Modeling HELP needed

Rhino Rhino for Windows
1

New to Rhino and could really use some advice on the best approach towards creating what I have in mind.

The shape I am trying to make is similar to a back massager (see attached images) and consists of three spheres in a triangular formation…around which I need a skin of some type (?) to form a single blobby mass. Think three balls of goo being pulled in different directions.
I’ve had some promising results between two of the spheres by slicing the spheres in half and using the resulting circular edges with >sweep2< along 2 splines.

Any suggestions would be GREATLY appreciated…thanks!

2

T- SPLINES, I’m sure normal rhino can do it, but not as well as T-splines could.

3

Agreed with ATH. If much of your modeling future involves making free-flowing shapes, an organic modeling plug-in should be considered. Off-the-cuff I can envision 2 or 3 ways to do this in T-Splines (tsPipe, radial symmetry, QuadBall face bridging, etc)…

tsMassaged.jpg1209×733 113 KB

Nature of the resulting model is that it’s got no abrupt edges that had to be forcibly matched up. Time can be spent tugging at edges, vertices, and faces to immediately explore variations – everything remains watertight.

tsMassager.jpg1209×733 125 KB

Once the model’s been shaped to perfection, one click converts it into a Rhino nurbs polysurface with no naked edges.

4

Sure it can be done without T-Splines.

  1. Draw four spheres or ellipsoids to form the outer shapes
  2. Connect the middle sphere’s center to the other centers (using smart track) with a line
  3. Pipe the lines to the desired radius (can even use different radii on each leg)
  4. Run BooleanUnion on spheres and pipes
  5. Explode the union result
  6. Remove the pipes
  7. Use BlendSrf to create blended surfaces between the openings left. Tune the blend parameters to get the desired shape between the spheres.
  8. Maybe use Twist, or CageEdit to change the final shape.

And, this is just with my very limited knowledge of modeling in Rhino :smile:

5

Hi,

Here’s a model done in 5 minutes with simple geometry.
Helpful if you want to stick to exact geometry (sphere diameters, distances, angles…) and explore from there. The legs are done with BlendSrf between trimmed spheres.
Gizmo.3dm (3.5 MB)

2 Likes
6

THANK YOU for all your help!

7

Anyone up for a grasshopper version? I’ve tried but can’t figure out how to blend the top part (three pipes) or put nice feet (spheres) on it (and blend the spheres with the legs).

Gizmo.gh (11.1 KB)