Hi guys,
I’m trying to model petals surrounding an irregular shaped base. I was thinking of arraying the curves, then projecting them onto the sides of the surface. This works with the model front on but isn’t working very well on the curved sides because of the irregular shape of the base…how would you model this so it looks like the image to the right? id really appreciate hearing any of your ideas!
lotusthrone.3dm (495.3 KB)How about arraying after extruding into surface, then arraying it around the curve.
Using intersection command to get the intersecting curve between the closed surface
and the arrayed extruded surfaces?
lotusthrone_arrayalongcrv.3dm (511.9 KB)
Hi Christian - see if the attached is what you need…lotusthrone_PG.3dm (237.0 KB)
The idea is to make a single evenly parameterized surface where the curved surfaces are on your part.
The rebuilt surface can be discarded once the mapping is done and the curves Pulled to the original surfaces on the original object - do all your merging and rebuilding on a copy.
If you build the pattern as more complex objects - 3d curves or surfaces, use FlowAlongSrf to apply them to the surface.
-Pascal
Toshiaki, thanks! this is a great idea. Really appreciate your advice, very helpful. i’ve never used the intersection command, it’s a good one to know !
Pascal, this sounds like a very good technique. thanks a lot for taking the time to share your expertise with me, much appreciated. several of these commands are unfamiliar to me so i’m going to try them out step by step now
Pascal I’m having trouble understanding your process…are you exploding the surface before ShrinkTrimmedSrf and UntrimBorder?
Hi again Pascal, I think i’ve managed to follow the steps correctly
I realised in the process of experimenting with this that what I really need to do is build the three dimensional form of the petals (not just the curves) and then paste the 3d pattern back on.
These are the steps I tried to do this:
First off I followed your first 5 steps
Then
This is what results:
As I understand it, the shape of the unrolled surface needs to be straight into order to produce the 3D pattern, so i’m wondering if you or anyone else could tell me how I may achieve this?
thanks for reading, and thanks again for your help.
Christian
Hi Christian - use UnrollSrfUV on the rebuilt surface then FlowAlongSrf the objects in the pattern from the resulting flat surface to the 3d surface. Does that work for you? For ApplyCrv the shape should be a rectangle lying in World Top CPlane to map back on correctly, but for FlowAlongSrf, not necessarily - if the UV’s correspond OK (which they should with UnrollSrfUV) on the base and target surfaces, then it should work out OK.
-Pascal
hmm i don’t seem to have UnrollSrfUV …is that a PC only command? i’m on Mac…
i didn’t completely understand this step
“I split the front straight surface in the center and shrunk the halves, to control where the seam point is on the reaulting closed surface when the next few steps are done.”
perhaps thats where i am going wrong with the UnrollSrf command. could you explain a little more what you mean here please
Hi Christain - Does it give you any feedback, like not implemented or something? It’s possible, I’ll check the next time I fire up the mac. UnrollSrf may be OK for this.
I split that surface and then merged all the way around with the start and finishing surfaces in the squence being on either side of that split - makes the seam in the surface end up there - you can make it and up where you like by splitting and shrinking any of the surfaces or using them as they are and just starting and finishing the merges where you want the seam.
-Pascal
hey Pascal, this is what I get:
“Unknown command: UnrollSrfUV”
and this is what i see in the manual
i can’t seem to unroll a straight surface yet…could you tell me why i am getting the shape in the image above?
Hi Christian - it will not necessarily unroll straight - try FlowAlongSrf from the unroll back to the 3d surface - just some circles or something. I’ll check in tomorrow some time and see what’s happening… Use the Dir command on both surfaces to make sure the U and V directions correspond - they should, but check and adjust. If the mapping is distorted try rebuilding the flat surface as well.
-Pascal
Ok Ok I think I got it Pascal, I just realised that you can use any srf as the base surface, not just the unrolled Srf, so I used the curves from the CreateUVCrv command and made Planar, then used that as the base surface for Flowalong curve, and it worked
YESSSS
WOOO HOO !!!
i’ll continue work on it to try and get the right seam happening
thanks for your help with this.
hey Pascal, in principle it seemed to work but in practice i tried it out with an even pattern and it’s not exactly the desired effect. what i’m looking for is a method to create an even shaped pattern all around. could you please check this out when you have a chance, any advice would be much appreciated.
i got a better result by selecting “Rigid” in the FlowAlongCrv pptions but still having an issue with the seam and the sharper curves:
Flow objects can be tricky…
I am on a flow pattern to, PASCAL help me a bit, but it turn confuse to get the right results.
We need to keep testing
good work
yea i see what you mean Architex, it is proving tricky. nice to know i’m not the only one struggling with it at least 
a similar result could potentially be achieved quite quickly using the zbrush curve function but it’s not quite as precise, and the pattern doesn’t change shape around the bends in the surface. i’m still hoping to achieve this in rhino.
PASCAL told me that for we achieve perfect FLOW we need to achieve surfaces UVs…
The destination Surface for flow have to get the same UV and Directions.
Have you try FLOW along curve, dispite of along surface.
Try to extract some isocurve of that destination surface, trace it in the midle long axis of your spheres and then try FLOW ALONG CURVE…
