Hi guys, like many of you on the forum I always learn something from watching how other people model things in Rhino. Figured rather than just consuming videos from other people I would start making some myself to show how I model things in Rhino. Check out the links below, any feedback is welcome. Cheers.
Thanks for the . I actually just finished another one. This one is a technique to filling 5-sided holes. There’s already several of these, but I have found that different techniques work better for different shapes holes and this is another good way to do it I believe. Cheers.
Very good tutorials, although I’m not capable of judging about better or best surface modeling methods, the tutorials give useful examples, are easy to follow, good and calm instructions, often giving pointers in advance as to where you are going, which makes it very easy to follow. And so on and so on.
Better or best surface modeling is subjective in my opinion. There’s a lot of Class A surfacing videos that agonize about getting the digital surface model absolutely perfect. While I 100% agree with the garbage in garbage out analogy, we also have to realize that we can’t actually replicate a 100% perfect digital model with manufacturing.
All the stuff I design goes to manufacturing and I have released many a file with small imperfections that cannot be seen on the final manufactured product. Emphasis on small imperfections.
Think about it, digital model is converted to Gcode for machining, molds are machined and for the work I do hand polished, after this carbon fiber is laid up in the mold and cured. Next the molded product is finished/sanded by hand, and finally is painted with several layers of paint. This string of events hides small modeling imperfections and at the same time introduces new manufacturing imperfections.
I do the best I can and have learned over the years what I can get away with and what would not be acceptable.
Thank you for the compliment, as mentioned earlier in this thread, I have learned a lot from watching how other people model things, so I decided that it was time to give back rather than just consume. Over the years I have learned that in Rhino there’s just about an endless variety of how you can achieve things and different users have different tips and tricks even if they are modeling similar geometry.
I have some more ideas and will work on them as time permits. There’s one type of 5-sided hole I run into a lot and quite honestly I believe that in that case the Rhino Patch delivers the best result. My idea is to do a video on that and ask other users if they have potentially better solutions. Would be interesting to see what the community comes up with.
The example in the video gives a better result with modeling the individual surfaces, but as I mentioned sometimes the patch command actually gives the best result, at least it does for me. So as far as I’m concerned it’s a totally valid approach. There’s always more ways than one to get a similar result.
That’s what makes it fun and frustrating all at the same time
Here’s another one, this one is my workflow of building clean primary surfaces and manually building the blend surfaces if the automated fillet tools can’t handle the geometry.
Hi Mark - thanks! One or two tiny workflow suggestions -
When you make the first blend curve and slide it around (btw, there is an option to start the blend from the pick location rather than the curve end, which is handy) the tension on the curve does not change - the three points keep the same relationship at each end. When you decide you like it you can click on any other continuity radio button and then back again in the one you want - that will reset the points to be the default as if you had set the locations there to begin with - in this case it is a subtle and probably unimportant thing but I mention it because the other blend comes off the ends with no adjustment and does get the default point locations. You’ll see if you make a second blend curve off of the ends at the first location, after trimming back the large fillet, the curves will not be the same.
You can trim without duplicating the edges, if you like, by Ctrl-Shift clicking on the edges to just get the edge curves inside trim.
Thanks Pascal, one of the things I found is that I always learn new stuff. I’ll have to try the blend curve options that you mention, thanks for the feedback.
The funny thing is that I know subobject select by Ctrl-Shift clicking, but I always forget about it. Just so used to duplicating the edges that I default to that behavior. Will for sure try to remember to use that more. Every time I see someone using it I go, oh I should totally remember to use that and than I forget
Appreciate the feedback, always looking for ways to improve my modeling workflow.
Hi Mark - one other thing about BlendCrv - in an earlier clip you show getting curves on or near surfaces to then create blend curves between the surfaces - the Edges option in BlendCurve allows you to do this directly - the advantages are, there is no intermediary curve which may or nay not accurately represent the curvature of the surface, it’s quicker, and you can (sometimes must, as in the case of the triangular surface tip) adjust the location and direction of the blend curves.
Hi Pascal, Yes, That’s super helpful actually. I just played around wit that option on a few test surfaces and agree with you that this is a better approach. The thing that I particularly like is that I can set up blend curves that minimize twist by moving the end points around until the curvature graph looks good.
Ironically, I may be learning more from you than others do from the videos. Thanks for the tip, appreciate it.
Rhino 6, Brian James, modeling and rendering simple glass: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jUMGqlVslc
Note latest change in the way Shift influences Gumball: Shift during Scale forces 3-D scale; Shift while dragging Axis Plane Indicator forces 2-D Scale.
