Messages

1

Offtopic / Here is a nice contest

« on: November 20, 2011, 02:14:06 PM »

Sorry for my total absence people, I am fairly busy lately. Anyway, this is a contest led by Poliform, an italian company that works this amazing new material they invented. Even if you don't plan participating you should take a look to the characteristics of the material.
http://designcontest.cristalplant.it/Default.aspx
Cheers a bunch!
Arial

2

Rendering / Re: Splotches!

« on: June 07, 2011, 04:31:36 AM »

Strange indeed. Can you post the file here?

3

Ask for help / Re: how to convert

« on: June 06, 2011, 07:35:10 AM »

Have you tried the Polysurface from meshes command? You can find it right under the boolean operations command on the left command panel.

4

Ask for help / Re: Emboss a Traditional Chinese letter

« on: June 06, 2011, 07:32:33 AM »

Hi people! I think T-splines would be a good solution although I started to say this almost for everything, I admit.
Another solution would be to extrude your lines on the Z axis without capping your solid and then patching the open edges to close your letter. Pay attention though, the less kinks you have on your curves the better your surface will be. Actually it is better if you don't leave any kinks at all. Use rounded edges wherever you can.
Salutes from Italy
Arial

5

Modeling / Re: modelling fabrics, flexible materials

« on: May 23, 2011, 10:15:54 AM »

Hey, you have a good head start there! I'm happy you found a technique that suits you. After all there are always more ways to do one thing and knowing one in a good way is more than enough most of the time.
But as of what you said about T-splines I totally disagree. It is true that people call it poor man's low-poly but if you know how to use it properly it becomes a portable B-52. Check this site and you will see some very good examples of it. Or check the WIP, there is a very cool chair modelled with T-splines.
http://betterlivingthroughcnc.com
He even did a webinar covering one of his protopypes realised entirely in T-splines.
It is a matter of understanding how to work out the right topology, after that everything is apple pie.
You are very welcome by the way! (:

6

Modeling / Re: modelling fabrics, flexible materials

« on: May 23, 2011, 04:03:21 AM »

Ok, lets say that in order to obtain those shadows you either need to:

-post product your render in PS
-create one texture with the shadows and stitches on
-model it that way

Hence you said that you were not familiar with PS I suggest you go with the modelling option. You will need T-splines though, because modelling such a surface in NURBS is going to be hell of a job.

As for the stitches, and I mean this;

you better use textures because modelling that probably will not be your best choice.
Have you tried the uvcWrap plug-in already? Maybe if you try to model something like a baseball or a small wallet you will understand what I mean.

7

Modeling / Re: modelling fabrics, flexible materials

« on: May 23, 2011, 02:11:57 AM »

think of it like this;
you managed to model your chair without the seams but did a little cavity at the edges (or a valley or folding or however you name it, just where the seams will be located).
You then proceed with the uvcwrap plug-in, you'll end up having meshes straight planes for the seams if you did your modelling right.  Get all those planar meshes and organise them in such a way that the meshes that represent the seams stand in line one after another.
Now after this I prefer using photoshop, do a big enough render of the uvc meshes and place my textures on it accordingly on photoshop, tweaking them as necessary.
Once this is done you will have an exact replica of the uvc meshes with textures and it will be enough to place that one image as a texture and all the seams, imperfections or what else will be placed perfectly on the model.
Or you can place your desired texture without going trough photoshop right on rhino.

Complicated? Think of it this way; take a mug and stick some duck tape all over it. Then take those tapes out and put them on tour desk, spray paint them and stick them on the mug again. This way you can decide what sort of paint to put where...

Seems complicated but it is easier done than said;)

8

Modeling / Re: modelling fabrics, flexible materials

« on: May 22, 2011, 11:02:30 AM »

The plug-in unwraps your surfaces onto a plane thus resulting in rectangle meshes. then you apply your texture and bump or displacement maps and you are good to go.
http://wiki.mcneel.com/labs/uvcwrap check this you will understand it on the fly;)

9

Ask for help / Re: help, match object properties, chance curve length, symmetrical Copy

« on: May 22, 2011, 08:50:24 AM »

Damon, man, you ARE into scripting! You'll have huge benefits thanks to that when it'll come to do complicated things! Wish I knew how to script in the beginning when I was learning rhino..
Anyway, there are plenty of commands in rhino which, in my opinion, makes it better than autocad in 2d. You can access most of them under the fillet curves command icon on the left.
Here are just the ones Ben is asking about:

The first one is "extend". It asks you t select a boundary object to extend the open curve to but you can skip this by pressing the space key, the enter key or the right mouse button and rhino will ask you to enter an extension factor. In this case you enter the amount of units you want your curve to extend, ie. you have a 15 cm long curve and you want to extend it to 20, you type 5.
Another one is scale 1d which is a command I use very frequently, esp for lines; pick the object you want to scale, the origin point, the reference point and then you type the new length of your curve, ie. you have a line that goes from point A to point B sith a 20 cm length. Scale1D, pick line, select the start point (aka Point A), select the end point (point B) and type 12. Your line is now 12 cm long.

For this second thing you ask, I am afraid there are no commands of the like. You will need to use other commands like copy, scale, extend or some other command.

As of symmetry there is a command of the same name but I never used it in rhino. I generally don't work with symmetrical objects but when I do I go with the good old mirror objects command.

Having told you these things I must add that i used to work with autocad back when I was studying construction engineering and I used it thoroughly but when I switched to Rhino, after the initial shock, I found that actually it is far better than autocad in overall. The object snaps are far better and, funny as it might sound, rhino have a bigger variety of commands when it comes to curve editing compared to autocad (most of the rhino commands are "hidden", means you need to hit space again to reach the alternative commands after activating the original one).
As a long time rhino and autocad user I highly suggest you to spend more time with rhino and investigate it to the depths in order to unleash its full potential(:

10

Modeling / Re: modelling fabrics, flexible materials

« on: May 22, 2011, 07:30:44 AM »

Hey Yuriy, check out the uvcwrap plugin for texturing in Rhino, it explodes objects in planar mesh surfaces on which you can place your textures however you wish and it positions the textures on your objects accordingly. It is a must for rendering realistic complex objects in rhino

11

Modeling / Re: how to create a surface instead of polysurface

« on: May 22, 2011, 07:27:20 AM »

Hi Jonas!
First of, you cannot obtain a box out of a single surface because the topology requires a plane curved in X, Y and Z directions whereas rhino allows surfaces to have only two dimensions.
As for attaching files, you should click the reply button. The quick reply does not allow you to do anything else but type a reply. For posting images I use www.imageshack.com. Pretty good and straightforward.
So yeah, upload some images so we can help you better with your problem(:

12

Modeling / Re: Modelling a tribal pendant

« on: May 22, 2011, 07:20:21 AM »

Definitely. T-splines is what you want to work with for these kind of organic shapes

13

Modeling / Re: Proxy objects

« on: May 19, 2011, 12:13:09 AM »

Sure, once you have a tree you can then copy it onto a surface or (I'm not so sure about this but I guess it could be done too) on a mesh as much as you want. Same logic as FurGen plug-in. But in any case, anything generated in rhino will have high polygons and putting hundreds of them will require a renderfarm to handle! Unless you are planning to make the next x-men animation in rhino I suggest you go on with bump maps and simple planes.

Here is an old render I did using bump maps on simple planes and the result for the trees is quite satisfying. The final render was 6000x2500 pixels big approx. and I printed it on an A2 paper. Just make sure that you rotate the planes on which the trees lie perpendicular to the camera on the XY plane and you are all good to go.

14

Modeling / Re: Proxy objects

« on: May 18, 2011, 12:07:21 PM »

Ok, so I tried your script yesterday but I failed at generating leaves to my liking. Hence I am not good at scripting and need to start from the second step of the 50 feet long ladder, I preferred beginning to build up a GH definition which, hopefully, will give the user the freedom to modify the tree (i.e branching, height, width) as well as the leaves (leaf type, population etc).
This is something I had in mind quite some time now and I have the general layout already planned. There are still things I need to learn in order to randomise some parameters and work with meshes instead of breps but I don't think it will take long before I finish it. Hopefully again...
So yes, I'll be updating soon I guess(:

15

Modeling / Re: RhinoTerrain tutorials?

« on: May 18, 2011, 11:40:24 AM »

Curious plug-in that one. I'll give it a try as soon as I'll find some time. In the mean time, would you mind sharing your progress in the WIP section? I'm sure there will be a lot of people interested in your results as well (: