How would you tackle this decorative metal work?
 

From a lamp I'm working on. The basic parts I've started to block in (just an extruded cylinder).

The decorative parts will be tricky - to build, and to weld in with the basic parts too.

Any advice or suggestions (I'd like to do it all in maya rather than a sculpting package) - all modeled or mapped?

The really tricky bits will be the spirals.

Cheers,

gubar

I would create curves over your pic like a path and use a profile (circle) and extrude it along the path. this way you get a even distribution of your geometry. you could also break up the extrution and do a second one right from the beginning of the spiral and use a scale of 0.7 or something to make it thinner in the end.

after the nurbs oart is done, convert it to poly and refine the geometry.

be aware of normals before you combine geometry.

gl!

Falots way is exactly how I did it when I created the railings on my Steampunk wasp.
Obviously the flower petals will have to be modelled seperately to the iron swirls.

Thanks for the replies fellas, I'll give that a go now.

cheers,

gubar

OK,

I've created my nurb extrusions, but I'm having trouble converting them.

I've played with different settings, and on a per-tube basis, adjusting the chord height ratio (using Standard Fit) is giving me the best results; however, it seems to pack the same amount of polys into the smaller tubes - this wouldn't be a problem except for the fact that it creates a different amount of faces around the circumference; for clean welding I really want all the tubes to have the same number.

Anyone able to help on this?

thanks,

gubar

Gubar in the convertion options using control points should give you exactly the same poly mesh as the nurbs surface.
You might want to rebiuld the nurbs first to have less isoparms around the circumference as a nurbs circle has quite a lot or simply reduce the points in the circle befor the extrude.
You might also find the amount of isoparms spaced along the surface may not be enough to give a a very smooth bend when converted to poly but you can either change that before you convert to poly or add edge loops after and tweek the polygons into shape.

Thanks jsprogg, I've got things happening now... but more problems. I've started to join some of the curves, and they're not smoothing right...

When I run the cleanup command (set to select and not delete) loads of the new faces I've created are highlighted as face with zero geometry area - but I've checked for rogue verts and faces but can't find any.

I'll keep plugging away and post later if I can sort this out.

thanks again,

gubar

Trying something else... how would you attach these two nurbs surfaces without converting them to polygons?

I've messed about with projecting curves, atatching and intersecting surfaces but without luck. I've also trawled my tutorials but there's not to many on nurbs.

CAn anyone help?

thanks,

gubar

Ok don't forget that nurbs shapes are not connected where they join, all nurbs surfaces are square patches and consequently they always have an open side so you will definately have to merge the verts where the nurbs patch wraps and meets.
btw how close do you intend to render? because unless it's a hero shot then you don't have to merge the geometry at all just combine it to make one object or group it.

Hi jsprogg,

I have been looking at circular fillets for this - possibly the way to go?

Hero shot lol - do you mean a real close up? Don't plan to have any, though for the sake of my own satisfaction I'd like to get this neat.


EDIT:

Does anyone know if the circular fillet tool only works on planar geometry? Because I've tried it with the image above (except I've moved the vertical piece down so it intersects) and it fails; it tells me this in the script editor:

// Error: rbfSrf1 (Rbf Srf Node): failed to compute the result.

Anyone tried this?

All I want to do is create a smooth transition between these two pieces - anyone help?!

cheers,

gubar

you could do a manual boolean opration by poly splitting around the connecting piece of geo and then combine and merge the verts.

Any way to do it using nurbs?

I don't really know much about nurbs and joining, i try to avoid using them since they are a pain to me.

Yeah they're proving to be a real pain to me too, I've not done much before. I'd like to figure it out though so I'll keep at it for a while - if I solve it I'll post back how.

Thanks for having a go,

gubar