how do you draw this in maya
 

help guys. how do you draw these kind of 3-d spheres, if you only have the unit component.

if you only have the small unit item on the surface, how do you form a sphere or squre with this unit component?

Hi, your question is a little confusing to understand as it is not entirely clear what you want to achieve.
Could you be a little more specific as to what it is you want to do?
If as your question suggests you want to draw the object then a 2D Painting application would be a better choice, but if you want to model the item to make a 3D object so you can rotate it and render from different angles, are you asking how to model it from this reference image ?

I think he might want to create it in 3D, but there is no default geometry to give a 1/2 Sphere with a slice out of it and for it to show the same thinkness.

If I am right, let me know. It should be reletivly easy to accomplish.

sorry about the confusion. the object in the graph is liposomes, and is made of lipids. i am wondering, if i can draw a lipid, which is the units that make up the sphere, can i draw that sphere?

in another way, if i have a object, can i replicate it, so it can form a conformal structure according some rules. such as cubic made of sticks, or sphere made of little balls?

thank you very much for your answers.

er..still not sure if i'm getting you. :)

just make a sphere, cut it in half. duplicate and make the second one smaller. now use the append tool to join the edges. then either make or find a texture of lots of spheres - you could probably do it with a procedural texture - and map it to the bump node.

actually modeling those lipids is kind of pointless unless you want to get in close.

I think I get what you want...

Your wanting to be able to generate this, by entering some calculations into a UI for it to generate this model according to the data supplied.

If this is the case than it could be done, but will require some very heavy MEL Scripting. It would be easier to model it out

If I am reading this correctly i think he wants to model the half sphere made from lots of little tiny spheres...hummm think i need to think on this for an easy solution.

My immidiate idea to create this, would be:

half a sphere with thickness
add the small spheres as objects around the edges ehere the big sphere has been cut in half.
add all the small spheres on the big sphere using a normal map or displacement map - like a golfball kinda texture or using the Bulge texture node..

jsprogg,

i think you got what i want here. just a individual component, and form a bigger structure with this component.

such as a sphere or half sphere consist of small balls as surface units..

sorry about my english, it is horrible, i know.

Why don't you just paint a custom bump map and apply that to a half sphere? Would be alot faster to render than actually modeling something like that IMO.

Use dynamics with a goal attached to the surface of a sphere. I think this would give better control

A slightly uniformed look tho...

hey chris you could birth them into a bit of noise via MEL to get em a tad random

THats would give better control over random sizes and placement