Maya 2020 fundamentals - modelling the real world
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# 1 23-02-2010 , 10:40 AM
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interesting challenge...

I saw a 3ds max and modo tutorial recently on creating a golf ball and thought to myself that should be easy to recreate in maya.

Well it is not!

Maya does not have a geosphere primitive as max does so the best way I could find is to start with a polygon>platonic solid>icosahedrin, smooth, set to linear, 3 sides per edge, .5 push, 1.5 roundness. Then do some extrudes.

The problem is the faces are not uniform and the resulting shape is really not round. From far away, with the sun in your face, and moving 100 mph it might pass but up close it kinda sucks.

I am still working on a method to do it. If anyone else wants to take a stab at it and can come up with a good symmetric high-res solution, please post.


"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton, 1675

Last edited by ctbram; 23-02-2010 at 10:48 AM.
# 2 23-02-2010 , 03:33 PM
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Ihis is a hard one, did you get that machine gun belt working.........dave

# 3 23-02-2010 , 05:58 PM
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nah Dave no luck on the machine gun belt. I have been having a bit of trouble staying focused on any one thing the last couple weeks.

Now I am going to have to shift through all my tutorial dvd's and backup disks to try and recovery as much of the 1TB of stuff I lost as possible. To be honest as I sit here and look at the boxes of dvd's and old disk drives I am not sure I have the ambition to even do that.

I have a tooth ache, the flu, and have been having chest pains for a couple weeks now and this has just put me over the edge. I don't really have the motivation to do anything right now.


"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton, 1675
# 4 23-02-2010 , 06:23 PM
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sorry to hear you are having it so bad, see a doctor about those chest pain all the rest will sort them selfs out in the end..........dave

# 5 23-02-2010 , 08:50 PM
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make the icosahedron and smooth it 3 times then make a bump map for the faces. it will be seamless.

# 6 23-02-2010 , 09:08 PM
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Here's a step-by-step tut on how to do it with an icosahedron:

How to Create a Golfball in Maya

Interestingly enough, the dimples on a golfball aren't uniformly one size so if you really want a masochistic way of building one (and have loads of time), you could probably create several dimple patches of varying sizes, merge their edges and create flat strip, then use a bend modifier to make the strip spherical. Then, keep duplicating and attaching individual patches to that - kinda like sewing a sweater - into a ball shape.

Regarding Maya and geospheres, you can grab an old script from highend (creativecrash) that makes them:

Geosphere Script


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# 7 23-02-2010 , 10:00 PM
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Hi NitroLiq
I will take my cap of to you for finding this, I did look at the icosahedron but did not see how I could use it..........dave


Last edited by daverave; 23-02-2010 at 10:05 PM.
# 8 24-02-2010 , 03:19 AM
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Yes I found that tutorial as well, but it does not create a symmetric sphere or symmetric dimples in the golf ball.

Try it.

I have tried a chamfer width from .335 all the way to .447 and the dimples are just not symmetrical.

That is what lead me to post the challenge. I want to create a golf ball that has symmetrical dimples and of course is also round.


"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton, 1675
# 9 24-02-2010 , 05:08 AM
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Well, honestly, like I said if you look at real golf balls, the dimples are different sizes. Here's a good example:

https://www.summitchristian.com/GRAPH...lfBallClub.jpg

You're not going to get that just from basic editing of a platonic solid. You would have to develop some sort of strategy of creating the various sized dimples in little square patches (using a plane) then merge the verts or edges, gradually building up a surface. Then bending into a circle shape. Since there are no real patterns to the dimples, this would be a bit difficult. If you're saavy with expressions, you could probably leverage one of the platonic methods and write something that would randomize the dimple sizes.

Not sure if you saw this post but here's someone creating one with the geosphere script mentioned earlier:

Creating a Golf Ball with Geosphere

His sample image needs more dimples and unfortunately the dimples are the same size...I think this basically follows the same idea as the other tut I posted but figured I'd post the link as a follow-up.

I realize you're going for the challenge of modeling it but I tend to look at things like "How detailed does this need to be? How close to the camera? How fast can I get this done for the client?" If I didn't use one of the aforementioned methods, I'd probably try making a displacement map for all the dimples and applying to a smoothed sphere. If I needed a detailed version...well, I bet the dimples would be fun to manually create in z-brush with a custom alpha.


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# 10 24-02-2010 , 06:24 AM
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The golf ball link is broken.

I really thought the dimples in a golf ball were all uniform. I will have to look at some references and do some research.

The method using the icosahedron does not seem to be a perfect sphere to me either.

I need to check out the geosphere script to see if that works.

Thanks for the feed back and keep it coming.

Some stuff I found...

Most balls on sale today have about 300 to 450 dimples.
There were a few balls having over 500 dimples before. The record holder was a ball with 1,070 dimples -- 414 larger ones (in four different sizes) and 656 pinhead-sized ones. All brands of balls, except one, have even-numbered dimples. The only odd-numbered ball on market is a ball with 333 dimples.



Officially sanctioned balls are designed to be as symmetrical as possible. a ball can have six rows of normal dimples on its equator, and very shallow dimples elsewhere. This asymmetrical design helps the ball self-adjust its spin-axis during the flight. The USGA did not sanction it and changed the rules to ban aerodynamic asymmetrical balls. The ball supplier sued the USGA and the USGA paid U.S. $1.375 million in an out of court settlement.
-wikipedia

so it appears the USGA tried to ban asymmetrical ball designs but was sued and settled out of court. Interesting.

I would still like to find a method of modeling a golf ball with uniform dimples. Just as an exercise to show that I as a modeler control the model and I don't have to simply settle for what Maya will give me and say it's close enough.


"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton, 1675

Last edited by ctbram; 24-02-2010 at 06:29 AM.
# 11 24-02-2010 , 01:14 PM
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Fixed the image link for ya, though if you just do a google image search of golf balls and weed out the the 3D versions, you'll find loads of similar examples.


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# 12 24-02-2010 , 06:53 PM
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This is what I get using the icosahedron method from the tutorial.

It's acceptable but if you look closely it has two flaws in my opinion.

1. the dimples are not uniform

2. the ball is really noticeably non-spherical

user added image


"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton, 1675
# 13 24-02-2010 , 06:57 PM
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yes I got the same.......dave

# 14 24-02-2010 , 11:58 PM
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Ct. Not to...argue the point with you, but, i'm...going to argue this point with you here mate.

If you take a sphere, and you cut little dimples in it, it then losses its spherical shape, you might actually have a sphere on the outer most arc of the object, Yet still even the profile will not look spherical, from any angle, due to the way that the dimples are cutting into the outer spheres edge flow.

I guarentee if you take a sphere the same side, and look at it in an ortho view, top or side or front, and lay the sphere over the top of the golf ball mesh, you'll see that the parts of the ball that arnt dimpled, will line up with the circumference of the sphere.

i will try that out in a bit and see if it proves or disproves my point when i have a bit of time here shortly,

g-man


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# 15 25-02-2010 , 04:38 AM
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The problem with the spherical shape here legend is the icosahedron with smoothing is still not a good sphere even before the dimples are added.

Try it. Create a polygon>platonic solids>icosahedron and then smooth it, change the mode to linear, and then set the number of divisions per edge to 3 or 4.

This is clearly not a uniform sphere.

You can improve uniformity by setting the set the push value to .5 and the roundness to 1.5 and the shape improves but it still noticeably not a perfect sphere.

You can see it in my rendered golf ball by looking at the upper left hand side. You can see it is flat. This is not because of the dimples. The platonic shape starts as a 20-sided die shape (the old d&d die) and when smoothed it approximates a sphere but has flat faces.


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