I want to 3D print some fidgets like the ones in the image. I’ve got the dome sorted, but flowify doesn’t work unless it’s a quad. I can make a geodesic dome, but it doesn’t roll as nicely as a sphere. I’m curious how you all would tackle this?
Hi Ty,
for Flowify use half of the dome and without the single vertex at the top. You’ll have a surface with four corners and full quads.
Start with a low poly sphere, not 24 segments to the circle, you will use SUbD anyway in the end.
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Four of them you can make rather starting from an ico sphere and using TT - Vertex Tools, QuadFace Tools and SUbD. Or if you have Artisan 2, you can use that.
Get inspired by how to model a football.
And for the fifth, take inspiration from the way a tennis ball is modeled (in Blender).
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2 things,
First: a geodesic dome will roll just as good as a SketchUp sphere (which is also made of flat faces), you just have to increase the frequency.
Second: how would a geodesic dome help you if you need quads for flowify to work with?
Edit: Thanks to @mihai.s and @panixia I now know that my second thing is not relevant!
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Hi Herman,
Quad surface does not necessarily mean 4 edges, there can be 5, with one with special properties. But it’s true, a simple sphere is more useful for Flowify, than an iso one, even if you do it full quad.
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The idea itself of working with quad topology + geodesic domes and such is not wrong by itself and it can lead to very interesting shapes.
The point is that this specific one is not a good use-case at all for flowify due to the topology containing a lot of poles/discontinuity.
As long as you create good topology based on the original geodesic/whatever structure, you can have a lot of fun indeed.
Here I’ve put together a couple of examples based on a dodecahedron, but similar things can be easiy done on other kind of polyhedron if you want to spend on them more thant the 10-15 minutes I did..
There’s also an example of how the topological structure of the tennis ball can be done without throwing in some random tris converging into a 18-valence pole (which can only cause problems when you are not going to cover it in fur, but you need to get proper subdivisions/unwrapping/further geometric detailing and such).
I’m creating a (free) plugin to tackle (among a few other thing) exactly this kind of shapes.. maybe I’ve just found a couple of beta-testers here..
There are a couple of more clever way to convert something like that in “full-quad”.
Quad modeling is 90% understanding topology and 10% understanding tools.
To be fair, your example is showcasing the exact opposite.
There’s no purpose in just converting triangles into quads like that, but extruding and then subdviding here would make more sense (for whatever shape similar to the ones showed in the OP example).
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Yes, the idea I gave him is good, I should have looked for an even better tutorial. Now that I am at a computer, I was able to make him a short clip. It’s better if you start from a cube, avoid npoles and create a good topology.
You can do this in SketchUp using the TT extensions and Fredo JPP.
Regarding the full quad iso dome, I should have stopped after the first edge set and the quad generated, because that was the idea to show.
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Well, technically speaking, a cube is the only possible quad topology in which every single vertice of the mesh is an N-pole (8 vertices total, 8 vertices with valence = 3).
But I get the “intention” of what you mean.
By the way what you are showing here is way better, but still could be improved if you
- Manage to re-project the cube onto true spherical topology (a subdivided Catmull-Clark cube wil never be a sphere, exactly because the N-poles introduce pinching at corners). That should be easily done in Blender
- Add detail on a more dense topology, to establish better curvature before adding other E-poles (valence 5 poles caused by Extrusion)
- Try to separate with at least a plain loop the n-poles and the e-poles like this concept here, because having them back to back is in general not a good idea (it can be done, but should be avoided in this kind of situations where you are looking for exact curvature).
That said, the general idea it’s not bad.
I was here to post another quick example I did after lunch.
Example of full-tri/full-quad/full spherical topology (despite the 12 valence star poles, which you can afford if you have enough density AND conform to sphere).
Perfect shading, no distorsion, 100% sferical (and manifold solid)
Unfortunately, now I need to do some real work, let’s see if I manage to do some more examples in the evening.. this stuff is fun.
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I’m very new to quad modeling as you both can see. I’ll have to find some time to experiment with QuadFaceTools and SubD. Never knew that soften/smooth can be used to make 2 triangles into a quad! Definitely have to try that out too!!
I’ve learned something new today 
So much to learn, so little time..
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Look @mihai.s video twice.
Soft + smooth by itself will return error.
You need [soft = true; smooth = true; cast shadows = false] in order to have it recognized as a valid QFT non-planar quad.
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Thanx, I only saw it once and not fullscreen. I just watched it fullscreen and I can clearly see it now!
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Btw, I would love to test your prugin when it’s ready! 
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Hi @tweenulzeven,
to learn the workflow quads+subdivs and how to think about it, I can recommend you to follow the YT channel TutorialsUp, one of the best for SketchUp, and to see how you can create more shapes, look for tutorials created by Blender, C4D, 3dsmax, etc. users, I’ll give you just three examples - Blender Guru, Polygonpen (C4D) and Arrimus3D (3dsmax).
It’s not necessary to learn those programs, but the way they think about how to create the lowpoly base surfaces, and then apply the technique in SketchUp, with the tools you have at your disposal. It would help you to have either the TT trio - Vertex Tools, QuadFace Tools, SUbD plus Fredo JPP, or Artisan 2, which has their equivalent.
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There will be a beta at some point, for now is in alpha v4 and look promising.. by the way is a tool intended for advanced quad modeling, you could easily get confused if you don’t know the afore mentioned “foundation trio” to begin with.
For a quick introduction I would recommend you start from the very basics here. One of the tuts is my sofa tutorial from about 10 years ago which explains step by step most fo the tools because it was targeted to absolute beginners. Some tools and techniques maybe a bit outdated because of course they evolved over a decade, but the base concept of the workflow is still relevant.
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Good to know!
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Another example.. here I saved the individual steps for reference.
Full model in the attachment.
Corrugated_Sphere.skp (2.5 MB)