I thought the 3d basecamp 2018 model garden were a really good idea, with everyone submitting models and then having them all shown off on display. I’d certainly be up for more of that in the future. I do mean to get myself a 3d printer, although knowing how much I like to tinker I don’t think I’ll leave it alone when I eventually do.
In the meantime I’ve just had a little play at making a display of my own from a selection of the models shared. I rendered on medium+ settings in Twilight. I used a “flat plastic” material for the models and used a “rayman boxlight” spherical sky for the environment.
This is a little instructional document I’ve started to work on. It’s basically to convey the idea of how particular CNC machine tooling configurations work. This particular configuration has a 10 position tool magazine for the main spindle and 5 vertical, 4 horizontal drills.
Often the config needs changing in some way or other. Unless you are very familiar things can get a little confusing, especially when there are RH and LH drills and those drills require corresponding RH and LH threaded bit holders. I already have some basic “circle” images of this but they are not very thorough. I’m going to send this model to LayOut and then add text instructions and tables of the different tools that can be used. I’ll stick it on the machine and the idea is that anyone can become familiar with the setups quickly and easily, with a bit of luck that is.
I eventually got round to actually remembering to collect the sheets that had the information on that I needed to complete the document. This (oh dear) were printed by someone many years ago, as you can see time has taken its toll along with many modifications, it hasn’t been kept up to date well and leaves a lot to the imagination…
So I used the modelled parts and the information from the first sheet to create something in LayOut that looks nicer and puts the information across in hopefully a much clearer way…
On the subject of tools, this image shows a woodworking profiling tool with changeable knives. I modelled this purely for illustration of how the parts are set up with the main block.
These pencil sketches remind me of a few months ago when I sent a lady some model images for some marketing material. She showed me the output and basically she’d tore them apart! She’d very neatly and cleverly combined several images and made them look like vintage plans using Photoshop I think, I weren’t quite expecting that.
It inspired me to have another tinker with the profile tool and Layout to see what I could come up with. I started with my basic template but simply inserted an “old paper” image and put it on a layer at the bottom of the stack to make sure everything showed on top. I sorted the viewports and added some dimensions but not overly detailed though.
I exported a JPEG from LO and put that into Fotosketcher. I desaturated the original image and then ended up choosing a vintage effect with a few alterations to the basic settings…Ah the date has given the game away, nevermind…
I had another go with SubD to try something more with the octopus type idea. This one has strange protruding eyes just for trial purpose and suckers on the tentacles.
I learned a lot with this one, especially not to draw circles for SuBD where possible. I initially drew circles for the suckers and my computer didn’t take it very well when I used SubD on it. I went back and replaced the circles with rectangular shapes instead, they worked much better.
I also painfully found that if you texture a non-SubD face, the texturing is lost when you apply SubD and so have to apply it again, Unless I did it wrong.
This is the initial model before SubD, its the same process as my last post really, just with more detail added. I put some articulation in the legs this time too…
I see stuff from Cotty and Box all the time that looks really good. I just went and bought it from “The Evil Software Empire” (which were an odd transaction) for 32 quid. There is a free trial too.
It’s simple to use really, you just have to kinda think “what’s roughly that shape, but a squared version” and model that. SubD takes care of the rest. You can go back and adjust the original at any time too which is good. It’s a nice tool to have.
@IanT the material shouldn’t go away when you SUBD. That is one of highlights, it is uv mapped. I’m on my phone at the moment so can’t shoe you what I mean. But make sure you paint the faces not the group.
This has been bugging me all day why that happened, I did find it strange and I am glad it isn’t the norm. When I think back, the texture were kept when I applied SUBD and were actually lost when I turned SUBD off to make some further adjustments. At first I just thought it were taking a little time, but nothing happened. I then thought “shaded with textures” weren’t checked, but that were fine.
At that time it were the “circle sucker” version that were bringing death to my system, so I were having trouble that way too. But I don’t think that had much to do with it, I did however redo it for a square sucker one, I thought it would be quicker than trying to remove all those circular parts.
I now see that the current “square sucker” version, does in fact retain the material when SUBD is turned back off, I didn’t want to try it again yesterday. (Colours definitely applied to faces in this one).
Left to right…Before SUBD/With SUBD/SUBD turned back off…The “colours” remain…(phew)
Yes it is, this stuff is all new to me so I thought I’d share a little of my goings on as I go. The whole quad modelling/ SubD stuff seems like some sort of wizardry to me, but I thought I’d start to try to understand a little at least.
As an addition to your example: with the last line, you’ve created an internal face, here you can see the difference with or without that face…
(Edit: You can get the same result without the face but with using the crease tool of SubD.)
