how to fabric tensile

[bluediablito]

hello to all.

i am a student taking design class. My concept is base on fabric tensile. i was trying to design something in 3d max with these concept but i am currently stuck. i was hoping some one in the forum know of a way to make these thing.

thank in advance

[Peter M. Gruhn]

Depends on whether you want it "right" or "pretty." If you want right I imagine you'd have to go with fabric simulation. If pretty will do, what you've got looks like a version of this thread:

 

http://www.cgarchitect.com/vb/34034-modelling-question-tent-like-shelter-panels.html

 

I made the attached image starting with a spline converted to poly. The turbo smooth rounded the long points. Chamferred them twice and they looked good. But the mesh had broken slivers. Welded the chamfers back together andthe slivers went away ad th poi noticed before that turbo smooth has its own rules for border conditions.

 

The smaller pieces were made by shift moving an existing polygon from the large mesh and modelling on that. They had hard corners to begin with.

 

The large piece required some cutting and then some modification of those cuts because "ewww, that smoothed bad".

[bluediablito]

thank you for the fast reply

i start some testing with a relax modifier

i like your method i will try it as well

"quick question. when you say if i want it right or pretty........is there a noticeble difference between the way you did it and the other with fabric simulation?

(cant i do a combination?)

and do you know the steps to do it with fabric?

[Peter M. Gruhn]

I don't know, I haven't tried doing something like this with a fabric sim. Doing it by hand should make it possible to make things that are just plain wrong very easily. I keep thinking there ought to be FabricCAD out there somewhere and keep looking through Fabric Architecture (the international magazine of coffee shop awnings) for the advert.

 

I do know that on mine the big piece in the middle, the long bottom edge just isn't right.

[erickdt]

Being that I am in the exhibit design business I do a lot of work with tension fabric structures. I happen to know that none of the big fabric structure companies use amy kind of fabric simulation software. Most just use AutoCAD I know of one that uses Inventor. I personally use NURBS modeling in FormZ. I find that I can produce very realistic results with this method but a lot of that realism comes from my experience in how these structures turn out in reality. I'm not sure what modeling with NURBS is like in Max though. Generally speaking I'd say you should focus on the general look rather than accuracy...

[Jan]

You should see this one:

 

 

And the SoapSkinBubbleTool plugin website (it's free):

 

http://www.tensile-structures.de/sb_software.html

Edited September 13, 2009 by Jan

[Jimy]

Cloth sims in Maya are great and efficient. If in Max then reactor does good cloth sims and they're pretty easy to do.

 

The only problem is you've got no control, so personally I'd just poly, subD model it. In the end it's about the image rather than physical accuracy so manual's all good.