irregular shape modeling?

[wannabeartist]

Hi all,

 

I just finished modeling a design lamp for a client and to be honest, I probably got some additional gray hairs while doing it. So, for future projects, I'd be interested to learn alternative ways of modeling something like this.

 

Here's a link to the product's page, I used the drawing and images there for my reference. There's even an animation of the thing.

 

Here's my mesh and rendered result. I used a capsule for the base and spheres for the balls - poles pointing at the capsule. It's not an exact match - for example the fact that the balls are not the same size made using Symmetry modifier a bit challenging.

 

I wonder if there's an easier (and faster! this took like half a day!) way for this kind of shapes - like for example, could it be done using the Blobmesh object?

[Peter M. Gruhn]

I think there should be a nice low poly model that's easy to create bridges between the shapes and then slap a turbosmooth on. Can't test right now.

[martincg]

or maybe through nurbs - check tutorials for nurbs inside max

[Peter M. Gruhn]

Sorry, forgot about this one. I usually rely on other people posting to bump the thread to remind me ;-).

 

Anyway, a cylinder, a couple geospheres and a little polymodelling and turbosmooth got a solution that doesn't totally suck in just a couple minutes. If you actually planned it out...

[wannabeartist]

Thanks guys,

 

Yeah, nurbs crossed my mind when starting this one, but I will have study them first - I have only done poly modeling so far.

 

Peter, thanks for the test, that's quite close to my version, except I used spheres and a capsule. Next time, I will consider geospheres though, it's probably easier to make a clean join with them!

[Peter M. Gruhn]

Yeah, Capsule probably makes the top join much nicer. The important point though is to work low res and use TurboSmooth. I got the idea from you that you did your work at high res; takes much longer and harder to do a good job that way.