Modelling Surface Through Splines

[mijajo]

Hey everyone,

 

I'm trying to model the SANAA Museum in Teshima using the contour lines of this floor plan.

 

 

So far I've tried using splines + cross section + surface. But the result it's not satisfactory. Any ideas on how I should approach this?

 

Thanks!

[Francisco Penaloza]

Nurbs??

seems to be the right approach.

[mijajo]

Hey Francisco, thank you for your answer.

 

I guess that you are talking about U Loft inside Nurbs. My next question would be then... is it gonna be possible to uv map the surface with UVW Unwrap tools or something?

 

I've never worked with Nurbs before, so I'm kinda rookie here.

Edited March 15, 2013 by mijajo

[meherthakker]

a plugin like this would be another approach

http://rendering.ru/ru_en/splineland.html

 

good luck

[matthewspencer]

I don't think it's appropriate to immediately look into expensive plugins for something as basic as a loft.

 

The point is, if you can get your model to polys, it can be UV unwrapped. Some methods make it harder than others but usually the topology of a NURBS object is so neat and tidy that conversion to polys is quite successful.

 

Loft it in NURBS using all the splines of that topological map, convert to a dense polygon mesh, unwrap as usual.

[Josef Wienerroither]

UV's with Nurbs are even better than with poly modelling

They are matematically/automatically generated together with the Nurbs surface

So when you are satisfied with your final Nurbs object the UV's will pretty much reflect and run distorion-free across the nurbs surface. So if you place a checkered material on them you will see that it's more or less already UV mapped

Of course you than can drop a UV Unwrap on it, but that will convert the whole thing to a mesh again,

so you loose the variable mesh resolution options etc... that Nurbs provide...

 

So you should work on the UV's only after you are absolutely sure you will not change the underlying Nurbs object any longer

[Stephen Thomas]

Have you tried adding a Normalize Spline modifier before you make the surface? That way you will ensure that each spline has similar number of vertices, which should give a better result. Also it's important to make sure each spline is oriented the same way i.e. vertices are numbered clockwise or anti-clockwise.

[Chris MacDonald]

Whilst I'd likely go with some of the answers given previously, I'd also like to point people in the direction of this plugin; http://populate3d.com/products/terrain/

 

It's pretty good with stuff like this.