I see what you're saying. You could possibly create a lofted version of the teddy bear that starts small at the center of the sphere(s) and finishes the size you want around the outermost one and the boolean the results.

--Luis

I'm thinking: Flow with Projection!

THanks Michael,
Looks beautiful but not quite... Your teddy is extruded along a line; it should "vanish to a point".
Harri

Hi Harri,

Sorry, I missed the taper inward part of you question. You could try a sweep with pointed end like this:







You would need to sweep pointed end for main face and each one of the eyes. Then do the boolean intersect of the main body to the shelled sphere as I mentioned previously. Then boolean difference the eyes from the head. Then unhide the copied solid sphere, and do the boolean difference with the newly created teddy head.

Does this make sense?

Michael T.

Hahaha, thats a good one MajicMike. made me think of something along those lines.

I think flow to the inner sphere and then slice and join it with the outer sphere 1mm apart should probably work, although I don't know how the flow command would actually affect the taper, which Harri is very interested in solving. Maybe Michael can give some insights about whether or not flowing the teddy bear would actually achieve the vanishing point that Harri is looking for...

--Luis

Take one big bear, take a very little bear at the vanish point
Make a Loft Direct between them
Intersect the volumes ;)



If you want a rounded bear take a sphere tangent to the middle of the face's bear ;)

For the taperd bear, dont forget sweep "with pointy end".

Yes yes yes!!

Thanks everyone, nice solutions. I'll play around and try them.

Harri

Hi Harri - sounds like you've already got quite a lot of advice!

Here's a bit more that I'm not sure was mentioned directly above.

Right now it looks like you've got the outline on to the sphere how you want it like this:



So you can now cut up the sphere to give you just a teddy shaped sphere surface piece by using the Edit > Trim command. Select the sphere, run Edit > Trim, and select your curves there as the cutting objects. Then the next stage in the trim command is to pick which pieces you want to discard - in this case you would pick these 3 pieces to discard (or you can switch the mode to "keep" where you pick which pieces to keep instead and pick the one big piece you want to keep):



Then when you finish the trim you will be left with a surface that is a piece of a sphere that has your teddy outline for its boundary like this:



Now if I understand you correctly that is one part of the shape that you want, but you want to punch it out to thicken it but in such a way that it follows the surface normal and stays perpendicular to that surface.

That kind of "perpendicular to the surface at every point" type thing is called a surface offset, and there is a tool called Shell which can be used to thicken a surface into a solid piece by generating an offset surface and then connecting the edges between the original and the offset. See here for a couple of examples:
http://moi3d.com/2.0/docs/moi_command_reference7.htm#shell

So at this point you select that sphere surface piece, and then run Construct > Offset > Shell (it's the second grouped command that pops out when you click on Offset), and type in your thickness that you want and you will get this result:



Here it is shown at a different angle:



You can see there that the inside piece becomes a second sphere at a smaller radius - that smaller radius sphere is a constant thickness away from your original sphere piece:



Generating a surface offset like that gives a different kind of result than extrusion - you can also extrude a surface as well but it will make this style of shape instead:




So basically to get a "constant thickness and perpendicular" result you will be wanting to use an offset type tool to do that, and the Shell tool is probably the most convenient for your case since it will thicken a surface fragment into a solid generating the side wall pieces at the same time as well.

Shelling for thickening a surface tends to work best when the thing you're trying to thicken is all one smooth piece.

Hope this helps give you another way to get it done!

- Michael

And I think Michael T was on the right track there with his first reply since he did use shell in there as well.

The difference is that if you want the "side wall" parts to also follow the surface normal then you'll want the side walls to also be generated as part of the shell as well.

If the side walls come from a boolean with an extrusion then those areas will have the one uniform directional quality of an extrusion rather than the "follow the surface shape" type of result that shelling a surface fragment will give you.

Hope that make sense!

- Michael

Many thanks for the detailed description Michael, exactly what I was trying to do. I had found shell and tried to use it but somehow got too muddled with all the stuff floating around ;) Now my teddy is complete.

The project actually involves a more serious side to the teddy, it's an applicator tool, used to place small radioactive grains precisely onto the eye of a patient suffering from eye cancer (retinoblastoma). This project is one of my favorites, it really makes a difference to people in a bad situation.

Harri

Cool, good to know these tidbits re: different tools! :)

You're welcome Harri, I'm glad that you were able to complete it now.

I would never in a million years have guessed that was what the teddy would be used for, that is a really cool project!!

- Michael