Bottles are often a tricky thing to model, especially if they have unique shapes built in.
This particular type works really well with rendering glass materials.
It has an inside surface to add thickness from the outside.
Refinements can be made throughout the process to achieve more accurate results.
Case in point: the flutes on the bottom half should have been more pronounced. And there is too much undulation in the above portion of the bottle.
Not bad at all for mastering this type of Network mesh modeling.
Here are my steps:
1) In side view - created a profile out of one long Control Points Freeform curve. If you stop along the way, that will become a seam or line at least.
The Through Points spline has its use, especially when you are tracing and in need of more expressive curves, but I'm used to the control factors in working with the Bezier type curves. Either is fine.
2) I created a Spiral from the base of the bottle. This spiral was really a slow moving curve. I used something like 0.2 revolutions.
It was only used for reference.
3) I grabbed the top points on the bottle above where I wanted to rotate the profile. To fit the motion of the flutes, I went to Top view and rotated the selected top points until it was in the ballpark of the spiral displacement.
4) Next, in different views, the points along the spiral flute area were moved to match the ascent of the spiral curve.
I temporarily used a Revolve of the profile to adjust the points so that the shape of the bottle was maintained.
As the profile was rotated off-plane and matched to the spiral curve, it was essentially re-flattened out to the radial sweep of the spiral curve.
Thus, the Revolve helped as a visual check.
5) The vertical profiles were rotated and copied to four quadrants to define the ascent of the mesh network.
6) Profile circles were created, copied and moved up to match the side profiles. Somehow, the Network mesh knows to use the closest rings that reside along the path.
NOTE::: To keep the proportions of a planar object from the side view (where it appears flat): With the axis icon centered, grab the corner handle.
Make sure that your cursor is above or out in the corner area of the corner handle. This will scale in X and Y directions while all you see is Z.
When the cursor is snapped in a Straight path, a 1-D scaling will occur in only the side-to-side direction.
7) As the Network averages the positions of the profiles, try to get the rings as close as possible to the side profile lines.
Since I rotated the side profiles out of kilter above the flute area, I had to rotate everything in order to match the profile rings accurately.
Otherwise, you might end up matching the profiles at the wrong angle and the whole thing behaves funny. (I did that)
8) I copied a profile ring. Once I created a shape to represent the fluted area, I did a Rotational Array copy around the center.
Then I trimmed them from the large ring with Boolean Trim.
9) Grab all the points in the newly trimmed ring and perform a round Fillet. This is the profile of the fluted area.
10) Use the same Spiral curve and perform an Array to Path with the flute profile. 11) Place the stack that now has a twist to it in the center of the bottle.
11) I created a reference Arc. 12) Sized the flute profile rings to follow suit. 13) And performed a Network mesh to the whole set of profiles, rings and side shapes.
14) I created an Rotational Array copy of some spheres for the area I wanted the dimples to be on the bottle wall.
I performed a Directional Array on the set of twelve and scaled them down until all spheres slightly sank into the bottle surface.
15) I Boolean Trimmed the spheres from the bottle surface.
NOTE: This happens more than I want, but I often end up with holes instead of the intersecting side of the trim objects.
I find that you can use the Boolean Merge to get the parts you want. Copy those and Undo to get back to where you can do the Trim again.
Paste the objects back in place and Join them.
16) Perform a round Fillet on the crater edge curves.
NOTE: The Fillet will most likely not work (Again?... No... Heaven forbid!) if there are intersecting curves on the path.
I found out that the profile curve that is found on one half of a sphere was transferring to the trimmed surface.
I had to back track and ensured that that line wasn't going into the trim area.
- Then the Fillets worked!
17) Finally, the cap-screw. Using the points on top for snap reference, I created a spiral. I used different views to set the points.
I made a profile shape and 18) edited the curve so that the profile would start and end inside of the bottle surface.
19) I then did a Sweep on a small wedge profile to create the cap-screw.
20) Very nice... I didn't know this was possible at first, and I was worried that there would be something that wasn't possible, like the dimple creation. I managed to sneak in an edit every so often through the day and my PC played nice, so I got to finish this without having to start over. Increment Saving is recommended!
This was thirsty work!
