Hi,

This is my first post to the forum. I just got MoI a few days ago and I must say I'm really liking it a lot. I was wondering how I could model a three stranded circular braid, and this is what I came up with after a day or so of scratching my head trying to figure it out. For this is was really only necessary to model one strand and then rotate/copy it 2 times at the proper angles. Because the rail was displaced in the Z axis at the proper points the result is the typical over/under configuration in a braid.

I had some experience with Rhino 3D some years ago so I wasn't exactly a newbie. Even so I find MoI to be wonderfully powerful and intuitive to use.

Regards,
fleetfoot

P.S. I forgot to mention this was a test render in Vue 10 Complete (sorry for the too large size)

Hi fleetfoot, it turned out very nice - I like the different metals for each strand and it casts a cool looking shadow too!

If you want to bend something like that along different shaped paths, you can do that by building a section that follows a straight line path and then using the new Transform > Deform > Flow command to warp it from the line backbone on to a curved path, see some of these examples:

http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=4834.1
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=4611.3

- Michael

Very impressive work Fleetfoot!

I ran into a similar challenge when I made this mesh:

http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=4561.1

Congratulations on coming so far so quickly with MoI. You'll have lots more fun with it as you increase your skill with it. Since you have Rhino experience, it should be as easy as going from a rugged mountain bike to a 10-speed... a sleek Italian 10-speed made with wind-resistant, lightweight composite alloys! (okay, poor analogy. ;-)

Thanks for the comments and suggestions Michael & Magic. I've started looking at Twist and flow. What awesome functions.

Magic your speaker is great work - thanks for taking the time to explain your process for it.

I realize my simple braid is pretty basic but doing it gave me a lot of initial insight into the power of nurbs modeling using MoI. Quite different from the polygonal methods.

Anyway I hope to get a full grasp and stretch out and see where I can take it.

There's lots of great stuff on this site and in this community.

Regards,
fleetfoot

I worked on something similar too



Flow is definitely going to make this easier for you. Good luck.

Nice render there too Sebastian!

- Michael

That is superb MOI for you...welcome to the club. I did recently similar but for different kind of things architectural exercise using flow.
quickly rendered in KeyShot. Flow tool is very powerful indeed.
Keep rolling and you'll get more and more out of this wonderful environment.

thanks Michael and our friends from the forum

mario

Nice results !

Wow, Bigseb - ritzy! Much respect. :-)


Mariomarimba, breathtaking intricacy. This structure should be made ten stories high and should contain an ultra fast roller coaster!

Yes, Fleetfoot, you'll very much enjoy MoI! ;-)

magic

when compliment comes from somebody of your knowledge then......thank you.
well... this yellow "thing " is part of a big structure.

and one more exercise before i go.

Hey bigseb -

Thanks for showing that. I am thinking of trying to model a similar ring, one that I actually wear which is made of silver. The odd thing is I know how to make something like this for real but I don't quite know how to model it in software.

I've been looking at the Twist & Flow Deform functions, but I can only see spirals so far. How does one use those functions to achieve the interweaving of the strands?

Cheers!
fleetfoot

Hi fleetfoot, those probably won't help you directly to do the weaving, but Flow will allow you to at least focus on making a weave that's all flat in a plane and then you can use Flow to bend it into the ring shape.

That at least takes one degree of complexity out of the equation.


Also you might want to check out this post that uses flow to map a straight curve that has a rise and fall in it onto a curved path:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=4785.13

- Michael

nice ring Sebastian, that the sort of pieces my wife wants me to design, ;( , told her she will have to wait, i need to work out how to do it, before I can do it :)

So the way that Flow might help with curve construction would be to first draw a 2D curve in the Front view that has a rise and fall to it, and have a line underneath it kind of like a shadow:



Then you can draw in a separate path curve in the Top view so you've got 3 curves like this:



With this kind of arrangement you can then select the "rise and fall" curve, then run the Transform > Deform > Flow command, and then pick that shadow line underneath it as the base curve and select the other one as the target curve, and that will produce this kind of result:



So you can kind of get an idea there that if you're able to kind of deconstruct the result you want into initially straight components you can then use Flow to deform them onto a new path, so you can kind of build things up by adding one element of shaping at a time which can be easier than trying to directly model the final path all in 3D.

Similarly you would focus on making a weave that was on a plane and then map from the plane to a cylinder shape.

- Michael

I put this aside for awhile, then when I came back to it I finally figured out how to do this circular weave.
This is a true over-under-over-under.... weave of three strands that wraps to form a circle with exact endpoints.
There are no jagged ends or overlapping surfaces or solids.
I put it in the form of a ring.

This rendering I adjusted the material of the weave to be less metallic because
the reflections were too intense and obscured the weaving effect.

Hope you like it. I can send the 3DM file to anyone who might be interested.

Cheers,
fleetfoot

I forgot to mention that I used the FLOW function, and it took me three tries to get what I really wanted. But when it worked
bingo! What a powerful tool!

Hi fleetfoot - the weave turned out really great!

- Michael