Hi guys,, help me to understand how to do the shapes in the cactus? I don't know where to start
Thanks.
Gianluca

A lot of plants have a fibonacci pattern. The pattern kind of coils around.

See the post on pineapple. http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=4558.1

Hi Gianluca, so often a repeating pattern like that can be best done in a rendering program using displacement texture mapping.

But if you do want to try and model it directly in MoI, then using the Flow command will be your best bet - to do that you will model the ripples as a separate object that's just oriented on a flat x/y plane, you could use control point manipulation or do a loft through a series of wiggly curves to make that base surface.

Then using the same kind of technique as that Pineapple model you could use Flow to wrap the flat wavy pattern on to your surfaces.

See here for some more info about Flow:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=4856.2

But if you are intending to render this object anyway it may be a lot easier to do the pattern as a displacement texture map in your rendering program instead of trying to model that kind of pattern manually.

- Michael

It's definitely possible in MoI... most EVERYTHING is possible with MoI! ;-)



Well, at least I gave MoI a chance.

For my quick attempt here I first made a square and Separated the lines. Each side line was given extra control Points by the Rebuild command.
Those new point enriched lines were Networked into a new surface.
I selected every other point on the surface. To do this I rotated the surface 45 degrees and selected vertical selection groups of points, which were really at diagonals. But none the less, I selected every other point on the surface in a checker-board configuration.
I simply moved those point on the Z dimension. This made the egg-carton pattern in the surface.
I trimmed a smaller square's worth of surface out of the egg-carton surface so that the edges met clean and consistently.
I made copies and Joined them together.
All I had to do was go through the steps to Flow the bumpy surface around a form object.

Yes, this can get extremely complex, and flow is hard to work with on many surfaces.
Good exercise though.

And thus... The MoI Cactus. :-)

thanks guys for helping me ... I do not only render (bump / displacement in C4d), but a usb key.
Gianluca