Topmod starball, how to do this with grasshopper?

Hello GH community.

After lots of tuts and play around with GH, I love it.

Today, I stumbled on one single image which I immediately fall in love with the model, http://th02.deviantart.net/fs19/PRE/f/2007/285/d/1/TopMod_StarBall_..., I tried to do this with GH+Rhino, failed. My knowledge of GH is still very limited.

I am wondering could the GH community give a hit? P.S I have managed to produce the starfish like shape, but the part which stopped me is the interlinked and how to put this starfish shape onto a sphere and connect each of the tentacles?

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by ng5 Alex on May 9, 2015 at 12:29pm

Hello Bizkit,

i used mesh+ to get to this similar result. i used a weaving component that comes with the plugin.

i guess working topologically with a mesh, same as top mod would do the trick.

cheers

alex

ps i will dig for the definition, in case you wanna take a look.

Permalink Reply by Bizkit on May 10, 2015 at 12:42am

Hi Alex Thank you for this. It is super cool. I have tried this, got one issue. There are zero thickness after I applied wb subd. Is there anyway we can get a none-zero thickness? Attached are the screen shots to better explain the issue.

Thank you again for this.

Attachments:

Perspective_view.PNG, 392 KB
Perspective_view01.PNG, 146 KB

Permalink Reply by ng5 Alex on May 10, 2015 at 4:48am

I think if you welded the "ribbons" before giving thickness this would result continuity.

Permalink Reply by Bizkit on May 10, 2015 at 12:25pm

Hi Alex

Thank you for the hint, unfortunately, I do not really know how to weld "ribbons", could you possibly please shed light on my way?

Thank you again.

Permalink Reply by Kim hauer on May 10, 2015 at 8:23pm

Yikes!... I would stay with Topmod, it was way too easy to use, even T-splines today can't match it. :(

attached are the fundamentals of how I linked 2 hexagons in Topmod, (2007)

perhaps this process can be done in GH?

Permalink Reply by Bizkit on May 11, 2015 at 2:36am

Hello Kim

I love Topmod too. However, the biggest issue with Topmod is, it crashes a lot, furthermore, the it only provided very limited scale control, aah, if I want to use it print something, it is going to be a nightmare. This is where the beauty of GH stands out......

Permalink Reply by ng5 Alex on May 11, 2015 at 4:53am

Hello Bizkit,

it crashed indeed, but there are times that i thought i has crashed, but it just needed time to compute the command, seeming crashed while at it. there was a case that a veru hard subdivision completed in 2 1/2 hours.

about the ribbons, i was thinking that if you end up with a mesh without thickness and weld all its vertices, then the thicknes would not result those stitched areas.

cheers

alex

Permalink Reply by Kim hauer on May 11, 2015 at 12:48pm

Yes and you still need a watertight mesh before it can be considered Shapeways doable. I usually use Meshman to check .OBJ or .STL meshes. If it does not display in Meshman there is usually problem.

Permalink Reply by Bizkit on May 11, 2015 at 2:40am

It is sad, :(, lookes like Topmod has stopped dev.

Permalink Reply by Shridhar Mamidalaa on May 11, 2015 at 5:01am

Almost there.

Permalink Reply by Shridhar Mamidalaa on May 11, 2015 at 5:05am

Used Dodecahedron used its pentagonal surfaces and the corners trimmed using sphere give 3 edge geometry.

Permalink Reply by Kim hauer on May 11, 2015 at 12:34pm

I love this forum! there is always someone to take up a challenge. Great stuff Shirdhar! now all you have to do is cut the face legs and create a path for the over under reconnect, ......sounds so simple! :)