concave shapes

[Edwyndham]

Hi.

Bit new to 3D modelling, and this software especially.

I'm attempting to recreate some chess pieces as a first project. Most of it's pretty straightforward with the lathe tools (which are incredible btw). I'm getting stuck trying to recreate the king's head as seen here:

kingtop.jpg (98.47 KiB) Viewed 1530 times

Specifically, those concave grooves of the crown. Not quite sure how to accomplish that in Curvy, or if it's even possible (maybe use Blender for that, but figure I would ask first)

My efforts thus far look like this:

crown.PNG (139.26 KiB) Viewed 1530 times

Basically, flattened cylinders rotated round one another to make the base; for the concave curve, I isolated part of a cylinder (deleting the rest via mesh select) and inverted it.

However this leaves me with a gap between the concave curve and the crown base, seen here:

crown2.PNG (20.96 KiB) Viewed 1530 times

I'm at a loss how to stitch that bit up. I was hoping that joining them together as a single object and using a command like 'stitch holes' might do the trick, but no dice. Would love to know how, or if there's a simpler/more elegant solution to tackling this kind of thing. This is the best I've gotten with random experimentation.

[Simon]

There are lots of ways to achieve this effect First off I'd ignore the dents and draw the full shape with a lathe. Then go back to add the dents.

There are 3+ ways to add a dent to en existing model. I'll mock one up...

This one uses "Mesh/Voxel Subtract Children"

Five cylinders are subtracted from a lathe in one go (I joined them and set them as a child of the lathe before using the command)

After making it I realised it would have been better if I'd made the dented section as small as possible, and left the parts above and below as simple lathes (You can make the Voxel settings use a higher resolution for a crisper edge, and you will probably have to smooth the subtracted dents to make them look the best)

This technique and alternatives are here in the docs:
http://www.curvy3d.com/docs3.0/menu-reference-mesh-menu.html

"Cut From Parent" would work... but in 3.0 Cylinders don't have enough subdivisions to cut nicely. A Cylinder made out of a lathe would work fine. Indeed "Cut From Parent" follows a similar track to what you were trying to do - effectively clipping parts out of two meshes then stitching the holes back together - but to clip the meshes they need to have a fine mesh otherwise you lose big chunks of the model. You can still do this by hand... but I recommend the Voxel tool this time.

There are in fact endless ways to do this - I've added at least 3 new ways in the new 4.0 build! It is a common issue

[Edwyndham]

Oh, that's awesome! Thanks a lot, can't wait to try this out.

[Edwyndham]

Worked like a charm, thanks!

king.JPG (95.93 KiB) Viewed 1518 times

[Simon]

Brilliant That is a great subject for a first sculpt too! Each of the standard chess pieces offers somewhat different sculpting challenges.

(You are now officially through the "moderator filter", so your posts should now show up immediately too)

[granada]

That's a great shape Edwyndham nice job

Dave