Modelling ornament

[Swiecznik]

I am an architecture student. My building has a bunch of ornament and I wanted to model it. I struggle a bit. I use Rhino and Zbrush. Can you help? How would you go about modelling it?

There are ‘pods’ on my facade. They are supported by a ‘tree’ like ornamental pieces. a fragment of the facade below (Picture 1)

Concept sketch (picture 2)

Target form of the top (a1) module of the ornamental tree. (picture 3)

Right now I trace with NURBS curves my lines and make them 3d. Then make a surface and export flat mesh to Zbrush. IN ZBrush I have problems of making this flat long pancake more cylindrical (branches like). (picture 4)

What are your thoughts?

[Spyndel]

Hello @Swiecznik,

I can’t help you with your work in another program.

In ZBrush I would make these branches with the curve tube snap brush over top of a piece of target geometry that I have sculpted to serve as a platform for the tubes. You could either draw the tubes out in real time, or use another tool like the Topology brush to precisely draw the curves, then switch back to the tube brush to draw them out along that curve.

You could also use the Curves Helper plugin located in the Stroke menu to create the curves from ZSphere chains if that is more intuitive.

Good luck!

[Swiecznik]

Thanks Spyndel. I had a go yesterday and was surprised how well it actually went. CG society also recommended curve tube snap brush.
Btw, the topology brush for making ‘sketch marks’ is an interesting workflow idea.

To follow up on this project. I was wondering how would you go about making the edges of mu modules meet perfectly (pic below). They are concrete casts I thought. Notice that these are just repeated copies but the do not match.

[Spyndel]

Yes, the tube strokes can be drawn along any live curve, no matter how that curve has been created. There are many ways to create curves in ZBrush. You can draw curves based on topological features ( for instance a creased edge or an open mesh border) if you use the Stroke> Curve Functions> Frame mesh feature. This would allow you to manipulate the topology of an underlying mesh to create very specific curves.

If you are asking about how to fuse or weld the geometry, you could do this with either the Live Boolean feature if your meshes reside in separate subtools. If your meshes reside in the same subtool, you could use Dynamesh or the Gizmo Deformer “Remesh By Union”. The latter feature has the benefit of using the Live Boolean process, so it will only alter the topology where the meshes are fused, unlike Dynamesh which will resurface the entire object.