special lamp

[themaxxer]

hello all

I have to model this kind of lamp. there are many of these acryl sticks in a certain shape. the problem is to give them a curveshape when looking from the side (frontview) there is also a shape in topview.



how to model it best? with hair modifier in max I have the benefit to cut the sticks with a map, but it not only cuts the sticks, it scales them, that's bad.
besides it has no collision detection.

maybe with vrayscatter? but I haven't used it before.

or with forestpro, but I don't know how to cut the sticks?

any other ideas?

thanks for help.

best regards
themaxxer

[bardo]

I don't know what the plugins you report can do....but one standard solution can be to model one stick at the maximum lenght, duplicate it with a regular grid following the boundaries of the top shape.
For the different lenght you can try to use the same method of the pin animation video (if I remember it uses a displacement map to move the pins).
For cancel the sticks that are over the boundaries of the top shape you can use an opacity map.

I know it's not a very clean method and not precise (the displacement map drives the different lenghts of the sticks ) but this is the first think I thought.

Good job

[peterguthrie]

its kind of possible in vrayscatter, but it won't map just the z scale of the sticks (you can map the overall scale). In your examples the variation in length is quite subtle, so maybe you wouldnt notice that the tubes vary in x and y scale? vrayscatter is certainly a very quick way of doing it.

see attached, 5 mins of messing about to see if it was possible!

[jacksc02]

I made a similar light a few years ago.
I used the animated pinboard method that was used in the NIN video and it worked really well. The most time consuming thing is painting the height map.

[jacksc02]

PG- I hope karba is paying you royalties for all your promoting of VRayScatter

[jozef_chvojka]

well I would use particle flow or scatter ( I prefer PF ) to distribute the cylinders on the surface on top, select bottom vertices and use noise/wave modifier to adjust the length of the cylinders...select bottom faces and view align from bottom view...
or maybe scale cylinders i Z in your particle view...

[themaxxer]

well, thanks a lot for the great ideas.

I now use the forestpro plugin to distribute the sticks on a curved shape surface.
It works great!

best reagrds
themaxxer

[rivoli]

here's my quick try. I first modelled a curved/wavelike surface, then used pf to position particles on it, randomly changed z scale to add variation in length, convert particles to mesh and then aligned vertices to grid.
I find pf gives much more control over these kind of things, and you can keep particles apart to avoid overlapping/intersecting cylinders.



edit: well, a bit too late it seems. glad you sorted it out

[themaxxer]

wow, not too late! I will try your way. It looks exactly what I need.

thanks for your work.

best regards
themaxxer

[bardo]

... Rivoli!!!!!!

[plastic_]

damn that's nice...I wish I'd understand particle flow.

must give it another look.

[rivoli]

cheers for that, but really, it's definitely less complicated than it looks. the flow it's a very basic one, just a couple of operators. but I guess it's an effective enough method, basically I just had to model the surface on which the particles are emitted. before converting everything to mesh you can even update/change it on the fly. of course it'd be nice to have an interactive way to do it from the beginning to the end, but I couldn't come up with anything that works.

[TRGraphics]

Mind sharing the file rivoli. That looks interesting but my knowledge of pf is limited.

[rivoli]

no problem, will do tomorrow morning when I get to the office.

[rivoli]

here's the file, max 2010. hope it's useful somehow:

http://www.caribouz.com/vray/lamp_2010.zip