Bruce Kieffer Posted January 25, 2020 Share Posted January 25, 2020 Our user group is modeling a cupcake for our annual solid model challenge. I have the liner, cupcake and frosting modeled. I'm at the stage of adding sprinkles. Once I create a few different sprinkle shapes, Is there a way to randomly drop them onto the frosting?" Quote Link to comment
danm01 Posted January 26, 2020 Share Posted January 26, 2020 Someone (DomC maybe?) wrote a Marionette network that adds random symbols from a specified folder inside of a control object. It works really well. You could make a set of sprinkle objects of different colors and use a circle as the control object. Quote Link to comment
Bruce Kieffer Posted January 26, 2020 Author Share Posted January 26, 2020 (edited) I've looked around at the tools in Vectorworks, and I don't see any way to essentially drop the sprinkles on to the cupcake icing. I could do it manually, but that would take way too much time. Edited January 26, 2020 by Bruce Kieffer Quote Link to comment
Vectorworks, Inc Employee Stephan Moenninghoff Posted January 26, 2020 Vectorworks, Inc Employee Share Posted January 26, 2020 ...and again, Marionette comes to the rescue. 2 Quote Link to comment
Vectorworks, Inc Employee Stephan Moenninghoff Posted January 26, 2020 Vectorworks, Inc Employee Share Posted January 26, 2020 Here's the file. Play with randomization along the generated curves and add more symbols as you require. Some manual nudging may be required to get this to look the part. Sprinkles.vwx 2 Quote Link to comment
Vectorworks, Inc Employee Stephan Moenninghoff Posted January 26, 2020 Vectorworks, Inc Employee Share Posted January 26, 2020 47 minutes ago, Stephan Moenninghoff said: Here's the file. Play with randomization along the generated curves and add more symbols as you require. Some manual nudging may be required to get this to look the part. 1 Quote Link to comment
Bruce Kieffer Posted January 26, 2020 Author Share Posted January 26, 2020 Beautiful and fast. I will play with it, but it really isn't how they would land in actuality. They would sit on top of the frosting, not embed partially. Quote Link to comment
Claes Lundstrom Posted January 26, 2020 Share Posted January 26, 2020 (edited) Also, never underestimate the value of good textures. From a recent job I did. No, it's not real. It's about 1,2 meters and with a skin of fabrics. Good texture.mov Edited January 26, 2020 by Claes Lundstrom 1 1 Quote Link to comment
Bruce Kieffer Posted January 26, 2020 Author Share Posted January 26, 2020 Claes, I plan to work on using textures next. Our challenge presentation date is February 5th, so I have some time. Quote Link to comment
Pat Stanford Posted January 31, 2020 Share Posted January 31, 2020 Another possibility would be to make the frosting as a Digital Terrain Model. Then you could use the Send to Surface command to put the sprinkles on the frosting. Quote Link to comment
Vectorworks, Inc Employee Stephan Moenninghoff Posted January 31, 2020 Vectorworks, Inc Employee Share Posted January 31, 2020 2 hours ago, Pat Stanford said: Another possibility would be to make the frosting as a Digital Terrain Model. Then you could use the Send to Surface command to put the sprinkles on the frosting. I tried that. The frosting has overhanging cliffs, depending on the degree of twisting and the depth of the ridges. I don't think the DTM is meant to handle such conditions. Quote Link to comment
Vectorworks, Inc Employee Stephan Moenninghoff Posted January 31, 2020 Vectorworks, Inc Employee Share Posted January 31, 2020 (edited) FWIW, the way I went about placing the sprinkles via Marionette was to generate curves from the model and getting the points on each curve by subdivision. Each sprinkle-symbol is then placed on one of those points and rotated randomly. That is why they get embedded. If there was a way to generate random points on each surface of the frosting model and getting the normal's orientation at that point, the sprinkles could be placed perpendicular to the surface and then be rotated randomly. Unfortunately I don't know of a way to do that with Marionette. Edited January 31, 2020 by Stephan Moenninghoff Quote Link to comment
Vectorworks, Inc Employee Stephan Moenninghoff Posted January 31, 2020 Vectorworks, Inc Employee Share Posted January 31, 2020 Just had another look. There may be hope... Quote Link to comment
Vectorworks, Inc Employee Stephan Moenninghoff Posted January 31, 2020 Vectorworks, Inc Employee Share Posted January 31, 2020 Having limited success with a simple NURBS surface but the whole thing fails with a surface derived from the frosting geometry. I have tried to unclip but to no avail. Quote Link to comment
Vectorworks, Inc Employee Stephan Moenninghoff Posted January 31, 2020 Vectorworks, Inc Employee Share Posted January 31, 2020 You guys remember Drape Surface? I never thought I might be needing this some day... ROFL TBC... Quote Link to comment
Vectorworks, Inc Employee Stephan Moenninghoff Posted January 31, 2020 Vectorworks, Inc Employee Share Posted January 31, 2020 That worked. Create a drape surface. U and V iteration = 100. Name it "test2". Run the Marionette. Adjust level of embedding by changing the insertion point of the symbol and the rotation values in the Marionette. Ungroup. Reference a different symbol and repeat. Delete the symbol instances that are outside the icing and those that collide with others. Max. 10 minutes clean-up work. You could try and expand the Marionette to go looking for symbols that are placed too closely to others but it's hardly worth the effort, I don't think. Sprinkle v 2.0.vwx 3 Quote Link to comment
Bruce Kieffer Posted January 31, 2020 Author Share Posted January 31, 2020 Stephan, these are very cool solutions! I have completed my cupcake model and I will present it next Wednesday at our user group meeting. It's a group exercise, so at this point I am done experimenting, but that does not mean I am done learning, so thanks. You can see my method to create the model here: https://vwxgroup.com/bk/cupcake.html Quote Link to comment
Pat Stanford Posted January 31, 2020 Share Posted January 31, 2020 @Stephan Moenninghoff I love it. I would bet that VW never expected the best use for Drape Surface would be to decorate cupcakes. @Bruce Kieffer Thanks for posting this originally. Probably the best way for us old-timers to learn is to do out fo the box challenges like this. Makes my head hurt. In a good way. 1 Quote Link to comment
Vectorworks, Inc Employee Stephan Moenninghoff Posted January 31, 2020 Vectorworks, Inc Employee Share Posted January 31, 2020 36 minutes ago, Pat Stanford said: I would bet that VW never expected the best use for Drape Surface would be to decorate cupcakes. Yeah. Unfortunately, there is no node for that but I may file a VE 🙂 Quote Link to comment
Popular Post Bruce Kieffer Posted February 6, 2020 Author Popular Post Share Posted February 6, 2020 Thanks to all for your help. We had our meeting last night. There were many interesting "cupcakes." I learned a lot, and I hope others did too. One of our members took my Vectorworks file and used it to 3D print this! It is real. 5 Quote Link to comment
Claes Lundstrom Posted February 6, 2020 Share Posted February 6, 2020 Nice. Pity that 3D printing is so slow. Have had two machines so far. We do stuff like this in a different way. Quote Link to comment
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