Organic Shaping of Many Pendant Chandelier

[SGNLE]

Hello,

 

I have been asked to create some drawings of a rather large OLED pendant chandelier (just north of 2,000 individual pendants) which will be arrange in an organic/waveform type arrangement. Typically with much smaller chandeliers (in the dozens of pendants), it's simple enough to do it manually one at a time.

 

I'm having trouble wrapping my head around the best way to approach this. In the perfect world, it would be to make a flat plane of all the pendants, and use that plane as a subdivision surface or NURBS surface where the center of each pendant is a control point I can adjust along the Z axis, wherein the pendants move with the resultant edited plane, which could then be removed or turned off to reveal the architecture of the chandelier.

 

I may be going about this all wrong, or just not sure how to execute this idea. Any thoughts or suggestions greatly appreciated.

 

The attached photo is simply a reference photo of a much smaller chandelier with a similar arrangement.

 

Thanks!

[SGNLE]

It is worth noting that in a perfect world, there is an expectation that these drawings be made into a final acceptable rendering, and would like to embed a render light in each of the pendants to turn on once the final model is set, in the event that this has any influence on anyones ideas. 

 

For me at least, it means to some degree that I need to be able to keep all pendents as individual objects or symbols as opposed to just a subdivided or augmented single object acting as a visual representation. 

 

Thanks again!

[Pat Stanford]

Out of the box thinking. The Digital Terrain Modeller has a Send to Surface ability.  What is you make a DTM of the surface pattern you need, a regular array of the pendants, and use Send to Surface to get the shape you need.

 

Unless you absolutely need to see the output of each individual pendant, I don't think you want to use 2000+ light sources. In Renderworks it will completely slam your render times and in OpenGL only 8 will be used anyway.  How about giving each pendant a Glow texture to simulate the light source and then embedding a single light in the fixture to simulate the output of the entire chandelier?

 

 

[SGNLE]

Pat,

 

I can see how this would be useful.... I should have mentioned that I currently only have a Spotlight license. That's my bad. Would love to see if there is something within that workspace before buying or renting a new license for one project, but if I gotta, I gotta.

 

Good point about glow texture and single light fixture. Thanks.

[Pat Stanford]

OK try this:

 

The attached script will replace every selected 3D Loci in a drawing with the currently active symbol. Make you pendant into a symbol with the insertion point at the bottom.

 

Create a NURBS Surface that matches the elevations you need for the pendants. 3D loci will insert "onto" the NURBS surface. Make you pendant symbol the active symbol, select the 3D Loci, and run the script.

 

You will have to figure out how to identify where the loci need to go ;-)

 

Script is very lightly tested. Use at your own risk. No warranty expressed or implied.

 

Procedure Replace3DLociWithSymbol;
{Replaces every selected 3D Loci with the active symbol definition}
{Displays a message if no symbol definition is active.}
{April 29, 2020}
{November 17, 2008}
{? 2008, 2020, Coviana, Inc - Pat Stanford pat@coviana.com}
{Licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License}
Var
X1, Y1, Z1: Real;
Procedure ReplaceObject(H1:Handle);
Begin
GetLocus3D(H1,X1,Y1,Z1);
Symbol(GetSDName(ActSymDef),X1,Y1,0);
Move3DObj(LNewObj,0,0,Z1);
SetDSelect(LNewObj);
DelObject(H1);
End;
Begin
If ActSymDef<>Nil then ForEachObject(ReplaceObject,((SEL=True) & (T=LOCUS3D)))
Else Message('No Symbol Definition Selected.');
End;
Run(Replace3DLociWithSymbol);

 

[bcd]

I would try this:

 

Fashion your nurbs surface to suit

In Top/Plan draw your grid of circles>Convert to Nurbs Curves

Select both>Project & Trim

Apply a glow texture as above and see what you have

 

 

 

[SGNLE]

Pat and BCD, 

 

Have not had a chance to test these yet but will ASAP on both accounts. Thanks for the input!