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Attractor Pattern is Magic

S1monS1mon Member Posts: 2,980 PRO
I just wanted to give another bit of kudos to @Evan_Reese for the Attractor Pattern FeatureScript and also mention some things that I figured out in order to get more control over the tool.

I can't make this model public, but I do want to share some techniques.

The main body of this part has top surfaces which are not all one face. I grabbed the left/right edges of the surface to create 3D Fit Splines and created a loft between them (which creates a single face with more even parameterization). I moved the edges inward with the surface tools, then I rebuilt that surface again using another loft - this made the UV lines evenly spaced and even offsets from the sides of the base shape. The pattern body is just an extruded pill (race track, or oval) which is taller than the final result. I split the whole result with an offset surface to get the tops to be curved where the main body curves. If I didn't do that, the tops would all be flats which work most places, but looked really wrong in the curved portion.

The other big revelation (maybe this is obvious to others) was that the attractors do not need to be in the plane or surface that drives the pattern. I split the driving surface (described above) to handle the quick change of the pattern around the letters (and picked those faces as attractors), but I also wanted a long fade on the left hand of this image. I added a surface which was slightly offset from the original, and then rotated slightly to taper its effect as an attractor (see second image).

Selection Fillet (also from Evan) played a supporting role in this pattern. It creates the fillets that been the bumps into the main body, and rounds the tops of them off. I needed this since I was scaling the shape and it's not on a simple flat body.



Comments

  • EvanReeseEvanReese Member, Mentor Posts: 2,129 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Yes! Thanks for the shoutout. I've been wanting to make a video to talk about some of these workflow things that you found out on your own. I've used surfaces like that to control the fade, and have also used it around logos and stuff like that. I've also rebuilt surfaces to go across multiple faces. In fact, I also wrote a feature I call Pull Surface which can simplify this somewhat. I made it public, but never made a big announcement about it because the feature isn't really well written, or well documented, and takes a lot of understanding of what's happening under the hood of the surface that I thought it would be too onerous to field troubleshooting questions about it. I just wrote it for me really. You're welcome to give it a go if you like, but I'm not currently supporting the feature either for fixing bugs or troubleshooting though 😬.

    Anyway, awesome work. I love seeing it actually being used professionally. Once you've got this scooter in production, let me know if you have any extras laying around 😁
    Evan Reese
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