ok how do i get a rough kinda swirl of whipped cream? you know im doin a challenge and i want to make a swirl of whipped cream on a metal table with a bottle next to it. i have something so far but it looks more like melting ice cream. help.
This link might give you a base for the mesh: http://tlinet.free.fr/volute%20violon%20english.htm
It’s a tutorial by BILL for creating the volute of a violin but if you follow it up to and including the first knife cut it should give you a nice start.
If anybody knows of a specific tutorial to create whipped cream it would of course be better, but I can hardly imagine such a tutorial exists.
uh, whip heavy cream.
did you try the proportional edit tool to shape it?
yes i did. i think thats what ill end up using if no one can help me though.
Quick solution off the top of my head:
I would dupliframe an oval over an animation path that has been shaped in the form of the pile of whipped cream. I’d make the oval nearly twice as wide as it is tall and space the path curve so that the volume of the oval has room to stack without going into itself too much. I’d give the oval a size IPO that matches the duration of the path, and adjust the IPO so that it gradually grows from a dot and reaches full size at about where the base of the stack will begin, keep it pretty much the full size throughout the stack, and gradually taper it back down to a point as it reaches the top of the stack.
Note: I haven’t actually tried this myself, but I hope that gives you something to play with. If you need me to, I’ll work it out tonight (I’m about to go to bed now) and post a more tutorial-like step-by-step version if someone doesn’t beat me to it.
(Edited for typos)
hmmm that sounds good but im a noob what does ipo mean? and break it down to my level. neways you said you are gonna do the tute thing so i wil wait. both ideas are great but that only gets me a smooth lookin poop pile. how do i get the gritty jaggedey surface of the cream?
Yes, my suggestion wasn’t a tutorial and it left some stuff out. You kind of had to already know what I was talking about and fill in the blanks. It was just a quick idea I wanted to post before going to bed.
An IPO curve (short for interpolation curve) is used in the animation system to affect changes in an object over time.
I’ll put together a little tutorial tonight after work, including both modeling and texturing the whipped cream. We’ll probably use a nurbs circle, animating both the size and shape over a path, then skin it.
I haven’t done whipped cream before, so lets see how this goes. 
An alternative to the dupliframe method is to use the screw tool, but for the texture you need to use the nor button in the “map to” tab of the materials window to apply a “bump map”
Also use subdivide fractal (Wkey-subdivide fractal) in addtion to a the bump map texture to give the edges of the pile a more rough look.
Cyclad, I didn’t forget about you. Tonight I really only had a chance to work out the shape to make sure the method I mentioned earlier would work. Here’s a link to a pic:
http://www.geocities.com/pellea72/index.html
It’s still kind of rough, and does look like the dog poop you described ( 
), but the key is going to be the material/texture/lighting to make it look like whipped cream. I played with texture a little, but I haven’t hit on anything I’m happy with, so I’ll tackle it tomorrow and start on the tutorial.
For the model, I pretty much followed what I said in my previous posts, so if you want to start playing with it, here’s a good video tutorial on using dupliframes by GreyBeard:
http://www.blender3d.org/cms/Advanced_Tools.418.0.html
Don’t forget that we’re not just duplicating a shape over a path, but we’re also animating the size from a point, to a fatter size, to a smaller size, to a point again over 100 frames (the same length as the path). I used key frames for that. My shape was a NURBS surface circle, subdivided once, and shaped to kind of resemble that star-like shape of whipped cream coming out of the nozzle. My pic above also has a little noise deformation applied.
How much time do you have until your project is due?
month end so im safe like an aliigator breifcase. neways that idea sounds good.
Modeling Whipped Cream
Open a new Blender project. Delete the default cube.
Creating the animation path
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In top view (NUM7) add a curve path. You can do this by typing SHIFT-A to bring up the add menu and selecting the Curve menu, and click on Path.
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Select the vertex on the right and hit EKEY to extrude. Hold down the CONTROL key and move the new vertex exactly one Blender unit to the right. Extrude the path until you have 12 control vertices in a line. For this tutorial, it is important to keep all the control vertices exactly on grid points, as you’ll see in a moment.
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Switch to front view (NUM1) and press BKEY for the box select tool. Select the four rightmost vertices.
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Use the transform widget (left click on the blue arrow pointing up) to move the selected vertices up about half a Blender unit.
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Press BKEY again and hold the SHIFT key down to add the next four vertices on the left to the selection, so that you have the eight rightmost vertices selected. Move them up in the Z direction about half a Blender unit.
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With these same eight vertices selected, move them to the left so that the left side of the selection is precisely over the unselected leftmost vertices. You can do this quickly by typing GKEY, then typing XKEY to constrain to the X axis, and type -4 (“minus four”), then Enter. Now deselect all (AKEY) and select the four vertices that are above and to the right of the others. Move them to the left to sit precisely above the other two sets of vertices.
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Switch to top view (NUM7) and it should look like you only have 4 vertices. Box-selecting (BKEY) a vertex in this view will also select the vertices underneath it. Using box-selection, arrange the vertices into a square.
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Switch to a front (NUM1), side (NUM3) or perspective view. Your path should look like an evenly-spaced spring or spiral. Adjust the vertices until the path is generally shaped like a spiraling pile of whipped cream.
Creating the cross-section
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In front view, type SHIFT-AKEY and choose Surface and NURBS circle to add a surface circle (Do not use a regular NURBS circle. Those will not work for skinning, which we will need to be able to do.)
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While still in edit mode, adjust the vertices so that the circle is a little flatter and wider at the bottom than at the top. Now select only the bottom center vertex and snap the cursor to that vertex (SHIFT-SKEY and then choose “Cursor -> Selection”). Switch to object mode (TAB) and go to a buttons window and activate the object buttons (F9). Click the Centre Cursor button, which should move the NURBS circle origin to the bottom of the circle. This way the bottom of the circle will follow the path instead of the center. This allows you to align the bottom of the path to your table without having to guess how much room to leave for the bottom of your whipped cream. (Edit: More importantly, when we scale the circle in the next step, having the origin at the bottom will cause the scaling to occur relative to the bottom of the circle rather than scaling to the center and making it look like we have parts of the whipped cream floating out in space instead of sitting on the table.)
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Using the arrow keys, make sure that you are at Frame 1 (in buttons window there will be a box with a number in it and an arrow on both sides), TAB into edit mode and scale the circle down to about a point. Hit IKEY and select Size to add a size key frame. Use the arrow keys to go to Frame 10 and scale the circle up to about the size you want the biggest part of the cream to be. Hit IKEY and select Size again. Go to Frame 11 and without scaling the circle add another size key frame. Without scaling, add size key frames at Frame 70 and 71. Go to Frame 91 and scale to circle to about half its size and add a size key frame. Now go to frame 101 and scale the circle to a point and add a size key frame.
Creating the outline
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Go back to Frame 1. TAB out of edit mode to object mode and, with the circle still selected, hold the SHIFT key down and select the curve path. Both should be highlighted, but the path should be a lighter pink color. Type CONTROL-P and select “Normal Parent” from the pop-up menu. This one will allow us to dupliframe the circle along the path.
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The circle probably moved, so select only the circle (It will be the size a point at Frame 1, but you should still see the origin point. It will have a dotted line going from it to the origin point of the path curve.) and type ALT-O (that’s the letter ‘o’) and left-click on the “Clear Origin” pop-up, or press Enter. The circle should now move to the beginning of the path curve.
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Select the path curve and bring up the object buttons in a button window (F9). Make sure the CurvePath and CurveFollow buttons are pressed. CurvePath should already be activated, but you’ll have to click on CurveFollow to activate it. This makes sure your circle is always facing in the direction of the path as it follows it.
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Now select the circle and bring up the animation buttons in a buttons window (F7). Click on the Dupliframes button to activate it. You should now see the outline of the circle make a shape along the path.
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This is the time to make any modifications to the path to make sure the whipped cream object will look like you want it to. You may need to edit some of the points of the path if things are spaced out too much or need to be spaced out more. You don’t want the outlines of the circle to overlap too much because it may cause problems when you connect them together (skinning). The ZKEY will allow you to turn on and off the ability to see the dupliframes of the circle when it is not selected.
Skinning
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When you are satisfied with the shape of the curve, select the circle and hit CONTROL-SHIFT-AKEY and click the “Make dupli objects real” pop-up or press Enter. The dupliframed should now all be highlighted in pink. They are now all real NURBS circle curves, not dupliframes.
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With all the new circle curves still selected, type CONTROL-JKEY and click the “Join selected NURBS” pop-up or press Enter. The circle curves are now one curve object. But they are still in segments. We need to connect them.
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With the new curve object still selected, TAB into edit mode, press the AKEY to deselect everything and hit AKEY again to select everything. Press FKEY and curves should now be connected. TAB out of edit mode into object mode and press ZKEY to see a shaded version of your object.
<edited to add small clarifications>
That should get you started. You’ll have to make adjustments to get the exact thing you were going for. The material/texture is going to be the deal-breaker. Try playing around with it and if you still need help, I’ll see what I can do.
pell