I’ve been breaking my head over a project for weeks now.
I’ve modeled 2 stylized characters, fully rigged and posed and I want to have them 3d-printed.
but the model is not done yet…
I have this schoolproject with the theme ‘Memory’ and this sculpture has to rise from a web of neurons.
and I have no idea, no clue how to do this.
I have tried applying the rigs and working from there, but the real problem is more how to model aesthetic looking neurons. and create a web for my characters to rise from.
Any tips, clue, known tutorials that I have missed or other handy ideas?
the tree from curves script should do nicely. I don’t think it’s available in the releases after 2.49, so you may have to use that. If you need instruction, try the tutorial at @ndy’s site ‘mindfields’.
(edit) also you may have to clean up the mesh a bit afterwards. another option, and probably easier would be the skin modifier.
What is the scale of the neurons in comparison to your characters and how many do you plan to have? Also, do you plan on printing the neurons? 3D printers may have trouble making all of the threadlike connections between the cells.
@ Modron: Thanks for your answer! The tree script was never implemented in 2.5+ releases of Blender so that is no option for me since I hardly ever worked with 2.49 (I had only experimented with Blender for some weeks before 2.5 beta was released, and I made the switch as soon as possible) I am looking into the skin-modifier though, and it looks promising.
@ electricsauce: Thank you for your answer as well, I’ve been experimenting with different sizes of neurons, and I will make sure that the thin threads of the neurons/ axons will be no thinner then the fingers of the characters. so I hope the 3d printer will be able to handle that thickness(time will tell). The length of the threads will also be minimized to make it easier to print, and I hope that using a ‘web’ of neurons will help stabilize the object.
But I’m still struggeling with how to make this web blend from neurons to the characters in a aesthetic way.
how to basically make this look good.
Maybe you could model the cell body and two bezier circles of different sizes. The smaller of the two would be for the dendrites and would have to be finger sized as you said before. The other would have to be about twice as large for the axon. Since the dendrites are so large, you would only need a few neurons in order to make a decent sized net so you can probably do this manually. You can then extrude the bezier circles along manually placed curves from cell to cell. With a little sculpting you can make this look decent
The main thing that you’ll have make sure of is that all of your dendrite/axon curves are capped. You’re not going to be able to print it out if you have a bunch of non manifold meshes in the scene.
One other thought, I don’t think a tree script would work well for what you have in mind. It would be able to model an individual neuron, but I think it would have problems connecting them together. You would need a script that can create a connected map of some type and I don’t know if such a thing exists for Blender.
The tree script was never implemented in 2.5+ releases of Blender so that is no option for me since I hardly ever worked with 2.49 (I had only experimented with Blender for some weeks before 2.5 beta was released, and I made the switch as soon as possible) I am looking into the skin-modifier though, and it looks promising.