I’m really new to Blender, I started learning the basics from the ‘Noob to Pro’ wikibook… but I’m kind of trying to “cut to the chase”. I have a very specific purpose for using Blender, which is to create 3D renderings of sculptures I create out of polyhedra (can’t link, see profile for web page). For example, see: http://www.flickr.com/photos/playful_geometer/5244571256/.
I managed to import a .wrl file of the Small Stellated Dodecahedron that is editable (other .wrl models didn’t seem to be able to open up in edit mode). However, the faces of the object are not really the outer faces of the shape (the point of the 5-pointed star, the image that is tiled to make the lamp). Instead the faces of this object intersect each other, as you can see here, where one face is selected:
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I want an object whose triangles are the faces of the shape. How can I modify the mesh to get this ? I thought maybe I could skin these faces if I arranged halves of the image properly, but there’s another purpose for having a new object as such, namely…
I also want to take the edges of the shape and turn them into cylinders, and add spheres to the verticies. Is there an easy way to do this for all selected edges/vertices ?
You assistance in creating virtual SpaceCrafts for promotional use as well as for rending some VJ visuals would be greatly appreciated.
Sometimes asking a question brings you the answer, in this case I have figured out how to get the images on the faces so I don’t need an answer for that anymore. But still need to figure out how to put tubes on edges, thanks for the tip on the ball points.
I will share my process for educational purposes. In the language of geometry (and not Blender) this shape has 12 points, each with 5 faces. I was looking to create 5x12 = 60 triangular blender faces that represent the visible faces of the shape. I have achieved this using an edge intersect plugin to create nodes at the “valley” corners, deleting the edges that run in the middle of the faces, removing all faces, and then recreating all 60 faces using vertex select and F.
In trying to describe the problems I was having on how to get the images onto the faces, I have discovered the answer to that problem as well. I selected the triangular faces, changed the UV outline so the right triangle was an equilateral triangle using the grab with Ctrl to snap in center, then applied the image, which scaled the triangle to fit its height. TADA ! Now I can make SpaceCrafts in Blender. Excited to share results eventually
As RickyBlender said there is a script that creates Dodecahedron in 2.5
With a little modeling you can go to your shape.
In 2.49 there is a script Solid Wireframe that will create cylindrical edges.
The spheres are Dupliverts on a second copy of that shape.
Thanks for all the helpful feedback. Using the suggestion about making a star from an dodecahedron, I managed to generate a figure of the Great Dodecahedron (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_dodecahedron) using the Icosphere to generate an icosahedron, then I extruded the faces inward by the exact distance of the pyramid height which I did some math to find out. I then collapsed the vertices of the faces into points.
There’s something strange going on with my model though… whenever I switch to Global view, my model disappears, there’s no camera or light source visible, and I can’t seem to return to local view. What’s going on ? I uploaded the file here gd_faced.blend (135 KB), your inspection would be greatly appreciated.
With the support of the community, I’ll eventually put together a little pack with all my face-able models for all to play with
Thanks for clue on how to solve my problem.