There must be a quicker way of putting dimples in a golf ball! I am doing a small clip for a company’s golf day and I don’t want to sit and model every dimple.
I was thinking of doing a sphere and the dupliverting little balls on an icosphere - then doing an intersection… I have never worked with blender’s boolean functions, but this seems very difficult.
any advice?
OK.
So i modelled th ball and the little spheres are in place - I go into edit mode and intersect - now I’ve got more vertices than I can handle!
What to do, what to do!?
You could try a texture: Make an image with soft-edged spots in the right pattern for the dimples. Apply it to the sphere and activate NOR in the materials-buttons. Increase the Nor-Value with the slider below. Maybe this already gives the right dimple-effect. Try also to press NOR again, so that the button becomes yellow. This inverts the effect and might look better.
You could also try to use the function “Noise” in the edit-buttons. This function displaces vertices of an object depending on it’s texture. (Just tried it with little succes: The dimples affect the vertices only in one direction, but it should be radial… Maybe there are some other parameters for that.)
The main problem will be to find a good image for the texture.
Holger
use a subdivided ICOsphere. then apply a texture with one blurry black spot to it. It has to show on every main face in the middle. Use the texture as bumpmap.
Another thing could be, you take an Icosphere. then model a triangular part of it separately with a hole in the middle. Preferably with subsurf later on to keep the count low. Then apply it as dupliverts. Rotate, scale and model it, til all the verts fit seamlessly. then make them real, join them and remove doubles. voila.
ok i checked my advice and it is crap :-? . But I work on it
HH
The patterns on a golf ball fits an icosphere exactly on the vertices. I am able to manage the vertices nively if the holes are subdiv 1 icospheres and the ball itself is subdiv 2 but
when you want to subsurf the mesh it messes up. Meshes aren’t realy designed to be intersected - so i think that a bumpmap is the way to go.
The problem is that thie holes must align to the vertices and not the faces… dupliverts seem to be the answer - but for the life of me I can’t get the rotations right…
Maybe this should be a challenge to my fellow blenderheads - I bet I’ll kick myself when I see how easy it is…
I just e-mailed you a golf ball bump map I had. You should be able to use it ok 
Brilliant - Thank you very much!!!
I did a little thinking and came up with this way of making a golfball using subsurfs. I don’t know much about golf balls though so maybe it doesn’t really look like one.
Anyway, it’s really simple so you can try it.
Make a three subdiv icosphere. Delete faces only. Extrude and scaledown to center. Remove doubles and delete only faces again. Make a four subdiv icosphere (without leaving edit mode). Select all vertices and remove doubles. Set it to subsurfs with the subdiv on two. Set smooth.
Looks pretty ok to me
Make a three subdiv icosphere. Delete faces only. Extrude and scaledown to center. Remove doubles and delete only faces again. Make a four subdiv icosphere (without leaving edit mode). Select all vertices and remove doubles. Set it to subsurfs with the subdiv on two. Set smooth.
I don’t understand :o
make an 3subdiv IcoSphere,
delete faces,
extrude(to where),
scale down (how much and what for if i’m deleting the faces anyway),
make another icosphere 4subdiv,
remove doubles (what doubles - there aren’t any)
could you send the .blend?
-d-
Ok, here’s a .blend: http://w1.185.telia.com/~u18510119/ball.zip
There’s one step in every layer from one to seven.
If you want to make the holes deeper try smoothing it, this is what I’ve done in the last step (between six and seven).
extrude where?
Extrude and scale the extruded vertices down to zero so they’re all in the middle of the sphere. This should make an edge from every vertice to the central one.
Remove doubles, what for?
Now since you haven’t scaled the original vertices of the three subdiv sphere, you’ll have some doubles.
Hope that helps
Wow!
now that’s an exercize in lateral thinking!!
thanks
Pofo! Thanks for the info. One addition though, you may want to use Ico 4 and Ico 5 spheres to get it look more like a golfball.
—edit—
Oh, and it looks better if you SubSurf it on level 1.
Ok, now I have a question. I was told never to model anything that I could map instead, and can make a golf ball look just fine by bump mapping( I think, Anyway ), so why would you try to model all the dimples on a golf ball? This is not a “my way is best” thing, but is there really a situation where you would model details smaller than, say 1/2 cm?
p.s…my golf ball. uvsphere, 8 seg, 6 rings. subsurf 1
http://prod.bsis.bellsouth.net/coDataImages/p/Groups/63/63240/folders/32484/201145ball2.jpg
I will probably use the bumpmap in the end…it is the easiest sollution to what I had in mind (character animation on the ball).
But I like to explore uther avenues as well. pofo’s sollution is so quick and easy and works without having to find a bumpmap that maps perfectly to the sphere.
It’s allway good to have one more tool at your disposal!
Okay, now I can make up for talking trash
Create a subdivision3 icoSphere.
with still all vertices selected, create a vertexgroup in the edit buttons (they are really helpful for modelling, hit new, then assign).
now subdivide the sphere 2 times
then select the group and scale it inwards (a bit more than you should expect).
select all vertices.
Now hit the smoothbutton several times. Switch to subsurf Level 2 and enable setsmooth.
Is that okay?
scaling outwards is also fun
HH
Damn, again one feature in B that I never knew existed! Thanks HH, you don’t know how often I’ve beenripping my hair trying to figure out how to make something that I could’ve done in 5sec if I only knew about this feature 
the vertex groups are relatively new (app. 2.20). Actually they are designed to assign bones to specific vertices. But they are great as selection memory, too.
HH
Because for some “just fine” isn’t enough 
Bump mapped dimples won’t allow a result like this: http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/scorpius/cornell-golf.jpg
(found in this thread: https://blenderartists.org/viewtopic.php?t=666 )
I remember that one.
Now that’s the guy to ask about golf balls.
did someone yet?
