robcat2075 283 Posted November 10, 2018 I'm making a project that involves a solid-spoked wheel, much like many car wheels are today without hub caps. To cut down on the modeling I used some lathing and duplicate techniques. I based my lathe outline on a rotoscope diagram. I used two CPs at every corner to make a sharpish but still-beveled edge... This wheel has 8 spokes (with 8 holes in between) and a bump on each spoke. The easiest way to model a round bump or hole is to stitch it in on splines between two other splines. That means a minimum of four splines across for each instance of a hole and a spoke with a bump... To support 8 holes/spokes, i need to do a 32 cross section lathe. (You set that at Tools>Options>Modeling)... However, the five-pointers around holes and bumps prefer not to be stretched very far or around large turns. I'll need extra splineage where I've drawn it in... To create those spline I put some extra CPs in the lathe outline where i wouldn't normally need them for a straight spline. I broke up one spline crossing and spread the edge splines apart to start the pie-shaped hole... Connect the front and back edge splines... The corners are 6-points and need to be split into two 5-pointers. I add a CP to the middle of each front-back spline with the Y key and stitch in a middle spline... The five pointer patches are still visibly wrinkled from having to turn a large angle. I stitch in a new spline around the hole between the middle spline and the old square edges and hook in a new radial spline at each corner at the wide end of the hole... Now the 5-pointers don't have to do much curve work. I stitch in the oval spline for the bump on the spoke and that gets me one finished hole and spoke... I could do this seven more time around the wheel, but there is an easier way... I cut out the 5 lathe sections that contain this new modeling and deleted one lathe section on the edge to leave hanging splines... I grouped that, set its Pivot to 0,0,0, the copied, pasted and rotated the pasted part 45°... I connected each hanging spline to its immediate neighbor in the old section. This new quarter section gets copied, pasted, rotated 90° and connected to make a half section. The new half section gets copied, pasted, rotated 180° and connected to make a complete wheel. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
R Reynolds 2 Posted November 21, 2018 Nice modeling, Robert. It looks to me like your making a one of those old, railroad hand (pump) cars. It probably comes too late but if you can use any more detailing, I can offer all parts from this one. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
robcat2075 283 Posted November 22, 2018 Thanks, Roger! I better do my own modeling for my contest entry, though! 😀 However, I do hope to see an entry or two from you in Planes, Trains Automobiles. Three weeks to go! Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
