SVERCHOK / Parametric Design Study of Soccer Ball

I have a growing interest with everything Parametric Design. Blame it on Sverchok and Blender. Well, actually ... I have been researching about this area pretty much since I started Computer Graphics.

There is instant beauty with patterns, repetitions, variations, generative, all those qualities that are inherited from nature and hence look very natural for our eyes, yet feel alien sometimes.

A small confession: I have an obsession with Voronoi (Cell) patterns. And that alone can be seen in many modern design. Actually designers and architectures are abusing Voronoi patterns for quite some times. Voronoi 3D is used in fracturing.

Maybe, designers and architects are just a bit curious (or "lazy") when they decided just to add complex looking pattern to their "simple" design! Let computer randomly form and generate the design! Sometimes, they end up with an interesting design that is really difficult to design. Happy accident.

I bet that is happening too. However, in grander scale, we do appreciate both SIMPLICITY and COMPLEXITY in design.

I want to give an example today how we could parametrically "re-modification of" Soccer Ball design into an interesting complex design.

POLYGON vs NURBS FOR PARAMETRIC DESIGN

Remember in the past when 3D people are modeling characters using NURBS? Until they realize that Subdivided Polygon is probably better and more efficient. Actually both are a good for parametric modeling. Polygon can easily tesselate into complex design, working with vertices, edges, and faces. While NURBS Curve and Surfaces has it's own built-in parametric UVW surface that is always smooth and can be modified in a more parametric ways (extrude, loft).

In Blender, we are using Polygon mostly. Maybe that will change when the NURBS is making a come back.

PURE SOCCER BALL MANUAL 3D MODELING

Firstly, I stumbled into this tutorial by Weelian Soh by accident today. Luckily, we have a good way to make soccer ball manually. It's quite fast too.

I went through his every steps on modeling soccer ball and I kind of like this.
https://vimeo.com/5991717

In a way, this is quite procedural modeling and parametric as well. Why so? Because it is like a recipe, there is exact step by step and it teaches few modeling techniques.

Soccer Ball is very special, it's Mathematically correct.

SVERCHOK AND MATH FOR SOCCER BALL?
We could start from nothing and model the Soccer Ball using Sverchok and Math. I am 100% sure! Maybe someone will go about doing that. So we can have a nice parametric Soccer Ball design (Soccer Ball is after all just a Soccer Ball, or is it?) right inside Blender. I will save this as challenge for you and myself.

https://www.awesomemath.org/assets/PDFs/MR4_planar_graphs.pdf

I simplified Weelian Soh's STEP BY STEP soccer ball into something like below that we can actually memorize and recite, to teach our future CG artists (I am dead serious!):

Here it is ... Soccer Ball in 30 Seconds... Start the timer....

1. Start with Icosphere.
Just like the Weelian Soh tutorial, I started with Blender Icosphere. Tap F6, set division from default of 2 to 1 division.

2.  Do Subdivide in Edit Mode, Level 2.
Hit Tab, in Edit Mode, do Subdivide up to level 2.

Well this step takes the longest... however, if you go to Top Ortho view, you can quickly select 6 vertices and then switch to Bottom Ortho View to select another 6 vertices.


3. Select all peaks and average.
Selecting the peak vertices of our 3D form so far, we want to "flatten" them so that we end up with the 5-sided parts of the soccer ball.

4. Simplify the soccer ball
In this case, I actually want a flat very basic 3D soccer ball with 5-sided and 6-sided. I use Blender Modifier actually:

Voila! We got Maya's Primitive Soccer Ball.

DONE creating Soccer Ball in 30 seconds?

Continue on, we don't just settle with simple looking ball. We want something more interesting.

You could continue with the usual HQ soccer ball, extruding, inset, Shrink/Flatten, Spherize. Careful here and don't end up with Macaroon Soccer Ball like what I have here:

Oops... I ended making this.

You need to Bevel properly. Use "Face Inset", then Subdivide. Poke the Faces, then Spherize. That's all, I think you could do it differently, to get that perfect Soccer Ball.

Here is the BLEND: https://www.dropbox.com/s/0m0hkh3gwwb5l4n/flower_soccer_ball12.blend

With a bit of Fractal:

However, I want to switch mode now to add some complex design. Let's slow down now.

DETAILING SOCCER BALL

We can take this soccer ball design to many different level.

I am following this trick shown in this "Parametric Building Design using Autodesk Maya". This book has some interesting technique in building all sort of intricate parametric design.

Actually some of them is not a purely parametric, but they are still step by step and applied as whole. Which is procedural. That is okey, we don't worry about that.

Let's bring back our soccer ball.

1. Clean soccer ball.

2. "Chamfer the vertex"
Actually in Blender, there is no Chamfer per se, so we just use Bevel Edge, it can give you kind of similar result....

I have to bring in Maya's Chamfer: (I think this is more like Max)

Maya's Chamfer.

Actually in Blender, you can do something similar if you activate "Bevel Edge - Vertex Only". Very neat.

Blender Edge Bevel is actually pretty robust (similar to Maya). You can modify the profile, segment, etc.

3. Peak the N-Faces
Select all faces, except the Tris, then Peak the face, to get the Poke.

Poking faces is usually bad for deforming geometry (we know, we love quads), however, in parametric design, we care more about getting interesting pattern.

We can Poke and Spherize to get something like below:

If we do Extude Individuals and then Scale Individual Faces:

If we use the "Vertex Only" options, we actually get a more beautiful umbrella flower like pattern.

From here on, Blender has own advantage of being able to go to Wireframe Modifier and just respect the edges to get such design below:

The Wireframe Modifier works only for faces, not edges, but if we have only edges, we can also use the Skin Modifier. And combo with Subdivision Modifier, you got all sort of interesting result.

New York City NYE Ball can be a great inspirations.

SVERCHOK SOCCER BALL MODIFICATION

We have not even used Sverchok yet...

Procedural bouncing ball is also possible by the way.

In Sverchok, we can bring in Polygon and turn it into Edges. Edges is totally and well respected.

Enough with soccer ball for today... I will add more over time for Soccer Ball related.

My point here will be:
We don't always need to start from scratch, in fact, the BASE forms is an important before we add more details. In fact by combining and mixing 2 factors, we often get something that is original.

RECOMMENDED BOOKS

Parametric Building Design using Autodesk Maya
http://ming3d.com/book/resource/

Form + Code
http://formandcode.com/

Parametric Design for Architecture
http://www.laurenceking.com/us/parametric-design-for-architecture/

DRAWING USING WIREFRAME IN THIN AIR INSPIRATION

http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2014/04/lix-the-worlds-smallest-3d-printing-pen-lets-you-draw-in-the-air/
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/studiocheha/bulbing-a-magical-lamp-design-light-up-your-life