Introduction: Digital Art: Heart Maze and Waving Conical Surface Sculpture

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About: Discovering things i love, one step at a time.

Fine Art Inspired by my interest in the Beauty of Mathematics, Computational Design and Computer Graphics.

Supplies

  1. Desktop
  2. Rhino 3d with Grasshopper (90 day trial): https://www.rhino3d.com/
  3. Plugins (free) used: Flexibility and Parakeet from https://www.food4rhino.com/
  4. Epic Games Launcher (free): https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/download
  5. Twinmotion (free): Search Inside Epic Games
  6. Twinmotion Datasmith Plugin for Rhino: https://www.twinmotion.com/en-US/plugins/rhino
  7. Adobe Photoshop (paid)

Step 1:

Using Rhino Grasshopper, points were generated using the parametric equations found in Mathworld: https://mathworld.wolfram.com/HeartCurve.html

Step 2:

  1. A heart curve was created from the generated points.
  2. A mesh surface was then created from the curve and remeshed to achieve better results downstream.
  3. The "Kruskal maze" component was used to generate maze curves, using the multi-pipe component, the curves were turned into pipe geometry.

Step 3:

A similar approach was used to generate a wavy parametric surface and pipe geometry, just a bit more technical. Other sources for parametric surfaces include but are not limited to:

https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-11773-7

https://sourceforge.net/projects/mathmod/

https://intofuture.org/iflow-seashell.html

Step 4:

The wavy surface and pipe geometries were then baked to Rhino for further editing.

Step 5:

Using offsetsrf command, thickness was added to the wavy surfaces, the parts were then placed on layers and named for convenience. Export 3D view was used to save the scene in the .udatasmith file format. (Live linking also possible)

Step 6:

After launching Twinmotion, the default landscape was replaced with a grass landscape, other assets applied to the new scene include flowers, butterflies, water, fish and materials applied to the sculpture. These were found on the Twinmotion library.

When the grassland is clicked, a panel appears on the right with option to dig the ground.

Trees and other vegetation were rapidly generated using the populate >>paint option.

Step 7:

The environment, camera and rendering were adjusted to create a more cartoonish look.

Step 8:

After the scene adjustments, a static image was exported as .png and opened in Photoshop.

In the filter gallery, under texture, the texturizer was used to add a grainy look. The image was then saved as "large file" for best quality.

The end. Thank you