Modeling a swirl like shape?

sidx30

Hey guys! I'm kinda stumped here. How would some of you go about modeling a hard-surface object that has swirling designs? For example:



The spiraling parts at the top of the column. I could probably just download an image and trace over it with polygons, but any way to do it through modeling? I feel like I should know this but I think my brain took a vacation lol. Thanks! :thumbup:

throttlekitty

In Maya, you could take a profile curve or mesh, and extrude that along a path curve for the positive shapes, then bridge or whatever for the negative ones.

sidx30

@throttlekitty

Thanks for the reply! What you said made sense. I wasn't sure how to make that shape with splines in Max, but I figured it out.

I created a couple different circles that went up in 10cm increments in radius. Than I just turned them into splines and cut them in half. After that I connected the ends of the half circles to make a spiral. I just need to turn that into a mesh now. Kinda feel silly I didn't do that earlier.

update: Actually, it seems that if works better if you cut out 1/4 of each circle. Using halves causes the swirl to be oval shaped.

throttlekitty

Might want to look for a helix spline generator, if Max doesn't have one out of the box.

sidx30

Aw man there is a Helix spline option! Now I feel more silly. First time swirller here haha. Thanks man.