How would you model this Toy?

[thoreaubakker]

Last week I was asking about toy design T-Spline workflows, and got many excellent suggestions and insights. Given the breadth of the examples, I was hoping to present a case study and get a little more specific.

If you wanted to model the Mickey Mouse toy in the image below, how might you approach it?
(assuming you had front / side drawings etc)

Would anyone consider doing this with multiple T-Spline bodies? Would you use solid / surfacing approach with splines and lofting etc? Would you do sub-d modeling in another package like Maya / Max, and bring it into Fusion to assemble?

I'm really intrigued by the elegant curves on the ankles / wrists / shorts etc, and wonder how people in industry would approach this.

Many thanks for any insight.

p.s. tried to @ thank and tag respondents from last week but autocomplete didn't seem to be loading them

[thoreaubakker]

@cekuhnen do you have any quick tips on this. I feel like it's within your level of experience.

[Anonymous]

TBH, I wouldn't even bother doing that in fusion. It would take a ton of steps to complete a task compared to surface modelers such as rhino/blender or even Zbrush.

[thoreaubakker]

thanks for the reply @Anonymous 

I think a reason I'm interested in the solid / Fusion side of things, is I'm interested in the general toy / manufacturing process.

Isin't it often hard to do things like CNC mill molds from surface models like STL etc?

The CAM functionality in Fusion is much more powerful when milling solids than meshes.
I know turning meshes to solids can be very difficult.

Thoughts?

[laughingcreek]

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@thoreaubakker wrote:

...Isin't it often hard to do things like CNC mill molds from surface models like STL etc?...

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That's more  a symptom of how well the model was created (ie skill of the human involved).    You can CNC from a stl just fine if the model is decent.  In fact, when the cam software goes to generate tool paths, it actually converts all the surfaces to a mesh first  in order to calculate the tool offsets.

But this could all still be done in fusion just fine.  I wold probably do the geometric stuff first so you have a visual scale, and then do the parts you would do with a t-spline.  For me the t-spline parts would be the hands,feet, pants, and the nose/cheeks.  If this is a workflow you end up liking, it would be worth it to learn blender, or some other sub-d modeler, to produce quad-mesh .obj files that will convert pretty well to t-splines in fusion, just because the tools available will make it faster. 

[cekuhnen]

@laughingcreek @thoreaubakker 

"Isin't it often hard to do things like CNC mill molds from surface models like STL etc?"

I agree with @laughingcreek . You can mill from STL just fine.

I designed few products and prototyped them right in Blender.

Where you will run into issues when milling from STL is when the mesh needs to be modified like changing adding a draft. then a NURBS model simple and obviously the better method

[cekuhnen]

@Anonymous 

"TBH, I wouldn't even bother doing that in fusion. It would take a ton of steps to complete a task compared to surface modelers such as rhino/blender or even Zbrush."

I disagree for one very simple reason.

You can model this toy in Blender or T-Splines just fine. But I would not even bother trying to model the surface transitions. The face maybe, and the hand/glove can easily be one.

How ears and head meet I rather would do via a filet command.

That is the beauty of using T-Splines or Sub-D modeling and building each element as an object and then via the surface/solid tools combine the parts.

@thoreaubakker 

I hope my suggestion makes sense. Either T-Splines or Blender model each individual part.

I honestly prefer Blender because for sub-d modeling T-Splines still lacks (or use Modo Maya etc)

You can export the raw OBJ mesh to Fusion360 load it into T-Splines convert and then use the

solid surface tools to combine filet split shell etc.

That is why I don't tough Alias or Rhino anymore. Non of them beat the Fusion Blender workflow.

[TrippyLighting]

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@laughingcreek wrote:

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  In fact, when the cam software goes to generate tool paths, it actually converts all the surfaces to a mesh first  in order to calculate the tool offsets.

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True, but the algorithms involved in that are vastly improved from the general .stl crap in CAD software. They are also highly proprietary.

[TrippyLighting]

This can be modeled easily with T-Splines or if you so desire with Sub-D modeling software such as Blender. I would not bother trying to use surfacing techniques.

As you already know - or so I assume - quad-meshes modeled in other software can be imported into Fusion 360 and converted into T-Splies and then into NURBS or BRep.

[cekuhnen]

@TrippyLighting 

"I would not bother trying to use surfacing techniques."

Well don't be so judgmental. You know if you like to be a 3d modeling masochist this would be fun !

Joke aside - I learned how to model faces via NURBS patches in Maya and I will NEVER go back to that time !!!

[thoreaubakker]

hey everyone, thanks for the replies. It was exactly what I was hoping for.

re: CNC and mesh - I seem to remember a challenge where I couldn't reference the geometry for tool offsets when trying to make tabs in 3D milling, but it's been a long time. Like solids I had made in Fusion gave me much more control than STLs I had brought in to set up tool paths on. It's been so long though, and I'm such a rookie, I will return to it when I have mill axis and school has opened up again.

@laughingcreek  

@cekuhnen 

@TrippyLighting 

The three of you reminded me of a key thing I didn't quite get -- that quad models can be converted to T-Splines.
In the past I have had trouble bringing meshes into Fusion (ie. converting STLs over the 10k poly limit) and so wasn't thinking about that.  I confess I haven't engaged enough with the great links you all shared last week. Knowing I can model in quads in Blender, then bring into Fusion 360 (and / or try directly in Fusion) is very helpful and I appreciate the replies.

I will try learning the Blender Quad SubD > T-Spline workflow.

I will 

[cekuhnen]

yeah nurbs can be shared via STEP

and mesh via OBJ and quad mesh

ngons work to but can be hit n miss with t-splines