Sci-fi Mecha armor creases

[sis_gnougnou]

Hi everyone,

I am currently trying to create scifi panel creases on a complex shape, and after trying different things, I'm coming for some help 😉 What I'm trying to achieve is something like this, which is either  a "V" or a "|_|"-shaped crease with a defined witdh and depth along a path.

I usually see 3D modelers solve this issue using cheap ways, for instance cutting across the entire mesh (resulting in the same straight cuts on both sides), or limiting themselves to the software capabilities (using for instance the circle pipe because it's "good enough", or avoiding drawing shapes on some faces while they'd like to), which is NOT what I want. I want to be able to have a different cut on each face, and be able to select my profil's depth and shape. This is super easy to achieve in software like Blender and Cinema4D.

For now, I draw my paths using the cut face function to benefit from Fusion powerful sketch constraints, export the mesh and use Cinema4D to do my creases :

1. Select all the paths created in Fusion (face cuts translate into edges in C4D, which is very convenient),
2. Bevel them to the desired width - This split all selected edges in 2 creating the width of the crease,
3. CTRL+FACE-SELECT to select all the newly created faces at once,
4. Face bevel with either a |_| or V shape with the desired depth. I'm pretty sure I can even do my own custom profile, but I usually just work with rectangle or V creases.

Note that doing this in C4D is very fast and works in every situations and angles, with very minimal cleanup (usually moving/merging a vertex here and there when switching from 2 faces at extrem angles).

My goal is to be able to do that in Fusion360 to benefit from History and have a direct visual feedback of what I'm doing, without having to go back and forth with C4D. For now, doing the plates in C4D do not allow me to go back and modify them easily, and any important modification of the prop in Fusion means re-exporting  and re-doing the plates all over again.

I've tried :

• Pipe : They are limited in the choice of shapes. Circle works best. Triangle and Rectangle never follow the normals properly as soon as there is a corner. Additionally, they do not allow me to select depth. Offsetting the bottom of the crease usually ends up in a complete mess.
• Pipes + Shelling : By separating the plates from the "inside object" (which serves as the bottom of the crease), I can pipe-boolean the plates only. By cutting through the entire plates and merging the core + plates, I get better results but I'm still very limited by the profiles available in the pipe function, and some cuts are still very messy.
• Sweep : They are super annoying to use because you need to have the profil at the right place, unlike software like Cinema4D that are smart enough to use a profile even if it's not connected to the path. I'm gonna need to do a lot of cuts, some of them probably at weird angles, placing a perfectly oriented construction plane every time is tedious.
• Manual Bevel + Offset Face : I tried projecting 2 paths instead of 1 to mimic STEP-2 of the Cinema4D working solution. I then offset those faces but the "offset face" function tries way too hard to keep everything coplanar and the end result is a total mess. This method also limits me to the |_| shape.

Please find attached a dummy object to test things on. Basically, if you manage to find a solution that replaces and works on all the current circular pipes, allowing me to choose my own width and depth with results as clean as the circle pipes of the attached example, you're my savior. Even a paying addon is fine at this point...

Note that the result doesn't need to be perfect-perfect, as in the end I'll most certainly will have to clean things up in Cinema 4D. But I'd like to avoid very chaotic looking faces as much as possible to have an "almost" perfect visual feedback from Fusion. The pipe-circle is a perfect example of a very much acceptable crease topology.

Thanks a lot ! I hope someone has THE solution 😉

[sis_gnougnou]

Hi everyone,

I am currently trying to create scifi panel creases on a complex shape, and after trying different things, I'm coming for some help 😉 What I'm trying to achieve is something like this, which is either  a "V" or a "|_|"-shaped crease with a defined witdh and depth along a path.

I usually see 3D modelers solve this issue using cheap ways, for instance cutting across the entire mesh (resulting in the same straight cuts on both sides), or limiting themselves to the software capabilities (using for instance the circle pipe because it's "good enough", or avoiding drawing shapes on some faces while they'd like to), which is NOT what I want. I want to be able to have a different cut on each face, and be able to select my profil's depth and shape. This is super easy to achieve in software like Blender and Cinema4D.

For now, I draw my paths using the cut face function to benefit from Fusion powerful sketch constraints, export the mesh and use Cinema4D to do my creases :

1. Select all the paths created in Fusion (face cuts translate into edges in C4D, which is very convenient),
2. Bevel them to the desired width - This split all selected edges in 2 creating the width of the crease,
3. CTRL+FACE-SELECT to select all the newly created faces at once,
4. Face bevel with either a |_| or V shape with the desired depth. I'm pretty sure I can even do my own custom profile, but I usually just work with rectangle or V creases.

Note that doing this in C4D is very fast and works in every situations and angles, with very minimal cleanup (usually moving/merging a vertex here and there when switching from 2 faces at extrem angles).

My goal is to be able to do that in Fusion360 to benefit from History and have a direct visual feedback of what I'm doing, without having to go back and forth with C4D. For now, doing the plates in C4D do not allow me to go back and modify them easily, and any important modification of the prop in Fusion means re-exporting  and re-doing the plates all over again.

I've tried :

• Pipe : They are limited in the choice of shapes. Circle works best. Triangle and Rectangle never follow the normals properly as soon as there is a corner. Additionally, they do not allow me to select depth. Offsetting the bottom of the crease usually ends up in a complete mess.
• Pipes + Shelling : By separating the plates from the "inside object" (which serves as the bottom of the crease), I can pipe-boolean the plates only. By cutting through the entire plates and merging the core + plates, I get better results but I'm still very limited by the profiles available in the pipe function, and some cuts are still very messy.
• Sweep : They are super annoying to use because you need to have the profil at the right place, unlike software like Cinema4D that are smart enough to use a profile even if it's not connected to the path. I'm gonna need to do a lot of cuts, some of them probably at weird angles, placing a perfectly oriented construction plane every time is tedious.
• Manual Bevel + Offset Face : I tried projecting 2 paths instead of 1 to mimic STEP-2 of the Cinema4D working solution. I then offset those faces but the "offset face" function tries way too hard to keep everything coplanar and the end result is a total mess. This method also limits me to the |_| shape.

Please find attached a dummy object to test things on. Basically, if you manage to find a solution that replaces and works on all the current circular pipes, allowing me to choose my own width and depth with results as clean as the circle pipes of the attached example, you're my savior. Even a paying addon is fine at this point...

Note that the result doesn't need to be perfect-perfect, as in the end I'll most certainly will have to clean things up in Cinema 4D. But I'd like to avoid very chaotic looking faces as much as possible to have an "almost" perfect visual feedback from Fusion. The pipe-circle is a perfect example of a very much acceptable crease topology.

Thanks a lot ! I hope someone has THE solution 😉