Undulated sign background - how would I do this in Fusion?

[sprior913]

On the X-Carve Inventables forum someone posted this beautiful sign that he did in Maya.  For the backgroung he said he:

Background texture: I model in Maya, and it has "volume noise" texture node (among many other types) you can apply to the material assigned to a mesh: I wrote a Python script that converts 2d or 3d textures into displaced mesh: So in this case I tessellated a poly plane the size of the stock, applied the volume noise shader, tweaked parameters on it until I liked the look, then ran my script converting it to real displacement

I'm wondering if anyone has an idea how a similar thing could be done in Fusion 360?

[innovatenate · Accepted solution]

You could use an image to surface script like the one below to generate the undulated background. See the below forum discussions for more detail.

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/api-and-scripts/image-2-surface-script-for-fusion-360/td-p/5555909

Thanks,

[PhilProcarioJr]

@sprior913

You can also import the background as an .obj file and convert it to a T-Spline then to a surface, honestly that will give you an exact copy of the surface in a cad format that can be edited in Fusion if you need to. I know this was done with a bone but the process would be the same for your background mesh from a modeling app. If you don't have a modeling app get blender it's free and can do the same thing. Just make sure the obj file you export is quads and not tris.

[sprior913]

@PhilProcarioJr, I don't have a background at all, I was asking for a way to generate a background from scratch in a similar way that the other guy did in Maya - he started from a random noise function I think.

[TrippyLighting]

The Frame and text you'd model in Fusion's Model workspace. The Frame could be just extruded rectangles (use sketches!).

the Text coud be traced with splines in a sketch and then extruded. I'd use one sketch per letter.

The undualted background you could do in the Sculpt enfironment.

When done you can use Modify -> Combine to make one cohesive model out of it that can then be machined.

As to hao to do the undulated background, I personally would use the FOSS Software Blender to create the base surface using either a randomizing tool similar to Maya. Hten export that as a .obj import in Fusion 360 and convert to T-Spline (Sculpt) in Fusion 360.

The image to surface script that Nathan posted above would to something similar directly in Fusion 360.

[PhilProcarioJr]

@sprior913

I realized that afterwords, sorry.

I would still use Blender to do that.

The reason I would use Blender over the script is I have had mixed results with the script and you would have more control over the surface in Blender.

It's fast and easy. Just use the displacement modifier and one of the filters. Takes less then a min and you would have complete control over the final surface.

Best of all it's free and works great with Fusion 360.

[sprior913]

Thanks all.  I was just playing around with this.  First I used Gimp Filters->Render->Clouds->Difference Clouds to generate an image.  Then I used Image2Surface within Fusion and generated this:

I'm sure I'll play around with the settings, but this is already in the ballpark.