[Oscar36]

I've been playing around with rope designs and efficient process on how to make them in Blender.

Super easy way:
Model/make a single segment of the rope > create an array from the segment > follow curve modifier

Here are a few different models/patterns I made:

And here is a pattern for your carving fun. Rope heart chain for a border.

 

[TenGees]

Oscar, I like the Celtic knot designs. You might even be able to use them in your clock panels.

 

[Oscar36]

Paul,

I've made many Celtic knot patterns and one of my old dragon clocks has one already.

I normally use tiles to build the knots. I made the individual components and then you tile them together to make any pattern you want.

You can also build a single element and throw into a curve as well just like the rope above.

 

[Oscar36]

Using this curve method is super easy and very fast. This Celtic knot might have taken a whole 5 minutes to make (once you have the process down). One bezier curve and one bezier circle and one rope segment.

What the curves look like:

For your PhotoShopping fun:

And, more importantly, for your carving fun:

For my collection I may try barbed wire next.

 

[Oscar36]

The barbed wire collection was a nice experiment but the patterns would be tricky. This render was done at 8 inches by .15" height. I've been making patterns long enough this gives me an idea of practicality. This would be okay but that is a fairly large carve with limited application for me.

 

[PhilBa]

Very nice! When I get a bit more time I will give this a shot.

 

[wyzarddoc]

Ropes look great!! Very hard to model, especially in 3D. What were the steps to model the rope in Blender? I have used Blender occasionally but not very good at it.
thanks

 

[Oscar36]

Thanks. I hate to say it but it couldn't be easier or faster. Once you have the technique down it probably takes about 30 seconds to do.

There is little to no modeling required. Its all done with modifiers.

Start with a cube > move a face so the cube slants > add subdivision > [optional: select lines and shrink to mimic wound string of rope] > use array modifier > use follow curve modifier > set number in array to cover the curve > done

This took less than 5 minutes to do for all it. I used the optional step for this one. You can of course take more time to add more detail and make it better with modeling and digital sculpting.

 

[Oscar36]

This is the single segment that is made from the process above (mostly because I switched two steps).

Applying modifiers you can get this.

Super powerful, fast and easy.

 

[Oscar36]

The above image is the rendered image for your PhotoShopping fun.

Here is the grey scale height map for your cnc carving fun.

 

[wyzarddoc]

Thanks again for the help

 

[Woodenhearted]

The ropes look very good.
I'm somewhat past the point of wanting to learn cnc, programs and models, especially 3D. I do like the work they can produce.
Good to see we have a source here for our future projects needing rope details.
Thank you for posting Oscar.

 

[BalloonEngineer]

There is a rope “tool” in Carveco that allows making arbitrary rope patterns.

 

[Oscar36]

The biggest difference between them is time vs money.

Carveco is an amazing tool but it's also $1200 dollars for the perpetual license.

Blender is 100% free but insanely complicated because it can do so much. So it takes time (maybe a lot of time to become proficient). But its free.

Personally, I use both my cnc and 3d modeling software to get what I need. Some tools are better at doing specific things than others.

Having a cnc hobby is not cheap so its nice to have a free tool every once in a while. Sorry, not a fan boy but it is a very good piece of software for being free.

Here is the software tool set I use to make my patterns:
CW Designer with STL importer = $600
VCarve Pro = $700 (No clue how to use it yet)
ZBrush = $900
3dCoat = $450
Character Creator 3 suite = ~$1000
ShaderMap4 Pro = $50
Davinci Video VFX editor/compositor = $600

Blender can literally do everything the above software can do and its free. Sometimes faster/better and sometimes not. There is even a build that can generate g-code from geometry but my understanding it's very basic. I don't use it so hearsay.

 

[Oscar36]

Sorry for the pontification.

Here is another rope pattern.

And some bone fun.

 

[Oscar36]

What would you guys like to see wrapped around a circle? This technique can use any geometry.

 

[TenGees]

I've done 2D vector drawings using rotation like that, Oscar. I've attached a preview and a pdf vector.

 

[Oscar36]

Paul,

That is very cool.