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Tutorial: how to model and render a realistic spiral cable in Blender / Yafaray

16

 Marco wrote:

At work (I’m a Mechanical Design Engineer) I had to render a model of a video intercom to get a realistic shot. I already had all the parts as CAD models, so I had just to export them in STL format and import each file in Blender. All but the cable.

Even if I’m not a good Blender modeller, I thought that it could be easier (and cleaner) modelling it into Blender than into the CAD software; furthermore I could easier apply modifications to adapt the shape of the cable to the position of intercom body and handset.

I wrote a two-part tutorial  where I described how to model the spiral cable.

Tutorial Links:

  1. http://marcoalici.wordpress.com/2011/08/02/spiral-cable-1/
  2. http://marcoalici.wordpress.com/2011/08/02/spiral-cable-2/

16 Comments

  1. Thanks for the tutorial and what an ingenious use of the cloth modifier in the end, I never would have thought of that.

  2. Thank you all for the comments!

    @vblend: The stable version of Yafaray (0.1.1) is for Blender 2.4x. As soon as Yafaray 0.1.2 will be reasonably complete and stable, I will upgrade even for production purposes. :)

    @JW: You are right. I wanted to dedicate a whole third part to yafaray settings, but I had not time to complete it, so I preferred to publish the first two in the meanwhile. Please, stay tuned! :)

  3. @MarcoA

    Your rigging process would be quite easier in 2.5x. I'm not sure if its there in 2.4x, but there's a feature in 2.5x called 'Bone Segments'. With that, you wouldn't 40 small extrusions, just around 4 large bones with 10 segments for each.

  4. Excellent tutorial... and this is the way to do it too! He didn't fall into that trap that "some" people do, making 90 minute videos of endlessly pushing vertices around, telling bad jokes and pretending it makes him a "Guru" of Blender... not naming names though!

  5. @ Milad Thaha
    Actually even in 2.49 the "subdivide" and "subdivide multi" tool is available for bones too.
    Well, I wrote that I'm not a good modeller in Blender, and there was the first time I used an Armature. :)
    Thank you for the tip!

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