Cineversity

Hello out there!

I am by no means a modeler. I’ve tried to model many simple things and that is about as far as I can go. What I cannot do for the life of me is model a baseball with seams. I want to be able to do this without mapping the seams over a sphere, but with actual geometry. I was hoping to do this with live primitives and mograph to keep everything editable for animations. Has anyone had luck building a baseball, and if so would anyone be so kind on sharing some tips or even a tutorial?

Thanks so much!

Hi Bnon,

I can share a scene file in the “Cineversity Q&A”, as I can’t attach files here. I have put together a little idea.
It is relatively simple, once you know the set up. (... talking about the model and a clear border along the two main parts)

What you have in mind with animation is perhaps a complete different story.

Let me know in the forum mentioned above if you like to explore that file.

Have a great weekend

Sassi

Hi Sassi,

I’d love to check out a work file if you wouldn’t mind posting. I have been playing with a file on my own and have gotten close. I can take a look at what you have done, and I can also post the progress with my file and show you the part I am getting stuck on if I can solve the issue from looking at yours.

Thanks so much, I really appreciate it!

Hey Bnon,

Here is the link to the file. I created it after I saw your question, I know that I did a similar file 6-7 years ago, but I could find it fast enough, so I created a different way this time.

https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share?s=0Jw5hOOnRcggte0I3Zm020

I have tried to give some hints, in 1-4 steps.

The first step is to select two edges and scale them to 20%, then do the other side as well, compare the cube, to see what you need.

The second step is then to Subdivide this, with the HyperNURBS option on. Just one subdivision. You find there two point selections which I suggest to scale with the X and Y direction, each selection by itself. This changes the roundness and the width of the middle. This sounds perhaps weird right now, but go ahead and you will hopefully see what this step did.
The Spherify-object establish here the roundness (set to 100%!)

In step three I came already close, but the edges didn’t work. So I deleted one of the two parts which creates the Baseball. Now the HyperNURBS worked much better.

In the next step I have duplicated the result and rotated it so the two pieces result in one mesh. “Current State to Object” and then the two meshes merged in “Connect and delete”, to get the final mesh.

Now you have a very clean mesh, and a continues seam along the seam where it should be. This can be selected and from there you can model further.

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For me that is the best start point, to get very fast a clean mesh, and build up from there.

You could select that seam edge and create a Spline from it, and parallel to it another one for a Rail-Spline, which might help to support the animation that you like to do.

If you have any question, please in the “Cineversity Q&A” forum, to keep things organized. I know that might be a little bit rough, in terms of “step-by-step” explanation.

All the best

Sassi

Sassi,

Thank you so much for your help! I am jumping into your files now. From now on I will post in the “Cinversity Q & A” forum. This was my first ever post, so I apologize for posting in the wrong forum.

Thank you!!

-b

Hey Bnon,

You’re welcome, and thank you as well. The initial question was about a tutorial, and well placed. I try to keep things a little bit organized, which hopefully helps everyone (later on) to find faster an answer to a question.

The way I did this model was more based on intuition or a “feeling”, how the initial geometry should look like to become useful on the end. It is not difficult to record the practical process, but modeling has a lot to do with these “imaginations”. As I say it from time to time, it is like playing chess, one has to be several steps ahead of the game to win.

I “re-search” ;o) since long to make this process more accessible or teachable. In the practical and intuitive part I found the largest difference, and with that the biggest challenge.

Have a great day

Sassi