From the course: HBIM: Historic Building Re-creation

Fine detail foliage

- In this movie, I'll talk about how the flouret leaf was put together. I'm continuing on from the same concepts that we discussed in the previous movie. But in the previous movie, we focused on just drawing this curved path here and orienting it correctly to give us context to the overall family. I've taken it a little bit further here, of course. This is the completed version. So, let me highlight this object right here. And you can see that it's solid, joined geometry. And I'm going to press "tab." So down there in the status bar at the lower left-hand corner of the screen, you can see it says, "Join Solid Geometry." I'm going to press "tab" so that it says, "Form Element." And then I'm going to click to select just the internal form, and delete it. Then I'll click this one, no Tabbing necessary, and delete it as well, just so we can see the understructure here. Now, I've got a spline path here and I've got another one here. But they're not in the same plane. If you kind of orbit around, I'm holding my Shift key and dragging the wheel, you can see that those things are at an angle to one another. Specifically, they are drawn on the work planes of these two reference lines. So, in addition to this curve that we drew in the previous movie, I came in here and I just sort of added two reference lines. You could see I just sort of decided, "Well, that one's sort of parallel "to this part of the curve, "and that one's sort of parallel "to this part of the curve." And then I used whole number angles just because I don't like a lot of fractions and detailed decimals. So I wanted to keep it somewhat simple. And then, I just set the work plane to the vertical work plane, for this small spline, and the vertical work plane here, for this larger spline. And that's how those two splines got drawn. If you look at the floor plan, in addition to that, I created some sections that were parallel to those work planes, just to make it easier to draw that information. So, I usually like to do that. I like to draw sections so that I'm looking right at the plane instead of drawing it at a skewed angle. Alright, so after that, everything else you see here is stuff that we've already talked about for the most part. Here's our spline path. And then, on there, we have several hosted points. So, if I click on these points, they're just like every other point that we've talked about, there's a normalized curve parameter, and you can change that to any number you want, to locate where you want your different profiles to be. Now, I've got a new profile family that we haven't looked at yet. This one right here. So let me go ahead and select it and do "Edit Family." It's built in largely the same way as the other ones that we've talked about. Up here, the forms I'm using is a simple arc back here, and then two splines here. Now the reason I chose two splines here is that I only needed to constrain the two end points to keep the shape of the spline intact. You may recall we talked about that in a previous movie. But, when you stretch either end point, it proportionally stretches the entire spline. If I had used an arc there, I would have to constrain three things mathematically. Either the two end points in the radius, or the two end points in the center or any three things. But I would have to do it with three points. So this was just a little bit simpler. So all of these parameters and dimensions are about constraining that shape to make sure it flexes properly. And then of course, I'm using the offset concept again, that we talked about in a previous movie, to allow this profile to offset either the positive or negative direction. However, I set up the offset a little differently in this file. I did the offset as an Instance Parameter. So, if I select this parameter, it's got the word, "default," or if you modify it you can see it's instance. Now let me close this file without saving. And let me show you why that's an Instance Parameter. in this case right here, this is profile five, and this is also profile five. However, you'll notice that this profile five is offset in front of the path, this one is offset behind the path. So, this one right here, actually doesn't use an offset at all. It's set to zero. This one uses a -1. So by using an Instance Parameter for the offset, it just facilitates that so that you don't have to create lots of extra types. Certainly could create extra types, but, it was just a little bit more convenient. Now, this one right here is offset significantly far back to 0.75, and so the leaf is going to kind of kick back as it sweeps down. Now, the other thing you might notice if you look carefully here, is that this profile is at a slight angle, relative to this one. So how is that achieved? Well, if you edit this profile family again, you look for any kind of rotation parameters. Or if you click "Edit Type" here, or scroll through the properties palette, you're not going to find any indication of a rotation parameter. Could I have built in a rotation parameter into that family? Yes, but it would have made the family significantly more complicated. Rotation can sometimes be a challenge, particularly with these curves when I'm trying to flex. So I instead opted not to do that. And the main reason that I opted not to do that is it's not necessary. It turns out that the hosted point itself has a rotation angle. All you have to do is type in a number here and it will rotate anything that's hosted on that plane. So that was a much simpler way to get the rotation that I needed without having to build in extra complexity into the family. So I started at about 10 and then it rotated the wrong way, and I said, "Well, okay, how about -10?" And it rotated pretty well but it wasn't quite what I wanted. So I said, "Well, let's try -15." And that was a little too much, and so I settled on -12. And so you will literally do a little bit of trial and error here. But because it's just a simple Instance Parameter, it' real easy to try it, see what it looks like. Okay, don't like it? Try something else. Okay, don't like it? Try something else. So, up here, I'm making use of that feature in two of these points. So, right here, I'm at -22. And over here I'm at -60. So let me take both of these and just zero them out, and show you what it would look like if we didn't have any rotation there at all. So I'll select these three shapes, the path, click "Create Form," and you get a nice looking form that looks kind of like a leaf. But when you look at it, edge on, it's pretty flat, right? So, to give it a little bit more organic feel to it, this rotation really goes a long way. So if I select that point, and start to rotate it, right? Let's say it was 10°. Okay, well that helps but you can see it's kicking back towards where the rest of the family would be. So a negative kicks it in the other direction, like so, right? And ultimately I had settled on -22. Now here, if I leave this one alone, it kind of flattens back out again. But as you saw, I wanted that to kind of kick out even more. So, I started putting negative numbers in there, you know, and here's -30. But ultimately I settled on -60, to really kind of cup it down, like so. And then it adds a certain amount of twist to the family and makes the whole thing look a little bit more organic. So, I think by just adjusting those rotation parameters, it goes a long way towards giving you a more organic form when you're building these leaf forms or other organic shapes. So, I'm going to select the rest of these, and the path. Click "Create Form." So, I've got that. And then to kind of clean this up right here, you can "Join Geometry." Sometimes "Join Geometry" doesn't work. I was happy to see that it did work in this case. And so, that completes the flouret leaf. Now right here, this continues on over the volute at the corners. So I have a separate family for that. And it's just more of the same concept. So, this one's actually in three pieces. So let me take the two side pieces here, and hide those for a moment with temporary hide. And then, let's take a look at this leaf right here. This one's even simpler than the one I just showed you. So, if I delete it, it's just a spline with hosted points. The same profile family that I just showed you in the previous file, and just by varying the sizes, so I go from a big one to a small one, back to a big one. That's what gives me that kind of swoops in and then back out again. And then of course, it follows the curve here to give that cup effect. Now, I wanted to close off the sides. So, I was trying to do it with the same profile. And sometimes you get too hung up on trying to do everything with one family, and it was getting way too complicated. So, if I restore "Temporary Hide Isolate," I found that it was just easier to add a second family in there. Now I did this as a nested family because, whatever I used on this side, I wanted to use the opposite on that side and just mirror it over. So by using a family, I could just update the family and then mirror it. So, I'm going to edit this family. And this one does use the rotation parameters, but otherwise its the same profiles. So, we're just rotating those hosted points to get the curvature and the more organic feel to this. And you load that family in, mirror it to the other side, and that gives you the final result. So, that completes the various foliage that we need up at the top of the Corinthian Capital. We now have all of our parts and pieces, and we're ready to do our assembly.

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