Help making a sphere made of hexagons

[florio 0]

Hey Boys and Girls,

 

I've been trying to do a little side VFX shot and I've been trying to figure out how to make a "force field" with the distinct look

 

but for some reason I can't figure out how to get all the polygons to "fit" together ... I originally made this with a platonic object but I found I didn't have the control I wanted.

 

Any help is appreciated and thanks in advance

~Florio

[madmonk 0]

Think about a soccer ball: it's not completely made of hexagons but on regular positions there are few pentagons. So basicly it's impossible to create a sphere out of hexagons only without "stretching" them or adding pentagons. I guess hexagons will always create a flat surface this way. So you can think of it as a soccer (football) ball. You could create it starting with a geosphere or a platonic in "bucky" mode (C4D).

 

That's probably why in the picture the top of the sphere is faded...to hide pentagons or irregularities in the structure.

 

You could try to get something you can use (not showing/masking some parts) cloning an hexagon over a sphere and rotating around the clones (I'm assuming Cinema 4D here though..). I believe you can get it about right.

Edited January 25, 2012 by madmonk

[Mylenium 0]

madmonk is right. Mathematically it's impossible to create a perfectly closed polyhedra volume with most uniform n-sided polygons if n>3 or at least create such volumes at arbitrary orders. Only specific orders ever work and thats pretty much what the platonic and sphere object already do. If you don't mind any deformations, your best bet is to create a grid in 2D, then wrap it into a sphere using a spherify deformer....

 

Mylenium

Edited January 25, 2012 by Mylenium

[madmonk 0]

In C4D I would create an hexagon polygon (lofted n-side spline) and I would put into a cloner (together with a null to offset the cloning pattern), using grid array mode and zeroing one axis. Then you have this 2D grid pattern and you can use the wrap deformer on it. You have quite some control to tweak it then, since it's all procedural.

[florio 0]

You guys rock ...

 

@madmonk I started out using a platonic object and got discourage with the limited control I had ... then I went to mograph and I was able to come close but not perfectly

 

@Mylenium ... I figured that the math just would solve right and the 2d map approach seems to be the best option

 

Thanks again for the help

~Florio

[mshadis 0]

Had this same issue recently and came across this video, it helped out big time.

 

http://screencast.com/t/vRD9AuTrlGxz

[madmonk 0]

Had this same issue recently and came across this video, it helped out big time.

 

http://screencast.com/t/vRD9AuTrlGxz

 

Terrific sir.

[oeuf 0]

mshadis, nice one.

[shalom 0]

Had this same issue recently and came across this video, it helped out big time.

 

http://screencast.com/t/vRD9AuTrlGxz

 

I'm perplexed. I'm also trying to create a sphere mostly with hexagons (and the occasion necessary pentagon). I've followed the instructions in the screencast, numerous times, but each time the "Melt" function gives me an ugly result that looks nothing like the result in the screencast. Has anyone else encountered this?