#golf balls
30 messages in this thread
Question, I've got to do this animation for a local here and it involves
a close up of a golf ball. Anyone have any nice convenient way I can get a
nice perfect golf ball with dimples and the MAXFLI logo on it?
— Steve
p.s. the way I see it, a bump map would make the dimples look like little hills
(bumpy) — so is there a way to do an "inverted" bump map?
Steven,
In order to do an "inverted" bump map, just reverse the colours of the
original cel, gif, tga, or whatever that you're using as a bump map. In other
words, if you have a cel consisting of white dots on a black background, just
reverse the colours to black dots on a white background.
Sounds relatively easy to do but in practice, with an image consisting of 64
shades of grey or something like that, it can be a little more complicated. I
suggest you use Animator Pro to do this.
Hope this helps,
Danny…
Hey Danny! Thanks for the reply and suggestion. I'll try it out
immediately! I'm sure that's the way to go for that inverted bump map. Even
though a close up of the ball will not get the "profile" of the dimples right..
it sure beats trying to boolean subtract 200+ dimples! <g>
Thanks also for the info on the PFB fonts for Corel Draw CD!
— Steve
p.s. BTW, did you get any word back from the mall project? <just curious>
Glad I could help!
About the mall contract, I'm meeting with them again on Thursday. Wish me
luck.
Regards,
Danny…
Ahh.. good luck! <g>
— Steve
Thanks, I'll need it! <g>
Danny…
Steven;
Please post if you are able to use a bump map to get your golf ball to look
real. Also, any pertinent information on how you accomplish it would be
appreciated.
I attempted to "build" a golf ball just for fun in both 3DS and Autocad with
AME. The one in 3DS had little flaws around each dimple the shape of a
triangle. One or two per dimple. I didn't finish the task because the Boolean
wouldn't make this work right.
The one in AME did a good job on the dimples, but then there was no surface
between the dimples. I could look through the ball between the dimples to the
inside of the dimples on the far side of the ball, and then between and beyond
those dimples past the ball.
I spent many hours and have nothing to show for it.
Dennis
Viewpoint in Orem, Utah has a 3d golfball for sale, last I heard they wanted
$400 for it, which is a bit steep for me. BTW they have a great catalog of
objects for sale, all generally good models, if a bit pricey.
$400 for a golf ball? How much are they asking for a Big Berta model? <g>
I'll certainly let you know if I get it to look right. Danny's inverted
bumpmap idea should do the trick if I don't get TOO close to the ball where I
have to see its profile.
— Steve
Steven,
good bump-mapping on it's own won't work because the dimples will be squashed
at the poles – you'll need to have progresively larger dimples as you move
towards each pole. This will look like a flat map of the world (Mercator
projection) where the land areas become progressively larger approaching the
poles in order to keep the lines of longitude parallel. Paint a map in animator
pro or your favourite paint package with this in mind with the dimples getting
larger towards the poles – lots of experimentation will be necessary. At out
SoCal user group one of the attendees, David Carroll, did a beautiful mapped
golf ball with the above method – without resorting to geometry.
Hmm.. I've been doing plenty of experimentation and did in fact notice
that squishing effect at the poles — makes plenty of sense. What I'm
wondering is if there's some "automated" way to extract a flat gif map from the
desired sphere map. I don't suppose David Carroll would be able to give some
hints in this direction to how he did his golf ball? <hint hint> 🙂
— Steve
Hi Steve,
pmji…this topic came up in one of the Amiga 3D Forums recently…some more
suggestions there….
Regarding the "squished poles" effect, there's a way to get around it in
Photoshop (Mac/Win)…make the dimpled bump map (invert luminance if
necessary), then use the "Rectangular to Polar Coordinates" filter on it…or
is it the "Polar to Rectangular" filter?
Anyway, the result is an image with fewer dots at the poles, more at the
equator, and all are stretched in the vertical direction. When spherically
mapped onto a golfball the results look as expected. Might need to model ball
as two hemispheres, or to mirror the image into a 1:2 aspect ratio, but, with
tweaking, should work across various 3D apps.
Beats using polygon-based CSG, because of file size issues. But silhouette is
not affected by bump map, as it would by a displacement map…tradeoffs,
tradeoffs….
Related topic: map>model projections are a bear. At SIGGRAPH (90? 91?) Pat
Hanrahan and Paul Haeberli presented a paper describing a paint program that
*paints in 3D* — you move/turn the object, paint on it, and the computer
figures out the projection for texture mapping. They apparently got the system
up and running on a workstation…some remarks about implementation, in some
aspects, being easier than expected. But I've heard nothing yet about this
coming to personal computers…wouldn't that be cool?! Anyone have more info on
this?
Regards,
John D.
Steven,
David Carroll isn't on the forum or CI$ at all, as far as I know. He does work
for Greg Pyros, however, so Greg may be able to convince him to upload a
description or help you out in some way. Greg sees him just about every day –
are you there Greg???
Martin:
>> are you there Greg?
I'm _always_ here… <g>
Greg Pyros
Dennis,
Did you tell AME to make your original sphere, from which you were subtracting,
solid? Sounds like that is what's causing your problem with being able too see
through the thing. Let me know if you try again and if it works for you.
Dave Mennenoh
David;
At the time I was doing this as a final project for a class I was taking at a
local college using their AME package. I am fairly sure that I started with a
sphere made in AME.
The only thing I could figure out, was the the dimples were too close together.
Since it didn't work, I didn't finish it. Where I hadn't applied dimples,
there was a surface. But between the dimples, there was no surface.
Oh well!
For now, I probably won't attempt this further.
After re-reading your note, maybe I had turned it into a surface mesh and then
was subtracting from it. I don't know. That's a good thought.
If I get some extra time (ha ha) I may check my files again.
Thanks for the input, Dennis
Dennis,
If you use AME to make a primitive like a sphere it is by default a surface
only. You have to turn it into a solid. I can't remember the exact procedure
right now – I will give it a look tomorrow and let you know. Someone else know?
Dave Mennenoh
Actually, when you create a primitive such as a sphere in AME, it is a
wireframe not a surface. If you were to do a hide in AutoCAD, none of the lines
would be hidden. To turn it into a surface, you have to mesh it using solmesh.
BTW, the sphere is already considered a solid.
Yann Bertaud – I.D.L. Autodesk.
Yann; I looked up my files for the golf ball and thought that I had somehow
forgotten to make it a solid. So I redid it from what I had.
It was a solid. I subtracted many other solid spheres from it to get the
dimples. Then I Put a mesh surface on it an rendered it. There is nothing
between most of the dimples.
I would be willing to upload what I have for someone to look at, but I believe
there is a bug here.
It is still not finished. There are many areas left yet to place spheres into
if this can be made to work.
Dennis
Dennis, go ahead and zip up the drawing and send it to me via private email or
send it to:
Yann Bertaud
2320 Marinship Way
Sausalito CA 94965
PS: when you say you rendered it, do you mean in AutoCAD or 3ds. If it's in
3ds, try turning on Force 2 sided when rendering and see if that does anything
for ya.
Yann Bertaud – I.D.L. Autodesk.
Steven
I created a golf ball with AME last year and the results were terrible.
I had less than 200 dimples (300 plus is realistic) and the final DXF file was
over 26 megs.
If this is for a commercial project the Viewpoint ball is a real
bargain. Good luck!
TedB
Hi Steven,
Few month ago, I worked on a golf ball that looked rather nice. I used a
bump map (the only practical method I found). I have a sample of the map that
I used. I'll try to upload it as soon as possible. Look for a file called
golf*.gif.
Hey great Christian .. greatly appreciated! Thank you thank you.
— Steve
Glad I could help. The map isn't perfect but it will save you time if you
want create your own. By the way if you make a better one send me a copy I'll
appreciate. Good luck with your project.
Chris
Hey Christian
Nice to see you up on the board. As I've been following this thread I've been
thinking of your golf ball (great job!). Nice of you to upload the map…since
I know the effort you put into it. What a guy <g>.
Hey don't forget the concert, it's next week. We can meet at my place for a
drink and munchies and I'll drive from there. Can't wait to see Carlton,
Cobham, and Clark together! (Are you listening Alan?)
Talk at you later
-Ralph
Uh-huh!
Yep, I'm all "jazzed"<g> for what should be a heckuva' evening!
Talk to you soon,
-Alan
>> Yep, I'm all "jazzed"<g>
Alan, you bust me up…I wish I had said that!
Call ya soon.
-Ralph
Hey Ralph
I look forward to the concert. It's going to take us years back (The
Mahavishnu/Return Forever…) I really can't wait. Hey Alan are you listening
or maybe busy or maybe you're having a guest (#7) <g> Talk to you real soon
guys
-Chris
>> It's going to take us years back (The Mahavishnu/Return Forever…)
Ya Chris, I still can't believe these guys are playing together.
Call ya later
-Ralph