Minimal Surfaces

Minimal Surfaces

* Oops, I have a bit of a problem here where I am stuck:
* I am analysing the possibility of modeling minimal surfaces in C3D (and not in Wolfram Mathematica which i can access externally, but do not own). The C3D option, basically, seems to be doable and may - dependent on further experimentation - allow some animation which I want to deploy in the project.
* The problem is:
* I can´t get the edges / boundary of the basic cells of the minimal surface to be displayed with linear “creases”, ie no smoothed edge-vertices due to the applied Cat-Clark / Stam-Loop subdivision.
* As a result, I am forced to make the whole “cluster” of units editable before applying the subdiv modifier to “fuse” the surfaces. Needles to state: I thereby lose the capability to animate the “construction” process.
* Does anybody have any idea what I have to tweak to get to a straight-line boundary?

* Screen Dump #1: right cell > surfaces without subdivision
* Screen Dump #1: left cell > surfaces with subdivision (surfaces don´t get to the blue creases)
* Screen Dump #2: that is what I would need

* For anyone interested in minimal surfaces:
* A Greek chap has published a couple of tutorials on minimal surfaces on YouTube:
1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZI1vJW5NCQ, a sample using 3D arrys
2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_nGoWTP0mE, sample using a Möbius torus
* He is using Blender®, the narration is in Greek, but the GUI is English and he spells out the English commands fairly clearly. Despite not understanding Greek, the tutorials are easy to follow, are concise and professional and can be easily ported to C3D.
Cheers from Vienna

Helmut said:

Does anybody have any idea what I have to tweak to get to a straight-line boundary?

Click to expand...

Unfortunately creases won´t work that way in a subdiv-modeler. You´ll need some additional/minimal geometry with creases on the outer edges+ its miters; see image.

Cheers
Frank

PS: I made something similar in terms of twisted surfaces after a tut of David Brinnen; second image. :mrgreen:

Thank you Frank and ZooHead

This is very helpful.
I will have to check that with various cells, but it seems to work with the 4 of the 6 models I am currently testing for 3D “tesselating” in arrays / particle mesh clusters / etc. The rest may need a bit more fiddling (those being twisted interlocking cells), but I should get there. Thanks for your help.
Servus from Vienna
Helmut

Thank you Frank and ZooHead. Your suggested solution seems to work for all my base cells which need a hard boundary:smile: .
@Frank: Attached you find an example of Enneper´s surface (a self-intersecting minimal surface) for your collection of iconic trade logos. Ideal for a client in the fish market Enneper studied in Göttingen and died in Hannover, so he was a country man of sorts at a time of the Kingdom of Hannover.
Sorry about the patchy Q&D Java script. That was all I needed at that time.