Procedural Ornament Tool
Procedural Ornament Tool Demo
Tool Final Look on Carousels
Tool Concept Ideation
This was a tool I created for theProcedural Carousel Tool
The goal for the Procedural Carousels project was to create a tool for generating wooden toy carousels. For this project, I wanted to make a tool to create spiral-shaped ornaments that would add detail to the carousel mesh.
I was inspired by ornaments like the ones on the carousel below. We can see that there could be many variations to the spiral ornaments - for example, the shape, orientation, number of branching spirals, and so on.
To guide my procedural tool-making, I focused on the spiral ornament that can be seen in the center of the carousel:
We can see that the spiral ornament is symmetric about a centerline.
My basic process was to make one side of the ornament, reflect it, and then place a center piece mesh above the combined left and right spirals. I laid out a structure for a basic spiral ornament:
Spiral Structure: Ornament Components (for one side)
- Spiral Spine - the main spiral that acts as the backbone for the branching spirals
- Spiral Branches - the smaller spirals that grow out from the curve of the spiral spine
- Centerpiece - the part of the ornament that is positioned in the center of the left and right spirals
The image below demonstrates this spiral structure and my basic workflow for creating the spiral ornament
There were a few visual elements with the tool that I wanted to hit:
Tool Goals
- Adjustable shape for the main spiral spine -- I wanted the user to be able to adjust the contrast of the scale of the two spirals that make up a spiral spine
- A variety of spirals oriented inwards and outwards from the main spiral spine -- the spiral branches can be oriented differently on the same spiral spine, making the end result more visually interesting
- Adjustable position of the spiral branches -- I wanted the user to be able to adjust the position of the branches relative to the spiral spine
- Stylized, wooden look to the end mesh -- since our carousel should have a wooden look, I wanted the ornament detailing to match this
Tool Breakdown
First, I created a basic spiral shape using the spiral node as the shape for the main spiral spine. I created secondary branching spiral nodes and used copy to points to copy a spiral to each point on the main spiral node. However, because a spiral shape is composed of many points, I first used the resample node to increase the length of each line making up the spiral, decreasing the point count.
Using an attribute wrangle node, I controlled the position of the points used as spiral branching points, allowing the user control over the positioning of the spiral branches. Visually, most spiral branches stem from the middle range of points on the spiral spine, so I excluded any points outside of the middle range. This was done by using the spiral's mesh and scaling it to zero along the ends of the spiral, creating a bounding box for the points.
After adding the spiral branches, I sweeped the entire shape using the Ribbon cross section to create a flat mesh. Then, I reflected the shape to create the entirety of the spiral spine and extruded to give it depth. Afterwards, I added a centerpiece mesh.
To give it a wooden look, I beveled the mesh using a custom wood grain noise texture. This created wood patterned indentations on the mesh and helped give it a more polished feel. I also added an additional scaled down version of the spiral spine to mimic the wooden mesh splitting look of the horses on the carousel.
Below are some examples of the different kind of outputs we can get:
Using a chain node, we can repeat this pattern and place it along the circumference of our carousel. Below is an example of what this might look like with a basic sphere mesh.
Here are some close-ups on the final carousels!
