Procedural modeling of fruit and sandstorm in Blender (bpy).

Overview

SandFruit

Procedural modelling of fruit and sandstorm. Created by Adriana Arcia and Maya Boateng. Last updated December 19, 2020

Goal & Inspiration

Our goal for this project was to create a way of procedurally modeling fruits, specifically exotic fruits, as they have a wide range of shapes and textures that we found interesting. We were inspired by papers about using sweeps of a profile along a path to generate shapes as well as papers about particle systems and surface textures.

To generate the fruit shapes, we used a general form of a profile of a variety of fruits with round shapes, such as apples, pears, and lemos and used rotation to generate a solid surface. The spike texture was created using a particle system, which we were inspired to after our presentation of Reeves’s paper on particle systems. We also included two bump texturing options for the fruits and added more variance to the shape by jittering random vertices using proportional editing in Blender, and animated a scene with the fruit as part of a sandstorm.

Roles and Responsibilities

This project was very collaborative, so there was considerable fluidity in roles and responsibilities. Maya worked primarily on the script that generated the pear meshes, the script that jittered random vertices, and the texturing. Adriana mainly worked on the texturing, sandstorm animation, and building of the scene layout, including the terrain.

Description of how the code works

To generate the meshes for the fruit shapes, we first begin with a bezier curve with 4 points on it. Then depending on a random factor that determines the type of fruit shape being generated, a function translates the points and positions the handles in such a way that forms a general shape for the fruit type. Then, the points and handles of the curve are sent to a function that jitters them randomly to create some variation in the profile shape. Finally, the points and handles are scaled by the same random factor in the x and y directions to create some variation in fruit size as well. Then, using the “screw” modifier in Blender, the shape is rotated around an axis to create the solid shape and turned into a mesh. After this, random vertices are selected and jittered by a random amount to create even more variance in shape and irregularities in the mesh. We also use two different textures to give our fruit an even more bumpy effect without having to make the mesh more complex.

To generate a fruit shape, import the fruitNew.py file into blender and run the script until you have found a desired mesh shape. To add a texture to the fruit, you must install the Fruit texture addon and the panel should show up in the sidebar, where you can choose one of two textures and a base color and apply it to the active object. To add spikes, use spikes.py and run bpy.ops.mesh.spikes() as in our midterm project.

The sandstorm portion of our project is run similarly, by running bpy.ops.mesh.sandstorm(). This function also utilizes another function we implemented, bpy.ops.mesh.terrain(). The inputs are the x scale, y scale, z scale, and the strength of the displacement or the turbulence. The terrain function is a very simple implementation of terrain generation using ‘cloud’ noise in conjunction with a displacement modifier. If the user wants to use their own terrain or use the terrain function, they should run the sandstorm function with the terrain selected. This will make the sandstorm active on that terrain. If there is no object selected, the sandstorm function defaults to a flat plane. The inputs to the sandstorm terrain are the size of the sandstorm’s base (x, y, and z scale), its rotation (x, y, and z rotation) and the total displacement along the y axis. This last parameter is included because the sandstorm can currently only move in a straight line.

To create the sandstorm we start with a simple cylinder mesh. We use a similar technique as mentioned earlier for the terrain function to create noise on the surface. Then we also add a vertex weight modifier between the storm and the terrain. We also used a lattice modifier to make the cylinder appear flatter on the bottom as it rotates, to create a more realistic sandstorm. The surface of the cylinder is then used as an emitter for a particle system. We also enable physics for fluids on the cylinder. Then a ‘bounding box’ is added, a cube surrounding the central cylinder which functions as a fluid domain.

Challenges

Some challenges associated with the general fruit shape are that the profiles are only loosely based on the general profile of the shape, so certain random jitters can make the fruits look irregular and misshapen beyond any normal irregularities that fruits may have. In addition, sometimes the random selection of vertices or the location of the jitter is strange and leads to the fruit looking strange. This was a problem while attempting to implement aging of the fruit. Subdividing the vertices every couple of iterations may help with these issues.

One challenge with the sandstorm was getting the cylinder not to be too noticeable. This still isn't perfect, and you can see in our animation that it is still fairly darker and distinguishable from the overall sandstorm. It was difficult to find a balance between this aesthetic caveat and having a sandstorm that is full rather than sparse.

Future ideas/expansion

In the future, it may be possible to refine the functions that generate the profile shapes so that there are not as many unnatural looking ridges and bumps, and possibly use a more mathematical function to generate the profiles instead of hard coding them in, in addition to writing functions for more types of fruit families. There is also the possibility of using the bevel function rather than the “screw” modifier to generate the shapes, by having the profile beveled around a circle or any other closed shape. This would allow us to define sections within the fruit shape to give a taper to the radius at certain points around the edge of the fruit, like that of a pumpkin. We could also add in a function to generate stem shapes of the fruits by extruding a profile along an arc or path with a taper defined for the size of the profile at a given point along the path. Although we attempted this, we would like to continue to try to animate and model the aging of fruits in some way, even if it is an imaginary framework. While trying to select random vertices and scale them down iteratively, we encountered jagged edges and little change beyond what we were getting from the vertex jitter.

It would also be ideal if the sandstorm could move more flexibly instead of moving in a straight line. It also does not work as smoothly on non-flat terrain, so there is room for improvement in terms of being more dynamic. As mentioned earlier, there could be some improvement made to help the cylinder particle system less noticeable. We also did not get a chance to improve much on our spikes, which could still be perfected with more randomness and perhaps adding curvature.

Results

The results folder contains screenshots of some possible output.

Sources

Reeves, W. T. (1983). Particle Systems—a Technique for Modeling a Class of Fuzzy Objects. ACM Transactions on Graphics, 2(2), 91-108. doi:10.1145/357318.357320

John M. Snyder California Institute of Technology et al. 1992. Generative modeling: a symbolic system for geometric modeling. (July 1992). Retrieved October 19, 2020 from https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/133994.134094

Owner
Adriana Arcia
Adriana Arcia
Shopify Backend Developer Intern Challenge - Summer 2022

Shopify Backend Developer Intern The task is build an inventory tracking web application for a logistics company. The detailed task details can be fou

Meet Gandhi 11 Oct 08, 2022
All Assignments , Test , Quizzes and Exams with solutions from NIT Patna B.Tech CSE 5th Semester.

A 🌟 to repo would be delightful, just do it ✔️ it is inexpensive. All Assignments , Quizzes and Exam papers at one place with clean and elegant solut

LakhanKumawat ᵖ⁺ 16 Dec 05, 2022
Platform Tree for Xiaomi Redmi Note 7/7S (lavender)

The Xiaomi Redmi Note 7 (codenamed "lavender") is a mid-range smartphone from Xiaomi announced in January 2019. Device specifications Device Xiaomi Re

MUHAMAD KHOIRON 2 Dec 20, 2021
Powerful virtual assistant in python

Virtual assistant in python Powerful virtual assistant in python Set up Step 1: download repo and unzip Step 2: pip install requirements.txt (if py au

Arkal 3 Jan 23, 2022
Install packages with pip as if you were in the past!

A PyPI time machine Do you wish you could just install packages with pip as if you were at some fixed date in the past? If so, the PyPI time machine i

Thomas Robitaille 51 Jan 09, 2023
Batch obfuscator based on the obfuscation method used by the trick bot launcher

Batch obfuscator based on the obfuscation method used by the trick bot launcher

SlizBinksman 2 Mar 19, 2022
Este projeto se trata de uma análise de campanhas de marketing de uma empresa que vende acessórios para veículos.

Marketing Campaigns Este projeto se trata de uma análise de campanhas de marketing de uma empresa que vende acessórios para veículos. 1. Problema A em

Bibiana Prevedello 1 Jan 12, 2022
Protocol Buffers for the Rest of Us

Protocol Buffers for the Rest of Us Motivation protoletariat has one goal: fixing the broken imports for the Python code generated by protoc. Usage He

Phillip Cloud 76 Jan 04, 2023
WildHack 2021 solution by Nuclear Foxes team (public version).

WildHack 2021 Nuclear Foxes Team This repo contains our project for the Wildberries Hackathon 2021. Task 2: Searching tags Implement an algorithm of r

Sergey Zakharov 1 Apr 18, 2022
Python Project Template

A low dependency and really simple to start project template for Python Projects.

Bruno Rocha 651 Dec 29, 2022
Markov Chain Composer

Markov Chain Composer Using Markov Chain to represent relationships between words in song lyrics and then generating new lyrics.. ahem interpretive po

Kylie 85 Dec 09, 2022
Reproduction repository for the MDX 2021 Hybrid Demucs model

Submission This is the submission for MDX 2021 Track A, for Track B go to the track_b branch. Submission Summary Submission ID: 151378 Submitter: defo

Alexandre Défossez 62 Dec 18, 2022
A plugin for poetry that allows you to execute scripts defined in your pyproject.toml, just like you can in npm or pipenv

poetry-exec-plugin A plugin for poetry that allows you to execute scripts defined in your pyproject.toml, just like you can in npm or pipenv Installat

38 Jan 06, 2023
Use a real time weather API to apply wind to your mouse cursor.

wind-cursor Use a real time weather API to apply wind to your mouse cursor. Requirements PyAutoGUI pyowm Usage This program uses the OpenWeatherMap AP

Andreas Schmid 1 Feb 07, 2022
poro is a LCU interface to change some lol's options.

poro is a LCU interface to change some lol's options. with this program you can: change your profile icon change your profiel background image ch

João Dematte 2 Jan 05, 2022
A price calculator for multiple things

Price Calculator A price calculator for multiple things Example I have 0.0567kg diamond. The price of diamond in kg is: $4500. Then it says: The price

Abel 1 Nov 26, 2021
Sacred is a tool to help you configure, organize, log and reproduce experiments developed at IDSIA.

Sacred Every experiment is sacred Every experiment is great If an experiment is wasted God gets quite irate Sacred is a tool to help you configure, or

IDSIA 4k Jan 02, 2023
Auto check in via GitHub Actions

因为本人毕业离校,本项目交由在校的@hfut-xyc同学接手,请访问hfut-xyc/hfut_auto_check-in获得最新的脚本 本项目遵从GPLv2协定,Copyright (C) 2021, Fw[a]rd 免责声明 根据GPL协定,我、本项目的作者,不会对您使用这个脚本带来的任何后果

Fw[a]rd 3 Jun 27, 2021
A tool to nowcast quarterly data with monthly indicators: US consumption example

MIDAS_Nowcaster A tool to nowcast quarterly data with monthly indicators: US consumption example Pulls data directly from FRED from a list of codes -

Gene Kindberg-Hanlon 3 Oct 06, 2022
IG Trading Algos and Scripts in Python

IG_Trading_Algo_Scripts_Python IG Trading Algos and Scripts in Python This project is a collection of my work over 2 years building IG Trading Algorit

191 Oct 11, 2022