Ive Been Re-learning To Code! Here Are Some Spiral Experiments I Was Toying With.

I’ve been re-learning to code! Here are some spiral experiments I was toying with.

I use Rhino for all my 3D modeling at work and for crafting, and the most recent update to the Mac version brought in a Python scripting environment. Back in college I’d done some stuff in Visual Basic (which was what Rhino had available at the time), and had made some fun stuff, but I hadn’t been able to do much of that nature for a few years.

I’ve been working through some tutorials to get the hang of the language, but this little guy is the first thing I coded on my own in Python. Basically it just takes a starting object, rotates it around an origin by the golden angle (137.5°), scales it by a percentage, drops out a copy and then repeats. I was inspired by work by John Edmark at Stanford who makes 3D printed spiraling blooming sculptures that animate. So for the 3D versions I added a rotation of the spiraled object as a basic variation to toy with. For the near future I’ll probably just use the flat version to cut or engrave patterns into surfaces, but who knows, maybe I’ll have some ideas I’m excited about enough to have them 3D printed.

For people who’re curious, here’s the short little script I wrote that does the spiraling, rotating the spiraled object, and also alternates between 3 colors. If you’ve got Rhino, feel free to copy it, modify it, make your own stuff using it, whatever you like. It’s not very clean code anyway. Code after the break:

import rhinoscriptsyntax as rs

obj = rs.GetObjects("Pick objects to spiral-array.") cen = rs.GetPoint("Pick center point.") rep = rs.GetInteger("How many copies?") scale = rs.GetReal("Pick a scale factor (ideally close to 1.0)")

phi = 137.508 #that's the golden angle. def spiral(input, center, angle, scale, i):    if i == 0:        rs.CopyObjects(input)    temp = rs.RotateObjects(input, center, angle)    temp = rs.ScaleObjects(temp, center, [scale,scale,scale])    output = rs.CopyObjects(temp)    #output the un-modified template, fed to the next iteration.    #then start to modify it according to the iteration number.    #each iteration's modified version is just dropped from temp.    cenpoint = rs.SurfaceAreaCentroid(input)    temp = rs.RotateObjects(input, cenpoint[0], i*2)    if i%3 == 0:        rs.ObjectColor(temp,[255,0,0])    elif i%3 == 1:        rs.ObjectColor(temp,[0,255,0])    else:        rs.ObjectColor(temp, [0,0,255])    return output #pass it a template object, do the scaling and moving to that object, #and pass it to the next step, but to modify the individual seeds, just #tweak and drop out the objects without worrying too much about keeping #track of them.

working = obj for i in range(0, rep):    working = spiral(working, cen, phi, scale, i)

While I had a pile of dragon tails on hand, I just figured I would get some shots of them all together. We got the small in blackened steel and anodized titanium, the medium in black and green, and the large in yellow orange and red.

Aren’t they adorable when they cuddle together like that?

Question for you; would you be able to take what youre doing for the tails and apply it to a pair of gauntlets for one to wear? Preferable something nice and durable for daily wear?

Sadly, I don’t currently have a good way of making scale gauntlets. The reason has to do with the particulars of how the scales get linked together. They look good when the material is under tension vertically, but horizontal tension makes it stretch out in a weird-looking way. For gauntlets, you really want the scales pointing down towards your hand, but that means that the material is under horizontal tension. So it just doesn’t work very well.

A solution to this could be to attach the scale maille down onto a sheet of leather, but I haven’t worked that out yet.

I would probably point you towards someone who knits with scales added in. Here’s someone on Etsy who makes some nice scale gauntlets using that method: https://www.etsy.com/shop/Crystalsidyll?section_id=6132040

Been cranking out these tassels for a dragon tail commission. But man they go slow. I’m averaging like 1.5 per episode of anime. 11 down, 4 more to go, and then I can finally start building this tail. I’m happy with the binding I worked out for these, but if I end up offering these as a standard option I’m really going to need to invest in crimping equipment.

Oh and once my paycheck and rent checks clear I’m making a custom order for large anodized titanium scales, so I’m excited about that. But that also means I need to dig out like 5 conversations that I kinda dropped out on where people had asked about titanium for tails, so that’s a pile of mental energy I’m going to have to dredge up in the next couple days. 

And I also need to head in to laser cut in the next few days. I need to cut a single mask. So really that means I need to figure out what other stuff I can productively cut so it’s not quite such a wasted trip. 

Crafting can be tiresome sometimes. It sometimes feels like I do nothing but fall behind and try to catch up. And man I’m tired of having cash-flow problems.

Dragon tail #2 for this month! This one is also anodized aluminum. It’s got a purple diamondback pattern over black, with a standard aluminum underbelly. Also a line of chrome spikes down the spine. The tail measures in at 34 inches long and 3 lb 12 oz.

I’ve got a couple days’ downtime now while I wait for more rings to arrive, then I’ll continue working on #3! I’m doing so much chainmail this month. I’ve torn through 2 TV shows on my Netflix queue already.

A trio of scale bracelets for someone. It took an embarrassingly long time for us to hash out the details and then for me to get around to making them, so my apologies to that person.

Left to right we have pink and yellow/gold anodized aluminum, then heat-colored titanium.