Bezier Filigree - Skill Builder

[Music] hey guys it's aaron so i've actually had several requests to show how to create filigree in scratch sketchup filigree is well it's this so kind of script leave kind of flowing detail work that shows up on a lot of fancy stuff so i want to go in and show how to make a ideal for sketchup version of filigree i've seen models where people have gone into extreme detail creating the leaves with a subdivision engine and real soft we're not going to go into that that is a whole i mean for one thing we can't cover that in 10 minutes and it is a whole art form to go through and create that what i want to do is show how to take a drawing like i have above and turn it into a level of detail that would work on a sketchup model so let's hop right in all right so i have this image it was a hand-drawn image and you can actually see some spots that like right here my line went in and my i started tracing this my sketchup line stayed nice and true where the hand-drawn image maybe got a little bit soft in there um they're really what you want to work off is off of is up to you i want to just give you a couple tips on how to take this image whether it's drawn by you or taken off of a you know classical architectural bill and that sort of thing and how to turn it into geometry you can work with inside sketchup there are extensions out there to trace black and white uh geometry like this bitmaps and turn it into lines we're gonna do it manually because you learn more that way um not opposed to those extensions but that's not how we're doing so first things first i have a black and white drawing and i'm drawing black lines on top of it so this is difficult so what i like to do is i like to turn on x-ray there is of course other ways you do this one thing you could do is you could go set your line color to something like yellow bright that's going to show on top being as i have nothing else in this model i'm not worried about snapping through too much i'm conscious of my my surface snap so uh i'm going to draw in this view okay so i'm going to do most of my drawing using bezier curves i'll link to bezier curves in the description down below what bezier curves does and this is an extension it is from the sketchup team so it's a kind of a native extension it lets you click four times so i'm gonna click right here to start i'm going to click right up here where my curve is going to end and now i have two handles one coming off the beginning one coming off the ending so what i'm going to do is i'm going to pull this one down in the direction i want to go so so that this curve starts to follow the black line right here uh i am coming off an existing line right here so i'm not starting from scratch actually coming off an existing line to get this curve to blend into the curve i'm coming off of i'm going to want to stay on that magenta line like that so i'm going to come down the magenta line until you know the first major part of the curve follows my reference and i'm going to click now i'm going to come up here and i'm going to pull this next line down so the rest of that geometry follows close like that all right now and all this filler grade don't have sharp edges i kind of have round edges so i'm going to come here and click here go across to here and i'm going to start with my my next reference i'm actually going to pull off of this line right here and i'll make this one actually parallel to that so i'm going like that now something to note this is what bezier curves does if i select let me go select and pick this first line if i look at entity info it tells me there's 20 segments that line okay so this is this big long sweeping line this short little line where it's just basically a u if i click on that also 20 segments so bezier curve despite the length of the curve you're drawing will always draw 20 segments all right i'm gonna go to draw busy curve again i'm going to connect to the end of that little guy right there i'm just going to draw so i have a couple curves here curve this way and then i curve back around i'm going to keep this simple and i'm going to click right about here right about where the transition from this curve goes into this other curve so i'm going to click right there my top curve i'm going to try to come off of remember that that u i created i snapped off of the green line so i'm going to go like that and then this guy right down here i'm going to go right about there now i'm going to click here it's hard to do for me with with only two references we're going to dig a little more into bezier curves we go through but i'm going to actually do this as two curves also i'm going to click here again grab my inference my magenta line start to pull down like that come over here like that click right here come up here again pull off magenta there there and then this this thing to close it up magenta line here magenta line here that magenta just assures that those lines all start to look like one now they're not perfect they're not i'm not saying it's going to have one beautiful swoop but at least they're in line right there i'm sorry i'm going through here kind of quick because i got a lot of things i want to show you guys so here's here's the thing that happens in filigree a lot we have lines crossing over lines so we also have this pretty much even uh this piece i'm assuming should be the same width all the way across so what i'm going to do is i'm going to draw another bezier from one side to the other here i'm going to pull up again on the magenta line so i stay in line right here pull that magenta line about there i got should have magenta line over here too so i'm going to go like that you'll notice i cross right over this geometry that is intentional to create this this piece right here i'm going to select this line i'm going to use offset to go from the end of it to the end that i'm connecting to so i'm going to click here and bring that to here that line create a little bit of a break there so i want to make sure to get rid of this little teeny line right here so that i can close my my uh shape later so there we go i should check down here too oh just slightly off so i'm going to delete that line and then just draw another segment right there so that actually closed that ooh look at that that's a good thing when you draw that last line it closes up that's awesome so then to close this p to put this piece in here i'm just going to come back in uh draw my bezier curve here to here again pull down the magenta side like that i want this to taper a little bit so i'm going to actually not use offset on this piece like that to there and i can do one more i'm doing this instead of arc you could if you like arc using arc to put the ends on here you could absolutely do that like i said i'm drawing the actual lines instead all right so once that closes now i can come in here and i can make sure that i have an intersection some this didn't break right here so what i can do is come to the intersection click there and click there and force that break see that then same thing over here i'm going to do that right here i actually have a break of the segment so i'm just going to come here trace over to here and then from there trace down to here and that broke those lines it broke those lines it broke those lines so now i should be able to get rid of all of this and that stays as one piece so that's just an idea of how you can go about putting those lines in it is kind of a slow steady process it's not a quick you know click once and and get it all done i have over here a finished one once you get to that point what you're going to want to do is select all these bezier curves you've created right click and say weld edges what that's going to do is it's going to automatically go through and all these all these pieces of lines are going to get welded together that's real important because what you don't want to have is a whole bunch of segments that when you try to pull this into 3d it's going to make it messy so i'm going to go ahead and grab all the line work i don't care about the reference image anymore in fact i can turn x-ray off right now and i'm going to make a copy of it so i'm just going to option move or control move on windows and put a copy of it up here you know i'm going to do yeah that's good all right so if this was sitting on top of a surface obviously the only thing that would differentiate the face of this filigree work from the surface would be lines and that's not going to work if i render it or if i turn lines off ever so what i'm going to do is i'm going to come in here and do a little push pull on it and how far is relative to obviously to how big this is but i'm going to pull up all four four four pieces like that now you can see that if that was sitting on top of a flat white surface you know now i got close that up all right now almost now i got something that's going to show up as a detail piece on here um it's good but it's not great it looks a little bit it's hard edged right so real filigree is going to have like nice smooth curves another saying it is totally possible to sketch up but it is it's an art form in itself creating that that volume but we can kind of uh force it for what i'm doing unless this filigree is a focal point i can go in and just make it look a little better on here and here's how i'm going to do that i'm going to double click on this main face i'm going to hold down shift double click here double click here double click here that gets all the lines all the edges now i'm going to hold down shift again and turn off the faces all i want to do is get the edges around up here and i'm going to go to entity info and i'm going to turn on soft i'm not going to turn on smooth i'll show you why i'm not going to turn on smooth but just turning on soft oh yeah see that see how that gives me that nice soft corner that looks so much better than it did before the reason i turn on soft and not smooth if i turn on smooth what it's going to do is it's going to try to go in and smooth these edges and what i'll end up with is a bunch of weird gray shadows that aren't going to look good but popping this onto a piece of like uh you know antique furniture or a door frame or something like that that that adds just a huge level of detail and makes it look like i said in the very beginning a lot more fancy hopefully like that like i said i i i would love to dive into making a full three-dimensional filigree detail but it's huge it's a lot of work it's a lot of geometry gets super heavy super quick uh this is it's there's some weight to this if you were to add it to a model but uh if you put in a component and a lot of times filigree repeats so if it was like at the i don't know the top of a four poster bed or something like that you'd have the same detail on multiple sides so you can save a little bit of weight that way but adding it that way and then putting that soft corner on the top really adds that that just that little piece of detail and if you were to go chase down one of those extensions it'll change the black and white bitmap into line work you could actually do this in like a minute or so so worth checking out if you did like that click like down below and if you haven't already please subscribe we create several videos every single week around here and you'll be notified of each and every one of them if you subscribe most importantly though please leave a comment like i said the request to show some filigree has been a comment that i've gotten i don't know five six seven times people ask for this kind of detail and uh i'm only doing it because you asked we like making these videos a lot but we like them even more when they're showing something you want to see thank you you

Channel: SketchUp

Views: 14,702

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: SketchUp, 3D modeling, Filagree, Detail, Curve, Bezier, Arc

Id: xdM8QLYY0zU

Length: 12min 59sec (779 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 20 2020