Metaballs come to BOSL2
Someone recently remarked on the difficulty of creating organic forms in
OpenSCAD. As it happens, a new feature in BOSL2 may make this easier.
https://github.com/BelfrySCAD/BOSL2/wiki/isosurface.scad
Here are two examples that appear with code on the wikie. A basic example:
[image: image.png]
A more elaborate example. It takes 10s to preview or render on my
machine.
[image: image.png]
Very exciting! Thank you!
On 2/15/2025 8:54 AM, Adrian Mariano via Discuss wrote:
Someone recently remarked on the difficulty of creating organic forms
in OpenSCAD. As it happens, a new feature in BOSL2 may make this easier.
https://github.com/BelfrySCAD/BOSL2/wiki/isosurface.scad
Here are two examples that appear with code on the wikie. A basic example:
image.png
A more elaborate example. It takes 10s to preview or render on my
machine.
image.png
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As a wood carving artist, I have been looking for a way to create
organic/liquid STL's.
Metaballs is something I have been playing with for a few days.
I have a lot to learn ... a lot.
Attached is a pic of something I have been trying to create in this fashion.
Any pointers would be great.
[image: pic.jpg]
joe.weinpert@gmail.com
skidrowacademy.com
On Sat, Feb 15, 2025 at 8:55 AM Adrian Mariano via Discuss <
discuss@lists.openscad.org> wrote:
Someone recently remarked on the difficulty of creating organic forms in
OpenSCAD. As it happens, a new feature in BOSL2 may make this easier.
https://github.com/BelfrySCAD/BOSL2/wiki/isosurface.scad
Here are two examples that appear with code on the wikie. A basic example:
[image: image.png]
A more elaborate example. It takes 10s to preview or render on my
machine.
[image: image.png]
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To unsubscribe send an email to discuss-leave@lists.openscad.org
I'm really not at all an expert in metaballs---I should mention that the
feature was written by Alex Matulich. It seems like to achieve something
like that you'd be best served by using isosurface rather than metaballs,
but I am not sure how you can build a function that has that shape.
On Sat, Feb 15, 2025 at 9:08 AM Joe Weinpert via Discuss <
discuss@lists.openscad.org> wrote:
As a wood carving artist, I have been looking for a way to create
organic/liquid STL's.
Metaballs is something I have been playing with for a few days.
I have a lot to learn ... a lot.
Attached is a pic of something I have been trying to create in this
fashion.
Any pointers would be great.
[image: pic.jpg]
joe.weinpert@gmail.com
skidrowacademy.com
On Sat, Feb 15, 2025 at 8:55 AM Adrian Mariano via Discuss <
discuss@lists.openscad.org> wrote:
Someone recently remarked on the difficulty of creating organic forms in
OpenSCAD. As it happens, a new feature in BOSL2 may make this easier.
https://github.com/BelfrySCAD/BOSL2/wiki/isosurface.scad
Here are two examples that appear with code on the wikie. A basic
example:
[image: image.png]
A more elaborate example. It takes 10s to preview or render on my
machine.
[image: image.png]
OpenSCAD mailing list
To unsubscribe send an email to discuss-leave@lists.openscad.org
OpenSCAD mailing list
To unsubscribe send an email to discuss-leave@lists.openscad.org
Looks great
Can anyone share the logic for producing these shapes. It would be
interesting to know.
On Sat, 15 Feb, 2025, 7:25 pm Adrian Mariano via Discuss, <
discuss@lists.openscad.org> wrote:
Someone recently remarked on the difficulty of creating organic forms in
OpenSCAD. As it happens, a new feature in BOSL2 may make this easier.
https://github.com/BelfrySCAD/BOSL2/wiki/isosurface.scad
Here are two examples that appear with code on the wikie. A basic example:
[image: image.png]
A more elaborate example. It takes 10s to preview or render on my
machine.
[image: image.png]
OpenSCAD mailing list
To unsubscribe send an email to discuss-leave@lists.openscad.org
A brief intro appears here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaballs and
google can turn up various pages on the topic.
On Sat, Feb 15, 2025 at 11:05 AM Sanjeev Prabhakar sprabhakar2006@gmail.com
wrote:
Looks great
Can anyone share the logic for producing these shapes. It would be
interesting to know.
On Sat, 15 Feb, 2025, 7:25 pm Adrian Mariano via Discuss, <
discuss@lists.openscad.org> wrote:
Someone recently remarked on the difficulty of creating organic forms in
OpenSCAD. As it happens, a new feature in BOSL2 may make this easier.
https://github.com/BelfrySCAD/BOSL2/wiki/isosurface.scad
Here are two examples that appear with code on the wikie. A basic
example:
[image: image.png]
A more elaborate example. It takes 10s to preview or render on my
machine.
[image: image.png]
OpenSCAD mailing list
To unsubscribe send an email to discuss-leave@lists.openscad.org
This idea looked so neat, and the render times so rough, that I added a
MetaBall object and from_metaballs function to
https://github.com/timschmidt/csgrs based on
https://crates.io/crates/fast-surface-nets
metaballs are available immediately in release 0.15.1 of csgrs here:
https://crates.io/crates/csgrs
Here's an example:
// Alias the library’s generic CSG type with empty metadata:type CSG =
csgrs::csg::CSG<()>;
// Metaballs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaballsuse
csgrs::csg::MetaBall;let balls = vec![
MetaBall::new(Point3::new(0.0, 0.0, 0.0), 1.0),
MetaBall::new(Point3::new(1.5, 0.0, 0.0), 1.0),];
let resolution = (60, 60, 60);let iso_value = 1.0;let padding = 1.0;
let metaball_csg = CSG::from_metaballs(
&balls,
resolution,
iso_value,
padding,);
// save to STL
let stl_data = metaball_csg.to_stl_binary("my_metaballs").unwrap();
std::fs::write("stl/metaballs.stl", stl_data)
.expect("Failed to write metaballs.stl");
On Sat, Feb 15, 2025 at 11:12 AM Adrian Mariano via Discuss <
discuss@lists.openscad.org> wrote:
A brief intro appears here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaballs and
google can turn up various pages on the topic.
On Sat, Feb 15, 2025 at 11:05 AM Sanjeev Prabhakar <
sprabhakar2006@gmail.com> wrote:
Looks great
Can anyone share the logic for producing these shapes. It would be
interesting to know.
On Sat, 15 Feb, 2025, 7:25 pm Adrian Mariano via Discuss, <
discuss@lists.openscad.org> wrote:
Someone recently remarked on the difficulty of creating organic forms in
OpenSCAD. As it happens, a new feature in BOSL2 may make this easier.
https://github.com/BelfrySCAD/BOSL2/wiki/isosurface.scad
Here are two examples that appear with code on the wikie. A basic
example:
[image: image.png]
A more elaborate example. It takes 10s to preview or render on my
machine.
[image: image.png]
OpenSCAD mailing list
To unsubscribe send an email to discuss-leave@lists.openscad.org
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--
Timothy Schmidt
(517) 292-4030
timschmidt@gmail.com
https://wiki.replimat.org
Just for fun, I took a quick stab at duplicating Ed Catmull's Dumbo the
Elephant model
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bicubic_Patches.png. I didn't
refine it all that far, but the results are promising.
Original:
File:Bicubic Patches.png
My attempt:
Nothing to get excited about, but a lot closer than the last time I
tried to do it with Bézier patches, for a lot less effort.
Here's the program:
include <BOSL2/std.scad>
include <BOSL2/isosurface.scad>
legD1 = 12;
legD2 = 6;
spec = [
// legs
fwd(8)*left(10), mb_cyl(d1=legD1, d2=legD2, h=20),
fwd(8)*right(10), mb_cyl(d1=legD1, d2=legD2, h=20),
back(8)*left(10), mb_cyl(d1=legD1, d2=legD2, h=20),
back(8)*right(10), mb_cyl(d1=legD1, d2=legD2, h=20),
up(20)*yrot(90), mb_capsule(d=25,h=40, influence=0.5), // body
right(20)*up(25)*yrot(-20), mb_capsule(r=7, h = 25, influence=0.1), // head
right(23)*up(10)*yrot(20), mb_cyl(d1 = 3, d2=6, h = 15, influence=0.2), // trunk
// ears
right(20)*up(29)*fwd(11)*yrot(80)*scale([1.7,1,1]), mb_disk(r=5,h=5, influence=0.1),
right(20)*up(29)*back(11)*yrot(80)*scale([1.7,1,1]), mb_disk(r=5,h=5, influence=0.1),
// tusks
right(25)*up(13)*fwd(5)*yrot(135), mb_capsule(r=1, h = 10, influence=0.1),
right(25)*up(13)*back(5)*yrot(135), mb_capsule(r=1, h = 10, influence=0.1),
];
bb = [[-30,-20,-15], [30,20,40]];
//#translate(bb[0]) cube(bb[1]-bb[0]);
metaballs(spec, voxel_size=0.5, bounding_box=bb);
@Joe Weinpert joe.weinpert@gmail.com
, interesting. I have a metal and stone sculpture I dreamed up years ago
that I could model with this. I definitely want to keep up on your
progress. Please send us pictures of anything you realize in wood ;-)
On Sun, Feb 16, 2025 at 10:32 PM Jordan Brown via Discuss <
discuss@lists.openscad.org> wrote:
Just for fun, I took a quick stab at duplicating Ed Catmull's Dumbo the
Elephant model
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bicubic_Patches.png. I didn't
refine it all that far, but the results are promising.
Original:
[image: File:Bicubic Patches.png]
My attempt:
Nothing to get excited about, but a lot closer than the last time I tried
to do it with Bézier patches, for a lot less effort.
Here's the program:
include <BOSL2/std.scad>
include <BOSL2/isosurface.scad>
legD1 = 12;
legD2 = 6;
spec = [
// legs
fwd(8)*left(10), mb_cyl(d1=legD1, d2=legD2, h=20),
fwd(8)*right(10), mb_cyl(d1=legD1, d2=legD2, h=20),
back(8)*left(10), mb_cyl(d1=legD1, d2=legD2, h=20),
back(8)*right(10), mb_cyl(d1=legD1, d2=legD2, h=20),
up(20)*yrot(90), mb_capsule(d=25,h=40, influence=0.5), // body
right(20)*up(25)*yrot(-20), mb_capsule(r=7, h = 25, influence=0.1), // head
right(23)*up(10)*yrot(20), mb_cyl(d1 = 3, d2=6, h = 15, influence=0.2), // trunk
// ears
right(20)*up(29)*fwd(11)*yrot(80)*scale([1.7,1,1]), mb_disk(r=5,h=5, influence=0.1),
right(20)*up(29)*back(11)*yrot(80)*scale([1.7,1,1]), mb_disk(r=5,h=5, influence=0.1),
// tusks
right(25)*up(13)*fwd(5)*yrot(135), mb_capsule(r=1, h = 10, influence=0.1),
right(25)*up(13)*back(5)*yrot(135), mb_capsule(r=1, h = 10, influence=0.1),
];
bb = [[-30,-20,-15], [30,20,40]];
//#translate(bb[0]) cube(bb[1]-bb[0]);
metaballs(spec, voxel_size=0.5, bounding_box=bb);
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