Greetings, fellow Easel Pro users!
I am carving a flower that rises from the surface. I wonder how I can make the pedals low toward the center and high on the edge. Please see the attached image with top and side views. My challenge is illustrated by the red line.
Thank you for your feedback!
Yuan
Easel isn’t really setup for 3d contouring like that.
You can try to use the Super Gradient Tool but it’s going to be quite a bit of work just for a flower. It can be done, I did something very similar just now and was going to send a video of doing it, but I didn’t record and it took like 20 minutes even going rather fast… so your looking at about 30 minutes of work even after you get to know the Super Gradient tool pretty well.
You would need one gradient for the roundover at the edges, then another for the swooping curve downward, and then another gradient for the center point. . .
Oh and those first 2 gradients I mentioned need to be applied to a circle and then the Flower shape cut out from that circle Or it will try to contour each petal. AND its would need a very high stepdown count in order to be a smooth carve, which greatly slows down the computing time of the project.
The cone generator, and the super gradient generator are really the only ways to get any sort of 3D contours in Easel,… but it’s really just 2.5D with a LOT of stepdowns
That’s how I’d go about it as well. I tried using the Bezier Cone app to make a simple gradient, and then I manually modified the output to get the middle part raised like your diagram. (It might be possible to do the whole thing with the app but I thought it would be easier to get something close and then edit it. I think I set it to 8 steps but you might want to use more to reduce the amount of sanding afterwards.) Then I imported a flower outline from the Pro Design Library and resized it to the same size as the gradient.
Here’s my version of this:
I also added another zero-depth shape to “block out” the part of the gradient that would be outside of the flower cut. (This wasn’t strictly necessary but might save a little carving time.) I did that by using the Offsetter v2 app to expand a copy of the flower outline shape, and then I set that expanded flower outline to 0 depth and used Easel’s Combine feature to subtract it from a square shape:
I am embarrassed to say that I have never used the Super Gradient Tool (or any apps for that matter). It blew my mind! Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!
I agree the app is not a true 3D feature, but it’s good enough for what I am looking for. I tried to model this flower in ZBrush, it was a nightmare to go back and forth between programs. I did what you suggested by employing three circles to generate gradients. Here is what I got. Any suggestions? And, is there any way to edit the gradient after applying it?
I can’t thank you enough for making the example and sharing it with me. It helped tremendously! Here is what I made after seeing yours. I’d love to hear what you think!
