I was wondering if anyone had a nice quick solution for modelling the kind of swirley stonework seen in ionic columns such as this? Obviously one could model it but I was wondering if there were any uber fast quick solutions that I might not have thought of, cheers.

In case wish to do a specific search, that part of the ionic capital is called the volute. The one I show is not very good for a number of reasons. Since I don't know what use you have for one, it may be acceptable. The salient point being that it is easy to create. What software are you using?

Cheers for the reply, I am using Lightwave for this project though I have acess to XSI as well. I think the one you have done there is perfectly acceptable to be honest, I can get away with that amount of division as they will most probably be on background/midground objects.

Well, not to take the steam out of phenom1's thread (by all means post your idea): I would extrude a cube along a curve for the swirl and then bridge the faces or I'd loft a series of curves in the shape you want (high, valley, high, valley, high,etc.) folowing a path curve.

I was referring to the actual structure of the volute rather than the subdivision. Teyon's methods work fine, but I find that it is a bit easier to create a disk of 12 sections for the eye of the volute and a helix of 36 sections, 1080 degrees, with an inside radius equal to the disk and an outside radius 9 times that of the inner. I then create polys from these. I can easily pull vertices to match a specific volute. Of course, this isn't necessary if you are creating generic capitals. Then select the edges that create the scroll and bevel and extrude. Add any detail to the volute. Then subdivide to smooth as much as you like.

I can do a flash tut in Silo, but I won't be able to get to it until Thursday or Friday night.

Message edited on: 02/07/2006 19:49

That would be sweet, have done it now but I am sure your tute would benefit a lot of people, I am pretty sure you can do it with LW's Seashell tool but I did not have time to get it to work. Silo looks really nice from what I can gather but then I guess the grass is always greener in another field!