Modeling a Squirt Gun?

[Justin Perinovic]

I modeled something sort of similar (a flamethrower) but can’t find the file right now, it might be on my flash drive which a friend is using…

Anyway, when I made that I just looked at a picture of what I was try to model (in your case you probably have the real thing) and did my best to recreate it, using various methods. Most parts ended up being sweep NURBS, booles, and hyperNURBS manipulation, though of course some other methods were needed for various parts of it. Of those three main methods the hyperNURBS manipulation proved to me the most consistently useful; the sweep NURBS was just used for the tubing on it, and the booles for carved out sections that were more dificult to make look crisp with hyperNURBS.

[Brian Dugan]

Thanks Justin.
I have begun by importing a curve from illustrator and duplicating it multiple times, scaling it, to fit the contour of the handle -then appling a sweep nurb. I guess what you’re saying is to carve out areas via boolens? The hypernurbs are a great set of tools – I just gotta get used to them. Do you know how I can apply another hypernurb to a element that already has been manipulated with a hypernurb?

Brian

[Brian Jones]

you can always toss a HyperNurb inside another HyperNurb but why? If you want more subdivision you can do the same thing by increasing the subdivisions in the first HN (not saying there is absolutely no reason to put one HN in another but it would be unusual). If you are not familiar with HyperNurbs you should check out HyperNurbs in the Help, particularly Weighting the Hypernurbs cage. Your squirt gun looks like it could use that (or well placed bevels).

[Brian Dugan]

Thanks Brian,
I’m getting there I think.
I duplicated and adjusted 3 different sets of closed nurb curves and lofted ’em.
I now need to stitch them all together…
Should I subdivide them more before I “make them editable” allowing me to edit points?

-Brian

[Brian Jones]

you could try making the parts editable, Functions/Connect then bridging the parts together by hand.
You can also try building it completely differently (there is rarely only one way) by taking a cube and extruding and beveling to get the shape inside a Hypernurb. Also remember with any symmetrical object you only need to build half of it (makes the details in the handle (from the first picture easier to do).

Here’s a bad example done quickly and not right but with better attention to detail could be another way to do it, with the advantage that smooth transitions from one surface to another are usually easiest when the mesh is one piece. Just started with a Cube, did three extrudes, some Knife work and an interior extrude.