Fluid Designer

June 12, 2019July 28, 2020 New Media Supply 0 Comments Curves, Modeling, Parametric

Fluid designer is a set of addons for Blenders 2.8 to create artwork like jewellery. Think about art-work you would like to print out and sell. The Fluid Design consists of two parts; an addon to create jewellery (JewelCraft)and addons to create parametric curves. The addon JewelCraft has some interesting features not only to create jewellery. And the curves addons are a must to have. One thing to keep in mind is that at the end, you want to convert all objects (curves) to mesh. And then you want to remesh them.

Fluid Design Parametric Modeling — Fluid Design Example of parametric modeling

JuwelCraft addon

Maybe you’ve seen the JuwelCraft addon years ago. It’s worth to take a look again. Now, this addon is focussed more on parametric modeling and it comes with a huge set of assets. It comes even with an asset-manager. To give you an impression what it contains here a list:

Add a basic Gem (optional) in the scene in case you want to work with Gems. Presets; Round, Oval, Cushion, Pear, Marquise, Princess, Emerald, and more.
Add Prongs and Cutter (optional) . You might wonder what prongs are. These are for mounting the Gem. The cutter is to boolean cut the base mesh so the Gem wil fit.
Curve Scatter is a very interesting feature. It’s like radial array, but then the a curve is used to scatter the objects.
Curve Assets. There is a huge collection of assets build with curves. From wiccan to Xmass, from Astrological to Thai Font. These are all curves.
Lattice Project. Select two objects and one objects will be converted into a lattice. You have to select the object you want to turn to lattice the last. At first sight it looks like a shrinkwrap, but it is a lattice.
Lattice profile. Select the object you want to deform, press Lattice Profile, and you will get a curve you can deform the object with.
Size Curve. Gives a curve you can deform other objects with in particular axis. Parametric modeling.
Stretch. Gives a curve you can stretch and deform object on X-axis. Parametric modeling.

Curve Addons

Then there is a set of curve addons. They will appear under the Add Curve menu Shift+A, then C. Once you add a curve a menu on the left cornet will pop up in which are loads of settings to find. When you add one of the curves you will have options (parametric) to change the curve’s shape. Included are the following:

Basin Curve
BorroMean Curve
Capareda Curve
Clelia Curve
Enneper Curve
Lissajouws Curve
Pappus Curve
Tennisseam Curve
Vivianni Curve
WireDish Curve

How to use Fluid Designer.

To give an overall idea, the following. Use the tools in Fluid-design without bothering about topology and intersections etc. Just drag n drop, copy, use parametric features and after that you will want convert all curves to mesh. As last step you want to Remesh them. For Example with Instant Meshes Remesh or for more convenient results OpenVDB (paid) and Tesselator (paid). Fluid Desing recommends Netfabb Basic to prepare your mesh for 3D printing, but that link seems to be outdated.

Where to download Fluid Designer?

You can download fluid design on Fluiddesigner.co.uk. The addons will install as usual. Meaning: Blender > Edit > Preferences > Addons > Install, and browser to the addon. And the curve-addons are all seperate addons, but they don’t bother the N-Panel and show up under Shift+A then C (for curve). Again, alternatives for Netfabb could be: Instant Meshes Remesh, VDBRemesh and/or Tesselator.