[TheGrandmaster1]

Though this at first glance might seem simple, after many, many attempts for a period of several months, I have met with nothing but failure. I have tried a geosphere with extrusions, wave modifiers, hundreds of lofts to make the dendrites…nothing has worked. I have here three images, of an axon/nerve. I am needing a model for medical illustration we can use multiple times. Does anyone have any insight how I might go about building this? A small tutorial perhaps, advice on the proper way to do it, a method to make the first branch that I could use to make all the others…anything? Help on how to model a axon/nerve cell such as illustrated here would be must appreciated.

Here is what I am trying to do...

Nerve 1 reference

Nerve 2 Reference

Nerve 3 Reference

[hellhammer]

You might want to try extrude along spline from a ffd-ed sphere and a nice irregular bump/displacement (depends on your time and machine capabilities really) map for the material,. These 2 steps are pretty self-explained and really easy to accomplish, but what will really make this shine is the render setups. Im not too sure of what could work for this since im not too great rendering hehe, but perhaps a sub scatter surface (sss) shader could help you to get some cool results. Those things seem pretty transluscent, particularly on your 3rd reference image, so you can give it a try. Pretty much a trial-error solution imo. There might even be some tuts on how to make this kind of thing up on the net . Good luck.

[lillo_@hotmail]

Hi!

I would try to create a sphere and then deform it to look like the center thing.
Then create splines for the "arms". Select the poly's on the sphere and use the "extrude along spline".

Hope this helps!
/Andy

[TheGrandmaster1]

Awesome. Well, oddly enough, I have tried extrude along sline, and a geophere before, but not together like this. My extrusion along a spline with with a mostly 2D nerve that turned into a mess. By making a Geosphere, cutting a square into it, and continuously cutting and extruding along splines, I have gotten better results than anything I have tried in the past 8 or 9 or so attempts. Thanks guy. BTW...good idea on the FFD box! I didn't think of that to warp the central cell area! I think I have it now. Any more idea are appreciated...but what we have here helps greatly.

[mmeye]

Here is a tutorial you might find work for what your doing. I think with some work you can adapt it for your needs...

I ran across this after reading this post so hope it helps!


Check here!

[hellhammer]

A quick thingy made with the method i described you:
Sphere>ffdx2
Edit poly: select random faces and extrude along spline with some taper (even the same spline lol).
Turbosmooth
The material is a sss with random setups and a cellular map for bump.
No displacement, no GI, only a couple of coloured omni lights
Copy copy copy scale copy scale copy
Tweaked the field of view to distort a bit
TADAAAM!

Took like 10 mins in all hehe, and that was mostly tweaking the material. Of course you can accomplish a cooler thing with some dof and maybe motion blur or something.

Edit.... forgot the image

[TheGrandmaster1]

Awesome. The boss is going to be very pleased when he comes in next (And he's usually happy anyway!) …my axon is far, far better now.

Hellhammer, that was just about perfect what I wanted. Thanks. This technique is working well.

Mmeye, that material will work nicely for my nerve. Everyone else, each post actually made a difference and helped. Thanks. Keep the thread alive if you want, the help is excellent.

Here is what I've got in an hour or so, much better than the mess before.