How to make christmas lights? A tapered coil of balls or a wrapped cone?

Question

Three years ago, I first tried to create a string of Xmas lights using a tapered coil. It "worked", but the results were ugly (and incredibly difficult to texture.) The texture was applied to the outside of the coil, causing the image to stretch & wrap. And applying the UV map requires a degree in Differential Calculus. So now, I'd like to do it right.

What I'm thinking now is a string of "beads"... a coil of balls tapered at the top but w/o resizing/reshaping the beads/lights themselves. I don't know if that's even possible since the number of "beads" would have to increase top-to-bottom.

Maybe there's a way to "wrap" a string of beads around a cone then delete/hide the cone? Dunno. Just spit-balling.

Any tips or am I asking too much? TIA :)

Answer 1

Here is a possible way.

You could use geometry nodes to create the spiral.

You change some numbers to get the height and taper you want.

Then you attach some spheres to the spiral curve and randomize the color of them.

Here is the result:

Here is what your node tree might look like, but you can customize it to have other ornaments other than just spheres, maybe even a collection of objects.

If you set up a material that uses the instancer option, it can use a range of colours instead of just one.