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I'm trying to to get this effect :

enter image description here

with my maze.

So, the maze should fall into the hole. I have no idea how to go about it. Maybe get it to follow the surface of a torus? (but don't know how). Please help.

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  • $\begingroup$ You intend to make a still image, or animate the fall into the hole ? $\endgroup$
    – Aleph
    Nov 4, 2015 at 10:49
  • $\begingroup$ Still image is all I need $\endgroup$ Nov 4, 2015 at 10:50

5 Answers 5

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Tissue+Solidify

I would personally model a piece of the maze and spread it on a surface with Tissue add-on. Just pick the component first and then the generator and click "tessellate". From the add-on wiki:

Tessellate tool allows you to copy a selected object (Component) on the faces of the active object (Generator), adapting its bounding box to the shape of quad-faces.

enter image description here

Try to keep the faces of the generator (was made by slicing a torus) as square as possible to avoid distortion. You can improve the component (was made with Hilbert node from Sverchok) to make it more tileable than mine.

Then I'll add a solidify modifier to the geometry only after the spreading to be sure that the walls are perpendicular to the surface.

enter image description here

Finish with positioning the camera slightly upon the walls.

enter image description here

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  • $\begingroup$ Wooow. Perfect solution! $\endgroup$ Nov 4, 2015 at 11:57
  • $\begingroup$ Not so perfect as it is not appliable to any existing geometry, but only tileable's one. It requires to build the maze with the hole, and not before. $\endgroup$
    – Carlo
    Nov 4, 2015 at 14:01
  • $\begingroup$ I was more impressed with this plugin at first sight than at second or third. Mazes are hardly tileable and there were issues with mesh density. No algorithm can do this, it has to be manual work. $\endgroup$ Nov 4, 2015 at 23:26
  • $\begingroup$ You can use a few trick to make the tiles less visible, as enable randomize option on the plug in or apply a component only on some faces of the hole and another component on the other, and so on...the variety requires more work obiuvsly. About the density, you should try to keep the face of the generator mesh all of the same size by sliding or creating loopcuts. $\endgroup$
    – Carlo
    Nov 5, 2015 at 9:13
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Deform a rectangular maze

Another option could be to deform a starting flat maze with a sequence of simple deform modifier.

Start by creating the rectangular maze. In this example I imported a svg from mazegenerator, extruded the lines, solidified and than removed the upper vertices of the wall to get only the base contour)

enter image description here

Add an empty, rotate it on the X axis by -90 degree and add to the maze object a Simple deform modifier pointing to the previusly created origin. This way we can force the modifier to get the origin's Z axis as a bending axis. Set the deformation angle to something between 45° and 90°, you can tweak it later.

Above all modifiers I added a Subdivision Surface modifier (set to Simple) to get a quicker mesh resolution and so a better bending of the geometry.

enter image description here

Add now another empty, rotate it -90 degree on the Z axis this time, then add a second Simple Bending modifier pointing to the new empty. Set the angle to 360 degree and move the empty on the X axis till you find the right proportions.

enter image description here

Finish by extruding the walls with a Solidify modifier.

enter image description here

The proportion of the initial rectangular maze and also its density must be calculated basing on the final target shape to avoid any kind of distortion.

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Why not simply using the proportionnal editing fonction ?

Here a basic shape (not a perfect maze, but some schematic one ;) I've selected the center vertices

enter image description here

Press O, to activate the proportionnal editing. It allows modifications of the mesh, acting like a magnet, to smoothly deform the surface of the model.

You can activate it from the menu too, in 3d view/edit mode :

enter image description here

And you can adjust the falloff type :

enter image description here

(pictures from the blender Wiki)

Well, while in this proportionnal edit mode, select the vertices from the center of your mesh, where you want the hole. You can adjust the proportionnal edit influence by rotating you center-mouse button, and then you just have to move vertically the selected vertices :

path to external image editor in blender

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  • $\begingroup$ Ok, his is probably as close as I can get with already modeled maze. Howerver, it doesn't give me a hole and I may need a view from the top into the hole. I would have to cut away vertices and it would be a mess. $\endgroup$ Nov 4, 2015 at 11:44
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You can also use a lattice modifier to deform non-destructively deform maze shape (or to animate it somehow)

here is a simple example: 2 dimensional cube arrays with an additional lattice to deform...

enter image description here

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I ended up abandoning my maze model and modeling it from scratch on a torus by extruding faces. This gave me a clean result like so

enter image description here

that I couldn't get otherwise.

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