Man, I think the hardest part of this assignment was getting my pattern to line up properly. The amount of times I just about started sobbing, I swear.
Texture mapping in Rhino 8 was a struggle for me because I don't actually know how to use the tools it has effectively for what I had in mind. I spent far too much time reading up on how to fix my pattern, whether on Photoshop or messing with the UV wrapping, to fit seamlessly on the sphere, and was tempted on multiple occasions to give up and use Substance Painter, 3DS Max, Blender, and Marvelous Designer to get the results I wanted. I'm starting to think that I just end up running into the most obscure problems ever, or I am overcomplicating a process others have found an easy solution to.
But anyway, I had to remind myself that I should be able to do everything on Rhino (since that's kind of the point of the class and I'm just an incurable overachiever who needs to chill out), so I kept trying to make it work. Sadly, I did have to come to terms with scaling back my ideas because--although I did end up learning how to emulate cloth collision on grasshopper--they required processes I only knew how to do on other 3D modelling software.
On a better note, I learned about the maelstrom command which helped me make the tissue for my tissue box. It helped me twist the rectangular surface I made to make it look more organic and soft. For both the table runner and the tissue, I also used rebuild, show control points, and manipulated those points with soft edit and the gumball. To get the drape effect I wanted for my table runner, I used blend surface to connect the two rectangular surfaces on the x and y axis, respectively.
I also learned to use grasshopper to simulate cloth collision, although I didn't end up using it. The ends of my cloth (the ones that are supposed to drape over the edge of the table) somehow kept clipping through the table even though I specified it to be the solid it was supposed to collide with. Still have to figure out why.
For my pattern, I did quickly realize I needed to edit it to tile better, especially if I were to apply it as a texture in Rhino. So I took out some of the original elements from my design and used photoshop to map out a repeating tile that still stayed true to the initial design.
I definitely had a lot of fun getting to do more 3D modelling now that I have a better grasp of the different tools at my disposal, not to mention I've gotten faster at it as well compared to my first day where I was fumbling around significantly.
Overall, despite the setbacks, I'm pretty happy with how these came out, and if nothing else, I have an even stronger drive to gain a better understanding of Rhino's texture mapping.