Autodesk Alias Organic Modeling 2

In this video I will be using a simple rectangle to start with and sculpt a Le mans type body from it, all in one piece. Again, this is taped in real time, so it only took around 20 minutes to get a shape going. Most sketches with a touch of color take that long, but remain always 2D. This has proven an ideal technique for me to experiment with shapes and highlights. I use it to either create the basic shapes from doodles and ideas I had, or just playing around with the form to see if something interesting comes out, much like playing with clay.

In extending the surfaces within Alias, much like adding points to a curve, sometimes unexpected hard points are created. I have found I can either work with them and use them to my advantage to create harder edges at certain spots, I can make them obsolete by by fine-tuning the surrounding hulls, even play them appearing and disappearing by playing with local CV’s, or afterward make a complete new rectangle from the same weight as the on I created, and snap the CV’s to the existing one. The latter mathod eradicates the unwanted harder lines and allows you to fine tune even more.

Of course this is not A-Class surfacing. It never was intended for that. What it does do is allow me to quickly find a shape I like as a base. I can develop this further to even a mill-able model stage, all the while ensuring I have actual usable data to verify with engineering. This data I can still easily modify after milling, to adjust to new insights, and from this data it is easy to create A-Class surfaces that maintain the wanted highlights. Depending on your creativity, it prevents models to look like the all too frequent ‘slab-slab-fillet’ treatment Catia surfacers prefer to pump out, and maintains the design intention.