Designing Uniqueness: Modeling Bubble Armchair in Rhino

In this tutorial, we're going to learn how to model an armchair in Rhino using a bit of Grasshopper to create the bubbled effect on the chair's surface. Modeling a bubble armchair is a fun way to create a unique piece of furniture for your 3D interior scenes. Let's dive in!

Overview

The first step in modeling this bubble armchair is to create a base surface in Rhino to build off of. Then we'll use Grasshopper to quickly generate spheres that will act as our bubbles on the chair's surface. After that, it's just a matter of creating the armchair's outer shell and giving it some nice smoothed edges.

Step-by-Step Process

Here is the step-by-step process to model the bubble armchair in Rhino:

Create Base Surface

First, create a simple surface in Rhino that will act as the base. This will give us something to build the rest of the armchair on top of.

Generate Points

Next, we need to generate points on the surface that will become the centers of our bubbles. To do this:

• Divide the length into segments
• Extend lines from the divisions to intersect the surface and create points
• Do this vertically as well, dividing the width into segments
• Delete any unnecessary points, like in the center area that will be flat

Create Bubbles in Grasshopper

Now we can jump over to Grasshopper to quickly create our bubbles. Bring the surface into Grasshopper and feed the points into a Grasshopper Sphere component. Next, connect the sphere radius - adjust to taste. Bake the spheres in Rhino.

Grasshopper makes generating the bubbles easy - just a couple of steps!

Build Outer Shell

With our bubbles in place, we can build the armchair's outer shell. To do this, create the base curves for the overall shape. Use commands like Dupborder and Sweep to build it up. Once we build it up, we need to refine shapes, fillet edges, etc.

Tweak as needed to get the exact shape you want.

Final Touches

Finally, add any last touches:

• Adjust bubble positions if needed
• Create proper surface thickness
• Render it!

Final Results

And we're done! Following these steps will give you a uniquely bubbled armchair modeled in Rhino. Feel free to tweak the process to get exactly the look you're going for. Modeling a bubble armchair is a great way to expand your Rhino and Grasshopper skills!