I have been asked by a fellow author to model their space station for 3D Printing and use in marketing images and video. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how best to model it. The base shape of it is easy. 7 Tauruses, 5 of them the same size, the other two both smaller sizes, equidistant along a central cylinder. After that, there are space docks and industry between the rings. I plan to do those as a cube base. The model is complex in the required precision to place the orbital industries attached between the wheels and the need to cut it apart for 3D Printing.
I understand that geometry nodes are modifiers. But I can see building the torus with its plating and greebles and windows, then using geometry nodes to instance them along their central cylinder, then place their spokes from the taurus-wheels to the central cylinder, and also use nodes to prep their animations. The taurus-wheels will spin among other bits.
But I can also see modeling out 1/4 of the wheel, the cylinder, and two spokes, mirror it, then instance it until I have all 7 of my wheels and do something similar with the industries and docking bays.
I am wrapping my brain around the general concept of the best times to use geometry nodes to supplement the main modeling process and when it’s better to stick with straight polygonal modeling.
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