Make a tentacle ball

You draw tentacles out of a sphere with the pointer, round the whole shape off with ORGANIC smoothing and render it. The picture you save is a dark violet ball covered in curving tentacles that taper to fine tips, against an orange and purple sky.

1. Choose File ▸ New Scene, and click Save… or Discard if Orbit asks about unsaved changes.

   The viewport shows an empty scene.

2. Click ADD OBJECT in the toolbar and choose SPHERE.

   A ball named Sphere 1 appears in the middle of the grid and is selected. At the top right of the viewport, the triangle count beside SPHERE 1 reads 720 TRIS.

3. In the INSPECTOR, under GEOMETRY, set SIDES to 32 and SEGMENTS to 24. For each one, click the number at the right end of the slider, type the value and press Return.

   The ball's surface is split into more, smaller faces, the flat pieces it is built from, and the count reads 1.5K TRIS.

   A tentacle starts out as wide as the face it grows from, so more faces give thinner tentacles. 32 and 24 are only a starting point. SIDES goes up to 64 and SEGMENTS up to 32.

   Leave ORGANIC switched off until step 9, where it smooths the ball and the tentacles together. With it on, the next step turns the smoothing into real faces of the ball, many of them small with three sides, and each tentacle then starts thin with three sides of its own.

4. Click MAKE EDITABLE (TAB), below the object's name at the top of the INSPECTOR.

   The ball enters poly edit mode, where you change its surface face by face. The button reads EXIT POLY EDIT (TAB), and under it the INSPECTOR counts the faces and vertices of the ball and shows the buttons POINT V, EDGE E and FACE F.

5. Click FACE F if it is not already lit, then click TENDRIL in the row of EXTRUDE, BEVEL and TENDRIL below it.

   A TENDRIL section appears, with SCALE /STEP at 0.92 and TWIST /STEP at 0.00°. Leave both where they are.

   A tentacle is built as a chain of short sections. SCALE /STEP sets the size of each section compared with the one before it, so at 0.92 every tentacle narrows toward its tip.

6. Point at a face a little inside the outline of the ball, on its left or right side as you see it. Press, drag slowly away from the ball along a curve and release.

   A square tube grows out of the face and follows the pointer, getting narrower as it goes. On a bend sharper than the tube can manage, it turns as tightly as it can and keeps following. A longer drag gives a longer tentacle with a finer tip.

   The tentacle grows across the screen at the depth of the face it starts from, so a face near the outline sends it out sideways, where its whole length stays in view. Keep the path clear of the ball, since a tentacle drawn back across the ball goes through it. ⌘Z removes the whole tentacle in one step.

7. Hold Option and drag to circle the view a little way around the ball, then grow another tentacle from a face near the outline. Carry on until the ball has as many as you want.

   Each drag adds one tentacle. Swing the path one way and then back for an S shape, or circle tightly for a curl that winds in closer toward the tip. About a dozen, spread around the ball, cover it well.

   A drag has to start on a face of the ball. The faces near the top and bottom of the ball are narrower than those around its middle, so tentacles grown there come out thinner. For a thicker one, click a face, hold Shift and click the faces beside it, then drag one of the selected faces. The selected faces grow a single tentacle as wide as the group.

8. Click EXIT POLY EDIT (TAB).

   The ball leaves poly edit mode. The INSPECTOR shows the banner MESH IS EDITED · PARAMETRIC LOCKED, the GEOMETRY settings dimmed below it and then the ORGANIC section.

9. In the ORGANIC section, click ENABLE SMOOTHING.

   The row changes to SMOOTHING ENABLED. The square tentacles round off into smooth tubes, and the ball and the places where the tentacles leave it turn smooth too.

   Smoothing works on top of the faces you drew, and the tentacles underneath stay as you drew them. To add more later, click SMOOTHING ENABLED to switch it off, click ENTER POLY EDIT (TAB) and grow them, then switch smoothing back on. With smoothing off, the surface on screen matches the faces you drag.

10. Press M, type alien in SEARCH PRESETS at the top of the MATERIAL BROWSER, and click Alien Membrane. Close the browser with the X at the right end of its title bar.

    The ball turns dark violet. Alien Membrane is a glossy skin that glows green wherever the surface turns edge on to the camera, which in the render lines the outline of the ball and each tentacle.

11. Click the ENVIRONMENT card at the bottom right of the window, above the RENDER card. Under BUILT-IN, click Bryce-Era Alien, then close the panel with the X in its title bar.

    The sky turns orange overhead and purple toward the horizon.

    Clicking a card swaps in its entire environment, and ⌘Z brings back the one before. The sun in this sky gives no light of its own. The ball is lit by the lights the new scene started with.

12. Click the ball if it is not selected, then press F. Hold Option and drag to circle around the ball until the tentacles spread out against the sky, and scroll to move closer or farther away.

    After F, the ball and all its tentacles sit in the middle of the view with some room around them, and dragging with Option held circles around it.

    In poly edit mode, F switches to FACE F and leaves the camera where it is. A view worth keeping can be saved as a camera snapshot.

13. Click the RENDER card. Under PRESET, click CHROME 2000, then click DONE.

    The card reads Chrome 2000. This look smooths the stepped outlines of the tentacles in the render.

14. Click EXPORT RENDER in the toolbar, then click RENDER. When SAVE IMAGE appears, click it, choose a folder and click Save.

    RENDERING counts up to 100% while Orbit traces the picture. The saved file is a PNG unless you chose another format in the sheet.

#Other tentacle shapes

The TENDRIL settings apply to tentacles you draw after changing them, and the ones already on the ball keep their shape. At SCALE /STEP 1.00 a tentacle keeps the same width to its end, like a hose, and above 1.00 it widens toward a flared end. Its range is 0.70 to 1.10, and a lower value brings the tip to a point over a shorter distance. TWIST /STEP, from −45° to 45°, turns each section a little around the path, winding the edges of the tube into a spiral. Neither setting is saved with the scene.

The finished ball is an edited mesh. Clicking RESET TO PARAMETRIC in its banner, then clicking it again when it reads TAP AGAIN TO CONFIRM, turns it back into a plain sphere with ORGANIC switched off and discards every tentacle. ⌘Z right after the reset brings them back.

Next: Edit a mesh point by point.