Tutorial #1 - Parametric Spiral Shells

December 2022 Update!
I've made a free Blender addon that will make spiral shells even easier to create in Blender. Enjoy!

---- original video description below ---

This tutorial will teach you one method for creating highly customisable spiral shell meshes in Blender. It relies heavily on array modifiers and drivers. I hope you get something out of it!

Here's a download link for a .blend file containing the shell with all its drivers, modifiers, etc.

IMPORTANT NOTE: When you add the empties (see the 3-minute mark in the video) leave them at the origin. Moving them will break the mesh being constructed.

Shells made with this approach:
YouTube Peter1504 made an awesome looking shell and included it in the following render:

[qedqubit]

best tutorial i've seen on how to make up 'properties' and use em for drivers 😀!

[amberczmills]

I made it through the setup! I had to slow the playback speed of the video to 0.75 and I also had to open up the download blender file to see the part that the instructor left for us to do on our own. Plus I got to learn about modifiers and arrays. Looking forward now to making many customizable shells with this setup. Thanks so much for this tutorial.

[biggeo_ru]

Great stuff! Exactly what i was looking for, thx a lot!

[queenofbread]

For anyone who is struggling, I recommend pausing the video to take notes as you go along. It will help you make sense of everything and truly take it in rather than making you feel like you're just following steps that you don't understand.

[dakkonblackblade]

Great Tutorial... i will give this a shot! Pls keep up the great work!

[neilgordon]

I just spent an age comparing my file with the example one, driver for driver. All exactly the same and yet my result was off kilter from the very first array!

Until... I finally noticed that the object origin of the base concentric circles remained at world origin! I had moved it in object mode and so its origin moved with it. Restoring the object origin to the world origin fixed everything!

[mtliedke]

That was a murder. Took me ages to go through this tutorial but it is awesome product. I've ended up downloading ready file as it was constantly showing error in the phyton script. Besides, no idea what I was typing in anyway so what's the point. Thanks for doing all the hard work. End result is amazing.

[ferntim]

This is absolutely incredible, thanks!

[КристинаКазань]

Thank you, it's incredible helpful ✨

[raulkaap]

I think this is how God himself designed conches.

[blaisegonsalves]

at 5:21 its showing me the value as 1 even though the value in my custom property is 6

[DefNotMarcelo]

This is a great tutorial but please slow down and let us know what hotkeys you're pressing to get some of these commands

[biggeo_ru]

Thx again! I have a little problem with final "cleaning" at 10:52 though.. I did exactly according the tutorial from your blend file but when in edit mode, face-select i select all by trait - i get all faces selected. What am i doing wrong? Maybe someone had same issue as me?

[laurapalavecino]

Can I ask you what specific key did you press to search "bridge edge Loops" (min 9:31) I cant´t figure out how do I get that search bar in Blender.Thank you very much

[ianhunt]

For some reason I am having trouble with new wedges and subwedges either appearing disconnected if the value is too low, or if you set the value high enough to fix this the edges begin clipping into one another. Does anyone have an idea where I am going wrong?

[blithegerm]

Blender can't seem to put the coils back together after I max out the scale property to 1 then reduce it to where it started (0.6) - the coils simply have separated into multiple layers but no longer linked together like a shell normally should. I'm using Blender 3.0. Do you possibly know how to solve this? thanks in advance and thanks for creating the tutorial!

[intelligenceservices]

@2:42 after setting the coil at a value of 1, the pause screen comes up shows the value 5.

[Bintangsatria]

Great tutorial ! Now i'm trying to figure out how i could do the array following a specific curve path ? I tried to change all the Fit Type array to Fit curve but it didn't work.. Thank you !

[intelligenceservices]

@3:21 as soon as i choose subwedgecontrol as the controlling object, i get a second copy of "shell" at the location of the empty (world origin). Every time I add an array modifier, following exactly what you've done, I get a new copy of "shell" showing up somewhere. then I get ten copies of them in a line going to the left (after adding the control driver) Your video does not show this occurring.

[Mrpoppe]

Great tutorial, although the google drive link is blocked :/