In a past tutorial, we created a simple braid from two strands. In this one, we will create a knot, a single continuous object composed of only one strand with a slight variation on what we did when creating the braid.
We will create 4 squares to use as ribs for our skin.
We will replicate these squares rotating them 40ยบ on the y-axis, with 8 repetitions, so that we end with 9 units.
The Replicate Objects dialog
Objects replicated prior to ungrouping
Having 9 units will mean that when we complete one revolution, we will not close the object (9 is not divisible by 4) and when we complete two revolutions, we will not close the object (18 is not divisible by 4 either). We will finally close our knot when we skin 4 turns, using all the available ribs.
We will repeat the sequential rotation for our squares:
- Inner top
- Inner bottom
- Outer bottom
- Outer top
- Repeat
First turn
Second turn
Third turn
The finished knot
Skinning the ribs can get confusing. SHIFT+spacebar (free rotation of the view) is a very great help for doing this skinning operation.
A rotated view enables us to skin ribs we could not get to otherwise
After that, we converted the skin into a polygon mesh; subdivided; textured, lit and added environment; and rendered.
The final knot
