*Best viewed in HD 1080p - Blender 2.8 or higher. In this tutorial, I will show a very simple and effective technique to model a triply periodic minimal surface, known as Schoen's Batwing, for 3d printing and design. Schoen's Batwing surface gets its name due to its fundamental region, which resembles a bat wing. Alan Schoen is best known for discovering a minimal surface that he named the gyroid.

Thanks LuxXeon for sharing your tutorials going to add it to today Blender FB page as well

Thank you, Lobo, for the support as always. I'd like everyone to know that until I get a new mic, the latest tutorial videos are without narration. I know this is difficult for some people who are used to following along based on what the author is saying. However, I do my best to include annotations at every critical point in the video where an operation on the model is occurring or parameters are being adjusted to help clarify which actions are taking place. I also include hotkey combinations and parameter coordinates being used so that you could achieve the exact same results. Consider this as a sort of "Screencast Keys" replacement. The reason I do not actually use the ScreenCast Keys plugin with Blender is simply that it just does not work reliably while my screen recording software is running, so it's virtually useless for tutorials (at least for me). The best way I have found to follow along with any tutorial in which there is no voice-over narration is to simply adjust the Youtube video settings to play back at 0.5 or 0.25 the normal speed. This will slow things down just enough to be able to read the annotations and see exactly which buttons or parameters are being adjusted in the viewport.

I was watching this new tutorial yesterday Lux, but I haven't tried it out yet, as I'm still not using 2.8. We shall see if I can manage it with 2.79b as soon as I have some free time. Thanks for posting it.

Miss B posted at 1:10PM Sat, 23 March 2019 - #4348603

I was watching this new tutorial yesterday Lux, but I haven't tried it out yet, as I'm still not using 2.8. We shall see if I can manage it with 2.79b as soon as I have some free time. Thanks for posting it.

Thank you, Miss B. I think all the essential tools and features needed to achieve this model are also there in Blender 2.79. The only difference will be the hotkeys and location of some of the editing tools. There were some changes to the hotkey mapping in Blender 2.8, but most everything else is exactly the same. Good luck, I'm excited to see your results! I think the Batwing surface is one of the most beautiful of all the minimal surfaces and would make a very interesting pendant or amulet if 3d printed with a necklace loop. Also, because the surface is "triply periodic", it can be duplicated infinitely along the XYZ coordinates to create an even more complex structure. It's in this way that Arch/Viz artists have used it for creating futuristic support structures for modern architectural designs.

Let me know how you do. At the very least, there are some techniques in there that could come in handy for other types of modeling objectives. Have fun. ?

All good to know Lux, so I'll be trying it out, though can't say when it'll get done, but I will post here in the thread when I have something for everyone to see.

One thing I should mention for anyone interested in 3d printing these objects: If anyone here has watched the 3dsmax version of this tutorial, which was created earlier, you may notice one of the biggest differences between the two processes is that in 3dsmax, I modeled the object to real-world scale for 3d printing output. The whole purpose of this design is mainly for 3d printing. However, in my Blender 2.8 version, I was not able to model using real world scale, even though I used the default meters as the units of measure. When it comes to modeling things in millimeters or some other metric units smaller than the default meters, I recommend converting the object's scale at the very end of the editing process but just before the application of the Solidify modifier. The reason for this is that Blender's unit conversion is still a bit "wonky" so to speak, and while it can convert the scene from meters to millimeters for you, the process does not translate perfectly to all areas of Blender such as the parameters in various add-ons. Some addons will not adopt the scale conversion that Blender uses for millimeters, and will display the parameters as either generic units or standard meters. This can become rather confusing when modeling to real-world scale, and it could throw off certain parts of the tutorial where parameter values to certain editing operations are critical for the proper results. This is one thing about Blender that I've never been able to get used to coming from 3dsmax. However, it's not impossible to overcome and for the most part, it isn't really a big deal.

Personally, I prefer to simply model the object as if I were using generic units of measure in Blender, then adjust the scale conversion in Blender from meters to millimeters at the end of the editing process. Once the overall scene scale is converted properly to millimeters and the object is scaled accordingly, that's when I add thickness to the object using the Solidify modifier since that is the most critical part of the creation process for proper 3d printing. Using this workflow, there is no concern about the parameters of certain add-ons or editing operations matching up with the given scene scale, and once the scale of the object is set where I want it I can then add accurate thickness to the surface before exporting to the 3d printer or slicer, or upload to Shapeways.