Create a New York Times Square New Year’s Eve ball
Updated
The ball is a 12 ft. diameter geodesic sphere covered with 2,688 Waterford Crystal triangles displaying 16 million colors in kaleidoscope patterns.
Create the frame: Select Spherical tool, set Shape to Geodesic Sphere, and # Subdivision to 3, then create a 6 ft radius geodesic sphere at the origin.
Select the Frame tool, set Radius to ½”, then click on the geodesic sphere.
Observe the edges of the geodesic sphere are converted into a unioned tubular frame.
Create the Waterford Crystal triangles: Select Spherical tool, set Shape to Geodesic Sphere, and # Subdivision to 6, then create a 5’-11” radius geodesic sphere at the origin.
Apply a material to the geodesic sphere using Reflection:Glass Accurate and Bumps:Knurl to emulate the crystal triangles.
To emulate the edges between each crystal triangle we’ll render the edges a different color: Select the glass geodesic sphere with the Pick tool and set the following settings in Tool Options palette.
Set RenderZone Attributes of the geodesic sphere to Render As Wireframe with Width = 3 Pixels.
Set Basic Attributes of the geodesic sphere to render Lines/Edges as a dark grey Color instead of Use Material Average.
