Hi! Brand new here, and fairly new to Shapr3D. I’m trying to make a tapered spiral. I’m trying to recreate a chameleon’s tail shape. I’ll include pics below. I got as far as revolving a circle around axis to the amount of revolutions and length, but when I went to scale or change one of the ending circle profiles, it didn’t work… any way on how to achieve the chameleon tail? I’ll include pics below. Thank you.
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Hi Kyler,
welcome to the forum.
Here is a way to do it:
- create a first 90° segment of the spiral using guided loft tool, with the end of the 1/4 turn being a scaled version of the origin. In my exemple, I used 120%.
- then duplicate the body and scale it by the same amount (120% in my exemple)
- finaly, use the align tool to place the second segment at the right position
- repeat the process as needed.
(to speed up duplication, you can union the first 2 segments and duplicate it, with a scaling factor raised to the power of 2. In my exemple, 120% means scaling by 1.2, so for 2 segments, it means scaling by 1.2 * 1.2 = (1.2)^2 = 1.44, so 144%. Then you can union 4 segments, with a new scaling factor of 1.2 * 1.2 * 1.2 * 1.2 = (1.2)^4 = 2.0736 = 207.36%)
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Here’s another way using Sweep and Scale.
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Please allow me to apologise in advance. I tried to create the Chameleon Tail using various methods but ended up with this mess… I just don’t know what went wrong! 
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Wow! Thank you for the quick reply and the tutorial! I appreciate that so much! 
Hey! Thank you for this tutorial as well! I can’t believe I didn’t think to scale the sweep on sections. I did tried it by sweeping that same spiral I drew with Spline and then once swept, tried scaling the one end smaller… I never worked out. But thanks a lot more sense. You guys are awesome! Ty!!
It may not be a chameleon tail but the final product looks dope 
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Thanks.
I was actually in the process of creating a video demonstrating two methods but my kids were arguing and fighting with each other so I set my laptop to one side for a while.
When I returned, @PEC and @TigerMike had already beat me to it and responded with both methods! 
I decided to turn my frustration into humour and created the weird snake just for fun 
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Hello TigerMike, sorry to bother you again, but may I ask how you were able to sweep in sections? After I spline the shape of the tail I want, it sweeps the whole thing, rendering a misshaped tail. Your’s is perfectly even. Please help if you can. Ty!
Greetings Ty,
No bother at all. Note that the spiral sketch consists of ever enlarging 90° circle segments. Sweep works with one segment at a time. After sweeping a 90° curve, I scale the end face by ~130%. I then use the enlarged face for a new 90° sweep.
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I love this demonstration of the enlarging spiral sweep!
I’m a new user, and have been trying to figure out how one would model an ammonite. Your method would get me most of the way there, but I can’t figure out how to get the ridges along the spiral. Maybe a series of varying sized lofts? Do you have any suggestions?
For reference, here’s an ammonite:
Greetings @Cynd3d and welcome to the forum.
This demonstrates one way that might work for you. Also note that I just eyeballed the scaling for the basic spiral and for the rings.
The ring is initially a 180° revolved spline. I scaled down the bottom a bit, then did a mirror and union. This resulted in a revolved body with a taper similar to a ring on your finger. After that it was a series of copy rotates and scaling followed by a union of all parts. Let me know if any questions.
Others may offer a different technique. Good luck.
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Oh, that is a much better way than I was thinking of doing it! You can really customize the profile of the ridge. I will play with that method and see what I come up with.
Thanks so much!
Very clever methods lads, well done.
Thanks again @tigermike! I did some playing around and though my file is by no means perfect, it was good enough to look very cool. So I decided to go ahead and 3D print (resin) a handful of them. Even made a couple into pendants just for fun.
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Great job! They look fabulous! Love it!
-MIke
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