Geometry Nodes - Bambu Filament Rolls Final

The original idea motivating this project was to create a virtual representation of the filaments I own, I don't have a perfect storage system for my rolls, they are scarced around different places at home, and I often don't remember what colors I currently have. So first, I wrote a list, for future reference.

Now the fun part begins, the Bambu filament Spool, I didn't make a 100% copy of it and cut some corners where I could, but I believe the end result is good enough for my goal.

Here are some images for reference:

The Spool was made in 3 Geometry nodes steps with some modifiers in between.

Step 1 - Base shape before Solidify

Solidify 3mm

Step 2 - Boolean operations

Bevel

Step 3 - Holes

With this, the spool is done.

Some possible improvements for the future:

- Split the spool in two. See reference images.

- Add cardboard tube interior. See Bambu refills for reference.

- Add big outer holes to insert the end of the filament.

- Add decals and other details: 800g,600g,..., Bambu logo, interior carved details.

- Different hole sizes, in the inner part of the spool, the holes are bigger, and in the outer part they are smaller.

- Different material for the tube, it should be more shiny in the middle.

Before I share the process for the filament, I want to briefly mention the _controls node group, this is something that I learned from Erindale and I use all the time, it allows you to have a centralized node group where you set values and they are propagated through all the nodes all at once.

Next, the filament, for this I first focused on creating a very tidy version, which is not realistic but again, it's good enough for me. Real rolls have the filament a bit messy and sometimes tangled up.

The filament was created as a curve, each layer of filament consist of a spiral curve, the direction changes between each layer from top to bottom or the other way around.

In the end you would get a dense mesh since I am not hiding parts of the curve that wouldn't be seen from the outside. The curve length can be animated with these exposed parameters:

In the node tree, the color attribute could be animated along the spline factor for example like this:

Producing something like this:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/fdeVIDEk4iY

Next steps would be:

- Optimization, not sure how though, maybe lowering the resolution of the spool and the filament. Creating multiple rolls makes my pc slow.

- Creating a messy version of the filament, I am not sure how either, maybe generating the curve dinamically and making it wrap around the already created curve using geometry proximity or raycast or something.

Finally, to wrap up, here is a render of my current collection of bambu filament colors, I'll save it in my phone to have it as a reference whenever family or friends ask me what colors do I have.

If you'd like a blend file with the node groups I used, feel free to contact me via the CGC discord and I'll happily share it.