Twisty Tentacle Generator

I wanted to make something organic, and sprouting out tentacles came into mind immediately. Cordscrew/spirals are also found in many organic objects also, so I wanted to incorporate that too. I made the code such that the number of tentacles, the lengths , the variation in lengths, the twist amount and variation, the offset of the twist, and the width of the tendrils are all customizable, which allows me to generate vastly different looking objects. I was initially reluctant to make this, because most of the examples I have seen of OpenSCAD are more angular and based on industrial shapes. However after digging through the documentation I found many build in functionalities that allows me to basically achieve the exact look I was going for.

Sketches:

[sketchfab id=”db9c04f4154242318eb2352ff340bd03″ height=”480″ start=”0″ controls=”0″]

[sketchfab id=”f1f65a2ec9a545bda2773012378e3527″ height=”480″ start=”0″ controls=”0″]

Code:

/*
    n: number of tentacles
    h: height
    dh: height variation
    t: twist
    dt: twist variation
    o: offset
    w: width of tendrils
 */
module generate(n, h, dh, t, dt, o, w)
{       
    randomh = rands(-dh,dh,n);
    randomt = rands(-dt,dt,n);

    for(i = [0:n-1])
    {
        rotate(rands(0,360,3))
        {
            translate([-20, 0, 0])
                linear_extrude(height = h, 
                               center = false, 
                               convexity = 10, 
                               twist = t + randomt[i], 
                               scale=-1, 
                               slices = 10)
                        translate([o, 0, 0])
                        circle(r = w);
        }
    }
}
generate(50, 200, 100, -500, 200, 40, 10);

Short Explanation:

I made bears that were mutated.

Long Explanation:

I grew up living less than a mile from an oil refinery, so if it blew up, I would be homeless and possibly dead.

Keeping this in mind, I wondered what would happen to the animals surrounding my house in the aftermath of the explosion, and I realized something—in the years to come, there would be a menagerie of animal mutations.

For example:

This is a normal bear:

But with the effects of oil infecting the water supplies, this could be the new “normal” bear:

Here are some more bears in case you wanted to see more bears:

And here are my sketches if you’re into that sort of thing: