Parametric Design in Blender: A Patterned Vase and Fibonacci Dish

What parametric design changes

In a parametric model, a change to one part can update related parts. A patterned vessel makes the value of that relationship visible. Simply wrapping a flat image around a curving surface can stretch the ornament or leave an awkward join. I develop the surface and the ornament together, then judge their proportions in a rendered view.

That does not make every generated version worth keeping. A mathematically consistent pattern can still look crowded at the neck or lose its character across the belly. Selecting the version is an artistic decision, informed by the geometry and by the object I want to make.

A vase whose hexagons become stars

The lower part of the vase is organized around broad hexagonal forms. Moving upward, the relief changes into interlaced rosettes and smaller stars. The transition follows the vessel's changing silhouette, so the ornament becomes denser where the neck narrows.

This approach draws on parquet deformations: patterns that change gradually across a field. William Huff developed the idea in design teaching; Craig S. Kaplan explored it for Islamic geometric patterns. Kaplan's examples and references provide the background. My work applies that family of ideas to a particular vessel, with its own silhouette and relief treatment.

I want the transition to remain legible from across a room, with more detail appearing as you approach it. The broad faces and recessed strands give the render different readings as the light moves across them. The grey material shown here makes those changes easier to inspect before deciding on the production finish.

A Fibonacci ring dish with a smooth interior

The dish has a quiet interior and a much more active outer wall. Its shallow cups meet along ridges that form several visible spiral directions. Their arrangement draws on phyllotaxis, the study of how structures such as leaves or seeds are organized. Fibonacci relationships are part of this design vocabulary, rather than a claim that every natural spiral follows one formula.

Greg Blanpied's Zoetrope turned bowl was an inspiration for the surface treatment. This dish develops a separate profile and geometric arrangement. I wanted the texture to soften as it approached the rounded lip, where the bowl needs a calmer edge.

The refinement that mattered most

An earlier version showed a faint ring where the belly turned toward the shoulder. Changing the decoration alone did not resolve it: the underlying curve and the relief affected each other. I refined that interaction while preserving the overall shape I liked.

The resulting render is cleaner, though a small trace can still appear from a distance. I prefer recording that limit to calling a render a perfect solution. A physical sample will show how the surface behaves under ordinary room lighting and how it feels in the hand.

From a render to a physical object

The current vase and dish exports passed the mesh check for non-manifold edges. That is a useful check on the model's connectivity. It does not establish print quality, durability or suitability for holding water.

Material choice and physical testing still matter. The release pages will describe the actual finish and intended use once those decisions are confirmed. The production geometry, construction settings and print files remain private; the images here document the designs and their development.

For work that has already been fabricated, my Chaos & Harmony case study shows how geometric relief behaves in carved and stained wood.

AI-assisted design in Blender

I use Blender to inspect the forms and render their surfaces, with coding assistance for parts of the tooling. I direct the geometry, choose which variations to keep and review the result. The vase and dish images come from modeled surfaces rendered in a scene.

That workflow is useful because a specific visual problem can send me back to the model. The ring around the dish's shoulder is an example: it became a question about the surface itself, and the revised render let me judge the change. Code assistance speeds up that iteration, but a plausible script still needs checking.

Much of that loop runs through Claude connected to Blender over MCP, so I can describe a lighting or material change and see it in the viewport. If you want the same setup on Windows, I package it as a one-click Blender MCP installer.

The broader algorithmic art article follows the same practice through algorithmically generated star patterns: how a few rules about polygons and angles produce interlaced designs.

Coming to Pardesco

The patterned vase, Fibonacci ring dish and related 3D-printed designs are coming soon. This section will link to the finished pieces when they are available, with photographs and confirmed product details. There is no release date or preorder open for these designs yet.