Prototype
The courtroom concepts that our design is based on had columns as a prominent element of the design. Therfore I built a procedural one.
For a base I used a grid with divisions only across its width (Fig. 1). This way I set the width and height of the column. Then I extruded it to set the thickness and separated the front, side and top and bottom faces. In the main part I inset each of the faces and then extruded it back so that I would have indentations along the column. I added a bevel to the corners of the indentations, which made them look more finished. It did however create ngons in the surrounding edges, but those can be addressed later with a 'Divide' node.
Figure 1. Initial geometry with vertical divisions; thickness and groups - blue: front, pink: side, green: top and bottom; Flare, insets along the length with beveled corners and ngons.
Finally I wanted to add divisions along the column (Fig. 2). I could gave added division in the starting grid, but I would not be able to create indentations along the column as easily. The easy way to add divisions would be to add 'Bricker Polygons' with the 'Divide' node only to the front and side groups of polygons. However when tweking the size of the 'Bricker Polygons' it seemed to add edges in weird places on the column sometimes, because the divisions are based on world space. Instead I opted for a Boolean based method. I used a 'Bound' node on the front and side groups to get a box representing its volume.
Figure 2. Adding divisions - initial geometry; padded bounding box if the part that we add divisions to; line with 'cutter' grids; added edge loops. Then I fitted a line to this box with the 'MatchSize' node. I created a group of points on the line that excludes its end points. To each point in the group I copied a grid and I continued to extrude the top and bottom to create flares.
I wanted to break up the flare in a middle part and borders (Fig. 3). I could do that with a simple inset and extrusion, but for it to work as expected I had to adjust the point normals with an 'Attribute Adjust Vector' node.
Figure 3. Inset with adjusted normals - top; without adjusted vector - bottom.
To create the UV map I used the same technique as with the panels. I combined the groups until I had the UV shells I want, and then did 'Name from Groups' -> 'Group from Attribute Boundary' (Fig. 4)
Figure 4. Left - UV shells; Middle - UV shells and highlighted seam edges; Right - UV map.
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