How to make a complex spiral

[Geobop]

I can make simple spirals using Filter > Distort > Twirl.

But how do I make a complex spiral like this one? The rays initially spiral clockwise, then change direction towards the end of the picture. In addition, the center of the spiral - the vortex - disappears, hidden by the rays.

Is that something you can do with Photoshop ir Illustrator's default settings? Or do you need a plugin? Or is it something you have to do manually?

Thank you.

[Trevor.Dennis]

Wow that is quite complex!  I don't think I could do that.  If anyone is going to be able to help it is our Dave

About davescm - Adobe Support Community

I tried Free Transform > Warp > Twist, then cropped to move the centre towards the bottom right corner and FT'd >warp > Twisted again, but mine is UGLY!!!

Maybe some sort of weather event modeling software that runs on a Super Crey (Dave is currently building his own Crey, but COVID — and the US military — are slowing the process)

[Geobop]

That's a nice try. 😉

[jane-e]

"If anyone is going to be able to help it is our Dave  About davescm - Adobe Support Community"

@Trevor.Dennis , that's a link to @davescm's profile page. We have tagging back again now. If you want it to show in his notification feed, type the @ symbol followed by his user name.

Nice spiral!!

~ Jane

[davescm · Accepted solution]

For those kind of complex twisting shapes I tend to turn to 3D software.

Just for demo, I started with a simple radial made in Photoshop by making triangle shapes and repeat transforming the rotation around the centre.

I then imported it into Blender 3D as a plane. I subdivided so that the plan was made of many faces. Then I just twisted the mesh by selecting a small face in the middle and moved and rotated it, using proportional editing so that nearby faces twisted on a scaled basis. 

Rendered it looks like this. You can twist/untwist however you choose.

Dave

[Geobop]

Wow, thanks for the tip. I'm going to give that a try.

[Michael Bullo]

Blender to the rescue again 🙂 Awesome solution @davescm