How to bend a closed mesh spherically?

Question

I want to project a mesh onto a spherical surface. For this I use the ShrinkWrap modifier. With the edge it works very well. But it doesn't work with the face because I can't generate a grid.

1. Draw a flat closed Bezier Curve
2. Convert to mesh
3. Fill mesh

a. Grid Fill doesn't work here because the vertices are irregularly distributed.

b. I can't draw edges manually because I need vertices at the intersection points. I don't know about that, especially when I have > 100 intersections.

4. Project the mesh onto a UV Sphere using ShrinkWrap modifier.

Can someone give me a tip to solve the puzzle or to simplify it? Thanks...

Answer 1

You can use the Knife Project tool. First fill your face:

Create another object (a plane), subidivide it, delete the faces only, put it over the first object:

Select your first object, switch to Edit mode, select the plane with CtrlLMB, then header menu > Mesh > Knife Project:

Now your object has a topology that can be bent:

Answer 2

I know you didn't ask for this originally, but here would be a solution using Geometry Nodes:

First I convert the curve into a mesh and extrude it upwards.

At the same time I use Object Info to get the sphere and mark its faces with a boolean value and the node Capture Attribute.

Then I use Mesh Boolean to cut the previously extruded object.

After that Separate Geometry can be used to separate the part of the intersection.

Finally, only the edges adjacent to more than one face have to be removed.

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If you want to keep the generated area instead, you can solve it this way:

_{(Blender 3.1+)}