How to Design a Halo Pendant in Rhino

A halo pendant is a round stone, a ring of melee, and a bale that has to hang straight. The easy mistake is treating it like a ring head on a jump ring. The bale is the piece. If it sits wrong, four perfect halos will still twist on the chain.

This walkthrough builds that pendant in RhinoArtisan, on Rhino, in about four and a half minutes. 0.4 ct center, custom bale, then a polar array of four, 18k white gold. Use it as a recipe for a single pendant or a set.

What you leave with: a center stone, a halo that follows it, a custom bale that hangs, a pose and polar array of four, and a render in white gold.

Stone and halo first. Bale second. Array only when one pendant is honest.

Place the center stone

0.4 ct round, face up. A pendant is seen straight on more than a ring is. Height is thickness: too deep and it kicks off the chest, too shallow and the halo has no gallery.

Lock the carat. The halo and the bale will be sized to this stone. If you change 0.4 later, you rebuild the bale hole as well as the melee.

Build the halo

Melee around the round, tight, even. Leave room for the bale connection at the top. That is the clock position that fails: a halo that is perfect until you attach something, then two gems disappear.

From the front the halo should read as one piece with the center. From the side it should have a floor, not a wreath of stones in air. A pendant gets knocked. Seats have to be real.

Keep stone size consistent. Mixing melee to “fill the top for the bale” will show as a blotch in white gold.

Design the bale

Custom, not a library jump ring. The bale has to take a chain, hide the join to the halo, and hang the 0.4 ct without spinning.

Build it to the top of the halo you already trust. The hole size is a chain decision. Too small and the client cannot use the chain they have. Too large and the pendant rattles.

Look from the side. The bale should sit in the plane of the pendant, not kick the halo forward. That kick is why so many CAD pendants look drunk on the body.

White gold will show a clumsy weld. Make the transition one piece of metal.

Pose and polar array

Once one pendant is settable, the video arrays four. Polar array is for a still, a suite, or production. It is not how you fix a bad bale.

Pose the first one so the bale is up and the face is to camera. Then array. If one copy collides, the radius is wrong. Change the array. Do not move a single pendant by hand and call it four.

Four is a presentation. You still manufacture from the source. If you need one, delete the copies. If you need a pair of earrings later, the same halo plus a different finding is a new file, not a scaled array.

Render

18k white gold and diamond. Light the face, and one three-quarter so the bale reads. A pendant render that hides the bale is a ring screenshot.

Then stop. The brief was 0.4, halo, custom bale, four in a polar still. That is enough jewelry for four minutes.

What to do next

Open the tutorial on YouTube and build one pendant once. Then array it. Change the center carat and rebuild the bale, not just the stone. The second time is when a halo pendant stops being a ring head with a hole.

If you want to run this on your own Rhino, start a 15-day trial or go to rhinoartisan.com.