26th January 2007, 06:42 AM | #1 |
Senior Member
Professional user
Join Date: Jun 2006
Posts: 102
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bending an object
Occasionally the need occurs to bend a (long) object along a predefined path: think for instance of a rope or of the limb of a tree.
As long as the object is regular and has a constant cross-section (the rope) you can just create it by drawing its cross-section, the bending path, and then extruding the one along the other - it works beautifully. But if the object is complex or has a variable cross-section (the tree limb) there's currently no other way to do the job than carefully selecting the points on a cross-section, rotating them by aproperly guessed angle, and re-positioning them where they belong - all this for each cross-section. It requires plenty of patience, takes a hell of a time and is extremely error-prone. A plugin to do the job automatically, whatever its limitations, would be really welcome. Would any AC3D expert be willing to run the gauntlet? (yes, I know, I already wrote on this subject once, but no-one seems to have listened then... |
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