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Old 26th January 2007, 06:42 AM   #1
coldby
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Thumbs up 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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Old 26th January 2007, 04:12 PM   #2
mconn1
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Default Re: bending an object

Have you considered using "extrude along path"?

Then to make the variable cross section, select the vertices that you would like thicker or thinner and that would make your tree limb pretty simple.

I found it works great for cables too.
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Old 29th January 2007, 04:27 AM   #3
coldby
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Default Re: bending an object

Hi Mconn1,
that's exactly the way I do it now, but properly done it takes ages. I was wondering if the right plugin could turn those ages to minutes
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