How to smooth complex splines

[Steve Bentley]

Choose your spline and either change the kind of spline it is (bezier, cubic etc), or change the Intermediate points setting or change the angle or number setting – or do all three
For adaptive, the lower the Angle setting the more “points” are put in between so the smoother the line is and the more “detail” the line can hold.
Using Uniform places each spline node equidistant from all the others and you can then jack up the Number setting to increase or decrease the overall number of nodes along the spline.

Be careful though, if you are using these splines to extrude or loft or sweep or other things in mograph, each new node on the spline can create a new isoparm along your final geometry which can increase render times – more polys to deal with. You have to find a balance.

[Steve Pearlman]

Thanks for that. But am I wrong in the observation that these are all fairly subtle tweaks to the existing geometry? I can only get small changes manipulating those variables. Is there an easy way to relax things more substantially?

[Jim Scott]

Have you tried Mesh > Spline > Soft Interpolation?

[Steve Pearlman]

That is great, thanks. How about a tool that isn’t committed to keeping the points in the same spot, something that would basically turn a shape into a circle if you ratcheted up the parameters enough (though that is not my goal)? That is how the Relax modifier works in 3DS Max.

[Brian Jones]

well there is the Spline Smooth tool (Mesh/Spline/Spline Smooth). That will do what you want but that is a tool rather than a deformer it has a ‘brush’ to smooth a spline with so it wouldn’t be great for smoothing a ton of curves. There are also the Chamfer and Round tools but neither of those will take a spline to a circle. By the look of the example image though one of those tools might do what you want or you could just toss the mesh into a Subdivision Surface object after – which will smooth out the jaggies.

[Steve Pearlman]

Does subdivision surface work with spline based objects? It seems to work fine with cubes and other polygonal geometry but not with my splines or rectangles, n-gons, stars, etc.

[Brian Jones]

no, it does not work with splines, that suggestion was based on an assumption that you would use the splines as the shape for a skin (which could be smoothed). If the splines are the shape and you are going to be rendering them in one way or the other, then only the spline tools would apply.