Splines On Active Surface?

Maxon Cinema 4D

Splines On Active Surface?

Posted by Joe Walker on October 23, 2012 at 10:10 pm

I’m trying to find a way to create text splines across a moving cloth surface that then need to be extruded (think embroidered logo on a flag). The opening shot starts in very tight, so textures and displacement will not work.

I’m coming from Maya where you can make a surface “live” and the splines will adhere to them. The “project” feature in C4D R13 seems to fall quite a bit short in that it doesn’t stay procedural to the receiving surface.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Darby Edelen replied 13 years, 6 months ago 2 Members · 3 Replies
3 Replies

Darby Edelen
October 24, 2012 at 5:30 am

Look into using the Surface Deformer. You can use this directly on a spline object. Make sure that the Spline is using an appropriate intermediate points mode that will give the spline sufficient detail to deform with the cloth (Natural is my go to in this situation, but Uniform with a high number value can work as well). However, if you extrude the spline from its deformed state the direction of the extrusion will still be in world space and won’t reflect the cloth deformation.

If you’re looking to deform the extrusion with the cloth then the setup gets a little more complicated. First you’ll need to prepare the extrusion for deformation.

Subdivide the Caps of the Extrude NURBS object under the ‘Caps’ tab. Using quadrangles in a regular grid is appropriate here.

Then place the Extrude NURBS in a Connect object with an appropriate weld setting (to attach the caps to the extrusion) and phong setting.

Finally put this Connect object inside a Null object. Place your Surface Deformer in the Null object at the same level as the Connect object.

The details of the Surface Deformer are covered pretty well in the C4D help but if you need assistance please post back!

Darby Edelen
Joe Walker
November 2, 2012 at 10:27 pm

Thanks Darby. That worked perfectly!

Cranked up the mesh density and got a really clean render.

Now if I could just tackle this Thinking Particles puzzle :0

Thanks again.

Joe
Darby Edelen
November 3, 2012 at 12:59 am

[Joe Walker] “Now if I could just tackle this Thinking Particles puzzle :0”

Thinking Particles is a fun one. Working through some Thinking Particles exercises actually helped me get a better understanding of XPresso on the whole although I still have a lot to learn 🙂

Darby Edelen

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