Lightwave Community at SimplyLightwave - View Single Post - Cables from splines/lines with surface thickness?

Divideby0 · 10-12-2003, 06:35 PM

I'm modeling a knit of interwoven cables. I made opposing curves using sine/cosine in Plot2D tool and have arranged them to have an "over/under" look with a clearance of 10cm. I have two options to give the cables thickness of about 5cm each:

1) Rail sweep a 5cm diameter polygon along the length of the splines. This works, but I have about 12km worth of cables and the object size increases to about 22MB. Not very manageable. I suppose I could use the splines(only 3MB) as a stand-in in Layout.

2) Give the splines themselves a thickness through a surface style.The only thickness I can seem to find is in "pixels". can I assign a measurable thickness? Would Sas-lite "strand" feature work for this?

Is there another option?

10-12-2003, 06:35 PM	#1
Divideby0 Full Access Member Join Date: Nov 2003 Location: Oakland, CA Posts: 34	Cables from splines/lines with surface thickness? I'm modeling a knit of interwoven cables. I made opposing curves using sine/cosine in Plot2D tool and have arranged them to have an "over/under" look with a clearance of 10cm. I have two options to give the cables thickness of about 5cm each: 1) Rail sweep a 5cm diameter polygon along the length of the splines. This works, but I have about 12km worth of cables and the object size increases to about 22MB. Not very manageable. I suppose I could use the splines(only 3MB) as a stand-in in Layout. 2) Give the splines themselves a thickness through a surface style.The only thickness I can seem to find is in "pixels". can I assign a measurable thickness? Would Sas-lite "strand" feature work for this? Is there another option?