Techniques for belts and/or tape.

Av7xrocker97

I was wondering if anyone had good methods for making good wrapping cloth, or tape that can be helpful or general for any 3d app. Thanks in advance.

StefanH

well the most basic method which works good in most cases is to model it as simple polygons. Then apply a shell modifier (3ds max) or sth similar to give it thickness and then apply some subdivision (e.g. turbosmooth in max) to make it smooth and round the edges. The are more ways to do it of course ...

onionhead_o

splines in max, nurbs in maya. will help with modeling belts i think

Av7xrocker97

I figured a good way in blender 2.5 recently. It consists on using retopo and laying out faces stuck to the surface, and then using the solidify modifier to make it extrude off the surface. Thanks guys! I only need to find a good way to make it overlap. It'd probably just consist of moving the faces to the point where the thicknesses don't go into each other.

leslievdb

yeah splines + path deform modifier is what i would use is max
after that i might use my wrap script to adjust the belt to the underlying topology and then apply a shell modifier to give it some thickness

Valandar

Using a retopo tool sounds like a good idea to me. Then in Max f'rex, a shell modifier, and you've got the base cage.

Mark Dygert

In max, spline set to rectangle. UV's are so clean you could eat off of them.