Max help- Braided metal wire

Eltrex06

hay so quick question im trying to make a braided metal wire/pipe



^^ like that one... now i have the woven pattern but im running into trouble on what to do next. I tried the bend modifer but it does some really wonky stuff, sends polygons all over the place. am i doing something wrong or is there a better way to go about this. Any help is much appreciated

below is my woven pattern made from a box arrayed, attached and welded

killnpc

Have you tried looking through this thread? they may have covered this or something similar. It might be a good idea to ask this there to contribute to that ongoing thread.

-kp

Eltrex06

i skimmed it, 49 pages is alot to look through but didnt really find anything .. but ill ask in that thread as well

Grimm_Wrecking

Page 47 here. If the video is too big I'll do a jpg capture at work in a few hours unless someone else throws one down between now and then.
Its maya, but same principles work.

Eltrex06

skimmed right over your post there, im DLing it now only about 8 mins so ill check it out and see what i come up with

Eltrex06

used your method and it worked much better, i think when creating the woven pattern i messed up someplace or welded/moved things i wasn't suppose to

never even thought of using an FFD to move the pieces... very cool

anyway here is the finished piece, using 2 wires one inside of the other to tighten it up, though for use on the final model i may ditch the second and use a cylinder inside to save on polys

Thanks a bunch for the video, totally helped out

Grimm_Wrecking

Yeah man no problem. Jpegs are more noticeable than a download link so I'll eventually do a tut like that for it. It just takes time.
Theres really no need for doing a second braided cable inside that cable though. If you make a copy of the original lattice work and rotate them 12.5degrees and pull it forward just a bit it'll line up with the previous. Do it one more time and it'll fill it out.
Though you may still want to throw down a regular cylinder inside.
There are a few more ways to do it, but thats the fastest way I've found.

Mark Dygert

You can also use TexTools to unwrap a cylinder convert the UV to 3D mesh, create a morph, skinwrap your braided wire to the flat version and morph it into a cylinder. I'm not sure if thats the method you used or not, don't have time to check.

Grimm_Wrecking

Mark Dygert wrote: »

You can also use TexTools to unwrap a cylinder convert the UV to 3D mesh, create a morph, skinwrap your braided wire to the flat version and morph it into a cylinder. I'm not sure if thats the method you used or not, don't have time to check.

Damn you Vig and you're simple solutions that I don't have available in maya...

Nope, its a few cubes, ffd and bend.

Mark Dygert

The advantage of the TexTools method is that anything you can unwrap you can apply these types of patters to. So say a spline that is standing in for cable pr pipe that weaves and loops all over, no problem with TexTools, but very hard to get it to FFD and bend correctly.

I guess you could create a long straight version in maya and path deform it to the spline?