twist a spline against its will

Oniram

I know this may sound kind of silly, but im working with a spline thats wrapping around a circular object, and at certain points the line (when rendered as rectangular) will lay flat on the object, and then at other times it lays on its side. rotating the vertecies and messing with the beziers will not fix this, and im wondering if theres ways to twist certain parts of a spline, while still keeping it as a spline (meaning not going into editable poly), i want this piece to keep the same thickness all the way around, which is why i dont want to mess in edit poly. if anyone has any suggestions, it would be greatly appreciated. here's a screenshot for reference to what im talking about.

cptSwing

this would interest me as well.. i usually just wind up converting the spline to a mesh a lot earlier than i'd like to, and work from there.

miauu

Try with Loft.

Oniram

didnt quite work. the spline is creating that twisted shape so anything i put to it will have the same shape

mortalhuman

Maybe you can do path deform to the spline from a straight piece with the same basic topology?

This means you'll use an edit poly for it, but it's more control than a rendered spline in this case I think?

If you still can't work out the unwanted clipping and way it's sitting, maybe using the path deform means you can always deform a new one to it and repeat steps, then you can use soft select with a collapsed version to rotate pieces by hand.

You can try to draw a new spline, too, a few of them, in different orientations as you place your points, maybe it will help to have a few (then at least you might find one spline that needs very minimal tweaking after it).

miauu

See the image:


You can use Loft and twist to change the orientation of the spline. Add as many points as you want and start tweeking. Also, if I remember corectly you can add the same shape in the loft path in desired location and then select this shapes and rotate them.

Oniram

ahhh! wow lol. didnt know you could do that. ive only really used loft in maya and i guess its quite similar in max. i managed to find a way to do it though. i just detached certain parts of the spline and rotated them individually, then once i put it to editpoly i rotated the ends that met with soft selection. though i MAY go back and give the loft thing another go. THANKS!

Motherdear

Another approach that might work is to make your spline a plane with the right width you want it and then apply a shell modifier to it. will give you an even thickness around, but will make it possible to edit as an editable poly. Quite a few ways to do this