Posted this couple days ago in Hardsurface FAQ. Same principle just make the boxes set broader and less of them width wise. it will at least give you a starting point.
Of course the easier way to fake it is just use two helix's.
Look into the wire deformer. Its pretty handy when you get into it. There's a few tutorials around: http://vimeo.com/7805975
If its going to end up as normal mapped geometry for a game asset though, you might be able to get away with extruding along a curve and mapping a tiling rope material onto it.
Step 1: With nothing selected Shit+RMB Hold Mouse over Create Helix.
Step 2: Create helix like any other primitive.
Step 3: Set the PolyHelix Settings to mimic the settings that I have on my screen shot.
Step 4: Duplicate the PolyHelix And rotate it on Y 180 Degrees.
To make a longer rope before step 4, just snap your pivot point (insert then v + mmb over the vert you want to snap it to <bottom center outer vert of end cap> insert again to make it moveable), delete the endcaps, duplicate and vert snap to the top of the original, shift+d to hearts content. Combine + Merge duplicate your super long 1/2 rope and rotate 180 degrees. (edit: probably want to scale it down a bit too...lol)
Then follow the video about the deformer posted by nullfed.
Not a Maya solution, but here's how I would do it in Blender anyway.
Create your straight rope, doesn't matter how:
Conform it to a curve:
You get live updates and easy control of the twist by transforming the beziers with the standard manipulators:
Unlike Maya's wire deformer, it won't distort your geometry like in that video and it twists along with the curve normals. The rope mesh pretty much retains its surface area.
Grimm_Wrecking : yeah i did that and the wire deformer totally didnt do what i wanted it to do unless im doing it wrong. pretty much what snowfly did, is what i need for maya, so it can attatch to any shape of the curve.
Yeah you can set up an IK spline, it will still deform the geo (its just going to happen) of course probably not as bad as some options.
Could just use a cylinder to make the entire length. The make a straight cylinder same dia. and then use a bit of straight "rope" to bake a normal map and tile it along the length. Or Paint a nm in PS.
The wire deformer shouldn't explode your mesh - clear your history and freeze transforms before you begin? play with the settings a bit?
- Anyway, altering Snowfly's method slightly for Maya, take a cross section of your 3 strands of rope, create a curve
- With the mesh and curve selected, go to Edit Mesh>Extrude>Options and make sure the extrude is set to 'use the selected curve for extrusion'
- After extruding, open up polyExtrudeFace1 in your channelbox. Alter the divisions and twist values to get the kind of rope twist you're after
To get the divisions running evenly along the curve, look at Edit Curves>Rebuild Curves. You can do this after extruding to get more visual feedback if you like or rebuild it before extruding if you know exactly what you want.
I've changed it to smooth preview and then pushed the faces out slightly along their normals to make it more rope like afterwards.
The control verts for the curve can still be be moved around to fit to any shape you want and the polyExtrudeFace1 node can still be tweaked to make it work.
Replies
Posted this couple days ago in Hardsurface FAQ. Same principle just make the boxes set broader and less of them width wise. it will at least give you a starting point.
Of course the easier way to fake it is just use two helix's.
this is the type of rope im going for.
http://www.stairropes.com/images/stair_rope_outcornerbig.jpg
like in the video you posted, how would you wrap that now around something?
http://vimeo.com/7805975
If its going to end up as normal mapped geometry for a game asset though, you might be able to get away with extruding along a curve and mapping a tiling rope material onto it.
Step 1: With nothing selected Shit+RMB Hold Mouse over Create Helix.
Step 2: Create helix like any other primitive.
Step 3: Set the PolyHelix Settings to mimic the settings that I have on my screen shot.
Step 4: Duplicate the PolyHelix And rotate it on Y 180 Degrees.
To make a longer rope before step 4, just snap your pivot point (insert then v + mmb over the vert you want to snap it to <bottom center outer vert of end cap> insert again to make it moveable), delete the endcaps, duplicate and vert snap to the top of the original, shift+d to hearts content. Combine + Merge duplicate your super long 1/2 rope and rotate 180 degrees. (edit: probably want to scale it down a bit too...lol)
Then follow the video about the deformer posted by nullfed.
Create your straight rope, doesn't matter how:
Conform it to a curve:
You get live updates and easy control of the twist by transforming the beziers with the standard manipulators:
Unlike Maya's wire deformer, it won't distort your geometry like in that video and it twists along with the curve normals. The rope mesh pretty much retains its surface area.
the curve pretty much exploded my mesh
http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/scripts-plugins/modeling/poly-tools/c/gl_makeropes
god damn maya n its lack of modeling tools.everything has to be a script
@pedro: hmm not sure, i'l look into it tomorro tho
Could just use a cylinder to make the entire length. The make a straight cylinder same dia. and then use a bit of straight "rope" to bake a normal map and tile it along the length. Or Paint a nm in PS.
- Anyway, altering Snowfly's method slightly for Maya, take a cross section of your 3 strands of rope, create a curve
- With the mesh and curve selected, go to Edit Mesh>Extrude>Options and make sure the extrude is set to 'use the selected curve for extrusion'
- After extruding, open up polyExtrudeFace1 in your channelbox. Alter the divisions and twist values to get the kind of rope twist you're after
To get the divisions running evenly along the curve, look at Edit Curves>Rebuild Curves. You can do this after extruding to get more visual feedback if you like or rebuild it before extruding if you know exactly what you want.
I've changed it to smooth preview and then pushed the faces out slightly along their normals to make it more rope like afterwards.
The control verts for the curve can still be be moved around to fit to any shape you want and the polyExtrudeFace1 node can still be tweaked to make it work.