I’d like to learn how to bend a cylinder into an arc then straighten it again. Imagine a straight cylinder bending down, ‘picking up’ an object, then returning to it’s original position.
I’d like the green cylinder to curve down and attach to the blue ball. Once attached to the green cylinder the blue ball will detach from the red one and the green one will return to it’s original position.
Can anyone point me in the right direction? Thanks!
Thanks for pointing that one out to me, I’ve got it working-ish. Can the simple deform bend only bend round the z-axis or is it possible to define the axis.
And another question, I’m sure there must be a way to do this. Is it possible to attach a mesh to the end of the cylinder once it has bent down? Maybe tell the 2nd mesh to follow a vertex on the cylinder or something?
I was about to post a related question. I routinely create an “edge-less” foreground to background mesh, which has a smooth contour from horizontal to vertical plane. I do this in Lightwave and modo, with relative ease, but have been dumb founded about how to do simple clean bends in Blender. I have used the Deform Modifier, but it seems only to work in Z-Axis. How do others solve this routine problem.
Paul
In the example blend above the bend uses an empty as the origin. This allows you to then bend the cylinder on any axis.
And another question, I’m sure there must be a way to do this. Is it possible to attach a mesh to the end of the cylinder once it has bent down? Maybe tell the 2nd mesh to follow a vertex on the cylinder or something?
You can use vertex parent or hook modifiers. A rough not very elegant example. Using bones will most likely give you more control http://screencast.com/t/ghf8wYhTe
