Hello, I’ve been fighting with blender for a couple of days and can’t get my head around this problem. How to parametrically extrude a shape along a curve having all sections be parallel. Here’s a rough exemple:
Thank you for your help 
In Blender it is called beveling, not extruding. You create a single 2-dimensional curve shape and type the name of that curve into the Bevel Object field of the Curve’s datablock context. Then you can use the resolution controls of the curve itself to add detail as needed.
See the attached file.
Attachments
265_bevel_shape.blend (79.6 KB)
Moving vertices from these faces along an axis and doing it along a curve would result what’s in your example:
[ATTACH=CONFIG]211350[/ATTACH]
Here’s one way to do it:
[ATTACH=CONFIG]211351[/ATTACH]
From top left:
-
A plane that has array and curve modifier added
[LIST] -
array count is set to fit the curve
-
plane is rotated and moved in edit mode, then duplicated to the other side
-
after that, they are separated (with P key) which makes the other half its own object and keeps the same modifiers as the other one
-
Two vertex groups for the cube
-
faster in face select mode, adding a group, pressing “assign” which assings selected to that group
-
one group for each side
-
Cube gets an array modifier and shrinkwrap modifier to project vertex group on to an object. One shrinkwrap modifier for each side. Project mode is used to constrain to an axis
-
Result
[/LIST]
[ATTACH]211363[/ATTACH]
I just can’t believe that there is no proper way of doing it, maybe I should post it for proposals as it should be quite easy and fast to do, sadly I’m not a programmer. It could be just a tick box near bevel which says something like maintain orientation or extrude or more blender like naming.
My point was not the ability to make it as I can go straight ahead with my project doing it in a brute way. My point was to make it parametric just as the bevel command 
Yes, I wasn’t sure as how to put it.
What I’m doing is trying to recreate a kevlar fabric of a speaker like this:
I’m going to have some renders really close so I can’t get away with bump and displacement in the experimental mode. I managed to use the anisotropic shader within cycles but still the areas that are seen at a low angle result flat and unrealistic. So I decided to go the mesh way and model a an object with parametrical editing in mind. I have a quite low polycount on the rest of the model so I have some spare juice to pump in the membrane. I’ll open a separate thread to exchange experiences on fabric rendering with cycles in hope that at some point it will be capable to implement ptoperly the micropolygons and some other techniques adopted by other renderes. An exemple from mitsuba
What is the best way to submit a proposal? This is nothing of an epic thing, it’s just a setting to disable the extruded cross sections to read the tangent of the spline they are extruded along it can be either added as an extrude modifier or a tick box inside the curve menu. Where is the best place to submit it?
Thank you
Some brief preview of the kevlar material 
Modeled in mesh, lighter than I was supposing, the scene remained fluid, super workable.
Does anyone know how to turn a flat fabric into a cone using mesh deform. I tried but the result was curved rather than straight cone, I used a cylinder as a mesh object.
Thanks
there was some fabric done with UV mapping in the tut for zipper and cloth on blendernation!
also there is an osl nodes set up for fabric did you see it ?
we also done some fabric for sofa with cycles velvet shader which looks very nice but no pattern
there was also 2 ways of making carbon fiber which looks like your kevlar fiber in cycles
did you see these node setup which are complicated but can work woth proc textures in cycles!
salutations
You can use a Lattice. See my blend file and image for example :
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17029626/lattice.blend
