I’m using Blender for modeling. The attached thumbnail shows an opening in a railing; the curved horizontal line in the center of the image is a length of safety chain. I’m contemplating representing this chain with a textured square tube of an appropriate number of sections, but what other options are there?
ns
Unless you are limited to using only a few vert’s, model the chain.
There is a great demo video on the Blender web site that shows various modifiers being used to form a chain that will vary it’s number of links to suit a guide curve.
http://www.blender.org/features-gallery/features/feature-videos/?video=modifier_stack
Thanks for the link to the video. Unfortunately, two factors make it a bit less useful than I would like. First, I am presently on dial up, and have not (as of this writing) figured out how to download the video so I can watch it off line, second, controlling the number of verts is a consideration, and while I am not limited to “only a few”, I don’t have an unlimited number available, either. But it is good to know where this resource is located.
ns
mjolnir,
In the wiki manual there is a description of the array modifier. (Link) Near the bottom of that page you’ll find an example of a chain made with the array modifier with a link to a sample blend file.
/ Mats
Sir,
Here’s the link you need: http://download.blender.org/demo/feature_videos/modifier_stack.flv
After a session with a javascript debugger, I worked out that the “video=modifier_stack” part of the address is the key.
The text that follows the = sign is the video name, without the extension. The extension is “.flv” The directory/folder that the file lives in is
http://download.blender.org/demo/feature_videos/
For example:
http://www.blender.org/features-gallery/features/feature-videos/?video=displace_modifier
http://download.blender.org/demo/feature_videos/displace_modifier.flv