I have a slight problem. I am making vines that need to taper slightly throughout their length. I made the base vine by creating a curve and making the object follow the curve as an array and as a curve. That works fine. The problem was that I thought I could use the “taper obj” option on the curve to taper the whole thing. Turns out, “taper obj” only works on the curve, and since I am not technically using the curve (ie no bevel object), it won’t work.
I will eventually be making the curves real (to be able to add particle systems to them), hence why I didn’t just use the curve itself. But if anyone can tell me how to taper it along it’s length I would be very grateful.
Ahh, thank you. I didn’t take the simple step from “simple” to “simple deform”.
If I have no other option I think I can use this to fake it on several of the closer up vines, but because they arch up and down, and the taper is via the global Z axis, it creates a vine that is heavy on the top and small at the base and the end. If the base isn’t visible, this works, but when both ends of the vine are visible I don’t think it will work. What I need is something that will taper along the length of the object, not via a global axis.
Well you could start with a straight vine ( a long subdivided cylinder basically or simply extrude your object), taper with simple deform then use the curve deform modifier.
In the stack put taper first then curve.
Having said this, I am sure I have seen examples of doing this with only curves. But this will work.
Keep in mind you can continue to “grow” your vine in edit mode by extending and subdividing it.
I tried what you talked about on a test scene and it worked great. Then I tried it on my scene. I didn’t create my object oriented around the Z axis. So I changed the orientation, applied the array, added a simple deform and then attached it to the curve (reoriented of course). It tapered, but there was a lot of distortion and strange twisting, some of it quite extreme.
It did suggest a solution, however, and a very simple one at that. It’s all about the order in which things get applied, as you pointed out. So I applied my array modifier, then simply scaled the end vertexes along their local axis with proportional edit on and an insanely large area. It worked, suprisingly. I hadn’t thought of using something so simple because the vine is so long, but it retains it’s original length, tapers along the local length, and still fits the curve.
