I'm getting bored to tears making 'em in Wings... extrude, sweep, move, extrude, sweep, move, get wrong, re do, extrude, sweep, move....

sigh

Anything that'd let me make some nice looking cables I can use in me own models would be great. Anyone know of such a thing?

I make a very rough (maybe Z-shaped) line, subdivide it, then maybe adjust points for jitter and sag, perhaps smooth it. Subdivide again, etc. Then extrude a polygon along that path.

Hmmm... could maybe do something similar in Wings. Ta very much!

Make sure your polygon is orthogonal to the beginning segment of the path -or at least close to orthogonal- else the cable may come out looking flattened.

I work in Silo (and occasionally modo), so I don't know the equivalent commands in Wings.

Decided to try something else; Chop bits out of a torus and stick 'em back together. Woiks like a charm.

The cloth room may do just what you are looking for. Make a well subdivided tube and make the ends choreographed. Simulate to get catenary. Use stretch stiffness to regulate length.

Cage has some great utilities for making ropes and chains and more, his freebies are on englishbob website http://www.morphography.uk.vu/

Thanks for all the replies. So far the chopped up torus seems to be giving me what I want but there's no such thing as too many tools in the box. :)

Following on...

Going to give Cage's python thingy a shot. Wish me luck.

Also, had a poke around on EnglishBob's site. I'd forgotten just how much great stuff there is on there. Many thanks, EB for keeping it up and runnning.

Here you go :)

http://www.philc.net/AllTiedUp.php

Hehe, thank you, Phil.

Tube primitive or sketch extrude (both really cool imo), modo. Extruding along a path in other various apps. Wings? A hell of a lot of careful duplicating/extracting/bridging I'd think. 'All tied up' is good for adding easypose to existing rigs (great in fact), spotty with automating the groupings and rigs themselves. And that's my, hopefully, non insulting to PhilC (as I love his scripts) review of ATU.

...problem with extruding out manually long curved tubes in wings is all the tweaking you have to do to minimize cockeyed edge loops that invariably result in your 'paths' going out of wack.

Don't I know it. :D Seems to be all ok now, though. Fingers crossed.

BTW, just got your Missus figure. Looks amazing. Thanks muchly!

You're welcome. Working on a couple of more things for her now, and a new figure (a draconic serpent)... They'll take a while to finish and get out there though as it's busy now at work (less free time) and I tend to noodle about with things a bit when I'm having fun. Your Marshall looks quite good! Best wishes in your endeavors.

Ya I can think of a lot of ways to make cables.in including xFrog app for making trees ;)

but if it's just for personal renders you could always paint them in post.

simplest box modeling way I can think of is take a cube make it long n skinny add loops ,subD,rotate away .

Cage's scripts worked great for me, you should be able to get what you want from them.

A Japanese creator called MASA wrote a little program called GordianKnot that's perfect for this type of thing. He actually calls it a program for making "strings" but you can change the diameter so cable, ropes and other things are very easy to do. Simply import the relevant geometry from you scene as an OBJ file and use the tools in the program to lay cable wherever you want.

Unfortunately, Renderosity's policies keep me from posting a link to it. but it's pretty easy to find. It IS an older program and hasn't been updated since 2009 so I don't know if you would have any compatibility issues with your OS. (It runs fine on the 32bit version of Windows 7, but I haven't been able to get it to run on the 64bit...that may simply be my own ignorance on how to do that properly)

Requirements:

• Microsoft Windows XP (Professional, Home Edition), Windows 2000
• Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0
• Direct X 9.0c Runtime or later

in Sketchup, I can draw the line I want the cable etc to take, then I use a Ruby that then sweeps along that line making the shape I want. I then export that out (DAE/Blender/OBJ if your using the free Sketchup.)

Since Rendo's policies prevent linking, please Sitemail me for the Links.

you can also use the Cloth room to drape ropes and cables. import a cylinder with enough sections to drape well, then if you remove the ends you want to remain in place from the sim, you get effective draping in the sim...

Thanks all for the info. I've now got most of me cables made but some of these ideas will come in useful at a later date, I'm certain.

Khai, you're about to get a sitemail.

SamTherapy posted at 11:35PM Sun, 03 April 2016 - #4263577

Many thanks, EB for keeping it up and running.

Cheers Sam! Hope the project is coming along good and LOUD.

Just a note. Have you checked out Boni's thread on Polybrush?

There's a wonderful old lightwave plugin for knots and ropes. . . . "Rope Editor Plus" from Next4d

Doesn't run on Macs, so I can't use it any more, but I miss it . . . really elegant

http://next4d.com/index.htm