Modifying grouped objects - Twist

[smeece85]

Hello all,

 

I have a rather perplexing problem (and perhaps it's a noob one too) with using the twist modifier on a group of objects. What I want to do is add a twist modifier to my group and have the group act as a single object. What happens instead is each individual object is twisted by an amount relative to it's own size (or something), so the twist modifier ends up separating the objects from each other.

 

It could be a basic problem of understanding - like maybe there is a method of linking a dummy object, and applying the modifier to that object, thus applying it to the group as a single object? I'm sort of lost. I tried using an xref setup ( as per tmccarter's thread on February 24th, 2006 ), and the model twisted fine, but rendered untwisted (aka directly from the xref file, without the twist modifier applied). Thanks for any help!

[WAcky]

Strange as I just tried adding a twist modifier to both a selection of objects and a group and the twist modifier acted on the objects as a group and not individually.

 

Any chance you can re-produce the effect in a file with some simple objects and upload the .max file so I/we can have a look?

 

Cheers,

James

[JonRashid]

Yep agreed, my modifier works fine on a group. Can you post file?

[smeece85]

Thanks a lot for looking into it. I managed to get what I want, but not the way I wanted

 

I was using imported NURBS that I didn't want to mesh out, but they just wouldn't twist together as NURBS. I got it to work by stacking edit poly on the group, so problem solved (but in an annoying way).

 

Another weird thing was that I tried saving the NURBS group as an xref and importing it in, then doing the twist. It twisted fine, and appeared correct in the viewport, but on render, it was untwisted... bizarre. Anyway thanks for confirming it should work! - Must have been something about the objects...