Curb question!!

[Roodogg]

Hi Everyone, this has been discussed in previous threads though I have a little more to ask!

 

I am modelling a detailed site and am on to the curbs. I have created a spline from my road edges and am attempting to loft a curb shape along them. This is working, though i want a nice even 1000mm between each curb stone throughout the site - obviously, the lofted shape is divided depending on the spline I am lofting along, not a set distance between edges (hope that makes sense!).

 

Is there a way of lofting an actual mesh along a spline!?

 

How can I do this?! Thanks for reading.

[Stephen Thomas]

You don't have to necessarily model the joint, you could create a curb texture and apply that to your lofted shape. Make sure you enable both 'generate mapping coordinates' and 'real world coordinates' in your loft settings.

[Roodogg]

Thanks so much - so simple yet easy for me to miss!!

 

Incidentally, it looks like there isn't a way to intance an object along a spline.

 

It would be handy if you could model a single mesh, incorporating a few varied curb stones, with segments so that when the spline curved, it curved the mesh. This would be great for detailed curbs / soldier course etc. I suppose decent results can be gotten from textures with good bumps / displacements.

 

Again, thanks, saved me from a few hours more of tutorial hunting.

[Matt Sugden]

yes there is a way to instance an object along a spline

 

under tools menu, look at spacing tool, you can choose a path and get instances or copies of an object to follow the path. it wont deform the individual objects to follow the path however, so unless your bends are very slight gradients it wont work, but it is very useful for railings, fence post etc... where objects are spaced further apart.

 

another way to do what your looking for is to use the sweep modifier, instead of lofting, you can choose your curb section and apply it to the path of the curb, again using the generate uv. you might run into trouble getting even spacing even of a mapped texture, so you can use the divide function in spline, to divvy up the lines into smaller sections, this help overcome that problem, so does filleting corners.

 

I've done a lot of curbs, as you can probably tell!

Edited November 4, 2010 by Bewdy

[Stephen Thomas]

You can use the spacing tool for that, under menus choose Tools/Align/Spacing tool.