Deforming a sweep at intervals along its line

[reginald]

Hi guys, I think this is fairly painless but I don't understood how to do it.

 

I building a road, made using a sweep, along a line. I now want to add some lay-by / rest areas for cars. This could be done by editing the sweep mesh directly (as shown in attached image), but I understand I can attach a 'deformer' (deformer may be poor choice of word) to the sweep mesh instead?

 

 

I think I mean one of these grid/boxes that you can pull handles on to deform the mesh? It would need to be constrained to the same line as the sweep so I can move/clone it to any location along the line/path and create these wider sections

 

If you know what I'm getting at here I'd appreciate any tips on the steps to achieve this.

 

Many thanks,

Edited June 21, 2013 by reginald

[beestee]

A loft will provide the type of control you are looking for, but is a little more complex to use:

 

http://docs.autodesk.com/3DSMAX/16/ENU/3ds-Max-Help/files/GUID-74A4B251-31F6-4661-8107-F925A3C4D859.htm

[reginald]

Thanks, in fact it's lofts I have moved away from, finding sweep better handling multiple splines at once. It may be that I need to compromise simplicity for functionality.

 

I can't help thinking that having an FFD constrained to the sweep path and only affecting the sweep object close to it would be a great method, but maybe just not possible.

[beestee]

Another possible method:

 

[Francisco Penaloza]

If this will be a road, you should use RailClone from Itoo software, there is a free version, that only work on flat surfaces but still pretty useful.

Create a simple road mesh, then create a bay area and let railclone do the rest, you can control what distance each bay will be and still arrange the path to move the road around.

If you still want to use FDD modifier, you need to apply a Mesh modifier over your path, but this will not grow automatically with your path and if you move the original path everything will get out of sack.

Railclone is the right tool for this.

Unless you use Cinema 4D then Mograp will do the same

[reginald]

Thanks again for the thoughts. Ill try your tip with the FFD. Never used the thing before. The FFD would allow a less linear result than placing objects on the path. A bit more hands on.

 

I have also used railclone a bit, and although it is very useful and quick, I had issues at render time. RC was smoothing my line points. The render would complete and I can actually see the spline smoothing change in the viewport. there are a range of consolidate / vert tools in the RC options but nothing would solve this issue for me.

 

Were talking about tiny changes, but I'm using these shapes / profiles for rendering heightmap information. 16bit greyscale (C4D no-go for this) is like handling uranium when trying to achieve smooth, road foundation results. Rendering these gradients with railclone was not as accurate or predictable as native max tools..

 

That said, if rc was just used for the layby / rest areas, and not the road then it would probably not present an issue and would be worth it for the speed and ease of all. problem is that the road is in 3 dimensions so its a cost to buy pro and place a few laybys.