using carved curves from nurbs

[davo]

hi,

i have a mirrored nurbs surface which is creating a fender shape "U" for the front wheel of a motorcycle.

i want to make the fender have a thickness so i figured i could carve out the 6 curves at the bottom, duplicate and scale them down and then skin between them. the problem i am having is that curves are not ordered correctly and what ever operation i use to skin(bridge, fillet, skin) i don't get a proper surface, i'd like to do three things:

1) make a single nurbs curve out of the six i have

2)reorder the numbers if possible (sort doesn't work)

3)skin between the two curves, essentially bridging the two surfaces

Thanks,

Davo

[Marc]

Hi Davo

What you've done so far is essentially correct. There are two ways to manage this. Firstly, you can use the viewport to do the skin operation, the order that you click on the curves to select them will be the order they are skinned in.

Or you can go old school and type the curve primitive numbers into the skin SOP's group parameter. So if you've got 5 curves, type 5 1 3 4 2 (for an example) into the skin SOP will skin them in that order.

Make sense?

Cheers

Marc

[davo]

I'm still having problems : here is a picture of my two curves and their primitive numbers ....

[Marc]

ah, I see.

What you'll need to do first is use the join SOP to make two closed curves out of those many curves you have.

So you'll need to join : 0 4 5 3 1 2 and then do the same with the other side.

The join SOP is easiest to use in the viewport, just click on the end of the curves that you want to join and it will reverse the direction if needed to join it correctly. Once you've created two curves out of that then you can just throw a skin SOP down.

Hope this helps

Marc

[old school]

Here is a real old school technique to do the curve offset using the extrude SOP. Goes way back to Prisms days.

Append an extrude SOP and set the following settings:

Front Face > Output Face

Back Face > No Output

Side Mesh > No Output

Thickness Offset > 0 to -1 to whatever

Use the Thickness Offset to control the offset effect. I wrapped an asset around this and I have a nice offset curve tool now and merges the input curve with the curve generated by the extrude. You can also save this as a preset and just use the extrude SOP directly to do the curve offset.

-jeff

[old school]

And here is the jw_offset_face.otl.

It has a bindselector so it works well interactively in the viewport. Just select the primitive face to offset and adjust the amount.

Let me know if you want changes to it.

-jeff

jw_offset_face.otl