How do I bend a pipe?

#1

[font=Arial][color=white]Ok, I’m sure that this has been brought up here a few times; I’m a little behind on my reading of the forum. But has anyone figured out how to create the equivalent of the LW BEND tool? I thought that someone had said that, the bend tool is just a rotate with a linear falloff on it. But no matter what I try I get very unexpected results (see Image below). What is your method for doing this seemingly simple task? [/color][/font]

#2

Well, falloff + rotate is far from perfect as a bend tool but it is ok. You have dones something wrong here though. I would suggest playing around with the falloff and making sure nothing is selected before using it.

#3

With me it works properly :

a draw your pipe
b draw your linear fallof with the apex toward left ( in the case the pipe lemght goes along x axis)
c) rotate tool

Bend!!

if u position the rotate handle towards teh end (left) you obtain an accurate linear bend. if u position it at the start u bend your mesh into another way.

of course u can save some preset like this and name it my bend tool or whatever.

incidentally, most of Lw deforming tols are a combination of move, and rotate with different fallofs.

Hint. don’t loose you time bending pipes in Modo. the pipe tool lets u draw a curved pipe how you want in no time. :smiley:

#4

Thanks Nemoid, that is the key… just becasue I’m used to doing it one way, dosen’t mean there is an identical equivelnt.

That being said, I did determan that the start position of the fall off grad shoulud be lined up with the center axis of the rotate otherwise it pulls it in the oposit direction and that is why I was getting the downward bulge in my elbow. I was still getting a backwards bulge though, and I’m not sure why, Oh well. I’ll try your tip…

Thanks,
Brad

#5

yeah try that and let me know about the results. eventually you could also add the straight parts of the pipe to a smaller bended section, but it should work properly with my tip above.

#6

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