Cerbera

If there is a way, I don't know about it, but would like to !! Bane of my life sometimes that problem... I usually end up remeshing or rebuilding so I don't need the normal tag any more. I certainly think we need better control of surface and vertex normals in Cinema, especially in relation to how imported Normal tags behave with subsequent deformation. CBR

Having some trouble visualising that without pictures I'm afraid, but if I get the general idea right I still think you'd be better using something like pose morph rather than trying actual cloth or softbody sims. I suspect it is unlikely you will be able to get exactly the precision joins you require using sims - they are too 'floaty' and hard to control in a way that non-sim approaches aren't. CBR

I haven't used that rig before, but if the slide path percentage is a keyable parameter, then you should be able to select the last key in the time line, and set the properties for 'after' to 'continue' or one of the other options that will let you loop it. CBR

Please complete your profile so that we always know which version of the software you are running. Answers to questions vary greatly depending on version used ! OK it looks like you have copied a single model containing 2 bolts - presumably they came from a model that had collapsed symmetry at some point. Not sure why you mentioned nulls - there don't seem to be any. To fix this just select the object, go to Poly mode, grab the move tool and double click one bolt in the viewport (the one you don't want), which should select all its polys. Press delete with your mouse over the viewport. Now only one bolt should remain, but its axis may be incorrect, so you can sort that using the Axis Centre Dialogue. You should change that axis so that is at the base of the bolt, with Y pointing up. Yes to your second question as well. It is easy to get rows of bolts using splines generated from the underlying topology (using edge to spline function) driving cloners in Object mode. You can also place bolts directly on surfaces one at time where that is helpful using the Place Tool. CBR

I would have thought cloth was a bit OTT for what should be a very minimal, simple animation... I think I'd do it with a field limited plain effector in deformation mode. You didn't say what is driving the animation, so difficult to advise further... CBR

How so / what stops you ? You should be able to feely look inside anything.... CBR

You are holding ctrl as you drag, right ? Also, you should change modelling axis to Selected instead of World, though that won't affect this extrude. CBR

Change the Cloner mode to Linear, and then you have per-step rotation values available. CBR

I too, am enormously looking forward to this release 🙂 CBR

'Centre axis to' will work if the option 'points centre' is enabled, which will place the axis at the average centre. What it won't do is reset its angle to those of the global space, so to do that you'd need to enable Axis Mode (top toolbar), get the coordinates manager, and zero out the rotation on X, Y and Z. Alternatively you can use Axis centre dialogue to also reset rotation by checking on 'Alignment' and choosing 'World' for example as the coordinate space. CBR

I don't have an iphone or use that software, but I do know that MbM integration with Cinema has been regularly improved with every update to S26, and I notice that you are not even running Service Pack 1. I imagine the first thing Maxon or anyone else we ask about this will say is that you should update to the latest available version of S26 (.107 as of today). I don't know if that alone will sort the issue, but it can only improve your chances. CBR

Ah yes that is an easier surface to make without doubt, but looks fairly random, and I am not seeing many repeating patterns in it so it would still be quite a lot of manual work to model this so it could bend properly. But I don't think the results we'd get from modelling that would be much superior to if you just used an altered greyscale version of that image as a displacement map and did it with materials or even just a high density primitive and displacer deformer if you wanted it preview-able in the viewport ! If you want to try lots of patterns that seems an eminently more sensible way forward, or you'll be stuck modelling for hours ! CBR

Well the Wrap Deformer in Cylinder mode will do that, as would a Spline Wrap driven by a circle spline, but crucially anything you import and extrude MUST have correct topology to be able to bend evenly, and the weak point in this chain is extruding external splines which gives you very little control over topology - in fact the only thing you can really do is choose delaunay type caps, which may give you a suitably deformable surface, but I suspect you will struggle anyway to produce flawless cylindrical deformation directly from an imported spline, because the radial segments must be EXACTLY even, or it won't look like a proper cylinder. Even Delaunay Caps does not give you this, and the only control you have over it is the intermediate points in the splines or the density slider in the caps options. You can see in your reference pic from all horrible shading errors that the topology from this spline is not even suitable to produce a viable render undeformed, though this will be mainly because of phong settings and caps type in the Extrude. If we turn on ngon lines we can see the reason for this... does that look like it will bend properly ?!! I tested it to see just how awful it would be, so chucked a temporary -360 degree bend on it, which would be yet another way to deform it cylindrically... As you can see, it is totally unable to even come close to a vaguely cylindrical result because there simply isn't the topo there to support it. So, forced into a cylinder as is, not only would this surfacing artefacting become orders of magnitude worse, but it can't even hold the basic shape ! And frustratingly there won't be much you can do about that with the rather limited controls of an Extrude Object, or even by Z-Remeshing it, which again doesn't necessarily return enough control to be able to get the topology you need. If I get time tonight I may make you something which shows you the sort of topology you DO need for even cylindrical deforming, but I can tell you now you need as close as possible to exactly square polygons all over the mesh. And the pattern you have shared is a particularly difficult pattern to achieve that with because of all those highly raked cutouts at the top which will necessarily be running counter-poly flow. Lastly, in order to wrap this successfully, there have to be identical counts and layouts of polys at both ends of the mesh or they won't meet up properly without a visible seam. I think even people like me, with 25 years modelling XP behind them might struggle with that particular pattern, so if you are new to modelling this is... ambitious, to say the least. I should also mention that using any deformer method mentioned above you don't want any thickness in the mesh until AFTER it is deformed ideally. If this was my project, I would import the spline, but then use it only as a visual guide to model a suitable flat surface properly, out of polys, so that I had specific control over the layout of every single polygon in it. That is the only way to guarantee a perfectly rendering result, unless you are able to get it via different methods entirely, like for example using the Volume builder and its smoothable boolean functions. The price you pay though using that method would be the incredibly dense mesh a VB setup outputs, which is unlikely to be re-meshable to more reasonable numbers without quite some manual effort to tell it which surface details it should keep sharp. CBR

Oh, so you don't even have service pack 1 installed ? First thing to do is to update R25 to latest version of it and see if problem persists... CBR

Which version of 25 is this ? And which software update are you referring to ? CBR

UV unwrap the object, and use UV space in the noise ? CBR

No, there is no environment baked in here (or at least no bitmaps were included with your file, so the reflections can't be coming from maps); simply reflections are turned up to max in the materials, and have a roughness of zero, so you create an almost mirrored look for the material, which is reflecting the default HDRI, which is how cinema previews reflections in viewport. Just turn reflection down from 1 to something like 0.3, and turn roughness up to fix this... CBR

OK, so you'd like to animate that text so it appears hand-written ? In that case you need to do one of 2 things for the main approach, and some additional things, which will improve stuff regardless of which approach you take. 1. If you want all of the word to appear in one go, and with one animation, then it needs to be a single continuous spline segment. 2. If it is not possible to connect all the letters into a single spline and get it looking how you want, then you will have no choice but to animate the sweep individually per letter, so that you can stagger them. You'll be needing a sweep object per letter in that case. So you need to do one of the above. But also. Change the intermediate points of your spline to 'uniform', which will make the writing animation a lot smoother and at more consistent speed along all points of it. Add or remove points in the sketched spline to make sure they are as evenly spaced as they can be. Do not let your sketched splines pass through each other - move the points in Z space and adjust their tangents, so they flow nicely behind or in front of the parts they cross. CBR

Yes we've asked 🙂 CBR

Fairly sure that's possible with fields or some other way natively. I bet its newly possible with S26 cloth as well ! I'll have a think about that and try some stuff... CBR

Ah, the one ring 🙂 I did that myself a few years back, and it's a very rewarding object to work with (getting that profile exactly right etc) and render as I recall... CBR

Forgive me - I think there is a bit of a language issue - I simply don't understand the question you're trying to ask ! Your scene uses a sweep object, which is working as specified, and apart from some slightly duff intermediate points settings and a rather chaotic spline that overlaps / intersects itself (not a good idea in 3D), everything is working as I'd expect, except the top circle, which is only not working because it has not been combined correctly with the path spline. Please could you explain, in more detail what the actual problem is ? CBR

....by rolling back the driver manually or installing the older driver again using nvidia update. CBR

Has anything changed about your video drivers ? I did read somewhere that Windows update, in its 'wisdom', overwrote everyone's existing nvidia drivers with a minimum version recently - perhaps that could have caused your problem ? CBR

Ah Ok, if it's a confidentiality issue then yes that is different. But thank you for taking the time to swap out the pics and share your solution when that is the case. Your solutions so far have been pretty inventive - I will continue giving this some thought, and get back to you if anything new occurs... CBR