My pleasure.
To solve your issues:
Just rotate the first “link” so you don’t see the seam in the close up rendering. The rest are “history objects” so they will also rotate.
I had to make the parts like they are now so make 2D will look as nice as possible. (Make 2D does not calculate intersections, so an overlap was the way to go)
And the parts has custom render mesh settings, to make them as light as possible, so if you need a smoother mesh then just go in and edit the block and set the custom mesh a bit finer.
EDIT: Remember that you can also add controlpoints to the curve if you need more control.
@AIW as to SS Braid: Can you think of any better method than a really precise bump map? I’ve gone back and forth with this. Same with finely perforated metal meshes.
I was just joking around. You are probably right. The only deficiency is that it won’t accurately depict the flow of the braid, but unlike the spiral armor, it probably won’t be noticeable except under extreme closeup. And even then you’d probably need to be very familiar with what hose braid does when the hose is bent to see anything wrong.
But THEORETICALLY I can’t think of any reason why it shouldn’t work just like the spiral armor.
I would use texture maps, alpha maps and bump/displace maps for this, and then add three layers of pipe, one inner, one for the “geometry” and one for the clear outer layer.
Braided wire, cán of course be made 1/1 but just like this object here, it will become very heavy and you will go to this forum and talk about it, and with some of the clever people around here on the forums figure out some inventive ways to approach the object.
ps. This probably has a very easy solution, but I can’t find how to edit an in-file block. Normally I can edit a bock definition, but I can not seem to find how to edit the block being repeated.
Edit the first one.
All the others are considered as historyobjects.
An other option is to just insert a new block, and edit that one.
(That is also the solution if you have scaled the block object (not the content), then you will not longer be able to edit it.
So just insert a new one and edit that, then delete it)
I’ll go and try to reproduce the creation technique of this object next week, I have not yet worked using the history a lot since every time I deemed it useful it would break as soon as I applied more deformations etc. (which is logical afaik though)
