Hi there,
Is it possible to use cage editing to transform blocks similar to scale, rotate etc?
Best,
Jeremy
yes, double click your block to edit the block and do your cage edit there.
or explode the block and cage edit that specific instance if you want to edit just one block. (it will no longer be a block if you go this route)
Hi Kyle, thanks for your message 
I might be misunderstanding something.
E.g., If I have a 10,000 brick blocks in a bonded wall, and I want to bend that wall of blocks, how would I do that without exploding them into polysurfaces first?
E.g., I might have 10,000 polysurfaces within the block, and can edit that block with cageedit, but I still have to have 10,000 polysurfaces, instead of one polysurface instanced 10,000 times
I am able to scale the 10,000 instances as one group or parent block in 1, 2, and 3d, and rotate and shear. However, I cannot cage-edit for other types of distortion.
Best,
Jeremy
Bump / height maps can be pretty convincing, with no added geometry. If the texture mapping is an issue, you can uwrap it, and get it just so. If you were doing a cylinder, the ends of the bricks on the bumpmap could be lightened with a gradient. The net effect would be: the right/left edges of the bricks would stick out, as if they were not chiseled curved.
https://www.reddit.com/r/blender/comments/5fs0tr/realistic_texture_attempt_2_brick_wall/?rdt=40435
Though, you could alternatively use Flow Along Surface using the bricks on a flat wall, and then making a reference surface, and then flowing them on the target surface. This will indeed add complexity, but it works.
You might have to measure the target surface, like Pi, or just click on the radius edge of the cylinder, and use the Length command to read it. Then the source and dummy/reference surface could be resized.
Also, you can use a combination of things. This hastily made trash can was drawn flat, Flowed, and then a Cage was added to make the dent. Generally anything I put in a cage, I keep a copy of it, though in V8, I think they retain the original.
Also, If you don’t need to be close to your bricks, you can reduce their mesh complexity or do it globally; this will help in working with the drawing…if it has 10,000 bricks.
1 Like
ah, that’s a different horse in a much different race.
In that case, unless absolutely necessary to have it built accurately with individual bricks, i’d say that a simple surface with an image and bump map is the better way to do this.
Doing this with individual bits will have an unnecessarily large computational overhead and unless you have a beast of a machine will likely drag your performance down to a crawl.
Thanks Kyle, the brick wall was just an analogy for a completely different situation.
Ultimately, I work with a lot of blocks to prevent enormous files, but sometimes I need to shape them together as one.
While shear, rotate, scale, work, sometimes I need to do other things like taper a set of blocks in scale, or bend them etc.
Best,
Jeremy