Flow along surface around ellipsoid

Hi, I am trying to wrap text around an ellipsoid surface and it has me baffled. all the tutorials online demonstrate how to do this using flowalongsrf on basic shapes like a cylinder or shapes that can be flattened using uv easily. i cannot seem to do this with an ellipsoid.

please if anyone knows the answer can they help out

Here are some steps and a fileā€¦

  1. Create your Ellipsoid. Pay attention to the order in which you specify the axes, because the seam will influence where the text will flow. Note the ellipsoid seam in the file is vertical and facing you. You can experiment with different seam orientations and see how it affects things.

  2. Use CreateUV and select the ellipsoid. It will make a rectangle on the XY plane at 0. That represents your ellipsoid surface unrolled and stretched out into a rectangle. The seam on the ellipsoid is represented by the left and right edges of the rectangle in the file. Make a plane surface from the rectangle, you can delete the rectangle itself (keep the surface)

  3. Set up your text objects on the surface as you like.

  4. Now here is the tricky partā€¦ Use FlowAlongSrf, select the text as the objects to be flowed, the plane as the base surface and the ellipsiod as the target. Where you click on the base and target surfaces makes a difference. If you are using V6, there is an AutoAdjust option in the command line for FlowAlongSrf - SET THIS TO NO. Otherwise it will give you the wrong result 90% of the time and drive you crazy. Then try to click on the base/target surfaces near their corresponding points - I indicated those with an ā€œXā€ in the attached file. You may need to play with this a bitā€¦

If you have history recording on during the process with Copy=Yes, you can then play with the original text on the plane surface and see it update on the ellipsoid.

HTH, --Mitch

FlowTextAlongEllipsoid.3dm (3.9 MB)

thank you for the response, i get the flowalongsrf command and the createuv and using history placed it correctly eventually.

you dont need to answer but your example ellipsoid only contained one curve and mine had multiple, thats the only part i did not understand, mine was simply created from the menu, am i being idiotic in missing something, my issue is solved but it seems strange.

anyway thanks lots all sorted

What you see in my file is simply the ellipsoid with the surface isocurves turned off. By default they are on, but in most situations personally I prefer not to see them, as then the joints/seams between surfaces are easier to see. In this particular case it makes it easier to see the single seam in the ellipsoid. The surface isocurves you see are only a display characteristic, turning them on or off does not change the object in any way.

1 Like

Hi Mitch

Very well explained.
When I use history, and move the source objects, the ā€˜History damagedā€™ message comes up.
But only the first few times.
After some dragging this effect goes away, but still works ok.

Do you see this as well?

I have that message turned off as I find it annoying. However, you are right, if I turn it back on, it does come up erroneously - here only once.

There is a similar bug report here:
https://mcneel.myjetbrains.com/youtrack/issue/RH-40264

I will post a new bug and link the twoā€¦
https://mcneel.myjetbrains.com/youtrack/issue/RH-47019

This is what @mikko repliedā€¦

This is normal behavior. The letters are both parents (in the FlowAlongSrf) and children (of ExtrudeCrv). The warning comes from the ExtrudeCrv history breaking.

Which is correct, because I forgot I only hid the original curves used to produce the solid letters instead of deleting them, and the curves are the parents of the solid lettersā€¦ Sorry.

@mikko
Would it be possible to show the reason/source for the history break in the message?
Could be handy.

Dunno, it could get complicated since any number of operations may break at the same time. In this case I used What command to check the extruded letters to see they had history attached to them.

I see, ok.
Perhaps then a hint on how to find the cause could be in the message box.
I didnā€™t have the What idea, so perhaps others donā€™t have that idea as well.
Just a thought.