Why is bending so difficult in SI?!

[Kerro Perro]

Ok i rarely look back to Maya but i keep running into this: bending deformations in SI suck!

I totally miss and love the Non Linear Bend Deformer in Maya, i can deform this object around a sphere in seconds using two of them:

No fiddling with centers, very easily tweakable - just great. I even made this flying whale animation with it years ago when i was only doing 3d for a couple of weeks (hence the ridiculous amount of glow..) But that is nightmare to do with bends in SI.

But that's besides the point, wich is that during modelling you should just be able to bend and tweak a mesh quickly and easily. This took me 20 mins of fiddling about, constantly reapllying the bend deformer and moving the center and i could only get one direction semi right - adding a second frustrated me enough to stop....

I guess it would be too much to ask one of the geniusses here to replicate the Maya deformer? ;)

Probably, but then my question: Why is this so difficult in SI? Why do things always go shooting off when you deform them? This also happens when you deform by curve so it must be something inherent in the SI coordinate system... Sooo frustrating and unproductive...

[ActionArt]

No kidding, I've never liked the basic deform tools in SI, they never made sense to me. There's a little pluggin called agbend (I don't see it on rray.de anymore) and I can't remember where it came from. It's better in some ways for simple stuff.

You might find that useful if you can find it. I may still have it somewhere, will have to look.

[Kerro Perro]

I'd really appreciate you posting it, i tried to hunt it down but it's gone...

[Hirazi Blue]

Gone? Gone? On the internet nothing's ever truly gone! ;)
Download it from here ("RMB & Save As") (directly from agedito.com BTW)

[Maximus]

Here are what i use, apply to the mesh as non sim ice tree.

[Kerro Perro]

Well guys thanks for posting those but i'm afraid they ain't much better:

Tried to bend this simple mesh on the z axis, here's the result with agbend and the ice bend compound Maximus posted:

Could only get the "Bend.xsicompound" working, the oobend flagged: Could not find node : ooSwitchAxes and did nothing and the BendAdvanced was just red - not sure what it needs to work...

Here's the same task in Maya...

[csaez]

The only difference with the maya one is the radius not being auto-calculated, but it's something really easy to do!

[ActionArt]

Yes, bend needs a serious overhaul. I usually end up using lattice deformers. Not the best for everything but the only one I can get to work sometimes.

[Kerro Perro]

The only difference with the maya one is the radius not being auto-calculated, but it's something really easy to do!

Lol i guess that kind of depends on your definition of easy ;) That ICE tree is very hard to read for someone like me. But even if it wasn't it doesn't compare to get deformer, apply and tweak and move on.

Makes me think about the SIC London thread were some guys are posting "is Softimage going to continue?" - that's not the question, of course it is, but it's the direction that's interesting. If it keeps going the way it is then that's great for (super-smart) guys like Cesar that can create tools like that on the fly but not so hot for the guys that just want an artist friendly and easy to use dcc package...

And yeah - i do know how much use it is to complain about that ->.....

(btw that doesn't mean i wont try out that ICE tree somewhere in future... ;) )

And yeah lattice deformers will work but for curves they are so slow and take so much work you might as wel bend the mesh vertex by vertex..

[rray]

"Deform by surface" works for some of these cases too: Create a (NURBS) surface sphere or cylinder, then pick deform by surface and adjust the SRT values:

[Kerro Perro]

Ooh that's a good tip, thanks!

[Maximus]

Sorry, forgot you need that node too, well anyway those are the whole pack.

[rray]

Ooh that's a good tip, thanks!

very welcome! I just got lost and I made a new avatar with that deformer xD

[Kerro Perro]

Yeah i noticed, it's cool - very hypnotic!

[luceric]

is it a perhaps a Shrinkwrap rather than a Bend that you wanted to do?

[Kerro Perro]

Well in the example in my first post i tried a shrink wrap but it was to rigid to get the shape i was going for, but it was perhaps a bad example.

The thing i just keep running into is that when i just want get some cool curved shaped shapes to my meshes during modeling i try things like deform by curve or bend and the mesh shoots off into outer space... The exact reason for this is still unclear to me though i get that it is because the bends pivot point is off. But exactly how that can be avoided easily when modeling off world center eludes me... (Though some off the things suggested in thread go some way to addressing that)

Add to that the lack of refinement and any kind of visual aid and i refer you back to my earlier frustrated rantings.