Hi Mike,

> I was wondering if this shape was formed by Sub-D or
> maybe by a hand-carved clay sculpture by industry artisans.

Hard to say for sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was actually done with NURBS modeling anyway, despite it being something that's easier to do with Sub-d. That's just because for a pretty long time stuff across a wide range of manufacturing industries have been done with NURBS. Sub-d modeling in manufacturing is relatively new.


> Would you consider any sub-control elements such as a positional start
> and end to the twist deformations (perhaps defined by the inference on
> where the start and end twist-axis definition is made)?

At the moment it does stop at the bottom of the twist axis - anything below the bottom axis point does not get affected. But this is actually kind of problematic because the deformation mechanism doesn't really work that great with abrupt changes, it kind of messes up the fitting mechanism and causes a little hiccup right in that area.

So making the twist be limited to a certain zone would probably have to be combined with some kind of "ease-in/ease-out" method as well so there wasn't an abrupt transition from the area of no twist into the area of twist happening.


> And also, perhaps a logarithmic or varied control over
> the angular degree through the body of the twist - where
> an object set could start slowly on the twist, then accelerate
> to a more acute twist?

That might be possible, but it would be good to avoid controls for it that make you feel like you're taking a math quiz...

So far I haven't really thought about how to control something like that.

- Michael