Now that I read Marc's reply again I see he also used Flow - that definitely helps a lot since it is much easier to construct the juncture area to be all smooth on a flat piece, then produce the bending of the entire object all at once using Flow rather than trying to construct things initially in the bent position which will make it more difficult to build a smoothly connecting center area.
One quirk with curve-to-curve flow right now is that it tends to rotate things by 90 degrees unless you place both the base curve and the target curve in the world x/y plane. So for a case like this, rotate your shape so that the bent path curve is in the x/y plane rather than going vertical, then Flow works by having a base curve (which is usually a line going down the center of your object) and a target curve like this:
Then you select the object, and run Transform > Deform > Flow (which is a new command in v3), then select the line as the base curve, and the bent curve as the target curve and it will produce this result:
Anytime you can primarily create your design as a flat 2D object will tend to make things much easier and then fit better with the primary NURBS modeling method which is focused on drawing 2D profile curves to guide the construction. If you find yourself trying to patch together a bunch of 3D curves directly, that tends to be a sign that you're trying to use sub-d modeling techniques rather than 2D profile curve driven NURBS modeling techniques.
- Michael
|