Hi Burr,

> I guess in the past I also was trying to "connect" everything
> and then "trim" them at the intersection points to make it work.

Actually if your curves form a regular UV grid pattern where they do cross (or come close to crossing) each other, then you can actually skip the trim step because Network will trim off any excess parts automatically.

So for example if you have this:



When you do a Network you will get this with the excess parts being snipped off:




> So, can the 2 diractional curves be "Closed" and "Not interesecting"?.

Yeah, they don't actually have to completely intersect but they need to come at least somewhat close to one another.

If they are too far apart from intersecting it can produce not as good results like stuff may tend to get somewhat extra lumpy. Also if they are too far apart MoI will probably have difficulty figuring out how they are organized into the 2 different U and V sets.

But if they are relatively close to intersecting but not exactly intersecting that is usually ok.


re: "Closed" - yup either the U or V direction or both can be made up of either open or closed curves.

If they are open in one direction and closed in the other, that will be like a cylinder surface, like if you look at these points there is a closed loop in the circular direction and the other direction is a line which is open:



It's also possible for one of the directions to collapse together to come to a single common point, either at one end or both ends. That's something like how a sphere's points are arranged:




Closed in both directions would be similar in layout to a torus (donut) type shape:




But all curves of one set need to be the same, you can't have something like several U direction curves with only one closed and the other U direction ones open. But the U curves can be different in closure than the V curves though like in the cylinder type case.

- Michael

Hi Burr, just another bit of info on Network.

When I say it needs to make a "regular" UV grid what I mean is that every U curve crosses every V curve.

So for instance something like this is not going to work right:




That does not form a single complete grid, for example note that this pair of curves (one from the U direction and the other from the V direction) are not crossing each other:




In a NURBS surface you can't have just one single control point in the corner missing like that, a NURBS surface is made up of the same number of points in every row or column. The same kind of thing applies to Network as well.

- Michael

Ok I'm armed for exploring.

Thanks!

Boy another excellent thread I've learned from!

I have to say though, I got shocked for a second Burr, when I saw the first screen shot of that green model! :-P

Looks like something the Pink Pussycat shoppe here in Manhattan would like to have designed! :-O


-Will

Hi WillBelljr,

I can see it on the shelf now.... The "Loft Ness Monster!" :O (I think we should stop there).