Hi,

I've attached a scene where Flow doesn't behave as expected.

The height of the cylindrical target surface (highlighted in yelllow in the screenshot) is curved, but the flowed solid's height doesn't curve, although it wrapped around the cylindrical target surface correctly.



Is it maybe because the curved target surface was created using Boolean?

Also, the flowed solid doesn't want to be cut by a Boolean operation. Why is that?

Thanks in advance for your help.

All the best,

Metin

Hi,
try "loft" command for target surface, this produces untrimmed surface.

Hi Metin, yes it's as eddi says above - surface to surface flow works on underlying surfaces (shrunken down as in ShrinkTrimmedSrf), it does not process something like a trimmed out notch, only the full structure of the underlying surface is used.

You can see the full surface if you turn on the surface control points on your target surface, you'll see that the narrowing edge you have is not part of the underlying surface structure but is instead a trimmed away area.

For contours like that to have an effect in Flow they need to be part of the surface's own control point structure and not a trimmed away detail.

- Michael

Many thanks, Eddi and Michael! I'm learning more about MoI every day.

Would it also make a difference if I'd use the ShrinkTrimmedSurface command on a target surface before performing the Flow command?

Hi Metin,

> Would it also make a difference if I'd use the ShrinkTrimmedSurface command on a
> target surface before performing the Flow command?

No, that wouldn't make any difference - basically Flow automatically does the equivalent of ShrinkTrimmedSrf on things already.

ShrinkTrimmedSrf shrinks the "underlying surface" down to the UV bounding box around the trim curves, it still maintains the surface as a net-like grid of control points and won't do something like cut a notch out of the underlying surface in just one local area of it.

So instead you need to use something like loft for constructing the surface so the full surface itself has the boundary contours you want, a trim or boolean used to cut out a notched area will not have any effect for flow because trim and booleans don't modify the "underlying surface", they only create new trim boundaries on top of it...

- Michael

Fully understood, thanks again. I've done a test, and indeed a lofted surface works as expected, so that's the method I will use from now on to create Flow target surfaces.

Have a nice weekend,

Metin

another big advantage with loft-command or sweep (with deformed rails and profile),
you can deform uv and get different results by flow-command,
without "base object" modification.

example for loft
before you finish loft-command with "done", move seam-dots direction.
or bevore loft, add more profile.

with sweep, similar, but direct with profile curves.

Thanks a lot Eddi, much appreciated. This gives me a new insight in the way MoI works.

Thanks,
and here is last one example with sweep "area deform",
on picture
Blue lines > Rails
Yellow highlightet > Profiles

Very interesting, thanks for the explanation! I didn't realize yet that you can influence surface topology and its Flow result by a Sweep profiles layout.

eddi, thank you very intresting observation!

Hi Andrei,
i do not speak English, only German and Czech, a proper brake here to post.
so hoping for you and your excellent understanding in 3D,
maybe a new theme for your famous tutorials ???
best regards

Hay eddi, I'm not sure I understand what do you mean :)

Hi Andrei,
i mean, you make very good tutorials,
can you make one for the "flow manipulation" ?
this can help other users with FlowPower!
regards

Hi eddi,
I made it already yesterday but not posted it. This is it:

Great video, Andrei! Vă mulțumim!