Re: Extrude attach tubes - hard times
Originally posted by moffiosso
I have 2 extruded tubes that end perpendicular to each other and I want to make a corner for the 2 ends or attach them to be one - can't seem to do it. any help would be great and you would be considered a legend in my book
PS I tried to attach the curves that make up the path for the extrucsion but it won't give me a clean 90 deg (perp.) corner when it make the transiton.
Thanks,
Moff
extruding does sound like nurbs. so here is a workflow for nurbs (my version of it only others might have better idea). to make it easier, just create a 90 degree sharp corner between 2 cylinders.
step one: you have 2 cylinders (in my example simple lofts, but extruded should work as well) that are perpendicular and touching in one point as in upper left picture. you select the lower cylinder and duplicate the isoparm (rmb -> isoparm selection mask, select the upper isoparm, edit curves->duplicate curve)
step two: i hid everything from view that was not needed. now i select the newly duplicated isoparm (why not simply use my circle from the loft? well, you etruded, so you are unlikely to have that circle there already 
). now you move the pivot point to the position where both cylinder touch (with insert key, and then move with grid and/or curve snap to fit) so it is roughly in position as in upper right picture. this will gonna be where we let the tube go around the corner.
step three: now lets have some fun with animation. set a key at frame 1 for the circle. now go to frame 10 and rotate the circle so it aligns with the other tube (in my example 90 degree around z). set another key. now the circle should go perfectly 90 degrees around the corner at frame 1 through 10. now go back to frame 1, select the circle and create animation->animation snapshot. the default setting is fine, but check them. so that it starts at frame 1, ends at frame 10, and increment is 1. if you want more or less steps, just put the second key and the end of animation snapshot at different frame. looking pretty good, as in the lower left picture.
step four: select one circle of the animation snapshot (does not matter which one) and use the up-key to select the whole group. the very cool thing (and that is why i abuse it a lot to create lofts ) about the animation snapshot is that after selecting the whole group the circles are picked in the correct order (starting from "frame" 1,2,3 .. 10). create a loft - and you are done. hide all curves, and unhide the hidden cylinders.
now it can happen that the corner and the 2nd cylinder dont align 100 % - to make them so, delete your 2nd extrude and redo with the last snapshot circle. you can now attach all 3 surfaces together or leave them as is or just globally stitch them together.