[hammondchips]

Rendering a rope... help needed!
I have a lovely imported spline swept along with a circle to produce a string/rope type shape. I would like to make it appear like a sailing or climbing rope with the flecks of colour in it, but can't get my head around how the texture can map around and along the spline.
I presume somehow i need to use the original spine to control the mapping??

Any help very welcome!
Thanks
Hammondchips

[bograt]

Is the default uvw not suitable?

[JDHill]

Unless I misunderstand, you should get what you want pretty easily, just by making sure to use the UVW Mapping Projection in your Texture tag. For example, here is a simple scene with a circle and a spline under a Sweep NURBS, where the Texture tag has been placed on the Sweep NURBS:

• 

This is just using a simple uv checkerboard to show what is being generated -- it has been bunched up along the length of the sweep by tiling the texture 20X along Y. The reason for doing that is that UV space will be defined as running along, and around the generated geometry, so by default, you would have one texture tile stretched all the way from one end of the sweep to the other.

To make a rope, you'd just substitute a suitable map for the checkerboard; it would have your rope "strands" running diagonally, such that they wrap continuously around when the texture is tiled.

[hammondchips]

Thanks Bograt and JDHill for the super quick replies

You were both right, UVW mapping was fine.

First problem was getting the percentage of the U and V correct. The rope was very long and therefore needed approximately a 1:100 ratio to correctly display the texture

The second was getting myself in a muddle about generating the twist in the texture in the mapping settings whilst rotating the texture to 45 degrees of course sorts that out.

thanks again
Hammondchips

[rccohn]

Any pics of the result?

[eric nixon]

For perfect rope, not only rotate the texture, but also use the stick texture tag, hit record on the tag, then twist the geometry.. looks perfect. OR in this case I used a live sweep nurbs with UV mapping and a twist in sweep nurbs settings.. Pretty sure it works both ways.



The big rope has displacement on it also, when I look at it now, I suspect the smaller strand coils are going the wrong way.. ..

Although its a bit complicated, at least you can see how the texture is adjusting when you fiddle interactively in the viewport.

[rccohn]

Hey Eric, when you say you did a live sweep, which software are you using?

I'm in Solidworks and don't have that level of control over UVs.

Your example is a straight rope - would this work on something more complicated? Like if the rope were flowing and curving?

[eric nixon]

This a c4d subforum no? if your a Solidworks user, youve already waste my time? and JD's. And yes it works for all shapes of rope.

[JDHill]

I'm in Solidworks and don't have that level of control over UVs. Your example is a straight rope - would this work on something more complicated? Like if the rope were flowing and curving?

I don't know of a way to accomplish that in SW -- I'd do it in another software like Cinema or Rhino.