Howdy.

im making a little muscle tool and theres a bit of a problem.

i have a path made in object level. i go into the actual path node in which its constructed. within here i want to make a skinned object.

thing is. i want the cross sections to get their orientation on the curve, much like if i chose to make a null travel on a curve in object level. and then to be able to use the “skin” node. this will give a good result and let me control each cross section element, so i can shape the muscle how i like.

i tried using a sweep but it works best when you use a single cross section.
if using sweep i guess i could always use a few group nodes and then transform on each to control things like scaling, but this still wont give me the nice clean method of manipulating each cross section as nicely if they could be controlled before being skinned.


so, is there a simple way to do this in sop level?

currently ive tried doing a few things where i experimented with making nulls travel on the curve in op level, then i make the skinned cross sections get their orientation using the vtorigin expression, but i keep getting inverted/ or double transformations, so its not working out how i like. which is why i need a way to do it inside sop level.

<<Edit:>>

ok, i definitely dont want to use the group/edit combo after sweeping method, this gives undesired results with scaling if the points for the curve are outside the sop. the edits have to happen before the sweep node comes into play.

I think you may want to use a normal vector on a curve to set the orientation of the cross sections. But for that you need to add normal vectors to the curve, this can be achieved by getting the “FLO” VOP SOP from this page http://odforce.net/codex/geometry.php [odforce.net] by Charles Abou Aad

Dose this sound like the answer you were after?

I picked this vop apart so if you need some tips on tweaking it just ask