Easiest way to create dotted / dashed lines / curves?

Forums Technical Discussion Easiest way to create dotted / dashed lines / curves?

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Adriano: Member; 408 posts; Joined: June 2015; Offline

Aug. 5, 2020 8:55 p.m.

I've found some related threads but they are quite old. I'm wondering what would be the simplest and cleanest way to create dotted / dashed lines please? I'm not getting clean results with the old ways, or it's reverse engineering by creating edges (connecting points by range) instead of having a simple clean “dissolve” edges by range which would be my favourite approach.

Thanks in advance.

A.

Edited by Adriano - Aug. 5, 2020 20:56:25


jsmack: Member; 7850 posts; Joined: Sept. 2011; Offline

Aug. 6, 2020 2:54 a.m.

The easiest ‘old’ way is to use the creep tool, but it's not very good and doesn't handle 3d shapes.

The ‘new’ way would be to use VEX/VOPS, as it much faster, and is flexible enough to handle 3d shapes.

Attachments:
dottedline.png (290.4 KB)
sign_on_the_dotted_line.hip (214.7 KB)


vusta: Member; 555 posts; Joined: Feb. 2017; Offline

Aug. 6, 2020 6:53 a.m.

wouldn't it be simply….any curve>resample>add>delete geo keep points>by group>N 2 ?


jsmack: Member; 7850 posts; Joined: Sept. 2011; Offline

Aug. 6, 2020 12:55 p.m.

vusta
wouldn't it be simply….any curve>resample>add>delete geo keep points>by group>N 2 ?

True, but the segments won't bend to the curve.


Adriano: Member; 408 posts; Joined: June 2015; Offline

Aug. 6, 2020 1:36 p.m.

jsmack
The easiest ‘old’ way is to use the creep tool, but it's not very good and doesn't handle 3d shapes.

The ‘new’ way would be to use VEX/VOPS, as it much faster, and is flexible enough to handle 3d shapes.

thanks man, for putting your hands into it. Sadly in my case scenario this set up does not work. I'm carving the curves and it's animated, i tried to adpat your network to my scene but it just crashes.

I wish it'd be easier to just throw a shader that applies this sorta look, i'm redering with redshift3d and can't help but wonder why those guys didn't implement such render, feels like something you'd want to have off the shelves in the same tab as their “strands” rendering options. Maybe i'm expecting too much.

Thanks for yoru time, always very much appreciated.

A.


Aizatulin: Member; 480 posts; Joined: July 2005; Offline

Aug. 6, 2020 1:56 p.m.

Hi,

clip is also a powerful node, but you need enough curve points for this, but it is quite easy to use (my opinion ofc).

Edited by Aizatulin - Aug. 6, 2020 13:56:30

Attachments:
clip_carve_lines_.hipnc (304.7 KB)


vusta: Member; 555 posts; Joined: Feb. 2017; Offline

Aug. 6, 2020 10:50 p.m.

jsmack
vusta
wouldn't it be simply….any curve>resample>add>delete geo keep points>by group>N 2 ?

True, but the segments won't bend to the curve.

well my interpretation of a dash is a straight segment…but if the requirement is for curvy/bendy dashes…well N could be > 2, still easy.


protozoan: Member; 1643 posts; Joined: March 2009; Offline

Aug. 7, 2020 5:58 a.m.

A simple method would be to use the (I think recently added in H18) group by range SOP. It has a nicer “select X out of Y” user interface and some small nice things like an offset parameter (so you can easily animate your line).

Attachments:
dotted_line.hip (93.5 KB)

Martin Winkler
money man at Alarmstart Germany

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