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Author Topic: putting rocks along a spline  (Read 582 times)

grue

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putting rocks along a spline
« on: April 20, 2021, 10:32:51 PM »
hello. i'm trying to distribute 4 rocks around this path.  i run into trouble when i use "evenly" in the 1s generator.  the verticies that are bunched up in the corner (see attached) squish the rocks so they are very thin like wafers.

i forgot whether or not railclone can just simply evenly distribute along a spline like this?

i have to do it this way b/c it matches exactly the shape of the imported geometry... that's how i created the spline - from create spline from the imported geometry and selected the edges > create shape > corner vertex.

thanks,

ps - anything else just distributes the  rocks along the longer segments and no rocks appear around  these tight corners.

Rokas

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Re: putting rocks along a spline
« Reply #1 on: April 21, 2021, 07:50:05 AM »
Hi grue,
You need to tell RailClone what do You consider "a corner".
Is it any vertex on a spline? Is it any vertex on a spline that has been set as bezier/smooth etc ? You control them in max via quad menu:

 
Once You setup Your spline, You tell RailClone what to consider as corner in rules tab:


Hope this helps.
Rokas

grue

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Re: putting rocks along a spline
« Reply #2 on: April 21, 2021, 04:21:20 PM »
it does and it doesn't.  i think what i'm seeing is that it's dependant on the vertex and not the overall shape? and if there are two or more vertices that are closer together than the size of the object being distributed, it slices the object or squishes it depending on the mode - tile, scale, adaptive.  it doesn't matter what i set the  vertex type to in 3ds  max... i can get some pretty interesting effects ha!  i'm trying toupload a 3dsmax 2020 archive file.

ok - so ideally, i'll get an imported shape in the  form of an  FBX file.  it might be  a landscape island.  what i needed to do was create a shape from that object (create a spline) but that spline has a bunch of vertices.  i've simulated that in the  attached file by subdividing the corners. - oh and imessed with some of the vertex types but generally i would need them all to be corner type to  follow the shape of the imported geometry exactly.

Rokas

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Re: putting rocks along a spline
« Reply #3 on: April 22, 2021, 07:59:42 AM »
Hi. Some of Your spline vertices are corner some are bezier corner



After selecting all and setting them to Corner, style seems to work as expected:



Let us know if You have further problems with it.
Rokas

grue

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Re: putting rocks along a spline
« Reply #4 on: April 22, 2021, 03:47:50 PM »
well. i've attached another scene.  i think the problem was not the  vertex type (as shown in the attached scene) i think  the problem  was using "adaptive" mode and most essentially using the "filet radius".

tile mode seemed to slice up my objects like tomatos
scale and count mode seemed to make sense
but adaptive mode + filet radius ultimately resolved the issues.

you can see where i had both bezier and corner and it still worked.

also, of course, it worked when all vertices were corner.

so in your last screen shot showing the corner vertices vs. the bezier verticies, that was in TILE mode.  and when i opened up this file this morning and switched modes and went back to tile mode it did not result in what you showed. so i don't know why that happened because again - i am able to use a combination of bezier and corner, but it was the adaptive mode that  really fixed it for me. well whatever i  think i'm getting it now. it's one of those things where it was so simple i was probably over thinking of it and not realizing the modes i needed to use?