Cineversity

Hi there, I’m new to c4d and though I have experience on autodesk products. I do find modelling in c4d quite challenging. In this exemple, I want to extrude a spline derived form 2 ellipses but the extrusion doesn’t have caps even though they are ticked. It’ll be great if I could have some guidance as to how:

- have caps
- add volume
- unrelated to the extrude, the spline was originated from the “connect and delete” of 2 ellipses and vertical/horizontal splines splitting the ellipse rings in 4 quarters. The connect and delete results in a spline with the bottom right quarter missing. If anyone can explain it’ll be great.

Thanks

Laurent

Hi Laurent,

The first thing that comes to mind that the Spline> Object> “Close Spline” check-box was not active at one point.

The image shows that there are connections between the two shapes.

What the images tell me that there is more that went wrong. Please share, if possible, the project file; images are minimal. A project file must be zipped to be attached here. If you use cloud services (for security reasons), please only Dropbox, Amazon, Google, Apple, Adobe, and Wetransfer. Please never shorten the URL.

Please have a look below.

The Circle Spline has an option for Ellipse and for Ring.

The Extrude will produce Caps if the Spline is a fit and the parameters are set.

All the best

Hi Dr Sassi,

Thank you for your reply. Attached is a photo of what I’m trying to achieve, which I can do easily on Fusion 360 (Autodesk) extruding a quarter of an ellipse ring, then using a loft along a path of 2 profiles of quarter ellipse ring.

I was trying to use the same methodology on c4d building part ellipse rings, extruding and then lofting. Though I have spent a lot of time on tutorials, I didn’t manage to do model it.

Here is the link for the file, it’s just a practice file

https://www.dropbox.com/s/axcsxn8oenq85uz/practice.c4d?dl=0.

This is what I did

2 circle primitives to generate 2 the 2 ellipses
4 splines (segments) to link them
Connect object and delete the 6 splines
Extrude / Lathe resulting splines but results were not what I wanted.

Thanks for your help

Laurent

Hi Laurent,

Please have a look at the file below.

I used an Arc object, set to ring. Made it editable [c]. Scaled the inner and outer “curve”. Then cut very close to the lower end (point mode, knife [M~K].
The lower two-point were then moved down.

This spline is a child of a Lathe object, set to 180º

(I could have also used just a spline, drawn in the needed shape, and then used the Outline function to create the profile.)

Cheers

Thank you Dr Sassi.

I’ll explore the line cut option

Regarding drawing direct with splines, I find it difficult to apply specific dimensions while drawing real time. Would you have any tips.

Thanks again

Laurent

Hi Laurent,

Sorry for the delay, but a Covid-19 shot wasted me for the last two days.

There are many options to guide you in creating splines. For example, draw roughly what you need, select the point (or points) and use the coordinate manager to adjust those.

Perhaps set some Null objects into specific places and use the Snapping to get the perfect shape.

On the other side, if you like to drive the whole thing by numbers, draw your spline and then go to the Structure Manager> Points.

An alternative would be to have a background image as a guide and use this.

Optional is Tools> Guides to prepare your work.

If you would share what data you have to start or what do you need at the end, I’m happy to look into it.

Cheers

Good morning Dr Sassi

No worries, I had the same reaction felt really rough but didn’t feel anything for the second jab! Hope you’re better.

Thanks so much for these tips, very useful. I have what I need now.

Regarding the loft generator, I don’t think it can loft on a path. Would you have another similar generator that would loft on a path?

Otherwise I have couple more questions abode the material node editor, is it better I open a new thread?

Many thanks

Laurent

Thanks a lot, Laurent; I think I’m close to being back to my everyday standard.

The Loft is taking the Spline shape, but it does not reflect its vertices [point] information like the Sweep would do with the path and profile.
Please have a look here:
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/x4tHAOpjSldFife3vipV5dWkQ1kj2gppPfncTnmhh2W

It only takes the first point (#0) of each spline and the sequence’s direction. Since it can combine all kinds of shapes, it can’t rely on the point structure.

I hope that helps.

Yes, please use for new themes a new thread, … much easier for anyone to find and read through.

Cheers