Blender 3: Curves and Twisted Cables Tutorial

hello today i want to show you how to create twisted cables using curves with blender and then i'll give you a short preview of my new add-on j-curve tools but i start here with a new project and the default cube that i unfortunately have to delete because i have to create a part for a cable that is made out of four cylinders so we start with one cylinder press shift a and edit and then i open here the operator panel set the radius to 100 and the height to 1000 these are just example values i don't want to use any cap fill type so set it here to nothing in object mode i set the shading to smooth and then i press ctrl and r to add some edge loops because we need a little bit more geometry when this thing is attached to the curve and bend okay nice now i snap the view then i go to edit mode the mesh is selected then i press the g key and hold the ctrl key pressed so that i can move it snapped to the grid okay but i want to have an offset to the center so i set x and y to 105 all right and now to create four of these meshes i add a mirror modifier for the x and y axis like that and then we can apply the modifier okay now we have the part but i have to rotate it so that it is aligned to the x-axis i do this in edit mode with the view snapped press the r key and hold the ctrl key pressed so that it can easily rotate 90 degrees snapped to the grid but it looks a bit boring i add a material that i call cable the color i set to a red tone for example decrease the roughness a bit to give it a more plastic look and feel and i think we can go with that and now comes the magic first i add an array modifier the fit type are set to curve that we don't have at the moment but that's okay and also enable merge all right the next one is a simple deform modifier because we want to have the impression that these parts of the cable are twisted i keep this for the moment as is to the default values and then i go ahead and add the next modifier and this is a curve modifier okay now i think it's time to add a curve so press shift and a go to curve and now you can choose any curve you like i select a path i go to edit mode and select these points and move them by pressing the g key or you can press e to extrude the points just to make the curve look a bit more interesting okay good enough now go to the modifiers and add the curve to the different properties for example here in the curve modifier now the mesh is attached and we already set the fit type to curve and after we assign it here to the curve property you see that the length is fitting perfectly now for the twist i go to the simple deform and adjust the angle i set it here to 500 but play around with it you get the idea if you think that the cables are too large you can still go to edit mode select the mesh press the s key and scale it down as you like then you can go to object mode select the curve switch again to edit mode and then select and move around the points by pressing the g key or press e to extrude the curve so guys at the moment i'm creating an add-on the name is you guessed it j-curve tools with this you can attach meshes easily with one click also multiple meshes here's an example of using a wireframe modifier before the mesh is attached to the curve but this is just a preview the addon is under development but i think the first version will be available next week there's also a curve creator feature so that you can click onto a mesh and the curve is added by pressing the enter key then you can select multiple curves and assign a mesh for example here the cable mesh and then twist it using an angle here in the panel so guys i hope you like it if you do then please don't forget to subscribe follow me on twitter facebook and instagram and if you have any questions then add these here to the comments below thanks for watching thanks for your support and i'll see you soon here on my channel on janna

Channel: Jayanam

Views: 32,244

Keywords: blender curve modeling, blender curves, blender cables, blender curve addon, blender cable addon, blender 2.8, blender, blender tutorial, blender curve tutorial, blender modifiers, blender curve modifier, blender array, blender array modifier, blender simple deform, blender deform modifier, jayanam, blender jayanam, b3d tutorial, curves

Id: k9itENb89Dc

Length: 5min 8sec (308 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 05 2022