Using the CURVE AND ARRAY Modifiers to Create Objects Along Paths in Blender!

what's up guys justin here with the cgessentials.com so in today's video we're going to talk about how to take complex objects like chains or ropes and bend them along pads inside a blender let's go ahead and just jump into it all right so what we want to do is we want to start with a curve right because curves contain more path data or information than meshes all right so i'm just going to do a shift a i'm just going to draw a bezier curve and then i am going to tab into edit mode delete the vertices by tapping the x key and then i'm just going to use the draw function in order to draw a curve and i'm going to draw a simple curve like this so it's a very simple curve and i'm going to go ahead and get rid of this very end point right here because it's going to mess everything up so we're just going to select this click x to get rid of it and we're good to go so now we have a curve object right here now let's say that we had something that we wanted to bend along this curve object so the simplest way to do this would be i'm going to just add well we'll call it like a taurus or something like that so we'll just set our 3d cursor to right here i'm just going to do a shift a and i'm going to add a torus right here i'm going to scale it down like this and move it over and so what i want to do is i want to make sure that i've applied my rotation and scale but i want this to follow along this object and so the way that i'm going to do that is i'm actually going to add a modifier to this torus right here so i'm going to jump into modifiers i'm going to add an array modifier right because what i want this to do is i want this to create copies of this object right here and so the way that i want to do that is i want to set our array fit type to fit curve instead of fixed count right because fixed count i can set the number of objects that are in here but it's not going to automatically adjust to fit along this object however if i was to switch this to fit curve right here then what i can do is i can pick my curve out of the list well what this is going to do is this is going to take my object and it's going to create enough copies so that it matches the length of this curve and so what i can do is i can select this usually i like to kind of try to align this with my curve object when i first start off like this so this is basically created enough copies that this is going to go all the way along this curve however what it's not doing is following along yet so what we want to do is we want to add an additional modifier called the curve modifier and so for the curve modifier we want to do the same thing we want to tell this okay we want you to deform this object along this object right here so notice how that worked this is basically taking this and it's deforming it along this curve but it's getting kind of messed up because it's not aligned with the curve right so usually what i like to do is once i kind of get this set up i want to take it and i want to move it so that it's actually following along the curve right here so notice how if i place this in the same 3d space as my curve right here then all of a sudden it's going to follow along that curve nicely and so there's a few things we can do with this so the first thing i want to do is i'm just going to tab into edit mode real quick and what i want to do is i want to rotate my object right because i don't want this to be flat anymore what i want is i want to rotate it 90 degrees like this then if i tap back out notice what i'm getting is these are now standing up so the orientation of our object is going to affect the way that this follows along our curve another thing we can do is we can also adjust our relative offset so notice how when i adjust my relative offset like this these are now going to overlap right here so i do have another problem though which is this doesn't really do what we want it to do right like if we wanted our taurus to act as a chain in here for example right now it's not doing that because these aren't rotating but what we could do is we could tab into edit mode like this and we could actually add by doing a shift d an additional copy of this ring right here and actually before i do that i'm going to do a control z i want to take this and i want to scale it down along the z axis a little bit like this this is an ideal we'll look at a better um we'll look at a better piece of geometry for this in a second but for right now i'm just going to take this and let's go ahead and go into front view go to wireframe view i'm just going to take this whole thing and i'm going to stretch it out a little bit again not an ideal chain link but it's close and so i'm going to go back to material preview mode now notice how i can adjust the offsets in here using this relative offset function right here we're going to use that in a second but the first thing we want to do is we want to select all of this do a shift d to duplicate it and i'm actually going to move this over along the y or x axis right here and then i'm going to take that and i'm going to rotate it like this so notice how when i rotate it like this now my piece of geometry that i have in here before the array modifier is actually made up of two links instead of one well now if i tab out of edit mode notice how this is going to follow along with that curve right here and we may need to apply our rotation and scale on this one i'm not really sure actually we did that in edit mode so i think we're good to go but what i want to do is i want to adjust my relative offset like this well notice how when i adjust my relative offset what that's going to do is that's going to adjust how this object is offset along this curve and if i turn off just for a second my array modifier and my curve modifier just so you can see what this is doing this is basically taking this piece of geometry right here and repeating it using these functions so i'm going to turn these back on there we go and so the cool thing about this is now if i was to go in and select my curve right so if i just take this curve right here and tap into edit mode for a second and actually adjust it so if i move this notice how this chain is going to move along with it so what i can do then is i can use this in order to quickly generate things like chains that actually follow along paths and so there's a lot of different things that you can do with this one thing that i think is particularly interesting is you can also use like more preset assets so for example i'm going to jump into top down view real quick i'm going to add another curve and we'll do the same thing we're just going to get rid of this and add a drawn in curve like this one and we'll go ahead and let's just create a curve that kind of goes in a circle like this so that ought to be good enough i think we're good to go maybe we'll do a little bit of rotation on this last object just to make sure that the curve is smooth but i feel like we're in pretty good shape with this curve well what i'm going to do is i'm actually going to use i'm actually going to use some pre-made assets and so there's actually and so there's actually a really cool add-on in blender called simply wrap pro that you can find in the blender market i will link to it in the notes down below it's a tool more designed to help you generate curves or wraps around character objects so what it does is it basically allows you to select an object draw a path around it and then generate things like things like cloth and other things like that one of the cool things about this is not only does it come with that tool but this version right here contains their wrap asset pack or down below there's also a pack of just the wrap assets without the actual tool here so there's a few different options in here but what i like about this is this actually has some pre-built um it has like a pre-built library in here of things that are designed to follow along a curve right so we can actually drag these in and then use the curve modifier um if we want to draw our own path or you could actually use it with the add-on itself so i'll link to that in the notes down below but that's where i got this and so what i want to do in this situation is i actually want to go to my asset browser and i'm loving the blender asset browser right now what it does is it allows me to just reference that folder and notice how i can find all of these objects in here really quickly well what i want to do is i want to take one of them and i just want to drag it in so let's say for example that we wanted um let's go with the rope right here so if i drag the rope in right here and i'm going to go ahead and align it just for simplicity's sake with my curve but what i can do is i can do the same thing with this object so i can add an array modifier to it and i can fit it to the second bezier curve so fit curve we're going to find bezier curve 0 0 1. so notice how that sets the length and it's just repeating this rope object right here then i can add the curve modifier right here i can pick the bezier curve again and use this in order to follow along with the curve and so you're going to want to align this with your actual curve but notice how once you do that right and you get this in here the right way you've got this really great rope that follows along a curve and basically what it's doing is it's repeating this object over and over again and so there's just some really interesting applications to something like this so if we wanted to do something similar again right so we're just going to move our 3d cursor over here so there's also like a chain of light bulbs in here and so usually i like to go ahead and get that object origin a little closer to the object so i'm going to use origin transform in order to do that real quick but then we could just do the same thing so array modifier fit our length curve modifier fit our object and then align our object but that's got some interesting implicat applications because you could also scale this object up and then do an apply rotation and scale like this so you can use the scale function in order to make objects follow along paths and curves as well all right so leave a comment below if you have any questions i will also link to simply wrap pro which you can check out for wrapping objects in cloth but also for that asset library so i will link to those on this page as always thank you so much for taking the time to watch this and i will catch you in the next video thanks guys

Channel: The CG Essentials

Views: 56,020

Keywords: blender, blender 2.82, blender 2.8, blender modifier tutorials, blender tool tutorial, the blender essentials, the cg essentials, thecgessentials.com, justin geis, justin geis blender, blender 2.9, blender 2.91, blender curve modifier, blender modifier, blender curve and array, blender chain, blender rope, blender chain along path

Id: cyA8gViQVn0

Length: 11min 5sec (665 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 27 2022