Comments on: Lathe modifier by Campbell Barton

By: blenderbender

blenderbender — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 12:10:04 +0000

You can go to edit mode and use spin with Degr 360 to get the same result… I think thats the reason why this modifier is gone.

By: blendmaster

blendmaster — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 17:59:15 +0000

whatever happened to this? is it still in development? it would be a great addition to 2.5

By: Charlie

Charlie — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 13:11:52 +0000

Picked this old thread link up from the recent post about Voumetrics (2008).

I wondered what happened to this modifier?

By: Freakydude

Freakydude — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 07:10:04 +0000

I like spin/spindup, I use it all the time when modeling mechanical things…. well pipeworks and all little nuts and bolts etc…

You make some good points Matt, but why are those tools lumbering dinosaurs? the alternative is stacking up piles of modifiers. if you don't want them you can apply and keep applying. are the modifiers, really interchangeable(i mean you can change the order and applying them without it distorting other modifiers such as edgesplit or subsurf or or, armature?

By: poked

poked — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 14:32:46 +0000

brilliant stuff , I hate spin duplicate and all that ,its too confusing a simple modifier is great

By: atm-matt

atm-matt — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 21:48:00 +0000

I am able to do all that with the basic revolve but having it parametric is amazing!!!

nice tut.

By: Matt

Matt — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 02:54:18 +0000

Freakydude: The advantage of having a specific modifier is that it's much simpler, quicker and easier to use. Most of the time, when you're just trying to get work done quickly, it's much nicer to draw the shape add the modifier, then boom- it's all set up with no fuss, no adding empties, no hunting for object names, no trying to accurately set up the right rotation.

One of the other advantages of things like the modifier stack or node trees, is that's it's not just monolithic big tools that try to do everything – you have smaller tools that you can assemble yourself in interesting ways.

And yes, Spin/SpinDup and friends are horrible old lumbering dinosaurs and should be cast into the tar pits when this modifier is in.

By: Gustav

Gustav — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 23:34:54 +0000

Great! Can't wait to try

Just a quick note to your max's vs blender's lathe comparison

In 3ds MAX you CAN set the axis with an object, if you go down to the axis-sublevel you can rotate, move, align or even link the rotation-axis to anything in the scene. You can also also animate the rotation axis (everything is animatable in 3ds max, with a few exceptions).

It's not possible to add lathe to 3d objects do (only works with 2d shapes) =)

Keep it up

By: epat

epat — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 22:56:49 +0000

@Ideasman42:
Just a thought – but it might be more useful for animations if "no. of steps" was changed to "angle between steps" – that way (and if the "degrees" button was able to be IPO'd), we could do sorta 'autolathing' effects in animations. With the current controls sceme, we would have to do some complicated pyDrivers calculation and adjustment of "no. of steps" at the same time as increasing the degrees of rotation or the animation would look inconsistent since the mesh resolution gets worse when "degrees" is increased if the number of steps stays the same.

HQ normals looks quite useful btw…
-epat. ;)

By: Ideasman42 (Campbell Barton)

Ideasman42 (Campbell Barton) — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 17:56:49 +0000

Freakydude – thats an option,

The array tool that the modifier was based on, wrote in python and that supported skinning.
I intended the one in C to do that also, but artificer didnt get around to it.

Skinning in the array modifier could be nice all the same… 2 reasons NOT to make this a part of the array modifier are…
1) Not discoverable. Users probably wont find it, seems kind of hidden functionality.
2_ even though it would work, youd need to do some math to get a full revolution so as to rotate the empty 2deg for 180 slices for instances.
3) Array is already a fairly large C function, This would make it a lot bigger, of course they could be made into 2 functions accessible by the same UI. but again, if they are 2 tools, no reason to lump them into 1. merging into the array modifier could also loose some of the optimizations that are possible when its separate

We know the modifier UI will need to be Modified to cope with more.. dont worry..

btw, I have working implimentations for a slice modifier
http://members.optusnet.com.au/cjbarton/test__.png
http://members.optusnet.com.au/cjbarton/test_.png

as well as some more that are working but not finished 100%, wire modifier, blur, fakeAO and..

HQ Normals,
http://members.optusnet.com.au/cjbarton/normal_algo.gif