Oodles of Noodles - A part of Honki's helpful thread of uselessness.

[Honki]

Greetings.

Today I will show you how to recreate a simple object using the long forgotten technique of Lofting.

Software: 3ds Max (Version 8 used in this demonstration, however may be done with any version/software that supports lofting).
Level: Beginner
Techniques Covered: Splines; Extended Primitives (Torus Knot); Basic Mathematics

[Honki]

Begin by creating a Torus Knot extended primitive.

[Honki]

Change the P and Q values to create more loops, however maintain a continuous knot. You will need to add more segments to maintain a smooth profile.

I used the following settings.

[Honki]

Top view.

As you can see, the settings I entered have created 6 loops around the center of the knot. You can add more, or less, if you want.

[Honki]

What we need to do now, is find a way of converting the torus knot to a spline. This will act as the path for our loft.

Add an 'Edit Poly' modifier to the torus knot and select the 'Edge' sub-object.

[Honki]

Select an edge along the direction of the torus knot (any will do, just not a cross-section edge).

Click the 'Loop' button under the edge sub-object rollout. You will see the edge selection literally has looped around the torus knot, and will create a continuous, unbroken edge.

[Honki]

Once the selection is made, click on the 'create shape' dialogue button.

Ensure 'smooth' is selected and press ok.

[Honki]

You have now created a continuous spline, in the shape of the torus knot.
You may now hide the torus knot, as we don't need it anymore.

Don't delete it. That's bad practice. You should just hide objects that are relevant to your scene. You can then come back to them later if need be.

Trust me. I learned this the hard way.

[Honki]

This is what we are left with.

[Honki]

The next step is to create a shape to loft around our path.

You can use any shape you like. But I like noodles, so I'm gonna draw some circles.

Make them nice and small, close together, and different in size. You won't need too many. 6 - 8 should do the trick.

[Honki]

Under the modify panel, select one of the circles. Right click on the stack object and convert the circle to an editable spline.

[Honki]

With your new editable spline circle selected, you need to attach the other circles you created to it.

Under the editable spline rollout, click the 'attach' button.

With the 'attach' button highlighted, click on the remaining circle objects.

[Honki]

Your group of circles, should now be a single editable spline.

[Honki]

Now our scene contains 2 objects.

A continuous spline created from our torus knot, and a group of circles.

[Honki]

Now we're gonna loft 'em together.

Select the group of circles.

Under the 'create' panel, go to the 'compound objects' sub menu, and select loft.

Click the 'Get Path' button, and select your 'Knot Spline' object.