Curved Scrim Challenges

[wctctech]

Hello,

I am trying to represent a curved white scrim in a show I am designing. So a couple of questions. The show is projecting images onto the scrims. I have all the images and i am hoping to "paste" them onto the screens to send to the LX designer. ideally I would love them to be be somewhat translucent. Is there anyway to map the jpg or bitmap to a curved surface.

Chris

[MattG]

I have had this come up and I am sure there is some easier way to do it, but for me thus far this has been one of the easier ways I have found to do it.

With me it is typically with sections of curved trusses. So say I am looking at hanging something off the upstage cord of a 30' OD half circle truss. I draw a circle with a 30' dia. then trim it to only be 180 deg. In my object info I check my arc length or whatever it the distance you need to know is and keep this handy. Then I duplicate it and convert the two to nurbs. I then ungroup and take one nurbs and change the z to like 35' or whatever your scrim height is. I go to the loft tool in my 3d modeling and loft those two together and now i have a surface the shape I want. Then I take the number I set aside earlier and know that is my length so if your scrim was 30' high by 30' wide I would make a texture to represent that in illustrator or photoshop or something making your logo centered in that area and apply it.

I am sure there is something easier, please enlighten me if anyone has some suggestion.

Matt

[C. Andrew Dunning]

Chris and Matt -

Actually, there IS something easier. Go to http://www.landrudesign.com/VWPlugIns.htm and download our curtain tool. Install per directions. You'll end up w. a command that is used to transform arcs into curtain objects - with adjustable settings. Applying a texture to the curtain will map the image to the curtain - at full width. One of the options is "Simple 3D" - which will create a flat (non-pleated but curved) surface that should work beatifully for what you're needing.

As to translucency, just give your image a little transparency in the texture editor box.

[BHunter]

Chris and Matt- you HAVE to get that plug in. It rocks at generating curved soft goods. It's also better (IMO) than the curtain tool for regular straight goods.

You won't regret it .

Bob Hunter

315 Design Solutions

Atlanta, Ga.

[Cris with no H]

There ARE, however, screen re-draw issues with your curtain too, Andrew.

Strictly speaking modeling, here, for a flat curved surface, I'd simply extrude an arc or polyline of the right shape to the right height from plan view. An arc will end up a half-cylinder shape when the extrude is filled, unfortunately, so using the Extract tool from the modeling toolset will let you take off just the curved shape. You can then delete the original extrude. Using polyline, though, avoids this problem.

[C. Andrew Dunning]

Chris -

What issues? And, what version? I've got things working cleanly @ my end through VW09.

Drop me a line off-list, if you'd like...