In this Blender 2.5 video tutorial we have some fun and show you how to create an easy chain with nothing more than a single link, a array modifier and a curve modifier. Then we take it a bit further and show you the process of using the freshly created chain in a simple scene.
Note: this tutorial uses the official Blender 2.5 Alpha 2 release.
Great tutorial I definitely learned a thing or ten!
that is me on just about all the tutorials
wow i also learnt a lot from this, now i can give my zombies chains
Great Tutorial Jonathan! Combining the arrays with the curve was great. I didn’t realize all these features were working this smoothly in Blender now! I think my favorite thing was “CTRL + Click” to rename something the Outliner!
Kudos Thanks!
Is there any *easy* way to stop the individual chain link meshes becoming deformed? This is always the porblem with this type of array-follows-curve construction, when all you want is the mesh center positions to follow the curve (like roller coaster carriages). It’s only just noticeable in this tutorial, but it’s such a common issue that I wish there was a “Do not deform mesh” check box when the ‘Fit curve’ option is selected in the Array Modifier panel.
…correction: What I meant to say was “I wish there was a “Do not deform mesh” check box in the Curve Modifier dialog”.
I really want an option like that too. It seems like a feature that could be made fairly easily.
Great tut, Thank You. It was nice how you showed different ways to control the chain.
Love the keyboard shortcuts in there too.
Very good as usual. hope you will extend this to a game engine collision chain, it would be very nice. excuse my english, bye.
Jonathan, What codec do you use when capturing your screencasts? there always seems to be compression artifacts in the video. Try using a lossless video format if the capture software supports any, Then you can make a smaller version for download etc.
You can also use dupliframe to avoid distortions.
I love these hints on how to go about things the proper way, to have a maximum of control while terminating the chance of error! Commentary and explanations are always right on target, this way one can really understand why and how things work or don’T. Anyhow I learned countless things from your tutorials and tips, you are a really gifted teacher and 3d artist!!!
Huge thanks and kudos Jonathan, you rock!!!
Will the future maybe allow joining blendercookie memberships via wire transfer (maybe just for full years to keep organisation easy)?..I don’t have paypal or credit card:( but I really want to support this site.
Love Jonathan, and his tuts are top shelf, but does anyone else hear a little bit of Julia Child in his opening “Helloooo!”?
I’ll take my permanent IP ban from BC like a man…
Hey, Thanks for the great tutorial!!!
Just Wondering… Is Kernon Dillon still doing tutorials?
Great Tutorial,
I have request, could you make a tut about making a hemp rope?
Hello Jonathan! Here is my quick tip and a little tro-lo-lo about your tutorial
)
You lose a lot of time to rotate and drag your curve. Almost immediately (as I just seen your tut.) I remembered about the very cool feature of Blender – shrink-wrap modifier!
All that you need to perfectly align your chain (or any other “curvy” thing) it’s just:
1. Make very rough curve over your surface (make a spiral over cilinder or any other things… whatever you want). Then approx. move your chain (with Empty) to the common place of the surface and align chain’s side to it very closely.
2. Add Shrink-wrap modifier to the Curve (your path) and set the Offset value of Shrink-wrap modifier just by looking on the chain and modified curve.
3. Now (unfortunately shrink-wrap can’t give us desired path immediately) just make sure that you have a desired form of your chain’s path. Because further editing will be harder than now.
4. And (with selected Curve) for now press Alt-C (Mesh from Curve) and Alt-C (-> Curve) again.
5. Apply this corrected curve to your chain as it’s path. Adjust chain’s and Empty’s positions to align your surface well.
I think it will give not bad results in most of cases.
And of course you can edit this curve (using Proportional Editing mode – it’s like a magnet, if you’re new to Blender).
Anyway, thanks for your tutorials Jonathan!
Please, make some cool tut on making good looking procedural materials: old rough black metal (I couldn’t make a good one), procedural fabrics (using nodes)… It will be really challenging!
Nice tutorial, pretty similar to your Christmas light tutorial actually. I also appreciated that you showed how you set up your scene.
It would be great if objects in Blender could be made to behave as solids so that when moving them about they wouldn’t merge into each other. Is this possible now or might it be possible in future versions?
this is a fantastic tut. that you so much. helping me a lot since im just starting in blender. keep up the fantastic work!
omg, i forgot to comment on here! (commented on Vimeo)
well, this is an awesome tutorial, Jonathan
the Studio Backdrop is really interesting…and the keyboard shortcuts I learned are totally useful.
also talked about this tutorial on my blog!
awesome
Hi , thanks for the tutorial. One thing I think is important to stress is the correct scale being used for all three elements of chain mesh, empty and curve. I was scaling my chain mesh in object mode and not edit mode after creating it on a large scale. Thus the empty with a differing scale causes all sorts of fun. Even when that is corrected (scale empty to match chain) you still get problems later on when adding a curve. It bends fine but setting the array to Curve Length then fails either way to short requiring huge scaling to see anything.
In your video you used F6(?) in edit mode on the torus to change the parameters of the torus. This does not seem to work in 2.5 Alpha2 release and the latest build 28343 on the Mac. What is the undelying function call to get this?
Hi Mike,
The F6 command brings up the Operator panel, which it also available at the bottom of the tool bar. This is only available immediately after you add an object. Doing anything like entering Edit Mode or transforming the object will remove the panel.
-Jonathan
Thanks Jonathan. I did not realise it had to be done immediately.
To make the chain a little more realistic slight offsets in the relative x,y,z boxes plus making the empty rotation a few degrees off 90 gives it a nice effect if not under tension in the scene.
Nice tutorial, but how would you animate the chain?
hello johnathan. love the tut.
for some reason when i make the empty, it wants to keep making a size of the next link of chain relative to before it was scaled down (i just scaled down the empty to match)
would love to know why this happens. is it a setting i hadnt selected, or just weird coding?
Hi rogueusagi,
I had the same problem (see above) until I worked out the hard way that the array modifier uses the scale AND x,y,z in its computation of the copies. When creating the mesh you want duplicated its importatnt to get it to the correct size you want in EDIT mode so the scale remains at 1,1,1. I tried scaling both the empty and mesh in object mode to match and this works ….except when you come to get the length to match a curve length ..which is when the scale difference between the curve and the object shows up. Using scaled mesh, empty with low scale values may lead to offsets showing up over large repeats due to round off errors creeping in.
This scale differnce can lead to usful and interesting effects. Try a tourus at 1,1,1 scale and an empty at the same with say fixed count of 30 (no xyz offsets) Scale the empty and see the copies fly out and increase (or in and decrease) Adding an ofset and rotation can produce good effects.
Thank you Johnathan good tut and fun.
Mike,
I knew what was happening, just not how. The tutorial and post comments combined are powerful.
I had the same problems – Thank you for your tips. Same issue. My curve was huge before it produced more chain links
Go Blender Cookie !
yeah. i thought i found a workaround, then i got to the curve, and a few of us seem to already know that result. thank you very much for your assistance in this matter, so i can finish my chain for some animation into and after effect composite.
once again. fantastic website, wonderful tuts, and helpful community.
rogueusagi, it’s not a weird coding. Just normal things. Be sure that the scale of Empty is 1, 1, 1 to not allow this. If you want to scale all chain – Make Parent your chain to Empty (other direction gives loop cycle which is annoying at View).
yeah, i didnt really think it was a coding issue, but rather just something i was overlooking. im just starting out in blender, so im very much learning what to look for and whatnot. thank you for the advice, i will try that as soon as i get the chance
yep. i did miss a step as i suspected. when i scaled my torus chain link down, i needed to be inside of edit mode while i did it. missed that step. now i have no problem with empties or anything else like i was having. hopefully this will help anybody in the future. now to animate this for after effects… hmmmmmm.
thanks to the fantastic community here for all help. between the tuts and the comments, powerful knowledge is obtained
Look into forums on Blenderartists.org and you’ll find even more
this is mine:)
a choose another perspective, and it has a little noise, i don’t know why:(
http://img340.imageshack.us/img340/1399/chain2.png
Clecle, note that your rings are floating in air. They aren’t touching neighbours. Noise is just because light’s (or raytrace in World tab) samples number. Increase it and all will be fine.
[URL=http://img3.imageshack.us/i/chain11.png/][IMG]http://img3.imageshack.us/img3/1661/chain11.png[/IMG][/URL]
This is my method. Not a good render but I can’t find better. Try this way and maybe you’ll like it (you’ll find it here in comments – just scroll up).
Wonderful, thanks a million. Definitely learned a lot!
Hi and thanks for the tutorial. But I have a problem. I made a curve around the pilar, but when I “link” the chain to it, it is two times bigger and in different position than the curve. And I really don’t know why
It sounds like you need to press control + A to apply the location and the scale. For the curve modifier to work properly the relative sizes are important. To avoid these kind of issues always try and doing the transformations in edit mode so as to not change the base scale.
Thank you. I will remember that (it’s the first time I am modeling something in Blender…).
hi i got a mac and the F buttons don’t work, how can i find the operator then?
I’ve searched and found nothing.
Thx
Hi Jonathan,
Your tutorials are really great, and are really helping me figure out my way around blender. I was wondering if you, or maybe someone else could help me. I have been trying to make the chain, I get up to about eight minutes in, up to the part were you place a curve onto the chain. I hit tab to go into edit mode to move the chain around, and instead of the whole chain being selected, the only object that allows me to highlight it is the original link. The very first one I made. I have deleted everything twice now, and started from scratch to figure out where I have gone wrong, and still end up with the same outcome. What did I do or not do, and what can I do? Thanks for any help you can give!
Hi Kristin, could you perhaps submit a screenshot of your chain setup to support@cgcookie.zendesk.com ? I’ll be happy to try and help you then!
-Jonathan
sure! and thank you!
It’s great to read something that’s both enjoyable and provides pargatmisdc solutions.
Great tutorial and actually the first I am doing in Blender (besides the introduction to Blender tutorials). While following the tutorial I got the problem that I cannot seem to zoom to the chain in detail anymore. At a certain point I cannot zoom further to the chain anymore… Any ideas what I might have changed (by a mistaken shortcut or so) that has an influence on the ability to zoom in the 3D viewport?
Thanks,
Lars.
solved.
Hi there again,
I have another question: Is it possible to have iterating colors for the chain links? For instance: first chain link white, second one red, next again white, next again red,…
I googled already and searched through the Blender User Manual, but did not find anything. The onyl thing I found is a unstable and unofficial patch called “Advanced Array Modifier”: http://www.blendernation.com/2011/03/05/advanced-arrays-in-blender/
But this is not included in Blender yet and I really would prefer sticking to the original (vanilla) built version of blender.org.
Does anyone here know how to achieve alternating colors on an array (modifier)?
Thanks a lot,
Lars.
Just in case someone else like me may need this:
As indicated in my submitted user images I managed to have alternating colors in my (second) chain. I achieved this by editing the torus: duplicate it, rotate the clone and assign different materials (colors) to the two toruses. I then had to remove the 90* rotation on the empty path and adjust the offset on the array modifier.
I can’t find the link to the studio setup tutorial that you talked about? Could you let me know where to find it?
Very Nice tutorial! Keep up with the good work!
When using Ctrl 1,2,or 3 ect. you actually can delete the sub-surf modifier using Ctrl 0.
Hey Johnathan,
I’m trying to get a “curve Path” added,but when I see the name of the “Curve Path” instead of saying curve like yours it says “NurbsPath”. I do have the option of the Curve Path but every time I click on it, it brings up a NurbsPath instead. could you help me fix this promblem.
Hi Zech,
The NurbsPath is still correct. The name of the object was changed a while back. You’re good to go
-Jonathan