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Plugin should be needs only if you want some "parametric" setup. If you want to create just static object, internal command edge to spline is enough. For example. 1, Create cube 100*100*100 2, Add cloner (grid mode, 3*3*3 with size 100*100*100) result is 27 cubes perfectly lay each other and "share" the same edges 3, rightclick on Cloner/ Current State to Object 4, middleclick on newly created cloner null object 5, rightclick / Connect Objects and Delete with first step you convert parametric cloner into separate geometries, with second you´ll select all newly created geometries and with last step you make just single polygonal object which contain also "inner" cage (all edges from single cubes are still there) 6, select newly created single object, rightclick / Optimize 7, switch to edge mode, select all edges, rightclick / edge to spline 8, drag out spline from child position of geometry object 9, hide everything instead of spline to see nice spline cage in viewport In these steps you optimize mesh, select all edges (Ctrl+A in viewport in edge mode) and create spline cage 10, Add connect object as parent of spline cage 11, Add FFD deformer as child of spline cage (use fit to parent command to adjust FFD size exactly to spline cage size) 12, In point mode with selected FFD deformer select all FFD deformer points and deselect all 8 corner points only 13, Scale them to your needs. Connect object make sure/optimize spline cage as whole, not all spline segments separated. FFD cover/influence whole spline cage and with selected control points and scale deform spline cage as you wish. you could see deformed spline cage is "linear". Select spline cage object in Object manager and change intermediate points from Adaptive to Uniform. (You could also adjust number of intermediate points if deformed cage is not as smooth as you want) timespace.c4d

Hi @bezo, thank you so much for the incredibly detailed guide! I finally got it to work by following your step-by-step instructions. Your explanation was essential for understanding the process. When you say "create just a static object," does that mean it's not possible to animate the deformation? Is there no way to achieve this using an animatable parameter of the FFD? If not, would there be another way to animate this deformation, perhaps using a Spherical Field? Thanks again for your help! Eudes

That can be a feasible (and very sensible) way to start when you need a very specific (and especially numerically based) corner radii, but what you are actually doing there is defeating the point of SDS in 2 ways; firstly you are forcing yourself right from the outset to be at much much higher density than you need (which is rather contrary to the whole concept of live subdivision !), and secondly by manually / unnecessarily doing work that should be left to SDS itself. So we actually want very minimal topology at the corners, and should be using the type of corner loop termination (box corners vs inset style ones) and distance of the neighbouring control loops to the main corner vertices to directly control the rounding on each corner, rather than defining it in topology. There ARE times when you NEED to define corners in topology, but this is not one of them, primarily because the rounding you seek is at a comparatively smaller scale than the overall topo density you need to describe the form and to allow it to bend evenly. CBR

Hi CBR Thanks for confirming that for me, I should have realised sooner that it was something to do with the isoline, Ive not tried the filter thing yet, but comforting to know its a bug, I dont model very often and have to relearn all the things Ive forgotten 🙂 Nice topo is not something that comes naturally to me, so its good to see how it should be done. In this case I was after the specific corner radius's to match the spline I had been using, so I started out placing a disc on each corner to get the radius, then chopped those up and did the outline first before filling in the middle. Many thanks Deck

I can confirm that until very recently there was a bug where having isoline editing on but the SDS cage hidden in filters menu was not working, and indeed that seems to be what is going on with yours - we can simply see both the isolines and the base cage. As you have spotted, it will be resolvable simply by disabling isoline editing. And I can also reassure you there is nothing wrong with your actual mesh, other than a few easily solvable tris that probably don't matter if left ! However, if I was doing that Sub-D I would go for much lower resolution in the base mesh, and all the quads, like so... We have enough topo here to handle a fairly decent level of bending at the base mesh level, but if not, we can run the bend deformer at the same level as the SDS and bend that instead. CBR

New around here and back in C4D land after a VERY long break. I was an avid Modo user and also I'm a former Foundry employee from back around the time of the acquisition 😅 although I was a designer, not a product manager but I do still have a bunch of friends there and sadly when development stopped, some of my friends got laid off. The TL;DR of why modo probably isn't around is its small foothold in professional markets. It's the best modeller out there, nothing else even comes close. There's one or two people in most VFX studios and they're generally very happy and very productive. But Modo in its early days had a huge number of hobbyist users. Post buyout, they started leaving in droves, in part initially due to the Foundry wanting to push it further into VFX (Which didn't work) and then they pivoted to a number of product design contracts and focused a lot of development there. The hobbyists initially frustrated and then priced out, they left mostly for blender. A lot of professional users stuck around, but those relationships often became more strained over time. Modo was never the most stable application and it's had a rocky history with stability depending on release. Some might bring some awesome features, but it also might crash 10 times a day. A lot of them left too. In terms of features though, there's a lot of incorrect info out there about Modo - it had a rep for only being a modeller, which just wasn't true, it had a bunch of awesome features: Dynamics, some pretty decent mograph/replication tools, sculpting and painting (About on par with boy paint FWIW), a kickass (But CPU only) renderer, super intuitive material workflow, some fairly decent animation tools and some crazy customisation capabilities. But it was very much a jack of all trades and none of those aspects were strong enough compared to the modelling. It was either "it only does modelling right?" or "Every feature apart from modelling sucked" the truth as always was somewhere in the middle. It covered a lot of the same ground as Blender, with a lot of the same weaknesses - it just cost much more 😂 I imagine unless you were a serious modeller and super committed it became a very hard sell. I've now made the decision to move the bulk of my work back to C4D, as I'm not a huge fan of Blender and hate Autodesk with a passion. I've always had a soft spot for C4D and it was my main package for about 5 years before Modo. I'm not a super serious modeller and most of what I do is product shots and mograph adjacent things. I'll still be doing my modelling in Modo for the foreseeable though, they've issued a 10 year EOL license that anyone can get ahold of. My commercial license runs out next month. ...that was quite a long TLDR, but someone might find it interesting IDK.