[Plugin] Shape Bender Beta

twistedtwin

Thank you Gaieus!!!!

I must have spent a good hour messing about with the plug ins....I should have asked sooner!!

Everything works fine now...and it's brilliant!!!

Thanks again

Gaieus

Cool. Next time DO ask!

Chris Fullmer

@gilliganu said:

I suspect it's an issue of which way your lettering is rotated.

My text test case is quite similar to your bar example, except in my case, the ends of the curved bar are parallel to the original bar! here is a photo:
http://z.gillie.us/gillie/shapebender Please click the link
(sorry, my site has hotlink protection, so in-lineing won't work)

Also, the bad bent cylinder is there, too. The curve is where the cylinder was supposed to be bent to.

Maybe you'll find time to download my test case, soon.

Gilligan

Hi Gillian, A few things I noted. It looks like you are modeling sideways. In SU, the red and gree axis form the ground. The blus should face upwards. Unless you modified that purposely, it looks you are working sideways, and that will mess up shapebender for sure.

The other thing it could be is possibly the start and end edges do not line up correctly. If you attach the model to this forum I'll take a look at it and see if I can get it to work. Thanks,

Chris

GilliganU

@chris fullmer said:

Hi Gillian, A few things I noted. It looks like you are modeling sideways. In SU, the red and gree axis form the ground. The blus should face upwards. Unless you modified that purposely, it looks you are working sideways, and that will mess up shapebender for sure.

The other thing it could be is possibly the start and end edges do not line up correctly. If you attach the model to this forum I'll take a look at it and see if I can get it to work. Thanks,

Chris

Thanks, Chris! Rotating everything so that the blue axis is up solved the problem. I've only used ShetchUp for a few hours and I'm not very familiar with many of it's conventions. I'm checking out several CAD programs to see which best meets my needs. It does seem curious, to me, that if the shape bender can follow arbitrary lines in 3D, why the orientation of the model matters.

I can still get it to fail by hitting the up or down arrows once or twice, after the first bent shape appears, and before return. I have uploaded picture and the test case on my website: http://z.gillie.us/shapebender/ IT's the third picture: Bent Text Two. Though teh problem seems easy enough to duplicate, the web page includes a link to a SketchUp file, under the image.

Gilligan

August

Hi Gillian,

I suspect that you don't have a complete mental model of what and how Shape Bender is doing what it does, and that is the source of your confusion both in conceptualizing how to apply it to your task and your problems with using it.

I downloaded your SKP file and attempted what you had apparently been attempting.

(For clarity I try to use consistent terminology: Source Object, Guide Line, Target Curve, and Result Group. That way, if they are shortened to Object, Line, Curve, and Group, it can still be unambiguous.)

I tried to bend the undistorted "Enter Text" as the Source Object using the line immediately under it as the Guide Line and the curved line nearest to it as the Target Curve. Here is the result, before pressing Return to accept it:
[attachment=0:3212bbj0]Trying to duplicate bentText2[/attachment:3212bbj0]
(I have the Shape Bender Toolbar floating in the middle of the drawing area.)

As you might infer from the image, I had no problems. I opened your file, I clicked the Source Object, I clicked the tool button in the toolbar, I clicked the Guide Line, I clicked the Target Curve, I captured the image. Note that Start and End are still indicated for both the Guide Line and the Target Curve and the proposed Result Group is still green because I have not pressed Return yet.

Here are a couple of pieces I wrote a while back that might help:

@august said:

It works as if the Shape Bender picks up the object and the guide line at the same time and then bends, stretches, or shrinks the guide line to fit the target curve, bending, stretching, or shrinking the object along with whatever it does to get the guide line to fit onto the target curve.

Depending on the shape of the target curve, the size of the bending object, and the distance between the guide line and the bending object, some parts of the object may be compressed while other parts may be stretched. But regardless of stretching or compressing of the object, one segment of the bent guide line is created for each segment of the target curve.

Feb 26, 2010, Page 25 of this thread.

@unknownuser said:

Shape Bender slices up the Original Object with vertical slices, according to how many segments there are in the Target Curve. One of the keys to predicting how it is going to work is that it will keep those slice faces vertical. It will rotate them in the Red-Green plane, but the slices will stay vertical.

The result is that for vertical curves Shape Bender projects the shape onto the curve vertically, for horizontal curves, it fans out and compresses, which is typically what you expect.
Apr 27, 2010, Page 30 of this thread.

The above description of how Shape Bender works provides the answer to your question:

@gilliganu said:

... It does seem curious, to me, that if the shape bender can follow arbitrary lines in 3D, why the orientation of the model matters. ...

The orientation of the model is critically important because that determines how the Source Object gets sliced up so that it can be bent. Most problems with Shape Bender seem to come from people assuming how an object "ought" to bend that unconsciously includes internal stretching/shrinking that is does not match how Shape Bender slices up the Source Object. That is how the orientation of the model matters.

Unfortunately, right now the only "manual" for Shape Bender is this discussion thread, and right now that is 532 posts in 36 pages. A while back I offered to Chris that I would collect the best stuff from the thread and edit it into a manual, but I haven't gotten to it yet. I hope the above bits aid in clarifying things for you. If not, there's probably something from someone else in here somewhere (the Search This Topic tool at the top of the page may be of use).

On that topic, I was unable to duplicate your bending of the text, where part of the final "t" went off at an angle. It looks a lot like the trouble you were having with the cylinder earlier. If you can duplicate the problem, I would like to know what you did, because if I ever put that SB manual together, it would be useful to know what people have trouble with and what they are thinking when they approach this tool "cold".

I hope this helps,
August

InterArchi

Hello Chris, Hello everybody , I'm new in this forum, and the first plugin I wanted to learn is the "" Shape Bender '' but I cant find the link for downloading the " NEWEST VERSION of the plugin, Would you please upload a link for me please ?
Cause the first version seems to be not working for me

Gaieus

Hi hichem and welcome!

Indeed the one attached to the first post is the newest version. This plugin is a bit tricky to use (thus is is still called "Beta"). Are you sure you are doing everything right (or installed the script correctly)?

GilliganU

@august said:

Hi Gillian,

The above description of how Shape Bender works provides the answer to your question:

@gilliganu said:

... It does seem curious, to me, that if the shape bender can follow arbitrary lines in 3D, why the orientation of the model matters. ...

The orientation of the model is critically important because that determines how the Source Object gets sliced up so that it can be bent. Most problems with Shape Bender seem to come from people assuming how an object "ought" to bend that unconsciously includes internal stretching/shrinking that is does not match how Shape Bender slices up the Source Object. That is how the orientation of the model matters.

Unfortunately, right now the only "manual" for Shape Bender is this discussion thread, and right now that is 532 posts in 36 pages.

That does explain a few things. My erroneous assumption was that shape bender sliced up the Source Object by planes perpendicular to the reference line. Which is only true if the Source Object is oriented appropriately. It would be nice if the required orientation was documented.

@august said:

On that topic, I was unable to duplicate your bending of the text, where part of the final "t" went off at an angle. It looks a lot like the trouble you were having with the cylinder earlier. If you can duplicate the problem, I would like to know what you did, because if I ever put that SB manual together, it would be useful to know what people have trouble with and what they are thinking when they approach this tool "cold".

I hope this helps,
August

The stretched out "t" was generated by hitting the down arrow, just after the 'proposed' bent object is displayed, and before the return key. The up arrow works fine, by swapping the ends of the reference object relative to the reference line before bending it. In this case, the text will read backwards. I can't recall what the down arrow is supposed to do, though I remember reading about it somewhere. It's not on the help menu.

It is unfortunate that many programmers don't feel the need to document their code. It makes it very difficult for others to use it. I write a fair bit of code myself and I always document it. It is often just for myself, as I often forget rarely used features a few years later. In the programmers defense, many users refuse to read documentation when it is provided. Many won't even read a single line explaining what to put in a box on a web form! An issue I've faced many times.

Gilligan

August

Hi Gilligan,

My apologies, I just discovered I've been leaving out the second G in your name.

August

InterArchi

@gaieus said:

Hi hichem and welcome!

Indeed the one attached to the first post is the newest version. This plugin is a bit tricky to use (thus is is still called "Beta"). Are you sure you are doing everything right (or installed the script correctly)?

Thanks brother for answering me, I guess I have fixed that out, the only problem is that I didnt copy the Jpeg files into the directory of plugins thus, the plugin didnt work properly any way thank you very much for your help,
If I need anything arround, I will call for your help, I have just discovered this forum and I'm really learning from you guys I do really appreciate your efforts

Chris Fullmer

Good, glad you got it working.

The main problem with this plugin is that it was written by a no good hack of a programmer. Everytime this plugin works it surprises me. I love this plugin and I'm certainly proud of it. But it could use a major re-writing to get it to be more stable and more versatile.

Thanks for using it,

Chris

Allen Brown

Hey Guys,

Sorry if this has been covered already, but I am a complete noob with SU, and have never used scripts.

First of all, I am using the free version 7.0.10247.

I first downloaded progressbar.rb. This is where my first problem starts; I unzipped it to my desktop, but I don't know what to do with it from there. Double clicking on it brings up a window asking me what program to use to open it.

Can someone point me in the right direction?

Thanks,

Allen

Rich O Brien

Hi Allen,

First off, welcome to SCF!

I noticed you're using SU 7.0.1, Google released 7.1 awhile back it's alot faster, give it a go..

As for plugins, Gaieus posted a little tutorial here

Basically all plugins are placed in your plugins folder...

Program Files>Google>Google Sketchup 7>Plugins

Allen Brown

Thanks Rich. I got both the progress bar rb & the shape bender rb's copied into my plugins folder. It appears to have worked somewhat, because I have the shape bender tool on my toolbar, and under the plugin menu I have the chris fulmer tools. However, I don't see anything about the progress bar rb in the plugin menu, should I?

Anyways, I create some 3d letters, click the shape bender tool, and I would expect to see "Please select a single line..." down at the bottom of my screen, but I get nothing. It's as if it doesn't really activate. I also tried by going through the plugin menu, but I get the same behavior.

Any ideas what I'm doing wrong?

BTW, I did try exploding the letters, then shift selecting, right click and making "Component", but still the same.

Thanks,

Allen

Chris Fullmer

This loos like you probably just got some files in the wrong spot. In your base Plugins folder, there should be a file called clf_shape_bender_loader.rb and a folder called clf_shape_bender. All other files (a bunch of icons and and file called clf_shape_bender.rb) should all be inside the clf_shape_bender folder.

If you feel like you have the files in the right spot, then you need to open the Ruby Console in the "Window" menu. Have that open, then try to run shape bender once. It will probably write a bunch of errors to the console. copy (ctrl-c) those and paste them back here. I'll look at what the error is and we'll go from there,

Chris

InterArchi

@chris fullmer said:

Good, glad you got it working.

The main problem with this plugin is that it was written by a no good hack of a programmer. Everytime this plugin works it surprises me. I love this plugin and I'm certainly proud of it. But it could use a major re-writing to get it to be more stable and more versatile.

Thanks for using it,

Chris

I have the honor to have an answer from you mister Chris, I'm now in this forum, and in the plugins world,

But I really need some help, I started to add some plugins to my Plugins repertory but I sometimes have a problem with the loader file

for exemple with the 1001Bit it didnt work please see what the error message shown by sketchup

and this is the screenshot of the those files right indside the Plugins folder

THIS IS THE ERROR MESSAGE

thomthom

You've put all of 1001bits files into the plugins root folder. All but one, 1001bit_tools.rb should be in a 1001bit folder.

Allen Brown

@chris fullmer said:

This loos like you probably just got some files in the wrong spot. In your base Plugins folder, there should be a file called clf_shape_bender_loader.rb and a folder called clf_shape_bender. All other files (a bunch of icons and and file called clf_shape_bender.rb) should all be inside the clf_shape_bender folder.

If you feel like you have the files in the right spot, then you need to open the Ruby Console in the "Window" menu. Have that open, then try to run shape bender once. It will probably write a bunch of errors to the console. copy (ctrl-c) those and paste them back here. I'll look at what the error is and we'll go from there,

Chris

Awesome Chris! That was it.

Thanks so much for all you do!

InterArchi

@thomthom said:

You've put all of 1001bits files into the plugins root folder. All but one, 1001bit_tools.rb should be in a 1001bit folder.

Thanks Bro ..U have a heart of Gold

thelandscaper

Hey, you have no idea the way you are helping me my friend!!! Thank you Thank you Thank you!!!

keep on the gooooood work.