Ribbon-style mesh question (Blender)

[Dave_Lindb]

Heyo! Who doesn’t love a good energy swirl across a ribbon-style mesh particle? While I normally do these types of meshes in Houdini, I quite like Blender and was wondering if anyone knows a good workflow for creating the same in that software. This is my current (fairly desctructive) workflow in Blender:

1. Create a curve for the ribbon profile (typically just a single line or an “X” in this case)
2. Create a Bezier curve
3. Use the “X-curve” as bevel object in the Bezier curve
4. Convert the result into a mesh to edit taper towards the end

Unfortunately, converting from curve to mesh means losing the curve controls and having to manually place the UVs, which are tricky to evenly space out when dealing with curved shapes like these and UV projection. Not to mention the repeated work I’d have to do if I ever want to change the flow of the curve.

If anyone has a good process for this I’m all ears!

[Rasto]

I’m working on same flow but it’s not good as houdini.
It’s quiet hard to me typing all step in english, so I screenshot some pictures hope it can help you.

1. add plane
2. use modify “array”
3. modify “curve”

when you get the good looking result disable the curve modify (monitor icon) than you can starting map the UVs.