CP's going double?

[kattkieru]

Hey-ho. I have a problem that happens every so often: CPs that aren't attached to anything, ones that should only have one bias handle, have two. This makes it so that it's impossible to connect another spline to them and have the two merge into one spline.

 

Anyway, a better explanation is the picture below. That CP has two handles. When I connect the spline to it, I get a spline and a patch that are just weird. What causes this? To fix it I'm having to rip out entire splines (at the moment this seems to be a catching problem, as deleting that one CP makes the one behind it have the same issue), and it's driving me nuts.

 

Thanks in advance,

~ Charles

[robcat2075]

by any chance do you have anything (h)idden? a cp on the edge of hidden mesh will show both bias handles even though it appears to be a spline end.

[Ganthofer]

I remember have problems similar to this, ussually when deleting and adding a lot of slines. I don't remember if I ever found a solution that always worked, but here are some things you might try:

 

-close and re-open project.

-select the cp behind the offending end cp and press the Y twice to insert 2 cp's between. break the spline between the 2 new cp's.

-select all but the offending cp, copy the mesh, paste into new model.

 

What version A:M are you using?

[Eric2575]

I've had that happen a few times but don't remember how I solved it. Try selecting the offending spline and hitting "y" to insert another cp along the spline. Then try deleting the offending cp. If that doesn't work, I'll try and rack my brain to see if I can remember how I solved it.

 

Oops, wrote this at the same time as Ganthofer. Yeah, like he says also.

[kattkieru]

Wow those were some fast replies. Thanks!

 

Near as I can tell they're not connected to anything else. I tried the Y trick first (was the first thing I thought of, actually) to no effect. Tried loading, reloading, reverting, to no effect. I'm actually done fixing the problems now; like I said, I ripped out the splines and rebuilt them from scratch, but I'd still like to know *how* the problem occurs so I can skip it next time. ;

 

I didn't try the copy-and-paste; I generally stay away from it when patches are involved because it eats my five-point patches, and since I'm using porcelain that also means I have to go through and flip lots of normals again. But I suppose I can try that next time too.

 

Oh, and I'm using v12.0w.

 

by any chance do you have anything (h)idden? a cp on the edge of hidden mesh will show both bias handles even though it appears to be a spline end.

 

Hmm... There were none with that issue here, but I found one on the back of my car that I wasn't able to solve before with that problem, so thanks on that!

[KenH]

That's weird. I've never experienced this, so it might be something to do with modelling technique. If you can, post the model or part of it. It may be solvable.

[Ilidrake]

How do you get the bias handles to show? I've tried everything and your supposed to be able to see bias handles in the dopesheet as well. Can anyone explain this to me?

[KenH]

It's the icon in the top toolbar.....in between the show manipulator properties panel and world space icons.

 

This should be in the manual if it isn't already as it's essential in being able to see what direction splines are going. It could solve alot of newbie confusion.

[kattkieru]

It's the icon in the top toolbar.....in between the show manipulator properties panel and world space icons.

 

This should be in the manual if it isn't already as it's essential in being able to see what direction splines are going. It could solve alot of newbie confusion.

 

Yeah... there should actually be an entire new chapter in the newbie manual about how alpha, gamma, and magnitude effect the spline look, and how you can manipulate them. I said in another section that I find it most beneficial to zero alpha and gamma and set mag to 100% before tweaking; I think that's a trick that'd help out a lot of people coming in from other programs as well.

 

As for my modeling technique, I think that may be the problem. It usually seems to happen when I duplicate geometry, modify it, then reconnect it (although I had a few on the trunk of my car that were free-floating splines; turns out that I should have been hitting "Select Connected" instead of selecting spline loops before hiding).

 

So what I was doing: I made a mouth from a 10-point lathed circle. I extruded the mouth out twice to form the lips. Now, instead of just extruding backwards, I copied the inner spline loop, pasted, and using extrusions I created the mouth bag. Lastly, I deleted that spline loop (leaving a bunch of free-floating ends sticking out) and tried to reconnect them to the mouth.

 

Looking back, part of it may have been that I deleted a spline loop with hooks running *from* it *to* other patches... They kind of stayed attached anyway (even though they were rootless), then vanished afterwards with no warning. But the first time I came across this issue was when I mirrored my model by hand (Copy/Flip/Attach always borks geometry for me, so I reconnect everything manually). That time, though, using K to disconnect and then either reconnecting or drawing a new spline between the two CPs worked; those tricks didn't work this time.

 

I fixed the model on my own and double-checked that there were no floating leftovers... But you're welcome to the mouth part. It looks pretty normal by my estimation.

beetle_mouthparts.prj.zip

[Stuart Rogers]

This makes it so that it's impossible to connect another spline to them and have the two merge into one spline.

I've seen this. It usually crops up when I'm reworking splines that have been previously joined together with the shift key held down (so that smooth flow from one side of the CP to the other doesn't occur (on purpose, I might add)). It's as if the CP retains that mode even when detached from that connection and reattached to another spline. Or something like that - it's one of those things that hasn't happened often enough for me to clearly understand the problem, so I've yet to file a report on it. (I last saw it on v12.0 but I haven't done enough modelling in v13.0 to see it again.)

[kattkieru]

I've seen this. It usually crops up when I'm reworking splines that have been previously joined together with the shift key held down (so that smooth flow from one side of the CP to the other doesn't occur (on purpose, I might add)). It's as if the CP retains that mode even when detached from that connection and reattached to another spline. Or something like that - it's one of those things that hasn't happened often enough for me to clearly understand the problem, so I've yet to file a report on it. (I last saw it on v12.0 but I haven't done enough modelling in v13.0 to see it again.)

 

Now that's interesting... You know, I might be doing that too. I have a habit of holding down keys that are connected to what I'm doing most, but I forget to let them up when I'm done. I bet I was holding down the shift key on some of the sopts I used, although I know I wasn't on the mouth.

 

Good thing to keep in mind, though, so thanks!