Furniture with rope: How to model rope as straight lines and as 3D knots?

Hey.

I like to use drilled rope to press parts of furniture to each other.

Example:

Is there anyone who made a model for such type of material and likes to share the experiences?

I need to draw straight lines, angles and 3D knots.

Thanks!

I have to model ropes all the time in my work. I generally use combination of extensions. Weld, Pipe along path being the main ones and draw catenary another. Then I paint the ropes with an appropriate material to keep them low poly. There are some well modeled 3strand twist ropes like the one in your photo in the warehouse, but they tend to be high poly and generally my scale is very large. I have had to make some detailed ropes and making knots is tedious. Build a poly line path of arcs, weld them together, pipe along path. If you’re bent on a real three strand surface not just a material then you will need a good bending extension. PM me and I’ll try to find some file examples I can share when I’m in the office.

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Have a look at Taff’s examples






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Thanks for the examples, Geo.

I will try to find a video tutorial, which shows how to replace a drawed line, which has straight parts, angles and free formed parts by a rope.

Here is a quick version for making low poly “ropes” using Pipe Along Path which I like because it remembers options and dimensions from session to session and can be set to use 0 for the ID so pipes have only one wall, plus it auto groups the resulting geometry and makes new layers for you.

Notice applying the texture to all surfaces does not map correctly. Instead, I apply a quick rope texture to one surface with hidden geometry on to allow me to position it, then to the SMOOTHED surface with hidden geometry off.

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@endlessfix
Thanks for that nice and helpful insight!