Sunday, June 24, 2012

Faulty Division_Abusing the DIVIDE PATH Command

I would like to go on record as saying that I am really happy with the divided path tool.  The possibilities of this thing are ridiculous.  Love It Love It Love It!!!!  I actually sat in a lab class at RTC so just so i could play with the tool...I wasn't interested in the class topic, only the divided path tool.  The guy next to me didn't seem to mind watching me screwing around either.

The basics are pretty simple.  Draw a curve, or a pair of them in this case:

Hit the DIVIDE PATH button:

and enter how many divisions...you can link this to a parameter...great....

I made a simple rod as an adaptive component 

Bring it in and place on the path

Hit the repeat button
and voila....

Ok....thats nice...AFTER the element had been copied, I changed it so that the top and bottom curves had an unequal number of points.  Nice.

On a whim, i wanted to see what would happen if set an unequal number of points BEFORE the adaptive rod had been placed



Now we are getting into some trouble....so i went further.  I made a rig:

Added a top curve and placed the adaptive rod, then i got the weird error message "There is only one component in this repeater"
Which is when I realized this tool is sensitive to the direction that curves are drawn!  So i attached the rod differently:

And then i got some weird stuff going on...




Dancing and singing in the happy valley ensues...

Does this picture create inner turmoil for anyone else?