Bridge polygons with Spline (and other Bridge improvements)

[dswahn]

The Bridge operation in Editable Poly is quite basic, but it would be very helpful if this operation can be used to make more than just straight connections.

It is often the case that I want to Bridge two selected surfaces but I do not wish to to have a linear connection. This non-linear path can be controlled by a spline object, like in the mockup below:  

The Extrude Along Spline operation will give you sort of a similar result, but the end does not connect or conform to the end surface, which requires a lot of manual work to make look right. To have this spline guide directly in Bridge would lead to much quicker and more accurate results.

Since the curvature of a path is used there can be an Adaptive Mode that inserts segments based on the curvature of the spline, for optimization.

I also have a suggestion for a new type of Bias when creating the Bridge. The current Bias setting only controls where the center of the tapering sits relative to the bridge. But i would like to see another Bias that controls the general segment distribution that can "pinch" segment distribution closer or away from the center. The benefit of this is that it is often the case that you need more segments near the connections of your bridge, and by pushing segments closer to these connections provides better segment distribution for things like relaxing the borders of the Bridge. Mockups below:

 

An improvement that could be implemented, preferably alongside the ability to use spline paths, would be automatic curvature of the bridge based on the face normals and distance of the extruded surfaces. A lot of other 3d modelling softwares has it, so why not 3ds max?

[joerg]

Yes please! 

[dswahn]

It would also be useful if the Bridge operation could produce straight corners such as in the situation described below. I want to build a straight corner but the Bridge will only connect diagonally. If each edge could check the surface tangent to the face it belongs to it would be possible to connect the bridged faces at their intersection. We could call it a "corner mode" perhaps.

How the current Bridge works.

 

How it should work if "corner mode" if enabled.

Also it would be helpful if new faces produced by Bridge could adopt UVs from the faces you connect from, saving a lot of time with manual UV fixing after you build these new faces.

[Kranos_Orphydian]

I think Cinema 4d has a some nice bride tool right now. Its way smarter than it was before.  Ill post a link here in a bit if you cant find it. Maybe you can pick up some ideas from cinema 4d tool and include it here!

Btw you can update your original post and keep everything in the same place.

[teratron]

Great stuff.

[Kranos_Orphydian]

I think instead of a spline a curve widget/graph  would be  amore elegant solution and this could be useful to add to  a lots of other modifiers and tools that can leverage this as an unified and consistent solution (a modern curve widget that is not the current one)

[teratron]

^^ Agree though the one in the bevel profile mod isn't bad, I'm just not sure how to move the verts on a fixes axis atm lol.