Curve to tube mesh question

[Parmenides]

Hello, regarding the 'Curve to Tube Mesh' in Bonus Tools 2017/Modeling tools. I love this tool, Maya really needed it. 

Unfortunately, I always run into the same issue when making wires. Under the TubeMesh attributes you can only bring the width down to .1, no smaller. This is the only way I see to reduce the diameter of the wire. Is this number dictated by Maya overall (by some other setting)? It seems odd to cap it at that.  Thanks. -Derryl

[damaggio]

Don't know about that but after you create the tube select all vertices and use the transform tool to modify thickness and remember that unfortunately by default the normals are reversed after creation, set orientation to 0.

[Parmenides · Accepted solution]

Ok, I figured it out. I knew there had to be something deep down that could be edited.  First I tried setting keys for the Width and using the Graph Editor to bring them down further, and that worked but it was clunky. So I kept digging and checked out the Node Editor. Never used that before, holy crap there's a lot in there. 

So basically, go to Node editor, you can select the mesh,  click on input connections and then look for 'makeNurbCircle' which is what Maya uses behind the scenes to make the tube. I also discovered that you can select ALL of the 'makeNurbCircles' together and modify them at the same time. 

Caution this is then multiplied by the Width setting in attributes not overridden. 

[damaggio]

Thanks paramenids for your solution I'll try that next.

Best.

[tibor.ludanszki]

Hello Im kinda a new to the Maya Node editor could you please explain the process step by step

i want to create eyelashes and they are done and all, but becouse of width paramater cant go under .1 im sitting here frustrated.

pls help 🙂

[Parmenides]

Hello Tibor, 

Select the tube mesh

Go to Windows/Node Editor

Click on ‘Input Connections’ circled in red. You should then see many nodes.

Then click on the node makeNurbCircle and change the radius in the channels.

[tibor.ludanszki]

thank you!

[sroselle]

Thank you for pointing out this limitation.  This is being addressed in the next version of BonusTools coming out soon.  So you will be able to scale the radius down to a lower, higher precision value.

[damaggio]

Fantastic Steve, thanks for the update.