Sweep mesh set orientation (prevent twists)

[bloodredshade]

Hello,

could someone help me with sweep mesh? I try to make a handrail for my stairs and curves seem to be an awesome tool for this but sweep mesh (and extrude along curve) twists my profile mesh. Is there a way to tell Maya that I want my profile to always face downwards? I'm struggling with this for days now, I tried to add more points to the curve, move the curve points but what I really need is a way to constrain the orientation of my profile. I've attached a screenshot of my test curve and the end result. It would be a shame (and a lot of tedious work) to manually extrude + wedge + extrude [...] if I could make this with curves easily.

I'm using the latest version of Maya 2022.

Thank you in advance,

Balázs

[bloodredshade · Accepted solution]

I solved it by setting align to left / right.

[a_bastidas]

Hey!

I'm having an identical issue, but with an edge extrusion, and came accross your post. How and where exactly do you set the alignment from left/right?

I am trying to build a road from a NURBS curve, so I need the road surface to always point up.

Thank you so much for your help!

[martinmichl]

I am facing the same question, when trying to use a the sweep mesh for a mopgraph animation. I would like to orient the normals to one direction, so to prevent them from flipping during animation

[giuseppe.milani]

Hi, I have the same problem, when I animate the sweep mesh, the normal flip;

[victorteigen]

I think I had the same problem? I solved it by turning off "Automatic Roll" under advanced settings in the sweepmesh tab, then it defaulted to aligning polygons horizontally rather than the weird random twisting it did before.

[giuseppe.milani]

it works!! thank you!

[absoluteKelvin]

turning off the automatic roll solves some issues. We need a way to set weighting to the rotation. its not good enough for complex curves

[sepu6]

Use Bifrost if you need more control. 

[absoluteKelvin]

Would like to see some examples because I dont think bifrost automatically solves the twisting problem