Sometimes the simple loft layer isn’t quite enough to get the surface you need. With the complex loft layer you can define as many cross sections as you want to build up a very detailed and complex surface loft.
General Params
The general params for the simple loft, these control the path to use, the start and length of the layer as well as options to scale, rotate and offset the layer.
Name
Name of the layer.
Enabled
Un checking this will remove this layer from the loft object and hide most of the inspector for it.
Col
Color to tint the inspector for this layer, makes finding the layer you want easier on complex loft objects.
Lock
Sometimes you will want to have the loft object update in realtime but maybe not all the layers actually change, if you check the Lock option then during a rebuild the layer will not recalculate its contribution to the mesh but will just use the last lot of vertices it built so greatly speeding up the mesh creation for entire object. So useful if you have a complex race track loft object and just want to deform a crash barrier layer from it, so you would lock all the layers except for the one to change, update that then lock it again.
Material
The material to use to render the faces built by this layer.
Path
The path along which to loft the cross section shape.
Snap to Path
If on the layer will be built where the path is and not in the local space of the object.
Start
The start position along the path shape to start building the layer, 0 is the start 1 is the end, values outside this range will either loop for closed shapes or extrapolate past the ends on open shapes.
Length
The length of the loft along the path, 1 is a full length of the path loft, the length value is added to the start value to find the actual end value, so if this is outside the rang 0 to 1 then the layer will either loop or extrapolate past the ends of the path.
Dist
This is how far to step along the path before building a new line of vertices, the smaller this value is the more vertices are produced and the smoother the end result.
Offset
The loft can be offset from the path by changing these values. Also there is an option to control the offset along the length of the loft from curves for the X, Y and Z directions.
Use X Offset
Check to use a curve to define the amount of x offset from the path along the length of the path shape.
Offset X
The curve to describe the amount of x offset.
Use Y Offset
Check to use a curve to define the amount of y offset from the path along the length of the path shape.
Offset Y
The curve to describe the amount of y offset.
Use Z Offset
Check to use a curve to define the amount of z offset from the path along the length of the path shape.
Offset Z
The curve to describe the amount of z offset.
Flip
For some reason you may not get a mesh that you expected out of the loft, or you may want to produce a tunnel type loft, if so then checking this will reverse the face order of the mesh effectively turning it inside out.
Path Steps
Read only, shows how many cross sections of vertices were built.
Path Teeter
This will tilt the path depending on the vertical slope of the path so as to try and align the vertical part of the cross section to be perpendicular to the path.
Advanced Params
Some more advanced params to control scaling and twisting of the loft along its length and importantly how the cross sections blend into one another.
Ease Type
This is the easing method to use for the interpolation of cross sections, this will control how smooth or sharp the interpolation from one cross section to another is. The easing options are:
Sine, Expo, Circ, Quad, Cubic, Quart, Quint, Back, Square, Lerp.
Use Twist
It is sometimes useful to be able to twist the generated loft, so check this option to enable the twist curve which controls the amount of twist to be applied along the length of the layer.
Twist Curve
The curve that controls the twist.
Use ScaleX
Option to turn on curve based control of the X axis scaling of the loft along its length.
Scale X Curve
The curve that controls the X axis scaling of the layer.
Use ScaleY
Option to turn on curve based control of the Y axis scaling of the loft along its length.
Scale Y Curve
The curve that controls the Y axis scaling of the layer.
Cross Params
Cross Start
The start position along the section to shape to start the loft from, 0 is the start of the shape 1 is the end, values outside 0 to 1 will either loop or extrapolate the shape.
Cross Len
How far along from the start to build the layer to.
Cross Steps
The number of vertices to use to build the cross section, the higher the number the smoother the mesh.
Cross Dist
The distance to use to make the next vertex at along the cross section, lower values will result in a smoother mesh and more vertices.
Cross Rot
You may want to rotate the cross section before it is used in the layer creation, you can define any rotation you want here.
Cross Scale
You can also scale the cross section before it is used.
Pivot
The local offsets of the knots can also be changed before the shape is used in a layer, useful to line up sub curves in a shape.
Use Scale Curve
Option to turn on a scaling curve to use across the loft. Not currently used.
Scale
The curve to use for scaling across the cross section. Not currently used.
UV Params
The options that control the UV mapping of the layer for textures.
UV Off
The Offset into the texture map to start the mapping from.
UV Scl
The Scaling of the UV coords, smaller values will zoom in on the texture map, values greater than 1 will start to tile the texture, negative values will flip the texture.
Swap UV
Will swap the u and v parts of the mapping.
Physical UV
If this is on then the actual vertex values will be used for the mapping, this can make it easier for some mapping cases it will also mean that the uv mapping will keep the scale of the texture map constant, so if you expand a loft the texel size will remain constant.
Planar UV
With this on the UV mapping will be calculated treating the entire loft as if it were a plane instead of a long ribbon.
Cap Params
If the path you loft along is not a closed shape or you are only using a portion of a shape then you may want to cap the ends of the loft, and these options allow you to do so and define the material and uv mapping for each end cap.
Cap Start
Allows a mesh cap for the start of the loft mesh to be generated.
Material
Material to use for the start mesh cap.
UV Offset
Offset value to use on the caps UV’s
UV Scale
Scaling value to use on the caps UV’s.
Rot
Angle to rotate the start cap UV’s by.
Cap End
Allows a mesh cap for the end of the loft mesh to be generated. The params are the same for the start cap.
Cross Sections
This is where you can Add and Delete the cross sections for the loft. Each cross section allows you to pick the shape to use, the curve number in that shape if there is more than one, and its positioning, rotation and scaling etc. If the Cross Sections foldout is open then you will see on the loft the cross sections drawn as well as handles on each end of each section to allow you to easily alter their positioning.
Sections
Color to draw the cross sections in.
Handle Size
Size of the cross section drag-able handles.
Reset Sections
This will reset the spacing of all the cross sections to be equally spaced along the path.
Alpha
Each cross section apart from the first and last will have an alpha value which says where it is positioned along the loft path.
Section
The shape to use as the cross section.
Curve
If the shape has more than one spline a Curve slider will appear allowing you to pick which curve to use.
Snap
Sometimes the sub curves in a shape are not positioned nicely so checking this option will align the first knot of each curve to be in the same position.
Offset
You can apply an offset per cross section to apply.
Rot
Also you can choose to rotate each cross section.
Scale
And also scale it.
Use Section Len
If you check this option two more sliders will appear to allow you to override the lofts cross start and length values for this cross section.
Start
Start position along the section path to use instead of the layer cross start value.
Length
Length of the cross section along the shape to use instead of the layer cross length value.
Add Section
Clicking this button will add a new cross section to the layer.
Delete Section
Clicking this button will delete the cross section from the layer.
Complex Loft Video
A little video guide to the complex loft layer and what some of the params do.
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