A Chain with Rhino and MAX

tubular objects: A circular chain quick built and very optimized

To build this chain you'll need Rhino3D and 3DS MAX 2.x.

The objective is to make the model with Rhino, all the great 2D stuff will make you able to make this quickly and easily.

Because there aren't any polygon or meshes in this stuff and with the great new features of MAX, rendering this will be very quick. The viewport manipulations will also be boosted up.

Such tubular objects aren't a problem anymore.

Modeling of the chain with nurbs curves

	1 - Run rhino before to strat the draw activate the snap to the grid with "S" + Enter. Just draw two 90° arcs joinned with two line. - Please follow the next instructions if you don't want to met trouble in the final rendering.
	2 - Select all the curves and join them with the "Join" command. - Now we need to really join it, I mean it can't be exploded back into 4 curves. - On the other hand that will improve the shape a bit and make it more realist. To do this stuff we're goin to modify the curve construction, - so just select the joinned curves and Elmoize it with "Elmo" In this case this curve reparametrization propose you 10 points with degree 3 if not set it as this. The pic beside show the 4 curves and the final Elmoized curve.
	3 - Now you just have to really build the chain. - Copy some parts with "Copy" and rotate them to make a not regulard organization, you must think about the final aspect of the chain. In reallity a chain organisation isn't regulard at all, but you can get nice result if you just rotate a few of them. Be sure to never intersect anypart and don't forget each curve will have a thickness.
	4 - When you've made a few chain's links you can copy some group again, this way the whole chain won't be regular. Here is a straight chain in the pic beside, you may keep it like this or bend it a bit to put it between two posts. 5 - We'll going to make it circular, you'll have to make a bit of math if you want perfect result, don't worry that will remind you the great time of school. Do you know how to calculate the circumference of a circle? Well for the bad pupils let's get a bit of your old courses. Pi = the circomference / The diameter and this is alway true, yes yes. And Pi is constant, it's 3,14159265359 approximatively :-) We want to put the chain on the circle but without stretch it. So mesure the distance the whole chain is about with "Distance", and build the circle according your great math. So the diameter of the circle is: Pi / Circonference you just mesured. Draw the circle with "2Circle" wich let you draw from the diameter. click the first point on the Zero X coordinate and type in the value of the diameter you have calculated (maybe with the Windows calculator) the diameter is then locked and you can orient the circle as you want. You should get something as the pic beside.
	- You may check that the lenght of the circle is the same than the chain one, use "Length" to do this. Now to put the whole chain on the circle we use "Flow" wich is a really great feature of Rhino. - So Select all the chain links and "Flow" - At the prompt you can see a few options type in "L" and Enter for line option, then draw a perfect line as you did to mesure the chain lenght, it must be the same line be sure to include all the chain not less not more. - then Rhino ask you a new reference curve to align to... click on the circle... You should get something as this pic beside.
	So the chain is now ready to be exported and rendered with MAX. Please see the tutorial to export and render this with MAX. The rendering is really very quick. This pic is another example of path and show you can really do what you want with this chain and build a scene with a perfect control on how the object is placed. Export/Import tutorial here

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