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In my latest render for Instagram I ran into a mapping problem. As a referece, this is the image:

enter image description here

The black and white striped bridge basically is half a torus with two cylinders attached to it. I couldn't immediately think of a way to unwrap it properly to get the procedural brick pattern flowing correctly. So what I did was create a cylinder, calculate the length of the bend, subdivided the part that should be bent and added a bend modifier to only those vertices.

But the transition from torus to cylinder on both sides is not completely smooth. So the next time I run into the same situation, I would like to use half a torus and extrude the ends on both sides. But how can I unwrap this shape properly so that the brick pattern is mapped just like in the render above? Or is there another way to approach this?

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A more procedural workflow suggests the use of Splines to create the shape. Moreover, Spline UV maps can be used to create the pattern you are looking for. First, model the spline and give it a full depth as follows:

Modeling

Then enable Use UV For Mapping and utilize the modulo operator to create the pattern you are after. The value nodes control the number of lines along the spline and radially while the less than values control the depth of the lines:

Node Tree

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  • $\begingroup$ Thanks Omar, that’s exactly what I was looking for. More and better even, because my first go-to place was a bevelled spline, but I wasn’t aware of the UV mapping feature. So that’s a bonus. :) Thanks again! $\endgroup$
    – wout
    Commented Sep 9, 2018 at 19:43

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