in Blender 3D, is there any function like 'Flow along surface' in Rhino 3D? I know the 'move along curve'. but it's modifying a mesh according to curved line.
I need to deform some meshes along irregualar terrain. I never used Rhino though, I think 'Flow along surface'in Rhino is what I'm looking for.
Can I find that kind of thing in Blender?
You can achieve something similar using a combination of lattice deform and shwrinkwrap deform modifiers
Let's say you have an object like this:
And you want to deform it on a surface like this plane:
to create something like this:
You can create a lattice that that has only one segment on the W axis and that is scaled to the size of your terrain.
Select the original object and add a Lattice Deform Modifier to it, selecting the lattice as the controlling object.
Then select the lattice object and add a shwrinkwrap deform modifier to it. Select the Target (plane), Set it to project mode and select the correct axis for the deformation.
If you activate 'Snap During Transform' as well as 'Align Rotation with Snapping Target', you can reproduce the behavior of Flow Along Surface's alternate mode.(The other mode being the one 'user:cegaton' showed)
Looked for this feature too, very nice solution with the torus, i tried the same steps but unfortenately it failed,
the torus stretches to the edges of the lattice and squishes as if the shrink wrap modifier was used, it looks that there is some changes in blender 2.78.
Anyway I have found alternative solution using mesh deform.
Lets assume that you already have a deformed plain 1 and a torus.
You just have to create a new plane (lets call it plane 2) for mesh deform add solidify, then add mesh deform on torus object and bind to the "plane 2", after that add shrinkwrap to the "plane 2" and move this modifier to upper stack, then select "plane 1" in shrinkwrap target chose projection mode (works best for animation) and that's all the deformation mesh should attract torus to the plane 1, also if you need to move torus around you need to move both torus and deformation plain or to parent plain 2 to torus. This is not perfect, but helps if the lattice method wont work.
Try the shrink wrap modifier. It will "shrink wrap" a mesh around another object.
Create a plane and subdivide it a few times for best results. Apply a shrink wrap modifier, and select the ground object for the "Target".
See the wiki for more information on this modifier.
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Modifiers/Deform/Shrinkwrap
