The Perfect Arc or Bending Steel

i'm trying to make a filter that essentially bends a horizontal bar. i can make the bar just fine and bend the bar, but i cant seem to keep the bar from 'crimping' at the ends or bulging at the center as i add more bend. so, i'm posting a snippet of the filter in the hopes that some of the math geniuses here can help me out. the bar must bend, but it must keep a uniform thickness as it does. any help?

Perfect Arc 1.ffxml

It will be interesting if others find a good solution here.

I messed around and ended up thinking that maybe the vertical, offset map could use an extra top to bottom dimension (rather than just a left to right dimension). So I did a crude experiment with the frame component...
(It's got it's problems, but was meant to show how maybe an extra top to bottom dimension might help.)


...But maybe there is a perfect, single, 2-D curve that will work here?





Perfect Arc 1b.ffxml

ok ssamm, your filter gave me the clue i needed. i think i've got it now. we had an impure gradient. when i changed your sphere gradient to a strictly profile circular gradient, then i could fix it!

you'll notice in the attached that i had attempted to mask your curve with a duplicate curve to get rid of that bottom edge, but something was wrong and that was the clue. when i began to move the mask up and down at varying percentage values, it became obvious that the bar/arc was warping at different values because of the round gradient and that gave me the means to a solution... change the circular gradient!

so, i'm attaching the work filter with no additional cleanups and re-maps of controls and masking. i'll clean it up later and probably publish it as a joint effort snippet.

THANKS!!!

Perfect Arc 1f.ffxml

hi carl. i'm going to go look and work on it now. dont know about the opposite direction, but probably. could probably rotate it to all four major directions. i wont put an any angle rotate on it, though. it needs an edge to work against...sort of. i can actually connect it all the way around into a circle, which is why i need to limit the controls or mask it and why an any angle rotate probably wouldnt be good here.

Brillant, I hope I can get the rest of the idea to work properly



A BIG HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU


you deserve a special one, cause your a top bloke

ok, i've submitted it to the library, carl

thanks, CF

yes, it works nicely now and i've also submitted another new filter based on the snippet. hope it's not the same thing as carl was going to submit. mine is a new rainbow filter. both shld be up monday.

working on another one that uses this. it's an attempt to break steviej glass

better get started, then. only 172 to go (lol. that came out wrong).

thanks for the b-day wishes, ssamm hopefully the filter will be up tomorrow along with the other one that uses it. and, thanks again!

Quote
StevieJ wrote: I'm always the last to know anything

LOL