ideas for making a bannister?

[KameiRonin]

I'm working on a house interior with a set of stairs which sweep up in a curve. Everything is set and looking good, but I'm having problems getting the bannister to work for me. I've tried using Rail Extrude, but the bottom portion of the bannister ends up twisting out like the car on a rollercoaster. I've tried cloning and skinning, but I can't get it to skin smoothly (I'm using one-sided polys, I've tried flipping the surface normals, nothing works). Anyone have any ideas?

[gjjackson]

I should think using a disc with rail extrude ought to work. I was able to get it to work on something similar. It all depends on the curve in the background. I would think you could trace the stairs as a curve and then rail extrude the disc from that curve.

[txbob]

Usually, that "flip out" you discribe is caused by a misalignment of the source polygon to the spline when doing the rail extrude. The Source poly should be prependicular to the rail as best as possible. Also any weird little bumps or turns at the end of the spline can cause undesireable results. Try extending the end of the spline by an extra point and use the last point as an end CP. (control point) This usually eliminates any weirdness. You might also try doing a multi rail extrude to cause the end to taper.

Finally, it you want to make a fancy end piece, you could create it seperatly, and merge it onto the bannister. (weld the points etc...) Make sure that the conecting end ot the new part has the same number of points as the end of the bannister, and you should have no problem.

Hope this helps!

[BeeVee]

Rail extrude does twist the extruded polys. :( Use C_Snake by Pictrix. Here's a link to the frame it's in: http://plaza17.mbn.or.jp/~PICTRIX/lw/ls/Snake/index.html

B

Edit: Also, CMan's AlignTo Rail allows you to line up your poly for extrusion perfectly.