PART 2: MODELING THE ROPE

This rope will look like it is made of twisted strands which themselves are made of twisted fibers..

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STEP 1
Making a cross section for the rope. It will look like 3 twisted strands.

STEP 2
Extrude the shape along the Z axis. The shape must extend along the Z axis for it to conform correctly to the bones.

STEP 3
Create a UV map for the rope before it is twisted. This will allow an texture image to be mapped onto the rope.

STEP 4
Use the twist tool to put twists into the rope.

STEP 5
Unweld the UV map polygons. I did not want to create one image that covered the whole rope. I wanted to create a smaller texture that would tile up the length of the rope. To that end I needed to size the UV map vertically by 500% (so my image will tile 5 times along the length of the rope). Before enlarging the UV map it needed to be Unwelded as some of the UV points are locked down in the welded state. I selected all the polygons and chose the Unweld command.

STEP 6
Then, from the Map tab, I brought up the Transform UV window and scaled the UV map by 500%.

The enlarged UV map:

STEP 7
I used the Merge Points command (on the Construct tab) to reweld all the polygons together.

This image shows the rope extending along the Z axis with the skeligon chain visible on a background layer:

STEP 8
I created an Endomorph for the rope.

I stretched the endomroph smaller. Using the endomorph I will be able to stretch or shrink the rope along the bone chain to size it properly.

The objects are now ready to load into Lightwave.