Anybody have a good suggestion as to how to accomplish this page curl effect in the Spline modeler? The image at left is what I need, the one at right is my attempt but I can't get one "corner" to come in towards the center of the model. I couldn't find a "curl" deformer & the bend, twist or punch options didn't seem to get there either. Would appreciate any ideas, thanks.

Hello Will, I recently had a project with the same requirement. The trick is to go corner-to-corner using pipeline extrusion and varying cross section widths. While my example only uses half a page, the the full page can be done by simply adding another cross section. (slide the cross-sections left or right for the proper proportions) If you haven't already figured it out, a special treatment will be needed in the shader room as well to avoid the mis-aligning graphics that as a result of the deformer/normals relationships apparent in your example. The trick there is to use Layer List>Flat Mapping. If things are still mapping a little funky, check "Ingnore Normals". If your'e workin with C3, converting the spline object into a vertex object and creating a custom map with the new tools in the VM room is also an excellent option. Mark

Thanks Mark, I tried your suggestions for the model & indeed it would work. The quick render at right was done as a test before an "Unknown Error Occurred". However, I just couldn't get the t-map to work & I'm still in V2 of C so the custom mapping would be problematic. UVMapper may have been a possibility but rather then go thru that I cranked up Illustrator 8 in OS9, applied the KPT Vector Effects Warp Frame plug-in to the eps "page" and built three gradients for the shadows on various layers. Not quite photographic but tells the story none the less. Thanks again Mark, I'll try this again in Carrara V3 when I get it.

Hi, this is too late to help but might be handy some other time: Another way to get a nice page curl (its easy to animate too) is to use the bend and twist modifier. To get just the corner to bend, rotate your object 45 degrees and then group it on its self. Then apply the bend and twist to the group with the object inside. You can adjust the upper and lower limits to shape the curl. If you build your spline object as a very flat thin cube you could turn off the modifier and then set the underside of the page texture using a simple rectangular layer shape. mdc

Thanks MDC, that works well. I completley forgot about the "group" trick for modifiers, funny thing is I've used them years ago in RDS!

In the modifier method, why do you have to group the object on itself. I've never understood why single objects could be grouped in Carrara anyway - and why they can be grouped multiple times.

Some of the modifiers will only modifiy things in one direction. If you rotate an object and then group it, Carrara ignores the rotated coordinates of the objects within the group and instead, looks only at the group coordinates which are the default 0,0,0 positions. However, when you work on one of the objects withing the group, it will still have it's rotated coordinates you assigned prior to grouping it. It's easy to create some pretty amazing stuff that way or get totally confused if you lose track of what you're doing! :)