tapered cylinder

[Canadian Mind 1]

How does one create a tapered cylinder thats wider at the bottom than it is at the top?

[ACEfanatic 7]

- Create a cylinder.

- Apply a taper modifier

- Change the taper to a negative number.

-ACE

[budweiserdude23 80]

Or you could use a cone, alot simpler.

[yoder7652 21]

yep, cone is easy, just make sure you only have 1 section in height or it can get high in poly count

[Canadian Mind 1]

agreed, cone has been easiest, thanks guys!

was trying to go for a curved taper, 100 meter diamerter down to a 70 meter diameter over a 485 meter stretch. Used 4 cones, each being 121.25 meters.

[Canadian Mind 1]

another question, how do I attach two cylinders? this is my first time working with shapes rather than soley splines.

while I'm at it how do i attach shapes to splines?

[Jasoncw 11,839]

Convert one of them to an editable polygon by right clicking>convert to>editable poly. Then look around in the pane to the right untill you find the attach button, and then attach them.

For splines it's the same thing. Make sure to weld together any loose ends though, or it will extrude funny.

Does that answer your questions?

[yoder7652 21]

To attach cones...put an edit mesh modifier on one of them and use attach and select the other cone. Then you might want to select vertex on the mesh modifier and scroll down to weld...(you'll have to do this for each adjacent vertex), but if you highlight two adjacent verticies you can weld them together and this will reduce your poly count. If you don't weld, then you'll have two verticies in the exact same location instead of one...like I said you have to do this at each point were your two cones match up.

EDIT: Jason beat me to it!

[budweiserdude23 80]

To attach a spline to a spline, you need to edit the spline you'd like to attach other splines to. Then a list should appear on the right toolbar. Make sure that the geometry rollout is expanded and click on the the attach or attach mult option. The tutorial in the Omnibus gives a good description on this.

As to attaching 2 cylanders, other than what was explained above, in some instances you may want to use the Group option depending on what you're trying. What do you want to do with the cylanders?

[Canadian Mind 1]

i'll post a pic in a sec. but the base should be easy, only 4 cylinders there. however above the first two rings are a series of 80 cones, each one a different diameter from the one above and below it. because i'm going to probrably be moving them up and down as I detail the base (which i happen to be doing right now, long labourous process...). it would be alot easier if i can move them as a single group, and the move function isn't that great when i highlight the whole bunch of them, its always a bit off.

here is the picture, the yellow/gold is the bottom cylinders, the pink.purple up top are the 80 "disk" cylinders that are all a different diameter from each other. picture taken as I move each cylinder up 15 meters. the green thing at the bottom is part of my eventual base:

btw - the pic. is 200meters wide by 1000 tall.

[wolverine 12]

I always wondered how to do this for making my smokestacks more conical looking.