Bend

The bend tool enables you to bend an entire object or just a part of it.  Typically you bend from an orthographic view.  You start by selecting a line that defines the start of the bend and the direction of the bend. Then you move the cursor to the desired bend angle.  The bend angle is shown in the command panel.  The Snap Angle allows you to adjust where snapping occurs so you can bend to exact angles more easily.  Once the initial bend is done, you can adjust the bend further using the on screen gizmos.  Once you are finished, you can click the green check to save the result of the bend.

The first image below shows the bend from an orthogonal view.  The first pick point is near the left lower corner of the object and the second pick is near the right lower of the object.  As you move the cursor as shown in the second image below, the object bends.  The lower image shows bending just a subset of the model.



Twist

The Twist tool allows you to apply a twist to all or part of a SubD mesh.  The first parameter in the dialog shows the twist angle.  You can change the twist axis and the end of the twist that stays fixed.  Note that if you twist with a large angle you should have sufficient number of subdivisions in the mesh to pick up the twist.  For example if you twist a 6 sided box 360 degrees, it will look like it collapses in the middle.

The first image below shows the initial object once the twist command has been started.  The second image shows a 90 degree twist.  The final image below shows a 360 degree twist.    



Taper

The taper command grows or shrinks the selected vertices of a mesh along a given axis.  The first number box controls the strength of the overall taper.  Below we used 1.5 in each of the cases.  The upper left image shows a taper along the X axis using Y.  The upper right image shows a taper along the X axis using Z and the lower left image shows a taper along both the Y and Z directions.  The second dialog box shows a the bowing effect.  The lower right image has a bow of 1.0, which effectively doubles the offset at the middle of the taper.    

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