Necklace

A Maya script that takes in curves and geo beads to place them along the curve while keeping the spacing relative to the size of the beads greatly simplifying the process.

Place the .py file in documents\maya\mayaVer\scripts\

and the icon files in documents\maya\mayaVer\prefs\icons\

Maya python command to run the tool:

'''

import necklaceV1 as nl

import importlib

importlib.reload(nl)

nl.necklace_ui.show()

'''

teaser

Tool overview

This version has two ways to calculate the placement and spacing. One uses bounding box to calculate distribution, the other gets activated when the bounding box instancing check-box is set to Off, uses the spacing of the input meshes.

The tool will calculate the order of the meshes independently by the rough way you arrange them in the viewport, and if you arrange them in a line with intentional spacing for each item relative to it's neighbors, the tool will use that spacing across the entire necklace.