Bulge & Taper Oddities

Bulge & Taper Oddities

I noticed a couple things about the bulge and taper modifiers that don't quite make sense to me...

1) The icons for the bulge and taper modifiers seem reversed. The taper icon bulges, and the bulge icon is tapered in the middle.

2) When a bulge modifier is added, it creates a tapered effect by default (apparently because the strength parameter is a negative value by default). This seems a bit strange and is counterintuitive.

These are just observations; I don't know if they are intentional.

-Steve

Hi,
I'm not sure if I understand you right. But the curvature or strength parameters of the bulge and taper modifier can have both negative and positive values. For the default values I just used a value which creates a nice effect. There was no deeper meaning behind these default values.

Bye,
Martin

Martin said:

I'm not sure if I understand you right.

Click to expand...

Hi Martin,

I'm not reading anything "deeper" into it. I'm just making a couple of simple observations. To reiterate, my first statement was simply that the icons for the taper and bulge modifiers SEEM (to me) to be reversed. After reading explanation for the taper modifier in the documentation, though, I think I understand why the taper icon didn't initially make sense to me. I was interpreting the icon has been bulged in the center, whereas it was actually tapered at the top.

However, the icon and the default behavior of the bulge modifier still does not make sense to me. I understand that the initial negative value can be changed to a positive value. I'm simply saying that it would make more sense to me if the default value for the bulge modifier was a positive 0.25 (and thus created a bulge) instead of -0.25 (thereby creating a taper). Similarly, it seems that the icon for the bulge modifier should in fact be "bulging" instead of tapered or "squeezed".

-Steve

Notes from the icon forger.

Why the Taper icon seems reversed is because the curvature´s default setting is minus 0.100. Should I build a new icon or should Martin changed the value to 0.100?
The Bulge icon shows the correct default modification as a preview so it keeps it´s promise.
The modifiers are so powerful, we have to decide and find one for all good looking representation; simple but true and true for simply every icon from the spline, creator and modifier menus.