Cablerator Addon

September 13, 2020September 13, 2020 New Media Supply 0 Comments Curves

Hi, can I ask you a favour: take a look into the room you are in now, and see how many cables there are. That’s more than 3 cables, right? Besides the fact that there are cables all around us, it make a 3D scene with all those shapes derived from cubes less sterile. It makes me think of Feng Shui where they use to break up hard corners. I tried this out and it makes indeed a scene look more alive, less sterile, homely, more natural. But to make cables is quite a hassle without addon. That’s where the Cablerator Addon comes in. And the first thing I love about the Cablerator is …..It doesn’t occupy the N-Panel….Jay! You activate the addon with a shortcut Shift+Alt+C and a popup follows.

The Cablerator Addon provides a fast and flexible workflow adding cables and pipes into the scene. While there are other addons for cables, this addon seems to be the fastest to me, and provides several ways to add cables. One way is click on anything for the start of the cable and another click for the end of the cable. In the popup you can adjust the bevel size and the tension. Well, let me show you the options below.

Here my first scene with the Cablerator:

Using the Cablerator Addon - Render — Using the Cablerator – Render

How does the addon work

There are several ways to add cables (or pipes) like by clicking on surface, by drawing on surface, edge 2 cable, or select multiple objects. So you do first your thing, depending on how you want to add cables, and you press in object or edit mode: Shift+Alt+C. Here is the menu you will see when you use that shortcut:

So you see the four options to create cables in the top section of the UI. Besides just making cables, we can assign a connector to each endpoint of a cable, or a socket. And that works pretty simple:

First model your socket, which can be quiet simple, like a cyclinder and some insets and extrusions.
Then select the socket or connector, and then the cable.
Go in Edit mode, and select the cable’s endpoints.
Press Shift+Alt+C and click: Add connectors.

Similar for Segments which are things that are somewhere on the cable between the start- and end-point of the cable. What is new I believe, is that you can make the curve follow the connector, which is done by hooks. That means when you are finished and then move a socket, the curve will follow. An idea is to animate the sockets. For more into depth documentation I suggest to take a look at the Official documentation of the Cablerator.