Skip to content

Loft to mesh

A loft builds a surface that runs through a sequence of input curves. The Designer's loft is the fastest way to author smooth 3D geometry from 2D curves.

Setup

  1. Author two or more cross-section curves. They can be Bezier or NURBS, open or closed, and do not need the same vertex count.
  2. Position them along the loft axis (typically the z-axis).
  3. Select them all (Shift-click) in the order you want the loft to traverse.
  4. Surfaces > Loft to Mesh.

The Designer creates a new Mesh3D placement and hides (but does not delete) the input curves.

Options dialog

The Loft to Mesh action opens a small dialog:

Option Default Notes
Sections input count How many curves to interpolate between
Smoothness 24 Subdivisions across each section
Across linear linear / bezier / nurbs interpolation between curves
Caps open open / close-at-ends / close-both
UV mapping cylindrical cylindrical / planar / preserved

The defaults produce a smooth surface with reasonable topology.

Cross-curve resampling

Loft requires curves with matched parametrization. The Designer auto-resamples each input curve to a common vertex count. To control this:

  • Resample: on by default. Picks the highest vertex count of any input curve and resamples the others to match.
  • Reverse direction: per-curve toggle if a section comes out flipped (look for inside-out shading; flip the offending curve).
  • Align: re-align the curves' first CVs so they line up along the loft direction; toggles off when you want a twist.

Closed vs open lofts

  • Inputs all open → open loft (a strip).
  • Inputs all closed → closed loft (a tube).
  • Inputs mixed → undefined; the Designer warns and treats them as open.

For a Möbius strip, set Reverse direction on every other curve.

After lofting

The resulting Mesh3D placement has standard transform / mask / material properties. To re-author:

  1. Right-click the Mesh3D placement > Show Source Curves.
  2. Edit the curves.
  3. The loft auto-re-runs and updates the mesh in real time.

The link between curves and mesh is non-destructive; the curves remain editable so long as the Mesh3D placement is in the project.

UV mapping

The Designer offers three UV strategies:

  • Cylindrical: U follows the cross-curve direction, V follows the along-curve direction. Best for tube-like lofts.
  • Planar: U / V are world-space x / z of the input curves. Best when you want textures to "lay flat" across the surface.
  • Preserved: keeps each input curve's U coordinate and interpolates V from input index. Best when the cross-sections carry meaningful texture coordinates already (rare).

Performance

A 24-section x 24-smoothness loft creates ~576 quads (~1152 triangles). The Designer handles up to ~10,000-quad lofts in real time; beyond that, prefer authoring topology in a DCC and importing.

Limitations

  • Loft is one-directional only (along a single sweep). For bidirectional surfaces (think of a checkerboard of curves), loft pairs separately and combine via the boolean tools.
  • No spline-sweep "rail" mode in v1; the loft moves linearly / smoothly between sections.

See also