Introduction

This tutorial, intended for those new to RailClone, offers a complete introduction to the plugin. The tutorial may be completed with RailClone Lite (free version).

You will need the scene wall0.max and its texture map files, you can download it  here.

We are going to create a masonry wall with some basic pieces. RailClone is able to create complex parametric structures by cloning and adapting mesh objects (called Segments) along a spline. You can define multiple Construction Rules, to take special actions in Start/End positions, corners, create evenly spaced Segments and more.

Tutorial Steps

• Open the wall0.max scene. It doesn't contain any mesh objects. We will start creating a basic wall segment.
• Create a box in the perspective viewport and place it at (0,0,0).
• Select the box, go to the modify panel and change the parameters as shown below.
  
• Add a Material modifier, set the material ID to 1.
• Create a box of Length=25, Width=30, Height=6 and place it at (0,0,150). It will be the top piece of the wall.
• With the Box02 object selected, add a Material modifier and set material ID to 2.
• Add a Taper modifer. Set the parameters as shown below.
  
• Add an Editable Mesh modifier and use the "Attach" button to create a single mesh object with Box01. Change the name of the object to "Wall-Middle".
• Apply a UVW Map modifier, set type to "Box" and Length=100, Width=100, Height=100.
• Open the Material Editor and apply the "wall" material to the object. You must get the following wall piece.
  
• Create a straight spline in the perspective viewport, three or four times the size of the wall piece (the exact length and direction is not important). It will be the path of our wall object.

  RailClone works by cloning and assembling the Segments needed to fill the path's length, and applying the needed transformations to get a consistent object, such as bending or slicing. We must define at least the path and one mesh object (a Segment).

• Go to the Create panel and create a new object from Itoo Software->RailClone. You can select a predefined style from the library, but for now select "Custom" mode to create an empty object.
  
• Pick the spline object that you have just created. An empty object is created, since we have not defined any segment yet.
• With the RailClone object selected, go to the Modify panel and open the Segments rollout.
• Click the button and pick the "Wall-middle" object from the scene. Since this is our first Segment, RailClone assigns it to the "Default" Construction Rules, cloning and adapting the mesh along the path.
  
• Although we got our first wall, as you can see it's not well aligned to the path. The problem is that RailClone uses the Pivot point of the Segments as construction point on the path. To fix it, select the "Wall-middle" and align its Pivot as shown below, moving it manually or using the Align tool (Alt+A).
  
• By default, the RailClone object does not have a material assigned. Open the Material Editor and assign the "wall" material to it.
• Now we want to add a post in the start and end points of the path. We have already included a post mesh for this tutorial. Unhide the object "Wall-Post" from the scene and add it to the Segments list.
• Go to the Geometry rollout, and select the "Wall-Post" segment in the drop-down list for Start and End construction rules. For each rule, you can also assign additional segments for the joints, but for now leave it as "none".
  
• Our wall looks nice, but if you zoom in on the union between the post and middle segments, you will notice that there is a small gap. This is because by default RailClone assemblies the segments using the full extents of the geometry, and this includes the top piece of the post. To fix this issue, we must add a negative padding at both sides of the post segment (see Padding reference for details).
  
• Go to the Segments rollout, select the "Wall-Post" item on the list and set Left and Right padding values to -5.
  

  Now you can play a bit with the spline, moving the vertices or adding some of them. Being a parametric object, RailClone will rebuild the wall automatically, even bending the Segments on curved paths.

  
• When you're ready, unhide all objects from the scene. You will find a spline ("rcline"), besides a "Wall-Evenly" mesh object that which will be used in the next steps of the tutorial.
• Select the RailClone object, open the General rollout and assign the "rcline" as path using the pick spline button.
  
• For this wall, we need to add posts in the corners of the spline. Go to the Geometry rollout and select the "Wall-Post" segment in the drop-down list of the Corner construction rule. Also disable the "Align to Path" checkbox. RailClone applies this rule to all spline's vertices of "Corner" or "Bezier-Corner" type.
  
• You will notice a problem in the object: the plugin tries to adapt the mesh in the corners, bending the segment and creating a strange result. Fix this issue by selecting the "Wall-Post" segment in the segment list and disabling the "bend" property. There are multiple parameters that you can modify for each segment, from slicing to the behavior on sloped paths. See Segments reference for details.
  
• And finally, we are going to add some smaller posts evenly spaced along the wall. Add the "Wall-Evenly" object to the segment list, select it in the Evenly construction rule, and set the separation between segments to 250 ("Distance" parameter).
  

This completes the tutorial. We suggest that you enjoy RailClone, creating your own segments, modifying the spline and changing the parameters. See the RailClone help for more information about plugin features.