In many scenes where there are building of tech stuff you will see pipes somewhere.. Turns out that building pipes with nice elbows along their path is pretty easy to do in blender. I’ve seen many different ways to do it but this method is straightforward and flexible.

The method goes like this:

• Build a path by extruding Vertices
• Add Bevels to all the vertices to make nice elbow shapes
• Convert the path to a Curve
• Add Depth to the curve Geometry

That’s it. Here is the step-by-step in Blender 2.83

Add a plane

Go in Edit mode (press Tab), make sure all 4 corner vertices are selected and merge them all

Now extrude the single vertice along the path you’d like (Press E, then move)

When you are done, select all the vertices and hit the “Bevel” tool. There are two things you need to be careful about:

1- The Bevel tool should be set as “Vertex Only”. You can find that in the Tool tab in the property panel.

2- make sure you add a bit more segments (like 5) to have a nice round elbow

Get out of Edit mode and convert the shape into a Curve, in the Object Menu -> Convert to -> Curve from Mesh/Text

Now you can go to the Curve Property in the right panel

Make sure the “Fill Mode” is set to Full.

Then in the Geometry sub menu, find the Bevel sub-sub menu, and adjust the Depth to whatever size you want for your pipe. The Resolution setting makes the pipe smoother but you can use a subsurface modifier to make them super smooth later

And here you go.. With a Subsurface modifier you get very nice pipes

You’d like to do a chain for a drivetrain, or you’d want to do a roller coaster or something that repeats the same object or shape along a defined path. Let’s see how this can be achieved with Blender. First it’s important to realize that there is one contraint to think about: Should the object deform itself along the path, or should the object remain in its original shape but just rotate along the curves of the path. For a roller coster, you will likely deform the shape, for a chain ring, you won’t. This choices changes the settings you need.

Let’s look at the first case, which is when the object deforms itself.

1 – Repeating along a path with deformation

Let’s first create a basic shape, whichever you like:

Then add a Bezier curve

This will add a basic curve on the main plane

Select it if not already selected, and go in Edit mode by hitting the “tab” key.

You will see that the curve has 2 vertices (at each extremity) and you have the ability to modify the shape of the curve by playing around with the red lines. Extrude the vertices (using the “e” shortcut after selecting a vertice) to create the path you would like to achieve

If the path needs to be a loop, you can close it by selecting the two open ends and hitting the “F” to make the final segment. You can also find this action in the menu Control Points

That should give you a full loop

Getting out of edit mode you will have a nice view of the path

But here is one catch.. It’s very possible that as you were moving vertices around, you didn’t stay in the same plane and if you rotate your view you will see something like that:

IF your path was supposed to be that way it’s cool. But if you need it to be a on single plane, you can go in edit mode, select all the vertices, the use the scale (“s” shortcut) along the axis you want (i.e the Z axis if you want the shape to be flat on the main plane) and then choose 0. That will flatten it all. I repeat => Select all vertices in edit mode, type “s”, then “z”, then “0”.

Now you can rotate the whole curve to align it with your main shape

We are now ready to repeat the shape.

To do so, you will need 2 modifiers: an Array modifier, then a Curve modifier.

For the array modifier, add a few shapes in the “Count” setting and choose your axis according to the direction you want

The relative Offset will determine how far apart (the offset) the shapes are from each other. In the example above (at 1.4) it will look like this

If you increase it to 2.1 for example you will see the shape farther apart

You can adjust this later anyway so don’t worry too much about it for now. Let’s add the curve modifier

Click the small square in the “Object” setting to select which curve to follow for this modifier

You will see the BezierCurve we created earlier, select it.

That will apply the curve to the object and looking in your viewport you will see your shape following the path

As we said earlier the shapes are deformed along the path, which is what we wanted

Now play with the count setting and the offset to have the object along the entire path.

Great.. Now let’s see how to NOT deform along the path

2 – Repeating along a path without deformation

For this one, I will create a different shape so we can see things a bit better. Something like this:

To avoid deformations, we need to NOT apply the curve to the shape, but to a small plane that will follow the path. Our object will be parented to the Plane and will repeat itself along the path without deformations. To avoid any issue, we need to make sure Origins are all concurrent and that scales are all reset. If not you will see some strange movement of the Shape along the path.

First, let’s make sure the Path has its origin to its geometry. Select the path, then right click and choose “Set Origin -> Origin to Geometry”

Then select the Shape, and do the same so both have their origin well placed.

Add a plane and scale it down a bit so it’s not too big.

Make sure the 3D cursor is set to the origin of the Plane. Select the Plane, right click and choose: Snap -> Cursor to Selected

Now select the Shape and snap it to the 3D cursor, that will move the shape to the same place as the Plane because both Origin will be concurrent. Right click on the Shape then Snap -> Selection to Cursor

Then select the Plane and add the Array modifier and the Curve modifier like we did earlier.

Play with your own settings of course

Notice that I used the “Fit Curve” instead of exact count this time, and chose the BezierCurve. This will make the repeat go along the entire curve.

But now comes the trouble that most people don’t mention in Tutorials.. For some reason, for others it works perfectly but it didn’t for me, so hopefully this help you.

When I increase the offset between the planes, they dont extend along the curve, they just stop disappear!!

That was strange to me.. After searching the web, I found out this was an issue with the Scale. In fact if you scale the Plane you will see the shape extend along the path as you scale more. See below (I put the Offset back to 2.5m)

Obviously this is very hacky..

Then I found on another forum that you can Apply the scale and rotation to an object and that will fix this automatically!! Select the Plane, go to Object -> Apply -> Rotate and Scale

DONE!! The Plane is now all along the Path, as we wanted when we chose “Fit to Curve”.

All you have to do now is Parent the original Shape to the Plane. To do that Select the Shape first, then shift select the Plane (so both are selected). Right click and choose “Parent -> Object”.

Nothing seems to happen.. That’s because we need to instantiate the Shapes now.. This is done on the Plane properties. Select the Plane only, then go to the Property panel, in the Instancing section

Click “Faces” and you should see a nice chain being created in the viewport. Unselect “Display Instancer” and “Render Instancer”. The Instancer is the Plane, you don’t need to see it anymore unless you want to change it.

Here is the result

You can make the original Shape disappear, but notice that in the collection hierarchy, it is now under the Plane. That’s because of the Parent relationship we created earlier.

Click the small “eye” icon for the Cube and the Bezier curve and you are good to go.

One more thing. The object you have now cannot be scaled up or down easily, or you may want to change some of the rings along the way. To do so, you have to make all the duplicate real..

Select the object and go to Object -> Apply -> Make instances real

Now each of the duplicate is a single object and you can scale the whole thing to your liking.

I hope this was useful. Have fun!