9.5.2

246 • CHAPTER 7
OBJECTS MENU • SPLINES • 247
 The spline is always created in the view of the active viewport. Bezier splines,
B-splines, Cubic splines and Akima splines will be created on the construction
plane in the perspective view or on the world planes of the remaining views.
With a Freehand spline drawn in the perspective view, the spline will be created
on the plane that is perpendicular to the camera direction. In all other views,
the Freehand spline will be created on the world planes.
 For some operations, such as the aligning of objects along a spline (Arrange
command) or the movement of objects along a given curve (Align To Spline
tag), the direction of the spline (where it begins and ends) is important. For
this reason, the spline is color-coded.
 By default, from the rst vertex, the starting point, and moving outwards,
the curve is colored from yellow to orange to red (the end point). The colors
of the start and end points can be changed within the preferences. The colors
chosen are then changed, in a graduated fashion, between the two points.
This colored display is visible only when the Points tool is active.
Segments
A spline is made from several partial curves, or segments. For example, if you create some text, you
will see that only one object is created, even though you typed in several letters. The text object now
consists of several outlines — one outline or more per letter.
For example, the word ‘Test’ consists of four letters; that makes four separate segments. However,
another, fth, segment is also present — the inside of the ‘e’ is a further spline segment. If this type
of element is later extruded to form a 3D object, CINEMA 4D will automatically punch out a hole that
is the same size and shape of the internal segment of the ‘e’.
A spline converted to a 3D object with holes automatically created.
Holes are formed only if a spline lies completely inside another spline and both form closed curves. If
two segments overlap in any way, no 3D object can be formed. If you nonetheless try, strange results
are likely.