Curve In Center Of Tube

[donnya]

ultimately, I want to move a bolus of food through the small intestine.

for starters, I'd like any help creating a curve for a motion path. the curve s/b in the center of the tube, (a curved tube). so far, all I have is to select an edgeloop on the boundary of the tube, duplicate surface curve, attach all the curves into one. then, of course, it runs along the surface and I need to move each vertex into the center of the tube.

any hep figuring a way to create the curve in the center of the tube? ultimately, it will be a very convluted tube (small intestine)

[gwelch]

okay,
Make 2 curves opposite each other on your tube, by selecting the edge loops or isoparms of your tube, then loft between the two curves with the loft sections set to 3, select the middle isoparm of your new loft and make a new curve from surface.

[failure]

Why not make curve first and build the tube by extruding the profile along the curve? Otherwise, write a scrip that'll automate or semi-automate the process. You don't need to attach the curves, just duplicate the edgeloop, group it and center pivot. Group's position is your point. Do this for all edgeloops and fit a linear curve thru all centers. Rebuild curve to cubic and adjust manualy if you need.

To create linear curve thru selected object's pivots run:

CODE
$sel = ls -sl;
$com = "curve -d 1 ";
for( $s in $sel ){
    vector $pos = getAttr ( $s + ".translate" );
    $com = $com + "-p " + $pos.x + " " + $pos.y + " " + $pos.z + " ";
}
eval( $com );