Plugin for Hash Animation:Master V9.0 or higher.
Bevels a model along a spline.
This plugin is freeware. Please mail (mbricman@kci-group.com) me a link to your work if you use it !
Zevel is available for PC and MAC.

Holy poop, this is great!
This makes adding new detail to a model a breeze. For instance, I wanted to add another edge loop of splines around a mouth. I just selected the edge loop, used Zevel and voila. the amount of time this could save me is huge! Any chance you could modify the app to let us add as many additional "zevels" as we would like? Or maybe pick two and it would add a set in between them.
Just great!
- Brian Nicolucci

Spectacular! I love the modeling in AM but sometimes the tools are very slow, so stuff like this is worth it's weight in gold. Keep up the great work!
- Brian Nicolucci

Awesome!
- Daniel Shimmyo

Great!!!!!!!!!!! More hard workers like you contributing toA.M.,and no doubt the best 3d software around.
- Robert Hatfield

This is exactly what I was looking for, havn't used it yet. i'll let you know how it works for me. We need more people like you that seems to do stuff like this for the joy of it. Thanks
- Aubrey Smith

well, just wanted to say i tried out a quick test after someone posted they used zevel for adding another spline ring around a mouth. i made an arm with only one spline ring at the elbow, one at the forearm, and one at the wrist......i shaped it up slightly to resemble an arm and not just a tube. then using zevel i added a ring at distance 2 then selected the one that should be the center and used zevel to add a ring distance at -2 this time.............wow, it worked like a charm, i got 3 rings at the elbow and it didn't take hardly any extra moving around to keep the original look. this is great.
- Dieter Wagner

Please-oh-PLEASE could someone port these cool plugins to the Mac?!
- Victor Navone

Thanks for making a great little set of plugins....Zevel is great.
John Henderson

Very nice work! I think this Bevel (or Zevel :-)) Plug-In is so essential, that should be included as standard tool in A:M!
Thank you
Or better say Zhank you :-)
(Hey- now I know why Arnold Shwarthzeneger sounds so funny... "Pleaze gimme zhis... Zhank you..." He's Austrian too :-))
- Dusan Kastelic

Quite frankly you have/are creating the most simple but powerful and useful tools for AM. Zevel is astounding! Yet it is so simple.
- Vernon Zehr

Thanks a ton Marcel!
- Francisco Villasenor

WOW!!!
I've been asking Hash for this since V3!
- Glenn Clowell

I wanted to say...THANK YOU!!
Your plug ins are amazing and a great time saver, thank you! People like you make the big bad companies look so pathetic...:-) Outstanding.
- Tony

That is most cool!
Thanks for making a very useful tool for us rather unartistic modelers.
- John F. Ashton-Keller

I just got around to trying your Zevel plug-in today, and I've got to tell you, it's great! I used it to insert a row of splines in between two other rows. I had sent a feature request to Hash a couple years ago for them to add a function to do this. I guess they don't need to do that now!
Thank you so much! Keep up the good work!
- Cindy Groves

Beveling a model can be a very tedious task. not that it is complicated - you just have to insert CPs at the right places and add splines - but still time - consuming. especially the exact positioning can take a long time.

But the advantages of beveled objects just outweigh these efforts.

Yves Poissant shows in his tutorial The advantages of bevels why and when you should use bevels.
Yves has a very nice and useful set of beveled primitive a:m objects available for download at his site.

However, in many situations promitive modeling is not applicable.

The described process of beveling is fairly easily formalized, but there are still decisions you have to make when beveling a model by hand. Zevel tries to make good decisions at these points, but you could certainly create a model that will not work nicely with Zevel. The usual situations however will be treated just fine.


They grey and black points and splines show the splineage as is was before zeveling.
The green spline was selected to be zeveled.
Zevel now refines the geometry along this spline. (shown in yellow).

Actually point B will get moved to the left and at the right there will be inserted a new CP.
As you can see, the new points are not positioned on the original spline, but on the virtual line between B and the neighbouring CPs (and exactly by the given distance value).

Zevel has problems with hooks, so detach any hooks from the spline you want to bevel and the reattach them after you beveled.

Since 5-point patches are weak, any 5-pointers adjacent to the bevelled spline will be lost and will have to be restored manually.

Zevel currectly does not replicate the CP settings of point B to the new CP. I did not need this yet. if there is demand, i can quite easily implement that (mail!).

Your mesh might look strange right after applying Zevel, just select (at least) all points that have just been created and moved, then deselect again (you can just select ALL points in your mesh if you like) this should make a:m straighten the splines again.

Select one CP from the spline you want to bevel, right - click on it (tip: right-click on the manipulator pane, this makes hitting easy), select "Plugins", then "Wizards", then "Zevel...".

If you want the geometry to be refined by more than one spline, you can select one of the newly created splines and zevel again by half of the amount you specified before.

Download zevel.zip for PC
Download zevel.hqx for MAC

Close A:M.
Unzip, copy the Zevel.hxt to your A:M HXT plugin folder (like C:\Program Files\Hash Inc\V90\hxt or the MAC equivalent)
Run A:M.

Use this plugin at your own risk, i did not have any kind of problem aside the above mentioned ones while using it, but its always a good idea to save often. especially before using a plugin.