Conduit

Cable dressing for hard-surface scenes in Blender. Cables that hang between anchors, fan out from a hub, drop from a ceiling and sprawl across the floor, or get drawn straight onto a surface. They end in real hardware and bake down to a game-ready mesh with UVs.

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This repository is Conduit's manual and issue tracker. The add-on itself is sold at 3dartstuff.com/conduit.

Install

1. Edit ▸ Preferences ▸ Add-ons ▸ Install from Disk, pick conduit_<version>.zip.
2. Enable Conduit.
3. The panel is in the 3D viewport sidebar (N), under the Conduit tab.

Needs Blender 4.5 LTS or newer. Every release is tested on 4.5 LTS and on the newest Blender.

The four cable modes

The panel has one tab per mode. Each tab has its own list of layers — a layer is one cable setup with its own look, anchors and output — and its own selection.

Hang — cables between anchors

A catenary between two or more anchor empties, with slack.

1. Place Anchors creates a starting pair either side of the 3D cursor, or Pick places anchors directly on a vertex, edge or face of your geometry (they stick to it, and follow it when it moves). Detach Anchors (the unlink button beside Pick) lets them go again, right where they are. Reset throws the layer's anchors away and starts a fresh pair.
2. Move the anchors, then Generate Cable. From then on, dragging an anchor or changing a setting rebuilds the cable live. If two anchors of a span sit in the same place, Generate names them: that span has no length to show.
3. Add Point inserts an anchor between two selected ones. On an A to B layer with one cable, that cable becomes a chain through all three; with several, set Spans to Chain first.
4. Remove Point (− beside Add Point) takes the selected anchors out and the cable closes up over the gap. On A to B the whole cable goes, both anchors. A drop on a span that no longer exists goes with it. An empty of your own is taken out of the cable but left in the scene.

Options:

• Chain runs one cable through every anchor in order. A to B pairs the anchors up and makes one cable per pair, each its own object — click one in the viewport and the panel edits that cable.
• Several cables on one chain: New Cable adds another cable along the same anchors, with its own look. Together runs them all along the same path (pick it when their looks differ enough to read apart), Spread lays them side by side like a cable tray — Stack Vertically stacks them up a wall instead — and Manual Offset places each one. Untick a cable in the list to take it out without losing its settings. A chain keeps at least one cable; remove the layer to remove the last.
• New Chain starts a separate cable with its own anchors, leaving the existing ones alone.
• Slack, per-span sag variance and a seed control the hang.
• Drop a span of a hanging cable to the floor: End lets the end fall and sprawl, Middle drops a loop from the middle while keeping both ends attached, with a controller empty you can drag.

Fan — one hub to many targets

1. Add Main places a hub empty at the 3D cursor, or Set Selected uses any empty you select — a hang anchor included, to branch a fan off a chain.
2. Pick Face and click a face: target anchors are scattered across it. While you hover, the face lights up and white dots show where the targets will land, sized to your Resolution Scale. Scroll to change the count while picking. Add Targets picks another face without losing the first.
3. Generate Fan Cables. Slack is randomised between Min and Max.

Dragging the hub or any target rebuilds the fan live.

Drop to Floor brings fan cables down: pick the Floor, then choose From the End (the target end has come loose and sprawls on the floor) or From the Middle (the slack settles on the floor, both ends stay put). Chance sets how many of the cables come down; raising it adds to the ones already down rather than reshuffling them. The hub end always stays up. Avoid Crossings keeps their floor runs from passing through each other (on for a new fan). Count and Seed are read when you pick a face: pick again to use new ones.

Draw — trace a cable across a surface

Draw Cable on Surface, then drag across any mesh. The cable follows the surface and rests on it; Surface Offset lifts it off. Extend adds to the stroke, Erase rubs part of it out, Redraw Stroke starts over. Draw on one object, a collection, or anything visible (Draw On). Freeze protects hand edits to the curve from being overwritten; everything that would rebuild it is greyed while it is on.

The stroke is recorded at Capture Detail, the one setting fixed while you draw, and the cable is built from it at Point Spacing with Smooth passes, so both can be changed afterwards. Keep Capture Detail finer than Point Spacing.

Drop — a bundle falling from a ceiling

For cable that has come down from a ceiling point and piled up on the floor.

1. Snap the 3D cursor to a ceiling face (Shift+S), then Ceiling from Cursor.
2. Pick the Floor mesh. Landings raycast against that mesh only, from the ceiling point down, so the floor has to be below it.
3. Set Cables and Spread, then Place Landings. Drag any landing to steer that one cable; Reseed rerolls them all, and is how a new Cables or Spread takes effect.
4. Generate Drop Cables. A landing dragged up to or above the ceiling has nowhere to fall to: that cable is left out, and Generate says how many were.

Shape: Fall Bow (waver on the way down), Floor Bend (how widely it curls over on landing), Sprawl Min/Max (how far it runs once down), Waviness, and Detail (sampling only — finer draws the same run more smoothly, not a curlier one). A cable on the floor never bends tighter than about twelve times its own thickness: it curves away from walls, the floor's edge and other cables instead of folding against them, and ends where it is boxed in.

• Landing Chance below 1 leaves some cables hanging short, cut ends and all — between Hang Min and Max of the way down. Their cut end is the Free End in Ends, Stripped on a new layer.
• Floor Offset lifts the cables off the floor (0 rests them on it), and Clearance is the gap kept from obstacles (0 picks one from the thickness).
• Avoid Obstacles keeps falls and floor runs out of walls and props. Leave Colliders empty to use every visible mesh except the floor, or name collections to keep it fast in a heavy scene. Objects adds single objects instead — select a few props and click it. A bevelled curve (a pipe) counts; a curve with no bevel is a line and is ignored. A pipe with no end caps still counts as solid. A room you are inside is recognised as a room, not a crate to be pushed out of. Delete a collider and it is gone from the list for good — a new object that takes its name is not picked up.
• Avoid Crossings keeps floor runs from passing through each other.
• One cable that differs: click a cable, Override Selected Cable, and the profile block edits just that cable. Edit Every Other Cable goes back.

The look: profiles

Every layer has a cable profile — the cross-section and what it does along its length.

• Preset gallery: Power Cable, Thin Wire, Rope, Braided Cable, Ribbon Cable, Flat Strap, Rigid Pipe, Hose, Corrugated Hose, Cable Trunking, I-Beam, Twisted Bar, Tapered Vine, Damaged Loom, Wire Harness. A preset is a starting point; tweak anything after.
• Shape: Round, Square, Rectangle, Hexagon, N-Gon, Pipe, Teardrop, L-Angle, U-Channel, I-Beam, or any curve you pick. Strands turns one cable into a twisted rope, braid or ribbon bundle. A shaped section keeps sharp corners: a small Conduit Sharp Corners modifier on the cable marks them, and a bake keeps them as sharp edges.
• Harness (its own section under the profile): many cables in one run, held together by zip ties, tape or velcro. Build it from rows — 7 thin Plain, 1 Twisted Pair, 3 thick Plain, 1 Braid — each with its own count, size, material and share of Loose cables. Against repetition: Tie Jitter and Missing Ties break the spacing, Wander lets cables drift across the bundle, Loose per Gap makes a loose cable sag in some gaps and not others, and zip-tie Heads face at random or all one way. The rows save with the profile, so a harness goes into your library. Works in every mode: a hanging harness, a fan of them, or one dropped from the ceiling and lying on the floor, where it opens out sideways instead of sagging into it. The Wire Harness preset starts you off.
• Per metre detail — rope lay, roll, ribbing — holds its pitch at any cable length.
• Taper, thickness noise, tilt. Regular Ribs turns the noise into even ribs, the way the Corrugated Hose preset uses it.
• Damage: worn-through jacket with the copper conductor showing.
• Library: Save a profile and Load it in any file. Copy From Layer borrows another layer's look. Point every Blender version at one library folder in Preferences.

Ends

How a cable leaves its anchor, and how it finishes. Each end is set on its own.

• Exit (a hanging or fan cable): by default a cable sags from the anchor itself. Square To Surface leaves the surface the anchor was picked on at a right angle, runs straight for Straight Run — and never less than the length of its fitting — then bends at Bend Radius (default: four times the thickness). It keeps to the surface if you turn the object afterwards. Aim uses the anchor empty's +Z — rotate the empty to point the cable — its anchor shows as an arrow while it does. Into Surface arrives square to the wall and goes into it at the anchor, for a cable entering a wall. A chain passing over an anchor picked on a surface lies against it rather than through it.
• Style: Plain; Stripped cuts the jacket back and shows coloured cores and bare copper; Frayed splays and droops them; Heat-Shrink and Taped put a band over the end.
• Uneven Cut (a harness or a rope): a cut bundle is never cut flush. Each wire ends in its own place, Broken snaps a share of them off shorter still with the copper showing, and Splay and Droop let what is left open out of the bundle and hang. An end that hangs from its anchor keeps one wire running to it, the way a stripped end keeps one core.
• Break Out: the last stretch splits and every wire goes to its own terminal — every cable in a harness, every strand of a rope, or the cores of a single cable. Split Length is how far back it starts. Either pick Terminals of your own (objects: a connector's pins, a terminal strip, the studs on a busbar; each wire goes to the terminal on its own side, in whatever order you picked them) or leave it to lay out a block for you, Terminal Spacing apart in as many Rows as you ask for, centred on the anchor and turning with it. Every wire arrives square to its terminal and none crosses another to get there, the ties stop before the split, and Boot wraps it where it comes apart. A fitting on that end goes on every wire instead — a ferrule or a lug sized to the wire it crimps, not to the bundle it came out of.

Fittings & Clips

• Fitting at either end: a built-in Gland, Plug, Lug, Ferrule or Grommet, or any object of your own. It sits on the anchor and covers the end of the cable: in front of the wall the anchor is on, or over the tip of a free end. It scales with cable thickness, so one fitting works for every cable (Match Thickness; a fitting of your own says what thickness it was modelled for), or stays the size it was modelled (As Modelled). The lug is a ring terminal in line with the cable, its ring on the anchor and the cable ending in its crimp barrel. Inset stops the cable inside the fitting instead of running through to its face, in every mode. On a cable too short for it, the inset is shortened to fit, and Generate (Rebuild Cable on the Draw tab) tells you. Model your own the same way round: origin on the face that meets the wall, the cable leaving along −Z (or choose another axis in Along). An end every cable shares — a fan's hub, a drop's ceiling — gets one fitting, and a drop cable that hangs short wears its Free End fitting.
• Clip repeated along the cable. A hanging span is held at its anchors, so that's where clips go (At Anchors). Spacing is for cable that rests on something — a drawn stroke or a drop's floor run — and clips lie flat against that surface, never closer than a clip is long. Along and Up say which way your clip model faces.

Fittings and clips are rebuilt as you drag, updated in place (a material you assign to one survives, and so it does when you pick another fitting or clip), and bake with the cable on Finalize.

Viewport Detail

Every layer has a Full / Medium / Low switch under its list, with the face count it costs beside it. Full draws everything the profile asks for; Medium and Low thin the rings and round sides for heavy shots. The globe button sets every layer in the scene at once. It renders at the level you pick, so set Full before the final render. The bake uses its own settings and never this.

A harness is light at Full anyway: its rings go where the cable bends, sags or twists, not every few millimetres along it.

Past about half a million faces the count turns red and Generate warns you. The cable is still built in full — nothing is coarsened behind your back — so lower the detail, or split a very long run into shorter ones.

Finalize — bake to mesh

Turns a layer into a mesh for export.

• Its own resolution — Length Steps and Round Sides, and Harness Detail for a harness — independent of the viewport. A layer left on Low still bakes at what Finalize says.
• UVs: World Length makes U arc length divided by Tile Length, so every cable in the scene has the same texel density; Normalised runs U 0 to 1 along each cable; Leave As Converted keeps Blender's own map. V runs round the section. Offset Seam Per Cable turns each cable's seam — and each wire's in a harness or rope — to its own place, the same every bake. End caps get their own island.
• Weld merges the seam's duplicate vertices (0 is off). After hides the curves or leaves them as they are.
• One mesh per layer (one object to export; each material on it is still its own draw call) or one per cable. The triangle count is shown.
• The curves are hidden, never deleted (their fittings and clips with them): change anything and finalize again. Modifiers and materials you add to the baked mesh survive a re-finalize. A mesh the new bake no longer makes — after switching between one mesh per layer and per cable, or removing a cable — is removed; one you had edited is kept beside the bake and named in the report.
• Detach Mesh hands the mesh over to you for good.
• A cable with no faces — two anchors in one place, say — is skipped with a warning rather than baked into an empty object.

Materials

A cable with no material of its own gets a generated one — Conduit_Cable, Conduit_Harness_2 to _4, Conduit_ZipTie, the copper, the fittings' metal and rubber — tinted once and then left to you. Pick a material of your own in the profile, a harness row, a band or a fitting and Conduit never repaints it.

Preferences

Edit ▸ Preferences ▸ Add-ons ▸ Conduit:

• Profile Library — where saved profiles live. Point every Blender version at the same folder.
• Live Delay — how long live preview waits before rebuilding. Raise it on a heavy scene.
• Panel Tab — which sidebar tab the panel sits under.

Good to know

• Everything Conduit makes is tagged. It only ever clears or deletes what it generated. A collection of yours that happens to share a name is never touched.
• Rename anything. Layers hold real references, so renaming an anchor, floor or output in the outliner doesn't break anything.
• One collection per layer. Everything Conduit makes goes under a Conduit collection, in a collection named after its layer, with its anchors, hub, targets and drop controllers in <layer>_Controls. Rename the layer and both collections follow (unless you renamed one yourself). Delete the layer's collection and keep its contents, and new anchors still join the same Controls. File everything somewhere of your own and Conduit leaves it there — it doesn't bring back an empty collection. The outliner button in the panel header tidies anything left loose in the scene root. Things you filed in collections of your own are never moved.
• Removing a layer (−) removes everything it made: its cables, anchors, hub and targets, fittings and clips. A finalized mesh stays — baked work is yours. So does an empty of your own that a layer only pointed at, and anything another layer still uses (a chain anchor that is also a fan's hub).
• Delete a generated cable and the next Generate puts it back. Convert one to a mesh and it's yours — Conduit leaves it alone.
• Scene ▸ New ▸ Copy Settings is safe: cleaning up the copy never deletes the original shot's cables.
• Pick, Pick Face and Draw Cable on Surface start only in the 3D viewport.
• Hover any button or setting for a tooltip.

Support

• Bugs and feature requests: open an issue. It needs a free GitHub account. Include your Blender and Conduit versions and, if you can, a small .blend in a .zip.
• Your purchase and downloads: 3dartstuff.com/conduit.