Ribbon3D

The base model is simple: one line or an array of parallel lines is generated between Start and End. Number of Lines controls count, Line Thickness controls the hardware-rendered stroke, Ribbon Width controls spacing between parallel lines, and Subdivisions controls the number of vertices along each line.

Subdivisions is not only about deformation smoothness. More subdivisions mean more vertices, and those vertices can become Destination positions for Replicate3D. Ribbon3D density therefore directly affects downstream copy density.

Ribbon3D has two independent optional inputs. SceneInput accepts an existing 3D scene/geometry stream. MaterialInput accepts a normal 2D image/texture for the lines. Feeding an image into MaterialInput does not change the output domain: Scene remains scene3d.

Blackmagic documents generated texture coordinates on the line array by default. That allows a 2D texture to work directly, while UVMap3D can deliberately replace or remap those coordinates downstream.

Ribbon Rotation rotates the cross-line arrangement around the virtual Start-to-End axis. It is different from rotating the whole object with Transform3D and different again from changing UV orientation.

A critical production caveat is that Blackmagic documents Ribbon3D as hardware/OpenGL dependent. The Software Renderer is not a valid visibility baseline, and Line Thickness or line artifacts can vary with GPU and driver capabilities.

The captured current Inspector differs from older/manual screenshots: it shows Join Style and Miter Limit where the reference text historically describes an Antialiasing control. The controls are real in the captured build, but the exact meaning of the four icon-only Join Style choices remains a target-build live-verification item rather than something to invent from icon appearance.

Neither SceneInput nor MaterialInput is required to generate the lines. Ribbon3D outputs a 3D scene stream; normal 2D Glow, Merge and MediaOut belong after Renderer3D converts scene3d to an image.