Adding festoon lights Hi! I’m making a scene in which I’d like to have festoon lights, preferably based of paths so I can change the forms on them. What is the best way to make these? I’d also like the lamps to be rotated independently. So, an array modifier won’t do the job properly. And you can’t put hair/particles on a path, right?
You can put planes on a path, and have them emit the bulbs.


Create your wire-curve
Create a plane, assign it Array and Curve modifiers to duplicate it down the curve
Create a bulb, or Collection of bulbs.




Set up a particle system on the array of planes. It's easier to illustrate some example settings than to list them all:



The rendering here is of a Collection of bulb-objects, and 'Count' is used here to strictly alternate them (but you can select randomly, if you prefer). In the render, the emitter is hidden:



With this sort of result:



Note you can sway the bulbs by CtrlT adjusting the Tilt of the curve at various points along it, and/or you can randomize their rotation a little in the Particle system.