Wrap cylinder around sphere As you can see on the picture below, I have this object shaped like a complex tube (selected in picture) that I want to wrap around this other object which looks like a flattened low-poly sphere (inactive object in picture).



As you may see, the center of the tube is flat on the Z axis. I need to wrap the "tube" around the "sphere" so that a line of faces on the bottom of the tube snap to the faces of the sphere. If I try to do it manually with "snap to faces", only the selected face of the tube moves and the rests stays in place, which distorts the object. I need to bend the tube withtout changing its general geometry. The result intended is what you can see on this picture:



I tried the shrinkwrap mod but it flattens all the vertices of the tube on the surface of the sphere (like it were intended for wrapping objects without thickness). Should I use physics to make them solid and use bones in my tube so I can articulate it like an arm? I haven't done any rigging/animation so far. Or is there another efficient way of doing this? Another mod? I read a bit about cast, curve and deform modifiers but none them will make the object snap to the other without passing through it. Also, if I skipped a step and there was a more efficient way to do this from the beginning, don't hesitate to tell me. Thanks in advance!
I think the quickest way to deal with this issue would be to load the reference image behind the mesh, tab into Edit mode with Proportional editing on and quickly move the tube into place in sections. With proportional editing on you won't have to move every vertices. If you find the proportional editing is distorting your tube shape just decrease the strength/area of the tool's effect.

Also, I don't think you're going to be able to have a perfectly curved innner edge on the curve and have it snapped exactly to the sphere's surface because of the hard angles of the sphere (see screen shot). This is because you still want the curve to be smooth which will require some subsurf to be applied.