How do you bend a primitive?

Is there an easy way to bend a primitive?

The only thing I've been able to discover is to create a partial arc from a ring. However this seems overly complicated and it is hard to get a natural looking bend. Also I'd like to change the amount of bend dynamically from a script. (I've also experimted with twists but they are even more complicated.)

As a simple usage example, how would I make a pole bend in the wind? (One end of the pole needs to stay fixed and the other needs to slowly bend back and forth.)

You can't do it with a single prim. Best you could hope for is a column of cylinder sections for your pole... the wind would cause each section to offset and rotate a slight amount, based on the wind direction and strength. Obviously, the upper section would offset farther from center, and rotate more.

I'm sure you saw this coming:

You may also consider rotating a series of textures on your prim to animate the illusion of bending rather than insisting on bending the prim itself. There is no way to "bend" a prim.

Cut torus, scaling and rotation could achieve that effect.

Thanks for the responses.