Hi Jodie:

Long time no hear. I'm modeling the Castle for Scarecrow of Oz and was looking at the Tinman Castle for some inspiration. I never knew you did that one. What a treat for the eyes and what great splines you laid there. I was particularly interested in how you created some of those wonderful balusters? Did you make one piece of the baluster, copy it with Duplicator, and then stitch them together? I don't think so, since they are so perfect. How did you do that? Please share your keen insight with a great admirer of your work.

Eric

Eric,
I'll launch an email to Jody. As far as I know he still using the one I have.
Last time I checked in with him he was really busy building 'real world' cars.
He showed me some A:M models (preconcept full working gears etc) he had created prior to building the real thing at Martin's Hash Bash.

If you send me your email at: rodney.baker@gmail.com I'll forward it to him as well.

He may still be checking in here though and might see your message.

Edit: Email launched.

Thank you Rodney

Eric

Eric,

Some of the pieces for the castle were already completed when it was handed off to me.

That being said, I did re-create some of those pieces and and created some new pieces for the 'main' palace.

I did not use the duplicator wizard as you suspected, BUT, it could be used for that. I used a VERY manual method. I lathed a circle the size I needed the entire section to be. Then I made a rough arch, like I wanted to duplicate. I then manually put the arch on the circle at one of the axis points. I then used the deformation tool to slightly bend it to match the curve. Then I created a copy and then set it's center point to 0,0,0. While it was still selected, I then rotated a certain number of degrees. I then stitched the two together and made another copy and repeated the process until I went all the way around.

This DOES require some planing to see just how many of the arches you can get around the circle. Easy way to do that is to change the number of lathe sections on your base circle when you make it.

I suppose you could use the duplicator tool for this, but I never can get it to rotate things the way I want.

Hope that helps. I'll see if I can get something closer to a tutorial or how-to on that this weekend.

Cheers!

Thank you Jody, that helps. Although I was hoping for a little bit more automation I figured it would have to be a lot of manual work. But heck, if it was easy, everybody would be creating Masterpieces like that. The hard work is what we get the ooohhh, ahhhhs for

If you can spring it, a small tut would not only be appreciated by me, but I'm sure everyone on the forum as well. No pressure

Eric

Okay, so here's the skinny. The duplicator works, but it actually creates more work for me.

I've attached a project file here for public consumption. It's a series of ten models showing the steps described here.

I first determine the size of the tower section I am building. Then I determine how many arches I want. In this case 16. The thing to remember is that you are building your first arch to match a pie section of the circle, not the other way around.

I build the pillar, then duplicate it and build the arch along a straight line first. Then using a 4x4x4 distortion box, I bend the arch to match the arc of the circle I want my tower to be. Then I delete half of each of the two pillars so there is just the arch.

NOTE: Being VERY critical about your bias at this point is the key to a smooth surface.

Once that is done I copy my arch once, rotate it around the Y axis at the 0,0,0 point (22.5 degrees in this case) so it ends up next to the first arch.

I then stitch them together at the pillar joint.

NOTE: Being VERY critical about your bias at this point is the key to a smooth surface between the arches. You can even preset the bias on the end pieces that aren't attached yet, so when they are copied, they will be ready for stitching.

Then I copy and rotate the twin arch around the Y axis at the 0,0,0 point (45 degrees in this case) so the set ends up next to the first set.

Then I stitch the two sets together and I have four arches for the price of only two stitchings. See where I'm going with this.

Copy and rotate the four arch set around the Y axis at the 0,0,0 point (90 degrees in this case) so the sets are next to each other again.

Stitch the sets together and we have eight arches for only stitching three times.

Only one more copy and rotate. Then TWO stitchings so we join the two halves of the circle and then just start designating the five pointers.

Overall, I was able to get sixteen arches with only FIVE stitchings. This is a LOT less work than if I used the duplicator.

Cheers!

very neat - but perhaps could even eliminate the stitching part if you did repeated copy flip attach. And could stand the vagueries and excitement of sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't (at least for me. But then again undo, & do again usually does it.)

Start with 1 arch section, constructed from an arc of circle, CFA , select all, rotate, translate to line up on zero, CFA, select all, rotate, translate, CFA, etc...

copy-flip-attach has NEVER worked right for me... even when I followed tutorials on it. I usually do a copy, axis flip and manual attach. At the very least I get consistent results.

Hope the tutorial helps others with CFA issues like me.

Thank you very much Jody, I'll look it over right now.

CFA only works about 10% of the time for me. Most of the time it takes the copy and puts it where I don't want it, and yes, everything is aligned and instructions are followed.

Definitely helped me, thank you for creating it. I had always wondered how that was done (and always thought the CFA thang was just my modeling ineptness...)