Modeling

Randy Berg

The pageup and pagedown keys will adjust the smoothness of the quickshade renderer.

This has the same effect as going to Tools/Options.../Rendering/Real-time Options and changing the "Polygons Per Patch" setting (as I just discovered).

Sounds like you're not using the mouse to manipulate the values: hit the button to show the bias handles, then:

• hold down Ctrl and drag a bias handle end to change alpha
• hold down Shift and drag a bias handle end to change gamma

As to what they do... Think about your spline as a road on bumpy terrain, and you in a car travelling along that road. Changing alpha is like you turned the steering wheel and the road twisted to accommodate your new direction. Changing gamma is like suddenly growing a hill so that the road tilts up or down from its current direction. alpha and gamma are measured in degrees from the "neutral" position.

Or, more mathematically, after getting the tangent direction at a control point by Hash's normal rules (which involve the position and magnitude of the CP and some of its neighbors, and whether the CP is peaked or smooth), the tangent is adjusted by:

• rotate alpha degrees about the normal to the surface through the CP
• rotate gamma degrees about the tangent (perpendicular to the spline) to the surface at the CP

Notice that you have to have at least two splines passing through a CP, to form a surface, for the above to make sense.

Which direction is positive or negative seems complicated; it depends on how you constructed the spline, and is probably not worrying about --- use the interactive method described above and just shift drag direction if it's going the wrong way.

Howard Trickey

Very simple, you don't copy or paste, you save your model with a file name, and then import it back into itself, all the group names will be appended to samegroupname2. It is a good idea to first select the entire mesh and make a temp group name like "all" before you save the model, then you will be able to easily select the new from the old.

Jeff C.

Some of you might want to know this. I couldn't find it listed in the manual, so here's how:

You can set a keyboard shortcut for "show handles". They will appear on any selected CP. You can also press the yellow bias handle button on the top menu bar of Modeling and Action windows to toggle the feature on and off.

When a spline is peaked you can move the handles on each side independantly of each other.

Bias can be adjusted either with the number fields or when these handles are active.

-Glen Crowell

Animation:Master has trouble with very large or very tiny geometry. The default choreography grid is sort of the "sweet spot" within which renders will encounter minimal loss of floating point accuracy.

Some of my landscapes approach the square kilometer mark, but going much farther yields rendering artifacts.

- Brian "balistic" Prince

Actually, the hide button can be used in more ways than that. Particularly if you have various named groups. Say you have a model with the following groups:

• Head
• Face
• Nose
• Left ear
• Right ear
• and so on...

It's obvious if you just want the head, you select the head group and hit hide (h). Then if you want just the Nose, you select the nose group and hide more (shift-h). You should only see the nose patches.

NOW what is not so obvious is if you now want only the Left ear, you could still select the left ear group (though they are hidden) and hit shift-h and only the left ear will appear with other geometry hidden.

In other words, shift-h is not just to hide more. It can function like a reveal button. Irrespective of what is hidden and visible, you could select any group or groups (using shift select) and hit shift-h to reveal them.

IMO AM's geometry select and hide function is unparalleled though they appear very basic initially.

sine

AM2000 has a killer new tool for selecting groups! Click on Patch Group Mode and then when you click on any legal patch, all of the CPs that make up the patch are selected. It's a continous mode tool meaning that you can keep selecting Patches and adding them to the current selection just by clicking with the mouse.

Michael S. Flynn

First you need to use any one of the three special manipulators, Translate, Scale, or Rotate. This will activate the pivot and allow you to grab it with the mouse. Also in the properties panel for the selected group of CPs, under the tab called "Pivot" you can type in the numbers yourself.

Second, if you want the pivot moved and *retained* then name the group of CPs (group naming) and then use either step above to move the pivot. Every time you select the group by it's group name the pivot will be where you moved it. If you just reselect the same CPs in the window the pivot is calculated on the fly to the center of all the selected CPs.

Not only is the pivot movable when using the 3 special tools, you can also rotate the pivot (the smaller set of handles closer to the pivot icon).

-Jeff Cantin

Here's how to do each.

To gain access to the pivot, so you can move it:

Whenever some group is selected, you can choose one of the special Manipulators--Scale, Rotate, or the special Move one that has a button. It's only the default, 'Standard' Manipulator that prevents access to the pivot.

Once you have chosen either Scale, Rotate, or the special Move [you can press 'N' on your keyboard to switch from the Standard Manipulator to the special Move one], you will be able to click and drag the pivot. I prefer to do that in a front, side, or top window so that I can be darn sure where I've placed the pivot.

You can also move the pivot by typing in numbers in the Properties Panel.

To keep Lathe available while doing all this:

Click 1 [one] Control Point on the spline you'd like to lathe. A segment of the spline, on one side of the CP nearest your click, will become selected. Now type ',' [comma], which selects the entire single spline on which this CP rests. This ',' command is called 'Complement Spline', and you'll also find it under the Edit menu.

'Complement Spline' will let you use the same Manipulators described above without greying out the Lathe tool--so you'll be able to move the pivot. That would not be possible if, instead of the comma key, you pressed the '/' [slash] key to choose 'Group Connected'. Only the 'Complement Spline' key will preserve your ability to Lathe, as far as I know.

James Poulakos

If you have any window open with the normals displayed or in shaded mode, the software must recalculate the patches and normal direction. If you have one bone in the shaded mode you will get the same re-calc process. If you have applied a decal then you get building texture maps as well when in shaded mode.

However, I don't know when & and at what point this slowdown kicks in. I did my train model on a P(1)-233 with 64 megs of ram and I saw the slowdown at around 4,500 patches. I had to stop working on the model at about 6,200 patches (I just couldn't wait that long anymore and called the train "done"). Due to a h/d crash in March, I lost the train model so I can't load it in my new faster machine to compare. But I did learn a few tricks.

1. Know what mode each window is in, and each bone...

2. Decals go on last as a general rule, because you will distort them or make then not display properly if you move points around and/or make and break spline connections.

3. Same as above for adding bones, do it near the end, cus making changes to the mesh (adding cps & splines) doesn't automatically assign cps to the bone you want. Make named groups for ease of use later.

4. Copy and paste parts into a new model, tweak them in the new model window then paste em back to the main model (if your model is not uni-body). The software places the copy in the same 3d space and scale provided you have your options changed to no off-sets on paste/extrude. Or you may want to do just the opposite and move the finished parts to a new model. Er, save often ;-)

5. Help others, send the whole thing to someone you trust with a real fast machine and find out what they get, write up a report of your findings (like this one) and send it in as a tip.

Jeff Cantin

This is a situation I've experienced in my first year of modeling with AM. And I put here tips to reduce the pain of modeling and overtweaking cp.

• Always start with the half of the model(copy,paste and flip it only when your satisfy of your modeling at 90%)
• I never play with bias at first (keep this for the final touch and not on every cp ! )
• most of the cp will stay at: alpha:0 gamma:0 and magnitude :100
• I always use rotoscope picture for modeling (this really help ! )
• I use as many patch as neccessary at the beginning but...
• At the end of the modeling process I will reduce the number of patch as much as I can (using for this "hooks" and "five point patch")
• Use "primitive" form if you can (using the lathe tool to create spherized form will give you the exact amount of magnitude/position for each cp and spline )
• model in "shaded wireframe"or other real time rendering really help! (put your subdivision level to 16 so you will receive a better feedback ofyour bias and crease problem)
• use two window to see the problem from two direction at the same time...( I don't use this much but it help sometime...I only got one 17" sceen!)

My main tips for you is: Never set bias to every cp or use bias as modeling tool. Too much bias setting will make your modeling works a nightmare...It's impossible to set the alpha,the gamma, the magnitude,and the position in at least three view for each cp !!! a model can have thousand of cps!.... you will never end this way. My suggest is use bias as a final tweaking tool or for special situation of the mesh. Also I noticed that patch or cp that have high bias control can produce strange move when they will be animated.

Bias control is very good but use it with parsimony

...the last thing is patience.

...no secret in there

Hold down the option or control key ( I forget which one is for Alpha and which is for Gamma)while moving the bias handle around. It works but it is difficult to control. It's easier to adjust the values in the properties panel.

Jim Talbot

This is very easy to do in A:M. Simply peak the control point, and then you can adjust the individual alpha and gamma for the splines on each side of it.

To see this in action, make a single, inter-connected spline that is just a 3-point triangle. Click on one of the CPs, and hit the peak button or just "P" on the keyboard. Now, select the spline to the right of the CP. Click on the "Group" tap in the PWS and change the gamma setting from 0 to 100. You should see the spline coming out of the peaked CP "round" out while the other spline stays peaked.

To do the same thing with the other spline (on the left of the CP) you would use a gamma of -100. A positive value would curve it towards the right side.

-Jim Sherwood

As yet, A:M cannot lathe only by a user definable number of degrees. -But there is a simple work-around:

For example, you want a section like one slice of an orange cut into 5ths. So if you want a 5th of an orange which is made up of a spline on each edge and two between those splines (a total of 4), subtract 1 spline (which makes 3), and times the number by 5 (which makes 15). 15 is the number you set in the Lathe cross section number field of the modeling tab under Tools > Options.

Once you Lathe the "orange" at those settings select just the selection you want (the 4 spline slice), copy it, select all of the "orange" and delete what you just Lathed, paste your section back into your model window and there you go. The copy and paste part avoids having to take the time to manual detach the "slice" from the rest of the "orange".

This sounds more complicated than it is. Do it a few times and you'll see that it is almost as fast as a having the actual partical revolve/Lathe tool in A:M already.

You can also use AMLoft to directly do this a couple of different ways. Mr. Richard Swika can better answer how AMLoft can do it.

Glen Crowell

If you are working with an angle the divides evenly into 360 degrees, then use the method suggested by the honnorable Mr. Glen Crowell. Simply use the A:M lathe tool, then cut away the region that you don't need. It is simple, fast, and always works.

For oddball angles, consider using AM LOFT's revolve tool. (Get AM LOFT at: http://home.epix.net/~ricswika/AMloft/ReadMe.html)

Here's how:

1. In a sepearte A:M model file define the 'axis of revoloution' by drawing a straight 3 point spline
2. Draw one cross section at the location where you wish to begin the revolve
3. Duplicate the cross section and place it where you wish the revolve to end. For precise placement, rotate the second cross section exactly into location by using the rotate manipulator with the pivot placed on the axis of revolation. This way you can get exactly any angle you need.
4. Save this model and open it in AM LOFT
5. Follow the instructions for doing a revolve http://home.epix.net/~ricswika/AMloft/AMLoftTutorial.html#Revolve
6. Import or open the resulting model in A:M

If AM LOFT revolves in the wrong direction, simply hit the undo button and repeat the revolve operation, but this time reverse the order when picking shape curves.

I hope this helps

Richard Swika

I do this all the time, by extruding.

Press CTRL+P to visit the Units settings, and set the Extrude offsets to 0.

Select the spline you wish to lathe, then EXTRUDE. Now, you can either give the newly extruded spline a group name in the PWS [safest] or just be a daredevil and try to click and move the pivot without naming the new spline. If you miss, your spline gets deselected and you'll have a bit of a pain selecting it again.

Move the pivot [details are in the manual] to place the center of your intended lathe, and choose the Rotate manipulator. Now you can lathe that new spline around the changed center.

Note that, if you deselect the spline [even if you named it as a group], you will have to move the pivot all over again. Unfortunately, groups don't seem to save their pivots.

Practice this, and realize that you can also *rotate* your pivot, to adjust the direction of rotation your lathing action will take.

Oh, and one more thing--you can move the pivot when using the Scale manipulator, too, to kind of mimic the effect of one of those volume deformation tools you've seen in other software. It isn't exactly the same, but it has lots of power and flexibility nonetheless. You can rotate the pivot to choose a direction for scaling, for example, and move it far away from the object--try this and see what different deformation effects you can manage, with just a scale tool. It's pretty dang cool.

James Poulakos

Good news: groups *do* save their pivot positions, and even rotations, as TinCan tells me. I just checked and found that I can save a group's pivot location and rotation, giving me the option to return and adjust that group's deformation without having to mess with the pivot.

This makes the Scale tool my one-stop deformation tool, it seems to me. I just tried deforming the Sphere High primitive, and I could get any deformation effect I could think up, just like I used to get with trueSpace's deformation tool. Cool!

And as Michael Hoyes reminded me to mention, you can also set the pivot's position numerically. Look on the Properties panel, on the tab 'Pivot'.

A final note: you can turn on/off 'Snap Manipulator to Grid' at any time, and if it's on when you move the pivot around, the pivot snaps to grid *intervals*. I.e., it doesn't snap to the nearest grid intersection, but rather snaps to a point in space equivalent to whatever your grid spacing's setting is. If you want the pivot to snap to exact grid intersections, try using the numerical entry method to put the pivot at an exact grid intersection first, then turn on the 'Snap Manipulator to Grid' function and move your pivot around. The numerical fields tell me that it isn't snapping to the exact next grid intersection [as in, '5.98' instead of '6.0'], but I can't explain that--it looks like it's snapping to the grid intersection to me.

James Poulakos

First make a new model under objects and drag it into the Choreography in the Project WorkSpace.

Select the model shortcut in the Choreography part of the Project WorkSpace then switch from Choreography Mode to Model Mode. This is done by pressing the yellow PuttyDude button on the top menu bar. Now you can model in any view of the CHO window with all the modeling tools.

You can come close to "Mirror Modeling" by dragging a second instance of your model into the CHO and scaling it by -100% in the X axis in the models CHO shortcut properties. This really helps keep your proportions when doing half a face!

Another way to get 45 degree birdseye (or perspective) views when modeling (with and without a rotoscope) is to add cameras to your model file it self. You can look through these camera views while in a model window. And bring in lights, too, if you want something other than the default straight on light that comes with a model window.

It's a way to "save" special views as well until "SnapShots" come back as a feature.

Glen Crowell

Not directly. Here is a method I have had success with: Make a new camera in a CHO and use an image as a rotoscope. The image must be the same proportions as your camera view is set to, or the image will be squashed or stretched to fit your camera field. Your camera can be set to orthographic or perspective in the camera object properties.

Glen Crowell

North-south/vertical/Y-axis is the default, after which you can rotate and move your lathed piece into place. However, you can change your lathe axis.

Select any point on the spline to be lathed. Hit ',' (or Edit > Complement Spline) Hit 'R' (or the Rotate Manipulator button) You can now move and rotate the central pivot for the model, as well as the model itself (switch to birds-eye view to get an unhindered look at the pivot and its handles) The green axis of the pivot (with the red handle) is the axis about which the spline will be lathed.

Regards, Myles - A:M dilettante.

To subdivide a spline in half I connect a hook to the spline, disconnect it (shift+k) then hit A to create a point in the spline and connect that point to what was the hook. Viola! the new point is exactly in the center of where the spline was, although the curve isn't exactly the same.

Chris Luckenbach

Nope, sorry , at this time there is no way to set the interpolation type for groups of channels, or to set a default interpolation type.

The best we can do is to open edit all channels, select the CP's we need and change the interpolation type after the fact.

(And if this feature snuck into V7.1 and I missed it I'll GLADLY be wrong! :)

Glen Crowell

Reading an old manual or book... D/l the latest manual and read up on glass, they even have a tut (page 307.) The software has changed again use white now or a light color and add in some spec color and 1.1 to 1.3 refraction.

Jeff C.

I was working away at the glass material, and was seeing an artifact that plagued Hash's transparency material a long time ago. That is, when the ray passes through surfaces in certain orders, it causes a weird blackness to appear. This only happens when passing through an "internal" surface, before passing through the first surfaces compliment side (don't worry if you have not idea what I'm talking about).

I updated to V 7.1c-2 and low an behold, problem fixed...

so, the first bit I'd offer, is to upgrade! :)

The second thing to offer when doing realistic glass is to remember that real glass is not perfect in either surface, not in quality. Therefore, you should make at least two glass attributes and combine them with a turbulent spherical combiner. each glass attribute should vary from the other one in both transparency, as well as refraction. This allows the appearance of an "impure" material.

Just an idea... Take it or leave it...

-Todd Shafer

For my own experience I tried it using a single surface spine. That is, draw a three leaf clover, exturde that , rotate , extude again and keep going . If you put three or more cps in each leaf plus the three interior points, peak the three interior points, then it produces a very good looking rope IMO. You can make the outer surface as flat as you want and the spiraling grooves can be sharp (tight). Only problem is it gives you 72 patches per six extrusions (3 inches) of rope but I think that still beats the three twisted circles.

Hope this helps.

John

Well, the pseudo-advanced answer is this: I find that it is easy to get wrinkles of any type by being conscious of the effects of spline spacing.

Specifically, if you have a patch that is very wide, connecting to a patch that is very narrow (and they're not precisely coplanar), this will cause a noticeable wrinkle right on the border spline. This is because of the way that the splines going across the border spline interpolate (i.e. they overshoot due to their "velocity" coming in from the distant CPs, then backtrack to get back to the closer CPs). My experience has been that these wrinkles will look good in either normal or toon-shaded modes.

If that's too horribly confusing... well, I can't explain it better without turning this email into a ten page treatise on patch topology :)

-Tony

Don't build in too many splines... make do with the minimum that you can use and still get good curvature. And, of course, model in Shaded mode to get the kinks out, then switch over to Toon-Render. You'll be pleased with the results, I'm pretty sure. Toon-rendering will hide an awful lot of niggling little details.

I would recommend that you pay special attention to modelling the eyes. Anime eyes have a very particular, very peculiar property, in that the Specular Highlight reacts to light in the opposite direction from the reaction of the Diffuse highlight.

"What the %#@!% does that mean?" I hear you cry....

Anime eyes traditionally have a darker area of the pupil (caused by diffuse lighting), but have a bright specular highlight which -cuts into- that dark area. Get some Manga (Japanese comics) and check it out! It's a strange, but very pervasive, artistic choice.

The way to achieve this is to model the eyeball with a sunken retina (i.e. it is a pit in the eye), and THEN slap a 98% transparent sphere around the eyeball, with specular intensity set to 5000 %. The high specular intensity will counter-act the dimming effects of the transparency. The different curvatures (concave for the pupil, which shows diffuse shading, and convex for the specular highlight) will achieve the peculiar "Anime look".

Then flatten this whole eye structure according to the technique described in the "Toon Eyes" Exsplination on the 3D Ark (which I believe should also be accessible by way of Sherwood's Forest).

I find Rotoscoping very very useful, particularly if you can read in images off of video tape. It's difficult to really keep a consistent focus and vision without an image to work off of (even if it's just a hand-drawn sketch of the proportions you want).

Hope this helps!

Tony

The AVA file is created as a time saver when you are in shaded mode. Rather than recompute, AM saves a file. Next time you open that model it will call up the ava if there is one. You can delete them if you want, no problems... the next time you open the model and have a window open in the shaded mode, AM will take the time to create a new AVA. In fact, if you want to *force* AM to build a new one, delete the old one. If you only work in wire frame AM will not make an AVA file or update one. Hope this answers your question.

Of course, this data is my own statement and is "unofficial."

Jeff C.

It depends on what type of hair you want. If you just want a few strands of hair sticking up, you could use the Line Geometry feature in version 7. You draw a few splines sticking up out of the head, group them, and in the Properties panel, choose Render as Lines and Group Has Color. You can even make them squiggly by increasing the randomness (this control is on the Lines tab of the Properties panel when you have "Render as Lines" selected). The lines can be transparent or even glow!

If you want hair that's like a wig, you can select the scalp area of your model, hit copy and paste to make a duplicate, and scale it up a bit and move the splines at the edge around. Then you can decal it if you want.

You could also use a Fur material - select the scalp of your model, make a new Material, right-click on the attribute, and select Change Type to - Fur. Fur does render a lot slower than a wig or line geometry does, though, especially if you have the shadows turned on.

There are a couple add-on freebie programs for AM that you can download at Sherwood's Forest that can help with hair. AM Loft (for Mac and PC) lets you extrude a shape along a spline, and RasenX (PC only) creates corkscrews (for braids, curly hair, etc.)

Cindy Groves

try doing a test render of your model. most of the small crumpling that can occur with 5 points should disappear in the rendered image. Also 5-points give really good results if the surface they define has only a small amount of curvature -- how much you ask? try experimenting with test endering...

-Tim

When you copy-flip-attach, after you've selected your whole object and before you do the copy-flip attach, you need to shift-click on one control point that is along the axis that you want to be the center. In most cases, that control point will be on a vertical spline that's in the center of your object along the open edge. Otherwise, AM will decide on it's own where the center of your object will be.

Cindy Groves

Be careful here... this is something that i learned from Paries very recently -- it *improved* my modeling and understanding of how to work with splines using AM.

Take this example, say you draw 4 *seperate* 2-point splines in a rectanglar pattern (a simple box - similar to above without the extra 2 CPs on each end)

After drawing the 4 splines you now want to start joining the corner points to close the 'box'.

Notice how when you select a CP, drag it over to another CP and connect them the corner becomes *rounded*.

As Jeff explained it, AM doesn't know that you want to keep that corner square, by default it *joins* the two splines together making them continuous causing the corner to become rounded.

This used to drive me crazy when extruding shapes i would spend so much time fiddling with the bias trying to get my corners square.

Now if you had *added* another CP to the end of the 2 point spline (*---*-------*) and then joined the middle CP leaving the left most one dangling, AM doesn't assume you want the two splines made *continuous* and keeps them seperate causing the corner to remain square.

As a rule, when drawing splines i alway add extra endpoints so i can maintain control on how the splines connect. If i know ahead of time that i want two splines made continuous, then i don't bother leaving extra CPs on the ends.

-William Bell

I was fooling around again this morning in V7.1, and dropped a model in the cho and scaled it up 250%, why? I donno.. :-)

I then exported cho as.... Hash model file, and named the model with a new name, sure enuff the new model was 250% larger than my first test model. Sure I coulda scaled the model in the modeling window, but.... what about bones? In the export to model, they scaled too...

Could be useful info for quickly re-scaling a model with bones.

Jeff C.

a) Just plain old adding enough splineage to the whole model in order to add to the quadriceps is what I would do.

b) Personally I'd use 5 point patches over hooks. Hooks and non- continuous 5 point patches will quite possibly reveal tell-tale signs if they are attached near where the splines are animated. So if you use them, attach the extra splines away from parts you will be deforming and keep them on shallow curved areas.

Like how Putty Dude's hook is on his belly instead of below on the hip where the legs bend.

c) If you add custom bias to a model you animate then you will get very unpredictable results when you deform it. I've been meaning to try the new ability to animate the bias (alpha/gamma/magnitude) of CPs. It might make extremely low splineage models hold more surface detail during animation IF we are willing to adjust them for each key frame. Scott A. Young makes very low splineage models that could profit from this in animation.

Glen Crowell

All you have to do is select the half of the head you have created, or the half of the head you prefer from a whole head model, copy it and paste it back in again. Before you deselect it, command click (Mac) or right click (PC) on the new section and chose flip on the x axis from the pop up menu.

If you have a full head that you want to make symetrical, it is easier to copy the half you like and then delete the original model. Then paste in the copied half twice and flip one half as described above. The deleting of the original gets rid of the problem of deleting half of a head model which causes splines on the ends to stay connected and you have to go back and delete lots of extra splines that weren't removed by the deletion.

Once you have the two matching halves, they both probably have the same center line where they will be connected. Click on a segment of one of these splines and press the "," comma key. that should select the whole spline, then press delete. You will probably have to do the same for the chin area, too. This will leave hanging spline for you to connect easily to the other half.

Jim Talbot

When doing a half model Its easier to save the half model under a different name then go into the new model and rename all the groups using L or R to designate left or right. Then flip the model and import it back into the original model. Then when the parts are joined you don't have to go in and reselect the groups on the new part of the model.

Bill Buffat

When the problem is the shear size of the model, one option is to model the parts of your space ship (or character) as different models in a choreography. This way you can see all the parts for correct proportions. You can always close all windows except for the modeling window you need. Then, when they are all done, import all these parts into one big model file. That way there are less waits and they happen all at the end.

Another option, if you don't need to seamlessly join the mesh parts, is to use Action objects and constraints to hold your ship parts together for animation.

It won't help the "finding patches" problem, but putting some bones draw mode (in the bone properties) in invisible mode can help with redraw.

So waits for "finding patches" are par for the course for big models. What is very cool is these waits are only for adding/removing/attaching/detaching points. If you only need to move around existing CP's there is no wait. This holds for Muscle action as well! You can have a HUGE model in action and incur no time hit for moving those points around.

Glen

Five point patches, as described earlier, are in fact real. They're wicked cool too! Personally, I use them all the time, in all sorts of tricky places. Mostly they're good for joining a circular spline (like an arm, or lips) to a grid-work of splines (like a shoulder or cheeks). You do it like this (ASCII art warning!)

+---+
|   |
+---+   Circle
|    \
|     \
|      +---+
|      |   |
| Grid |   |
+------+---+
|      |   |

- Tony

i think you could create a simple attribute material for each color grouping. and what you could then do is make a short material action for each grouping for each instance. just long enough to change the color. you could make one action for each group and have it cycle thru the different colors. using the ease setting in chor to set the action to the appropriate color.

Actual geometry will probably render faster, and look better, than either of the other options. One thing to be careful of though, is that modeling tasks get very laggy when you start pushing around a few thousand patches... if things get unbearably slow, try making your tree (or whatever) out of a few seperate models and combining them in an action object. The work will go much faster because AM won't have to keep re-calculating patches and normals.

Brian "balistic" Prince

Just like to clarify here: Fur creates real geometry at render time. What Brian was suggesting was the use of modeled Cylinders to create the pine needles.

Jeff, Hash, Inc.

The Lock button works just like the hide button. It locks the CPs that are not selected. Try selecting only a few, press the lock button, and the others will be locked.

--Raf Anzovin

The software saves the patches in the model file, so even when you recalculate patches, it's only doing it for the new patches.

Open the file in a text editor and delete the entries in the file from (and including) [PATCHES] to [ENDPATCHES]. Then reopen it and press the "Calculate" button on the properties panel. This should align the normals on the entire model. Be sure to make a backup of the data first.

Jeff, Hash, Inc.

There is some confusion between snap to grid and the button "Snap Manipulator to Grid." The right click "snap to grid" should set each CP to a grid intersection, when you are using the snap manipulator to grid button, you are snapping the "manipulator" (your cursor) to the nearest grid interval. (See the text on the status bar, lower left of screen when holding the cursor over the button.) Also the default off-set for extrusion and pasting is X= 0, Y= -10 pixels. You can change this to X=0, Y=0 for no off-set, which is the way I like it, my extrusions and copy 'n pastes stay exactly in the same place as the original CPs so when I use "Snap Manipulator to Grid" tool they jump to the intersection if they started at the intersection.

-Warning- Will Robinson -Warning-

If you do set the the off-set to X=0, Y=0 in the tools, global tab, you could extrude and forget to move the CPs (get distracted or something) and you would have double geometry that would be hard to find. So when I copy or extrude I make sure I move the selection as the very next step.

I hope you find this helpful, let me know if týÿÿÿ‚"fixes" it for you. I don't think the math is off or the grid is crooked, I think the program is doing exactly what you're asking it to do... with the Y= -10 pixels!

Jeff C.

Use hooks to stitch a cylinder of greater density into a cylinder of lesser density, the hand to wrist join for example. 5 point patches I use for attaching a cylinder parallel to the x axis to a cylinder parallel to the y, I'm basically talking about shoulder to torso join, they're also very useful for the 4 corners of eyeholess, anything where you cut a hole in the side of an existing cylinder.

Matt Andersen

A 5pt patch keeps all control points editable. A hook reduces the density of a mesh by connecting the spline and then removing it's controlpoint.

Tommy D'Aquino

The most common cause of a crease is a dead end spline, a spline that isn't a circle (closed), the curvature of a spline going through a single cp is defined by the position of the cp before it and the cp after it, if it dead ends it's only half curved and the surrounding geometry is usually made up of closed splines, so the curvature doesn't match giving you a crease which no tweaking will fix (5 point patches applied correctly can fix this though). Also, beware magnitude, it can make areas that look like they're creased (no magnitude=peaked), personally I find it's easier to just add geometry then deal with alpha, gamma and mag throughout the model, I only use it on areas that adding geometry results in dire repercussions, nose, ears, stuff like that, and I only use it on my final modelling pass, but to each their own, I suppose.

Matt Andersen

Add my vote to instancing in Choreography. A few jobs ago I had to do a forest with a heap of trees. I made 4 different trees and placed them in cho. Then I went back and made 10 different poses for each tree, altering them ever so slightly, and occasionaly ever so not slightly ;), and then dropped different poses on the trees. It resulted in a forest with a lot of variety and only 4 different tree models.

Nico

This is a great case for pose sliders! You don't have to make 10 poses, just one!

I did a combination of the suggested answers. I made a model of single a Jet, then a model with multiple jets, and another model with even more. (My own air force!) I used the single model for the ones closer to the camera and used the largest group for "fill in" that was farthest away. So I guess, there are many methods to acheive the same results.

Jeff C.

Bones will work just fine in non-continuous models.

Brian "balistic" Prince

YES! You can have a bone control CPs that are 10 miles away from the next piece... Unibody construction is never a modeling requirement! Some models animate better if they are unibody, but you don't have to.

Jeff C.

Do you absolutely /need/ to connect those points? Why not just leave an invisibly small hole there? If you'll notice, the sphere primitives on the CD all have tiny opeinings at their polar regions. If a hole is visible at rendering time, just shrink those CPs down to 1% again...

Brian's answer was good, but you can also avoid the hole in the first place by making sure your spline end "Selected CP" properties show 0 for the X axis before you lathe it. You can even type in 0 and enter if you like.

Au contraire, mon frere! (I always wanted to say that...) While this may appear to work at first, you may see some rendering artifacts caused by the fact that you have multiple unconnected points sharing the same geometrical space.

This is why I describe how to make the circular floor in my PuttyDude tutorial the way I do. When I first tried what Kevin describes, I was getting weird radial artifacts spreading out from the center of the floor. I contacted Jeff or Steve and they said it was because I had multiple unconnected points sharing the same geometry. I changed the center so that there was a tiny whole instead, and then everything was perfect. Rather than go into all of that in a beginner-level tute, I just made the floor a different way.

If the points are connected, then you won't have artifacts. It's only when the points are unconnected and you have parts of patches sharing the same space.

-Jim Sherwood

Certainly, there is even a basic bones structure in the primitives directory on your CD...just import it like a model

Brian "balistic" Prince

Let's start with the "default bone" sometimes reffered to as the "black bone," this bone can only be seen in the bones window when you click on the model's name in the PWS. It is the bone that basically defines the bounding box in the cho window ( I say, when you are new to AM98 to leave this bone alone ) Normally it starts at 0,0,0 and automatically expands to the front most CP of the model and the roll handle expands to the top-most CP of the model, as you build your model. My guess is that sometime in the modeling process you dragged all the CPs away from the 0,0,0 starting point, or you played around with the "black bone." Make a new model and examine this, it should help you correct it. Remember, you must click on the model's name to see the default bone.

Once you have your model constrained to a path, you could use the rotator tool to stand him up again, do this on the first frame! Otherwise you would be adding that movement to the cho action...

Also noteworthy is as you adjust the black bone in the model, it will affect how the model is in the action & cho windows.

How to correct: Many different ways to do this, I will offer up a few...

1. Play with the black bone (next time, leave this bone alone! LOL)
2. Copy all the mesh and paste it into a new model window... see how the black bone appears and using the property panel, transfer the data one field at a time to your first model!
3. If number two doesn't work, then add bones to your new model and try again.
4. never, ever, go back to raydream...

Jeff C.

It's seems you've found out that when you merge two sides of a mirrored half, there's a "common" spline. this common spline needs to be removed from one side before glueing the two halves together.

I didn't DL your projects, but it's very easy to correct if you still have the head as just a half of a head.

Select the completed half. Copy. Paste. Assign your pivot to x=0 and flip across the x axis, the newly pasted half. Now, with it still selected, in your properties panel, give the new half a bit of an offset in the X direction. Use an even, easy to remember number like 10 (this number will depend on the scale of your model). This offset will allow you to see the halves separately but will also be easy to realign them since you're using an easy to remember offset.

Once the two halves are separated, you will notice that the right half of the head has the center spline and the left half of the head has the center spline. This is what I referred to as the common spline. Select it on one of the halves, it doesn't matter which one, and press "," (comma) to select the entire spline. NOTE: YOU DO NOT WANT TO SELECT IT BY GROUPING!!! This would select more than just your spline, it would select the CPs of the splines perpendicular to it as well. Now, once your common spline is selected, delete it.

You should have one halfe with a center spline and one with dangling splines. Glue the dangling splines to the center spline, then select the rest of the newly pasted half and counter offset it.

You're done!

Yep, you can delete named groups without affecting the actual mesh, just click on the group in the PWS and press delete. I do it all the time.

CL Audio

When you want to connect a hook, the spline you want to connect it to is internally devided in 4 quarters and those are the places where the hook will connect. As a result you cannot connect more that 3 hooks between 2 points. My terminology is way off, but I hope you understand what I'm saying (hey, I just woke up, give me a couple of minutes). So:

+---- ---- ---- ----+

This is the spline (well, I mean part of a spline, between 2 points) And where I left spaces are the places where you can connect hooks.

Francis

Check to make sure in the Tools, Options, Folders Tab, that nothing has changed, and the "Import/Export" is pointing to the correct "IE" subdirectory. As an example, in my C:\hash\IE subdirectory I have 3 files: ply.hie, av2.hie, and dxf.hie. I am also using the latest version and it works.

Jeff C.

After more experimentation with dxf import:

If your dxf model (especially more complex ones) imports into AM and when you try to delete some portions of geometry and it hangs AM, do this:

Copy the entire model & paste into a NEW model window. Now AM will not hang when you push CPS or delete splines, etc. Don't forget to delete the old model.

Hope someone finds this useful.

Vincent.

Turning on Show Decals, then viewing a model in shaded mode causes an AVA file to be written.

Jeff, Hash, Inc.

I would save the model externally, make a new model, and import your model into the blank one. You will preserve everything that way.

You have to get a black bone it's automatic, maybe your not looking in the right place for it. In bones mode, click on the model name on the PWS, search all views to find it, or open the properties panel and read the coordinates of where it is, maybe somehow you made the bone to start and end at 0,0,0 (too small to display). But you gotta have a default bone, you just gotta...

Jeff C.

You can change what view the rotoscope displays in the General properties Tab of the Rotoscope .

-Rich

Yup this is easy with the tools you have in AM98.

First decide on how dense you want the mesh to be, so set your lathe cross sections first from the tools drop down menu.

Next, from the front view window draw a spline (any spline) and whack the lathe button.

Highlight and delete one of the resulting circles.

Highlight the remaing circle and click on the rotate manipulator button and rotate the mesh in the front view so you can see the whole circle.

Now select the right or left half and delete that, then break the spline running from the poles. Click on any CP and whack the lathe button again.

Thats it--perfect sphere evertime!

Jeff C.

I had this problem and discovered that it had to do with hooks. It seems a hook doesn't get assigned to a bone, at least in some instances. What I did was disconnect the hook, assign the floating cp to the correct bone and then reattach it as a hook.

Jim Talbot

Probaly hooks or it might be the other thing which is just a display problem, open up the model window and group the offending points, they'll probally flatten right out in the action window, if it continues to mess with you, break the hooks and reattach them, in my experience there's some maintenance involved with hooks if you make a lot of changes to a model.

Matt Andersen

Yes and no. When you create a spline it is automatically dedicated to the patriarch (black bone). If you would like to unassign a series of control points all you really have to do is click on the model name and use the group tool to assign the points in question to the patriarch. It essentially works like removing CPs from a bone, but you're really just assigning them to the 'root' bone...

CL Audio

Pick the splines one after another. Don't click exactly on the CP. Click on one and then add the others by shift clicking them. You can tell if you've got the right splines by the yellow highlight on it. Then type in the value of mag in the properties tab. It'll change all the splines you've selected. It's not interactive though.

or you can select all the vertices you want (with group or whatever), shift-deselect, then shift-select. This should keep all the cps selected, the last one showing control handles (assuming you have the button down). Play with the handle and all the patches will follow suit.

Chris

Dudes, don't confuse the "snap manipulators to grid" button with "snap points to grid," they were and still are working as designed. To "snap points to grid" select the points and right click, choose "snap to grid." Mac users you know what I mean... control click or whatever...

If you want your manipulators to jump at grid intervals then push the button. Been that way since V5 beta. That's why the button's name is "snap manipulators to grid." See my basic splinemanship tutorial for exercises in this regard. Or you could open your V5 manuals to er, oh yeah, page 48, nah, that would be like work... 8^P

Jeff C.

If you stop and think about it for a bit, the two do work well together, snap your last point(s) to grid and now with the button pushed you can only move the CPs to other grid points.

I use this all the time, try this... Add lock five CPs in a straight line near grid marks, select them all and right click, choose "snap to grid," then push the button and extrude. Now just hit the "down arrow cursor key" and the extrusion *jumps* right to the next grid, hit extrude again and the cursor key again (or) use the mouse, instant grids.

Or you want to move the whole mesh to the left or right, up or down, select the entire mesh, whack the button, then just hit the cursor keys, the mesh will move perfectly in large increments, then push the button to "off" to fine tune the movement. This works great after a copy, paste, & flip sequence to move the new half to it's proper place.

Jeff

I'm not sure where this is happening for you, whether it's in the modeling mode or in action mode. If it's happening in model mode, you need to group the eyes with the rest of the body. For example, if you selected the entire model before you created the eyes, grouped it and named the group "puppy," and THEN created the eyes but didn't add them to the "puppy" group, when you click on "puppy" in the PWS, you will see everything except the eyes become selected. When you move the group around, the eyes will stay put. The solution? Click on the "puppy" group, and then shift-select the eyes to add them to this group.

If it's happening in action mode, it could be because the eyes have not been put into the proper bones heirarchy. Depending on how you have this set up, the eyes might stay behind. Or similarly, if the CPs for the eyes have not been assigned to a bone in the heirarchy, moving the head will not move the eyes too.

Basically, make sure you have assigned the eyes to something! They need to be assigned to a group or a bone, or both.

-Jim Sherwood

No.

No, the way you're doing it is a pretty good way to go about it.

-- Tony

I disagree, kinda... Let me explain.

Start using the V6.1 betas (very stable now). With V6.1 you can export quad DXF files and if you select the setting of 4 polys per patch it will add the detail for you.

Here's what I have done that works. Select the whole arm you are working on (I think you gave this as an example) copy it, open a "new" model and paste it. Export it from that new model (temp, you don't have to save it), now switch back to your first model and import the DXF, for every patch you used to have, you now have four. It will import back at a different scale & rotation, but using the tools in hash you can quickly adjust it to the correct fit. Name the group, like, temp arm and hit the hide key (H). Now if you have more detail than you wanted, remove some of it by selecting a CP and hitting the "," (comma) key or by using the group tool and delete them. With a little practice this method can be very quick IMHO.

Jeff C.

I have never approached the 20,000 patch mark, but I may still have a valid tip for you.

When my model is getting very complex and it's not unibody, such as a house, I copy an individual part and paste it into a new model window. Everything keeps the exact same scale & location in 3D space, even the decals stay applied on the object(s). That way the computer only calculates on the sub-set of patches, when I am happy with my adjustments, additions etc., I save the model with a name and then I use the model import function so all the named groups and colors are retained. Again, the import model will bring it in the same 3D space you copied it from!

There may be better answers, but I hope this may help you and others in the interium.

Jeff C.

I got a unibody tree up to about 17,000 patches the other day, and you don't need a bone in shaded mode for it to just crawl with that many patches when it has to recalc. You need to break the house up into smaller models and put them together in a choreography or as action objects (you want to keep the mainbone in the same place so you can just slap translate to and orient like constraints onto the child models and move the whole set as a unit in the chore or action). If you're exceptionally clever you can probaly even use hanging spline to to connect the two models together as if they were part of a single unibody model. It will of course be harder to maintain the model when you have it seperated into several different windows, but it beats watching grass grow or normals align.

Matt Andersen

Yep. Practice.

Another good tip is to select all the control points along a path, (I think the keystroke is ",") and then hide all the rest. By displaying one wire at a time and looking at it from the top, you can get a better idea as to it's shape in 3D. You can think a little clearer with a nice cross section than with a billion wires all spinning around.

Hope that helps.

As William said: practice. You have to move CPs until you think you're going mad. Switch often the view not only between sides and front but use bird's eye view a lot. In the beginning you can start selecting the outer spline rings (if there are some) and move them backwards, then the next ring and move this a little less backwards until you get a form resembling a head. And use rotoscopes at least for the general form and dimensions of a face.

If you have the face done just make the splines longer and follow the rotoscope. I recommend using in this first state all splines. Later on, if the head looks right, you can thin out the spline count e.g. on the back of the head by using hooks or five point patches etc.

Get some reference material: look on all the tutorials (especially on Glen Wilton's tut) and on the work of some others. I don't think Armando's wireframe shot of Sylvie is still available, but you can get Peter Lin's Ellie-model from Sherwood's Forest.

Frank Hofmann

You probaly won't see any difference at the choreography level as you're mainly dealing with just blackbones. The difference is when you have a bone which is lower on the branch it's coordinates or rotation is offset by it's parent, open up a pose, select a bone and then click the translation tab, most likely it will be 0,0,0, as this is the local translation or offset from it's default position in the hierarchy, if you select global it will give you it's exact coordinates additionaly X is side to side, Y is up, and Z is forward and back (this is rarely the case in a child bone of a character). Using it at the proper times will prevent a lot of back subtracting, it applies to rotation as well, everything says it's 0,0,0 locally but it's actual rotation is quite a bit different, take a look at the axis indicator when you toggle between global and local, it will probaly change a great deal . Hope that's of some help, you'll understand it a lot better if you ever run into a situation where you actually need it.

Matt Andersen

You just insert a point along one of the splines and or break it. In Betas before 24. you couldn't insert a CP on a 5-point-patch-spline without a crash. But now you can.

Peter Tomsson

Well, after seeing this message, I decided to give it a quick try. I can't say that this is the best way, but it might help.

I took a small C-shape (about 5 units tall, and about 20 units from the center). I then took this shape, and lathed (in 8 sections) to form a half torus shape. Then, I took one of the 'C' shaped splines, copied it, and pasted it directly above (where the bottom of the new 'C' touches thoe top of the one copied).

I then added 2 points to each of the 3 horizontal spline to the right of it. I then broke in the middle of these 2 points, so I would have hanging splines on both sides. Connect the hanging splines on the right, and connect them to the 'C' that you pasted. This obviously isn't very even... so look at the y coordinates to a cooresponding points on the top and bottom C, and find what the offset will be... and create a Y offset for each ring, so that it evenly slopes up.

For example, on mine, it was 5... so the first ring (where you copied from) stayed the same. The second 'C' was 0.625, then 1.25, then 2.5, etc... incrementing evenly until the next to the last one at 4.375... and the last stays the same, with no offset (which is already offset by 5).

You can then take the entire piece, copy, and paste... and then translate it by that same offset (the 5 in mine)... and connect the 2 ends together, and be remove the double splines where needed. Once you get everything the way you want it, copy this whole thing, and paste it again, (with double offset) and piece everything together again... and repeat as necessary...

Please keep in mind, that this technique can be greatly refined... but it may give you a starting point to work with. One thing that I did, to make it more tidy, is that I broke and removed the bottom of the copied spline, so that I could piece it nicely together, and not have double splines. Just play around with it, and let me know if you find a better technique... as I'm just learning myself. :-)

I've been playing around with screws/spirals and such and what I have been able to do is create a cross section that you want (in the front view). (In your case, it would look sort of like a sine wave going down the screen). Measure the distance between waves. Divide that by 8 (we're going to make an 8 segment "lathe"). Switch to the top view. Select all of those CPs and hit extrude. In the properties, look at pivot tab and get the value of the Z offset (remember this number, you will need it a lot). Back in the group tab, enter the negative value for Z offset (moves the extruded item back on top of the original). Goto the pivot tab, and enter 0 for the X and Z offset, then go to the group tab and enter -45 for the Y rotate. In the Y offset, enter the negative amount that you came up with when you divided by 8 then repeat all of these from the extrude. Do this eight times and you should wind up with a spiral shape. Join the two pieces, and you have your threads. Then you just need to make the cap at the bottom of it and make your bulb on top. If you need, I can get some screen captures of this process and put it on the web.

Mike Hoyes

If what you want to do is make the threads, here is a quick way I use to make springs and stuff.

1. In the front view create the shape of your threads. I used a four point open spline like this:

           \
            |
           /
   

2. translate the shape off the Y axis lathe it, I used a precision of 8
3. break apart one set of splines, what your looking to create is a circle with one open section.
4. now select all the control points except one of the open ends. Using the arrow keys, move the selection up in the Y axis a set number, I hit the arrow 15 times.
5. Go around the circle subtracting one set of control points at a time, and move the remaining selected CP's up the set number.
6. After you have the points all translated, you should have a helix shape, copy and paste the helix with an offset of zero, and move the copy up in the Y axis. Do this as many times as you need, and connect your open ends.

Mike Hovland

I would recommend building the robe with a skeleton identical to your character. Then, when you want it attached to the character you can add constraints to attach the bones. When you want to detach it, you just go into the Ease channels and slap all of the Eases down to zero percent.

It's not the easiest way in the world to do it, but it works.

-- Tony

As of Beta 10, the following feature was added: "bones with out wireframe on, CPs are protected from grouping and selecting"

This allows you to assign your non-selectable points to a bone, unclick the Wireframe box, and those points will no longer be selectable (which means they will not be moveable).

Together with the ability to import DXF files, this will probably make tracing from DXFs very very easy (just import the file, attach it to a non-wireframe bone, and then trace over it from any angle!)

-- Tony

Make 2 separate models. Body and toga. Load both into Choreography. Then mess with the toga till body doesn't 'poke' through. So work in two windows. One modeller window for Toga, and other to check in Choreography. Then when 'correct', paste toga into the Body.mdl.

There maybe better(other ways)

david

Very good idea, I will add that you can model right in the cho window if you click on the "toga" model and whack the model mode button.

Jeff C.

You could render out views of the body(wireframe views with CPs turned on) of the front and side, then import the pictures in and line them up in the appropriate views. Make sure the alpha buffer is turned on, so that when you bring in the rotoscopes thee wireframe will be solid and everything else will be transparent. Line up the images in the appropriate views and turn pickable off. Now you can model your toga over them.

Bryan Cool

Try this, doesnt use hooks just 4 point patches to make a Tree.

Lathe or draw a 4 point circle(in top view.)

Extrude downward, as many times as you wish to make a trunk/cylinder.

Return to the topmost circular spline, hide the rest.

In top view, select the circle. Extrude with no offset. Scale inward . Now you have two concentric circles. Scale the inner circle quite small.

If you render this, the central hole will not patch, as all 4 points are on the same spline. You have 4 areas that currently patch. draw another 4 point spline, small enough to fit into one of the areas. Extrude it upward a distance representing a branch. Go to the base of the branch and join the ends to the 'area', that patched earlier. Repeat in the left over three areas.

Unhide the trunk.

You should have a cylindrical trunk, with four (or less), cylindrical branches sticking out the top. Extrude any of these branches, further upward.

Repeat the process and you can make further branches from the top, and so on.

If you want to have branches coming out of the sides, when extruding the branches just extrude a small distance before extruding a longer length. This would be similar to making a knee in a very long thin leg.

From the 'knee', you can add further 4point rings, join them to the 'knee' and extrude outward so you can have smaller branches coming out of the sides of larger branches.

I'll probably write this up as a tute, but for the time being, there is sonething similar to this in my 'saxophone' tutorial at 'Drawing with Splines'

david

Colors work via group names and selected CPs for them. On your copy eyeball select all the CPs that make up the pupil and name this new group, then assign that group a color just like any other group. Or, select the black pupil group you already named and while holding down the shift key (add) all the CPs of the copied pupil to it. This has always worked for me.

If you saved just the eyeball as a model you could import the model into itself and the color groups for the new addition will appear as say, "pupil1" (pupil (one)).

Jeff C.

No.

Make a five point spline, join the ends together. You now have a 4 point non rendering patch.

Jeff, Hash, Inc.

I think a lot of you are missing the cool part of 5-point patches: ****SUBDIVISION SURFACES**** ie:

+-----+----+----+-------+
|     |    |    |       |
|     |    |    |       |
+-----+--+-+----+-------+
|     +--+-+    |       |
+-----+--+-+----+       |  <-- detail added to an existing mesh>
|     |    |    |       |      without having to jump through
+-----+----+----+-------+      hoops (or patches, for that matter)
|     |         |       |
|     |         |       |
+-----+---------+-------+

All you have to do is group the select the 5 points you want to render and then a button directly under the lathe button will become active. The button looks like a 5 point patch! Simply depress the button and voila, the patch will become legal! Now in shaded mode it looks pretty bad but when you render it, it is perfection my friends! You guys at Hash are the best. Please don't raise your prices ever.....Please!

John Griffith

Here is what I did to get it to work. First, all shapes *must* be closed loops... From Corel6 highlite the closed shape, choose export selected item and of course choose tt as the file type. The dialog box will assign it to the "!" key if you are starting from scratch, but you can choose which keystroke you want with the selector. Since Hash is only going to give you the outline, don't add extra details or extra colors... Type in the "Family" name and save the TTF file to the windows fonts directory.

Go to the control panel "fonts" and look up your new font, it will be assigned the "Family" name you typed in. If you get this far, you are home free, and then you can use it in Hash right away... If not, then re-read the Corel manual...

Thats as much help as I know, and it worked for me with *no problems*

Lemme know if I set you straight!

Jeff C.

You *can* save it to any directory you want, if you want to keep your homemade fonts seperate for whatever reason, but then...

...it probably won't show up automagically in the Fonts control panel if you save it somewhere else. But all you have to do is go to the File menu > Install font, and then browse for the font file you just made. It's a pretty quick way to make precise geometrical outlines for use in AM98. Not that AM98 was bad before for making mechanical shapes, but this makes it even more powerful!

David Fontes

If you click the spline you wish to add a section onto first, it will highlight and when you drag a new section out it will be connected to that spline, you don't have to let the program pick for you. Make sense?

Matt Andersen

Sure you can model a face without lathing! The way I do it is start out with a very simple head shape with no details...just a ball for a head, and a opening for a neck. (you could lathe the starting object if ya want)...then I when I have moved the control points as much as I can, and start to need more detail, I add more splines to the face...just by stitching them into the existing model. Then I move those new splines until I can't go any farther, and then I add some more splines. Keep doing that until you have the detail you want...just make sure you make the shape as perfect as you can until you move on.

Hope that gives you some help,

John

Im not sure you may know this but if you dont this is very useful

Normaly when you lathe something you get that iratating ring at the to and bottom of the model putting holes in it. Now if you click on the point you want to be on the top or bottom of your model and get its cordinates, you can then set the lathe origin cordinates to the same thing closing your model. It wont give you one point it will give you the normal amount but they will all be in the same place making your model solid.

eric

I've run into problems when lathing where the top and bottom CP's sit at the origin (center); I get rendering artifacts from overlapping CP's after the lathe operation (i.e., 2 of the CP's for a patch are in the same XYZ coordinate). So, using this idea by Eric above, make sure you get close to the center, but not right on it. The best way to do this is to place the CP's fairly near the center, lathe, select the ring of CP's where the hole is, and scale down them down to 1 percent (use the numeric scale input fields in the Properties dialog).

Girard Hottleman

About lathing, I leave a small ring at the cap, and then group the cap and scale it down very small, but not all the way to zero. If you don't go down to zero, you can still Control-Shif-Zoom in on it and select just the ring.

This is very usefull in that you can group the cap (with the grouping tools- this selects all the cps, not just the one's on the ring, but the ones running out of the ring, too), type in mag, gamma, to tweak the end of the cap, then select a point on the ring, press comma to group the ring spline, and then re-adjust the mag and gamma tweaks (leaving the ring nice and circular).

I used this to cap of a dog's tooth, and it seems to work well, I think he's smiling, anyway...?

Gramps

To save models in libraries, they must be saved externally, not embedded in a project. Do a Save As to save the model, then you should be able to drop it into a Library.

Jeff, Hash, Inc.

Check your Extrude offset in global options, if it's set to "0"pixels you can cause your self problems. You may have accidentally extruded in place then deselected the splines, later reselected them and extruded from the same spot -now with TWO sets of splines.

Some people have also modelled whole characters starting from a "single" CP by lathing it and then extruding. The only thing is you can never have less than a two CP spline. When you hit AddMode and place a CP you are really getting two CP's. If you click on it and move it you'll see that it is connected to a second CP by a spline, the two CP's were directly on top of each other.

Glen

In regard to importing dxf models as templates: Paint Shop Pro has a nifty feature where it will read a dxf as a black-on-white wireframe image. This could be saved as a tga and used as a template pretty easy.

Andrew Ebert

I've never used any other 3D Animation app other Hash's so I'm not exactly sure what a Loft is. There is a vehicle model I am working on that needs to have some big spring coils around the shocks and to do this I imported the circle segment, sized it. selected it, and then extruded it with the X,Y,Z translation turned off. In case you didn't know, if you select a group of points and then click any one of them, it's X,Y,Z translation position appears - type in where you want to move the group relative to that point and the whole selected group moves. In the case of the above extrusion, since all translation was turned off, it looks like nothing happened - but there is an extruded circle that occupies the same space as the original even though you can't see the points as the selection color green, but they ARE selected. All I had to do now was chose a Y axis degree of rotation, in this case 22.5 degrees. After that, I just clicked on one of the 4 selected points and typed in the Y axis translation. I repeated this operation until I had a complete ring that rose gradually so that the last extruded circle was directly above the first. Then I just copied the whole thing to the clipboard and pasted it in the exact spot, clicked a point, and typed in the Y axis translation so that the bottom circle of the pasted segment lined up with the top circle of the original. Then I deleted the first bottom circle of the pasted segemnt and manually connected the four points of it's circle to the corresponding points of the top circle of the original segment. Now I had 2 coils and kept repeating the operation until I had as many coils as I need. It didn't take long, and wasn't as complicated as it sounds and I had a perfect coiled spring with none of the distortion that happens when you extrude alond a spline.

Michael S. Flynn

Well, I just spent a lot of time fiddling with that (and yes people, the new model with my eyeballs and lids is coming out Real Soon Now: I just moved into a new house though, so I've been delayed). Here's my extremely long-winded methodology: most eyelashes will not need this kind of detail, but hey, you asked the question, right?

A:M PORTION

Make a grid, two patches deep, and as many patches across as the upper eyelid you're joining to. Use the middle spline of the three long splines to give the eyelash some curvature. Copy, mirror and add to the other eye. Copy both, mirror them, adjust size, and add to the lower eyelid. For a male (with less pronounced lashes) you can probably get away without the middle spline for curvature.

Make a Pose called 'Apply Decals'. Go into muscle motion. Move these lashes out to the side, and manually make them into flat orthogonal grids. Save the pose. Zoom WAY WAY WAY in, so that one top-bottom pair of lash-grids fills the screen. Do a screen capture.

PHOTOSHOP PORTION

OK, now you have two long grids, stacked one above the other. This is your workspace. First thing to do. Add a new layer above this background. Create an alpha channel, and work in that view on that layer. Fill it with black. Set viewing transparency to 50%, so that you can see your grid under it. Now you've got the basic template that you can start off of.

Use the polygon lasso tool to make a VERY narrow triangle, with its base at the bottom of one of the grids, and its point at the top. The triangle should be (at most) a pixel or two across at the bottom, and at least a few hundred pixels high. Fill with white. This should give you (by way of antialiasing) a triangle that uses gradations of gray to get very smoothly smaller. This is a basic eyelash. Make three or five different models in varying thicknesses by hand.

Now, use the marquee tool to select an eyelash and start copying it into various places. This will create new layers, and sometimes (depending on how big you marqueed) will black over other eyelashes: you can prevent this by setting the overlay mode to Lighten. Make lots of lashes, make sure that your transparency is set to 100% on all layers, then merge all the layers (except the background) together. Then start selecting groups and copying them around randomly, and merging them together. Go crazy. The goal is to give a fairy random but consistent distribution of lashes. You will generally want, at the least, two eyelash-widths of difference between adjoining lashes. Still, spacing is an issue of artistic choice at this point.

Do the same for the bottom lash. Generally the bottom lash is somewhat shorter, and much less dense than the upper. Do -not- just copy and shift the original lash: this will be incredibly obvious when they are lined up over each other in a render.

Now you've got an alpha channel that will provide the perfect transparency for your cookie-cut lashes. If your eyelashes are black (as many are), you're done. If, like me, you wanted to simulate someone with honest to God natural blond hair, and wanted to make that clear with blond eyelashes and brows, you will have to add a color gradation to the RGB portions of your image. Remember that you don't need to limit your drawing to the lashes area in that channel: the color will automatically be limited by the alpha channel.

Set your transparency back to 100% and merge your creation down over the (now useless) background. Cut out the portions that have eyelashes (as opposed to the white space around them) and save them as 32-bit TGA files. Bring them into A:M and apply them over both eyelash grids as a cookie-cut map (again, in the muscle pose that you created). Close the muscle pose and return to the basic model: the Decals will now be attached seamlessly to the curving, complicated eyelashes. Render and admire.

-- Tony

The hooks work well on curved surfaces as well. The trick is to continue them past another spline, then hook into a patch *next* to the one you're trying to close. It's kind of tough to explain, so look at the Thom.MDL file on the CD, around his belly.

Jeff, Hash, Inc.

Hey, I -like- newbie questions. Sometimes they bring out really good points. Like this one.

To make a coil (Tony style):

• Create your 'cutaway profile' of the coil.
• Move the center of gravity over to the center of the coil.
• Lathe in four sections.

You now have a 'torus' thing of your cutaway.

• Select a single cutaway profile and copy it.
• Move it vertically to be just above its original.
• Detach the splines on one side coming into the original. Reconnect them to the copy.
• Take the other three cross sections and move them one-quarter, one-half and three-quarters as much vertically as you moved the copy.

You now have a 'lock-washer' thing of your cutaway.

• Select the whole thing. Copy it. Move it up as much as you moved the first copy.
• Select a point on the cutaway that is nearest the copy, making sure that you select one of the splines going around the cutaway, not one of the splines spiralling upwards.
• Hit the comma (',') key to select the spline. Delete it. This leaves you with loose splines that you can join to the copy-cutaway.

You now have two cycles of the coil. If you copy and connect two copies of these two cycles, you'll have four, then eight, then... uh,... well, lots!

Of course, if the coil is always going to be compacted (i.e. a spring that never stretches) you'll have a much faster render if you just make a single big lock-washer and decal a 'vertical lines' bump-map onto it.

-- Tony