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Modeling Confusions
About Truespace Archives
These pages are a copy of the official truespace forums prior to their removal somewhere around 2011.
They are retained here for archive purposes only.
Modeling Confusions // New Users
Post by Geodesic Nerd // Feb 6, 2008, 3:35pm
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Geodesic Nerd
Total Posts: 4
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I'm pretty new to 3D graphics as a whole, so I've got a couple of questions that I'll put in here.
First off, when are NURBS objects useful, and what makes them so special?
Second, when using a metaball object, is there any way to build and attach a skeleton to that mb object? If not, what is the easiest method of smoothly animating an mb object?
Third, I wanted to try modeling a mouse, and I was wondering if there were any suggestions as to the best apporach.
Any help would be much appreciated. |
Post by Geodesic Nerd // Feb 13, 2008, 1:53pm
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Geodesic Nerd
Total Posts: 4
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Umm...just to clarify, I'm currently working in trueSpace 7. |
Post by splinters // Feb 13, 2008, 2:12pm
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splinters
Total Posts: 4148
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.. I wanted to try modeling a mouse, and I was wondering if there were any suggestions as to the best apporach.
Any help would be much appreciated.
I would start with the head first, ears are always tricky...:rolleyes: |
Post by splinters // Feb 13, 2008, 2:24pm
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splinters
Total Posts: 4148
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Sorry, couldn't resist.
Nurbs are great for smooth surfaces with no polys as such, they are controlled by b-splines and at the moment are particularly useful for cloth type effects as tS does not have cloth simulation in tS7.
Be warned though, Nurbs do not work in Workspace and are converted to polys which makes them jagged rather than nice and smooth.
The picture below used a simple Nurb based plane to make the blue cloth then I simply grabbed the control handles and tweaked manually to get the right effect.
Not sure about metaballs though... |
Post by Steinie // Feb 13, 2008, 2:53pm
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Steinie
Total Posts: 3667
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Geodesic Nerd, first off welcome to the Forums. You are asking some pretty advanced questions for a "beginner". First, you have 7.51 I hope and not 7.0. Second you really should start by watching the videos supplied with the manual to get your feet wet. Next at least read some of the manual to see what trueSpace offers. We are all here to help but your first questions sounds like you want us to teach you the program...frankly no one has time. Get your feet wet, come here when your stuck and everybody will help you then.
P.S. Start by just playing with the program for awhile. You will be amazed how fast things start clicking.
Why do you want to model a mouse to start with? Pretty difficult first project. There is actually a video course Caligari sells which models a Mouse.
Have you checked out the free tutorials here to get comfortable with trueSpace.
http://forums1.caligari.com/truespace/forumdisplay.php?f=60
Check out the free tutorial that discusses Nurbs here:
http://www.caligari.com/Help/Tutorials/NewtS5Tutorials.asp?Cate=Training&Subcate=Tutorial
I hope this is enough to get you started.
Edit:
I read my response to you from yesterday and some of it sounds mean. Wasn't my intent. Sorry. |
Post by Délé // Feb 13, 2008, 6:03pm
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Délé
Total Posts: 1374
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Here's how I view Nurbs. Have you ever used the pen tool in a 2d application like Adobe Illustrator? You mark points and then have handles to adjust the curves. That is kind of what Nurbs is like, only in 3d. Some people like to use them for anything that has a smooth surface. Personally, I don't like to use them because you don't have as much control over the density of the mesh. You can adjust the density when translating it into a polygon mesh, but you don't have nearly as much control as you do with Subdivision Surfaces (SDS).
So my personal choice is to use SDS rather then Nurbs. SDS is sometimes referred to as "Box modeling". What you do is make a lower resolution (boxy) type model. Then you can apply SDS which smooths the model out. Every time you apply a layer of SDS, it quadruples the polygon count on the mesh and uses the new geometry to smooth the model out. SDS is very common in character modeling because you can rig your lower res mesh with bones and apply the SDS at the final render. Thus you're not trying to rig a dense mesh, which can be very time consuming.
With that said, I would use SDS to model a mouse. It takes a little practice to learn how dense to make your mesh so the SDS looks good, but once you get used to it, it works well.
Here's a good place to find tutorials and learn more about SDS:
http://www.subdivisionmodeling.com/forums/
As for the metaballs, I've only used them to make liquid (puddles), so I'm not sure if you could rig them with bones. I would have to say probably not though.
hth |
Post by Geodesic Nerd // Feb 14, 2008, 5:42am
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Geodesic Nerd
Total Posts: 4
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Thank you all. The replies have been quite helpful.
I've been working in Illustrator for a year now, so if NURBS are like the pen tool, I'll be fine.
As far as the mouse I'll try the SDS modeling. I looked at some other threads on SDS modeling and I think I've got a good idea as to where to go with that.
The trueSpace manual that I have says it's for trueSpace 7, but I'm not sure whether it's actually 7 or 7.5. I do know that I recieved no videos with it, just the program and a manual the size of my head. I'll try and force myself to work through the manual on the weekends ;).
Thanks again. |
Post by TomG // Feb 14, 2008, 6:26am
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TomG
Total Posts: 3397
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Hi all,
The printed manual is trueSpace7 content only - the manual was not reprinted for tS7.5.
The videos for the manual were released after the printed manual, so you won't find a CD in there with videos, or reference in the text to videos. You will find a new PDF manual with videos for download in the repeats download section though, if you are on tS7.5. You should be sure to get this, whether you have the printed manual or not, as the updates are significant!
We moved to the electronic manual as being the main source, in order to more readily keep up with the changes to the software.
HTH!
Tom |
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