Shoud I use....

[Eudaimic]

Originally posted by BilboBagginz
Hi, first post here. Love this place.

Question : I am modeling a forklift and it is very 'boxy' would it be easier to do with poly's rather than nurbs. Any ideas?

Second, how do you use a construction plane and apply your reference images to them. Is it a material?

Thanks.

Bilbo

I'd say polys, but I'm a polykinda guy, so...

As for the reference images, in your material (lambert probably) you can assign an image by pressing the white and black checkered button to the right of the color slider.

[luminis]

Well, if it's 'boxy', then yes - polygons will work better for that. Although you can create sharp edges on NURBS surfaces by using linear degree surfaces, it's not as good as poly modeling, especially when modeling mechanical-like things - as the tools you can use with polys are better suited for this kind of work.

A construction plane is used only for aid in the modeling. To use reference images, you can use an image plane. Go to any orthographic view (such as front, side, or top) and on its menu bar go to View/Select Camera (or select one of these cameras in the outliner or hypergraph). Open the Attribute Editor and on the camera shape tab (such as frontShape), look for the Environment field and open it. Click on the 'Create' button next to 'Image Plane'. This will create a new node named something like imagePlane1, here you can change some of its options, such as display and position, and you can browse for the file you want to use as reference.

I hope this helps. If you got any more questions, let us know. Either me or someone else will be glad to help.

And welcome to the forum!

[BilboBagginz]

Great info, thanks.


When I try to assign my images to an image plane I get these far away green boxes that are related to the image plane itself. Is there someway to turn that part of the image plane off (or hide it) as it is very distracting.

Thanks again. Geez I love this place.

[luminis]

If I'm not mistaken, those are orthographic cameras, turn them off on Display/Show/Cameras, or soemthing like that...

[BilboBagginz]

hehe, actually when I hide the cameras I lose the image planes too. Is there a way to apply your images to a nurbs plane or poly plane?

[playmesumch00ns]

Yup just assign a file to the colour channel of a lambert, then assign the lambert to your plane. Oh and press "6" to go into hardware shaded mode. You can alter hardware texture display quality in the lambert attribute editor

[luminis]

Oops, you're right, I forgot about that little detail :), both the camera and the plane share a transform node, making it impossible to show one and hide the other.

All you can do is to try to ignore the camera. Otherwise, you can also do this on a nurbs plane like you asked. The only problem is that when you try to model in wireframe, the image will not be visible. This can be fixed, but it only gets deeper and deeper and everytime more complex, so I would really suggest just using image planes instead to keep things simple.

But here's the procedure to do the plane with a file on it anyway. I'm not sure what your experience with Maya is, so I'll do a step by step procedure, so please forgive me for mentioning steps that may seem obvious if you are already familiar with them :)

Create/NURBS Primitives/Plane. Move/Rotate/Scale it as needed. Right click and hold on the plane, and then Materials/Assign New Material/Lambert. On the Color attribute, click the checker map button to open the Create Render Node window, from which you can choose File. A node called file1 will be created together with its placement texture. On the attribute editor look for the file1 tab which will show you the options for the file texture, browse for your file and that's it. Make sure you're on hardware texture display mode to view the image on any of the 3d views.

EDIT: Hmm... While I was typing this, playmesumch00ns posted a more concise answer. Oh well...

[BilboBagginz]

I did just that. I added it to a plane. Thanks for the info. :D

[Eudaimic]

Originally posted by playmesumch00ns
Yup just assign a file to the colour channel of a lambert, then assign the lambert to your plane. Oh and press "6" to go into hardware shaded mode. You can alter hardware texture display quality in the lambert attribute editor

This works pretty well, that's what I did.

Assign any reference planes to their own layer so you can turn them on and off.

[BilboBagginz]

Okay new question. Is there another way to attach nurbs together other than fillet? Also is there a way to cut a nurbs surface like you would a poly? Like for instance a 'cut nurbs tool'.

[playmesumch00ns]

If you want more detail, you can insert isoparms. Right click > ispoarms, then drag an existing one into a new position (it'll duplicate) then Edit NURBS > Insert isoparm...

You can't arbitrarily cut a NURBS surface. That's just the way they are

[luminis]

You can cut a NURBS surface. It's called Trimming. Althought it's not the best thing to do, because a bunch of problems can arise from it - basically what you do is to create a curve on surface defining the shape you want to cut, and then use the Trim Surface tool.

Also, you can attach surfaces together with methods other than filleting. You can attach two surfaces together by using 'Attach Surfaces', but it requires the parameterization of both shapes to match exactly (same number of spans on the edge where you want to attach it).

Let me know if you're interested in any of these two things, and I can write up a quickie tutorial to show you how to use them :)

[BilboBagginz]

When I select an isoparm of an 'extruded' surface I can't move them. It gives me an error. Is it because it's an extruded or lofted surface?

[luminis]

Isoparms can not be moved directly at all, no matter what kind of surface they are from. All you can do to edit the surface through components is to move CVs or to move complete rows of CVs (named Hulls).

[BilboBagginz]

Ah I see, thanks for clearing that up. :D

Actually thanks to everyone. :D :D :D :D

Cheers. :beer:

[BilboBagginz]

Two more questions.

Is there a way to chagne what lights are used when rendering?

Is there a way to connect nurbs to a poly surface? So it's seamless?

[luminis]

1.) Yes, the simple answer is to delete it :surprised. Or you can control the lights that are used at render time by using the Light Linker. 'Window/Relationship Editors/Light Linking/Light Centric' will open up the linker. Here there are two columns, the one on the left shows what lights there are; and the one on the right shows all objects and shaders of the scene.

Click on the light you want to disable. This will highlight all objects on the right (this means that the selected light affects all those objects). Un select (by simply LMB dragging) all these objects on the right column, and the light will be disabled, so to speak (actually, what it means, is that no object is now affected by this light). Light linking is normally used to link certain lights only to certain objects (to create special effects).

2.) I'm not sure what you meant by 'connecting' nurbs to poly, if you explain it a bit more, perhaps I can help.

[BilboBagginz]

Okay will try that with my lights.

Now for the explanation. I was reading a car tut and the guy was building a car out of polys. He had done the bottom part with poly cubes and extrude faces and all that good stuff. But for the arch over the door and the roof itself he used birails. How would you attach the birailed door archway to the poly car base?

I found the link. http://www.mtmckinley.net/tut11.html

And I quote "With the new object, reshape it (Fig 16) and connect it to the car body. (Fig 17) Using a Lattice could be helpful to match the piece to all 4 views.


For the top of the canopy, I'm going to use a Birail. These 4 curves are what I'll be using (Fig 18). This is the surface that results, when using the same settings as in the earlier curve extrude. Tweak and connect."

[luminis]

Ok, I see now.

Well, there is no real way of connecting a nurbs surface to a polygonal object, as it would be almost impossible to get the two to match perfectly (especially if it's such a curved surface).

But I checked the link you submitted, and it seems that what he is doing, is to use the birail tool, but with a polygonal output. In the options of this tool, I'm sure there is an option named something like 'Output Geometry', and you can choose either nurbs or polys. He is using a poly output, so although it is a nurbs tool using nurbs curves, it will give you a polygonal object. This could also be done simply by outputting it to nurbs (as it does by default), and then converting that to polys - but doing it the way he does it, just saves you an extra step.

One thing you will need to do is to adjust the settings for polygonal conversion. As soon as you select poly as output for the birail tool, a new section should open up referring to the tessellation attributes for the conversion. These options will control how the polygons are fitted for the conversion, how they are placed, how many of them, and whether they are quads or triangles. You will need to play around with these values until you get something similar to what the image in the tutorial looks like, or you will have trouble connecting it later.

Once that is done, just connect the two objects (the body, and the newly created object) as you would with any other poly objects. Combine it, make sure normals are all aligned, merge vertices, merge edges, and soften the normals.

Let me know if this helps, and/or if you need any more help figuring it out. :)

[BilboBagginz]

Thanks a bunch. :surprised I wasn't paying close enough attention to what I was reading. :D

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