How to use wings from AM standpoint?

#1

I have come from Animation Master and would realy like to learn wings. I have been persevering for a while now and allthough I realy like it so far, I have the following problems:

  1. I am having problems with the fact that subdivs don’t represent the poly model that you make. My main area of difficulty is the mouth. I find that the polys have to overlap for the proxy lips to meet. Are there strategies for dealing with this?

  2. In AM, I could be tweeking away and easily multi-select points to move them together. Also, the camera in AM rotatates around the geometry that you have selected. Can I do these things in Wings?

Sorry if these have been asked before, but I couldn’t find them in the search.

#2

1:Putting vertice closer together will solidify the area but sometimes you will need to add geometry as opposed to with Splines wich cover curved areas with much less points.

2:In Tweak mode,AFAIK it is impossile to have a multiple selection but the magnet can sometimes be better(activate by pushing 1 while in Tweak mode)…

To aim the camera and have it rotating around a point is one of the most useful and easy features,just select any element and push “A”

Also look at the Magnet included with the standard operations it’s very good.

#3

Hi Actarusprocyon, thanks for your reply :slight_smile:

>1:Putting vertice closer together will solidify the area but >sometimes you will need to add geometry as opposed to with >Splines wich cover curved areas with much less points.

I have notice the thing with closer vertices solidifying the geometry. This is probably wht way to go. However, I have noticed that some people manage with a very simple mesh. I guess that it is just a lot of tweaking in wireframe and then checking the smoothed mesh loads.

>2:In Tweak mode,AFAIK it is impossile to have a multiple >selection but the magnet can sometimes be better(activate by >pushing 1 while in Tweak mode)…

I guess that this will have to do. I like the way that you can have different influence types.

>To aim the camera and have it rotating around a point is one of >the most useful and easy features,just select any element and >push “A”

This is great for when editing normaly. It would be nice if there were some way of doing this in tweek mode also. I am getting used to using “q” though and this seems to work well enough.

Oh, another thing that I would like from tweek mode is to be able to constrain movement to xyz by holding “1”,“2” or “3” (like you can in AM).

I am possibly being fussy and just not accepting the the amount of work must go into learning a new modeller but I would like to see the tweek mode improved a little. How do we send suggestions to the programming team?

#4

One programmer:

Bjorn

You can go to this thread to post wings wants

http://pub161.ezboard.com/fnendowingsmiraifrm1.showMessage?topicID=1736.topic

#5

Thanks for the link… WOW!, that is one big thread. And just one programmer. Poor guy!

#6

John, I have a decent amount of experience in AM and Wings, to tell you that once you have the hang of the box modelling style, you won’t look back in a hurry…well worth perservering! There are many things I love about spline modelling, but the all the things I hated about it are resolved in Wings. It is true of course that you work on the proxy cage, not the actual interploated curved surface(as with splines in AM), which is a bit daunting at first , but the advantages are a perfectly smooth mesh (unless you want to put in creases), and that you can rough out a shape and slowly add detail in areas much like traditional sculpting.

I presume you know about the realtime proxy mode, where you hit shift/tab and you can see the proxy skeleton(that you are manipulating) and the interploated mesh underneath? I find it better to change the colour(preferences) of the proxy cage to black or anything but default white and you can also toggle the wireframe on/off with the w key. Sometimes the mesh is easiest worked on in this proxy mode, especially if you are working on a real low poly character that will be later subd’d in your 3d app…advantage being that you can see the final result as you work (well wings is only subdividing each poly by 4, but that is usually enough).

I can now do a decent looking smooth head in a about an hour…which is usually totally freeformed. Have you ever tried to model in AM without reference and without creases with speed?It can be done , but much easier with box modelling.

Also, you may want to try another freeware app that has recently been updated called Marbleclay:
http://member.nifty.ne.jp/escargot/MCLFrm.html

I only found it (via the news page of cgtalk) yesterday, and boy am I hooked! It is like a cross between AM and Wings with a really sweet proxy mode…you can actually model with splines and then box model from there…whatever takes your fancy. Not as many tools as wings(it is still in beta tho) but when you put the mesh into splinemesh mode2 it is very similar to tweaking an AM mesh…you very well may love it…

#7

Zendorf,

Thanks for the info!! That MarbleClay looks a treat!

I think that I have found most of the main features in Wings. It seems that there is a huge amount more to learn but mostly only if you want to do mechanical moselling. I will try that tip of changing the colour of the proxy as I can find things a little confusing at times.

Actually, since my last post I have had a few more stabbs with the program. The first one resulted in a head that looked ok but which had a realy messy mesh. Then I had another stab and I managed to make a pretty realistic model with all the muscles in the right place and all in quads! I was chuffed to say the least and I seem to be getting faster too.

I have thought of doing a comparison with AM. I never, or rarely use any reference when modelling and probably take about an hour making a head (although I can spend for ever tweeking after that).

I found that, after the discipline of patches, quads wern’t all that hard. In fact, I found similarites in the aproaches. With hash you get three and five point patches. You can kind of build these in quads. The five pointer is made out of five quads. It is like a five pointer where there is a line drawn from each vertex to the centre. The three pointer is a quad with a vertex pused in with the equivilent of a hook coming off it. I probably didn’t explain myself too well there and you probably know this already but hey.

One thing that I would like to say is that Hash patches have improved massively recently. They changed the porcillain material so that you get more detail with it and so you don’t have to worry about creases so much now. It is also faster to model with. Of course it crashes but that is par for the course.

Thanks again for the input.

#8

Yeah, I agree that starting on spline/patch modelling is a good way to start (AM being my first 3d app) because from the word go, you have to think about the flow/topology of your structure. The loops in AM splines are no different to do edge loop modelling with polys…tis all about getting the topology to flow with the musculature. The main difference being that with AM you can’t really keep things all quads (Tho ppl did do it prior to the 5 pt patch feature… I only came in at v8 :shrug: ) and have to put 5 point patches in whereas with polys you tend to put in 3 pts and poles to converge your loops unless your app can handle ngons(such as Wings).

Most of my mesh ugliness in AM came about from 5 pt patch and hook regions…I do have the latest version and have tried the porcellin, and it sure does help, but of course not perfect. From using that Marbleclay app the last couple of days (I am hooked) it has forced me to think a bit differently as it doesn’t handle ngons, so I have had to alter my approach a bit from my Wings style. Usually in Wings I would cut in my edge loops and work from there, but in this app I have been doing more extrusion and knifing. the interesting thing is that when I went back to Wings, it actually helped my modelling as I could combine both approaches. Just goes to show that the more modellers you practice with, the more proficient you become as you refine your style, as they all do similar things and you will get different ideas in one that are transferable to another.

I am really hoping that AM modelling may one day go in a similar direction to Marbleclay, as you could spline model up a proxy cage using linear splines and then get your nice perfectly smooth model interploated underneath…best of both worlds…convert your spline model to polys and use as proxy cage, no more creases. If they then also added face style tools for extrusion and bevelling (similar to zevel), the modeller would be much more universal. Oh and while I am dreaming, they would also add in fbx support and external renderer support(rib…Yafray/3Delight etc) , major stability, new manual and would rule the world…end of ramble…

#9

hmm…This Marbleclay looks interesting but unfortunately,it gives me a “Please Run Update After copying to Marbleclay’s folder”

I extracted it in a folder on c: and that’s what I get when I run Marbleclay.exe…any idea?I really wanna try it.

Edit:Ok,an earlier version worked MarbleCLAYb53d,seems I’ll have to update some components on my system,although I have no idea what they are.

Neat program,really it’s got a good interface and I love how you can choose the tools using the mousewheel.

Another question,is there a way to setup the subdivisions of SplineMesh1 higher?

#10

As far as I can tell, it there is no way of changing the subdivsion level for the editor. This would be nice to do (you could email the suggestion to the author) as I am sure the app could handle it speedwise, as the opengl performance flies. I am presuming that you have selected opengl and smooth shading options up top?

It seems to be subdividing each quad by a factor of 9, which is why it looks smoother than Wings proxy mode (which is 4) and it is fine for my needs. I don’t use a wheel mouse, so didn’t know about the tool changing…sounds neat…the hotkeys are very easy anyway numbers 1-9 on keypad and you can change your hotkeys on the far right of interface which is cool…it had no default for zoom, so one click and I changed it to ctrl/alt…nice.
Also another reason I am digging this app, is that it works perfectly on the Wacom, which is what I always desired in Wings, as I use it on all apps…

A few other recent observations…the interactive scaling is very handy…any axis is available at once, just use shift to constrain proportions on a plane. There are bevel and edgeloop selection tools in there as well as constraining your move on an axis in perspective mode…also you can change your selection style or filter your selections on the left of interface…

Of course I love Wings , but it is nice to jump between apps as this has a few things that Wings doesn’t , like lathe, knife, patch modelling, etc so well worth learning. With these two apps and the upcoming Blender with Nurbana based nurbs tools, all my modelling is covered by freeware!

#11

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.