Script to Generate Snail Shells

[NickE]

Back when I was going to enter the "Need for Speed" competition over on Animanon, I adapted Steve's spring script to produce pretty realistic snail shells.  Unfortunately, I ran out of time for the competition.  Here is a short clip starring a shell.

http://www.youtube.com/v/1sm-F7Gosvw

Attached is the script, a sample render of two types of shells, and the parameters needed to reproduce those shells.  To produce the renders, I converted the parametric shape to a mesh, deleted the cap face, used the shell function to add thickness, and textured.

[lynn22]

The shells look lovely, thank you for letting us have this script.

[hihosilver]

That is a magnificent script!  I replaced my other spring script with it as it's capable of doing both springs and snail shells and more!
Magnificent job once again.

[kreator]

another great script .....based on spring script I notice ?

[thecolclough]

haven't got time to play with this right now, but i'm going to have to have a go soon.  this looks brilliant!

- colclough

[Steve]

Cool script, NickE!  Is it OK if I post this in the scripts download page?

[NickE]

I would be honored, but the honor is really yours, Steve, since all I did was slightly modify your spring script.

[csf]

I m using 97.b and I cant get anim8or to load this script my other scripts are loading fine though.

[Steve]

csf: Have you put the script in the same directory as the others?  Enable the Script Console (in the File->Configure menu) and see if there are any errors reported when it tries to load it.  You'll have to exit Anim8ot and restart it to get the script loaded.\

NickE: Can you give me some good preset values for your script to make a snail like in your picture?  I want to change the defult values in the script so that it makes a good snail by default.  It's a little tricky to set everything just right.

[NickE]

Steve,
The initial post of this thread has two screen shots of the parameters used to create the shells shown in the render.  Did you want something different for the preset?

[csf]

Yep its in the same directory as the rest of the scripts (which are working) I enabled the Script Console and it does not load it up during start up. if I load it from load script it would compile with no error.

After some experimenting I realized the file was . A8S instead of .a8s once I fixed that it now works (not sure where the caps came from).

[Aarangend]

OKay... could someone please tell me how to use scripts? cuz I have like no idea!

[kreator]

Parametric scripts are the ones that appear on your GUI as little icons .

You need to make a folder on your compter like scripts  or (plugins) then put all your downloaded scripts into that folder.

Now you must load up anim8or and go file/configure

when the configuration editor appears you will see a box for scripts , just browse to the  folder that you have made, then make sure preload scripts is ticked.

Some scripts are not parametric and run from the menu Scripts.

[Aarangend]

oookay... I will try that