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Why Can't I Generate A New Poly/Face?

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RudySchneider:
Well done, Old Codger!  Experimenting pays off!

And as far as Edge Loops are concerned, the Anim8or manual only makes a slight, non-applicable reference to them, but calls them "circles."  But taken literally, it's a closed-loop of edges.  And moving the entire loop is equivalent to your moving multiple points.  In this case, it's moving all of the points on the loop.

Attached is another example of moving edge loops, and the affect it has on either subdividing or smoothing (both under Build) the object.  Note that subdividing gives you a cage, which you can then use to further deform the mesh.

ENSONIQ5:
So many cats to be skinned, so many ways to skin them!  Another approach would be to construct the cross section of the semi-cylindrical hut and lathe it around a centre line, then remove the bottom half.  This effectively builds the smooth inside and the ribbed outside of the model in a single operation, already joined.  In the example attached, note that the cross section is built offset from the centre line (green arrow) around which it will be lathed.

I would also recommend building separate interior and exterior 'sets' as the alternative comes with all the same drawbacks as on-location filming.  Thinking like a set builder rather than an engineer can be helpful, for example interior sets can be built in a modular fashion with removable sections to allow cameras to pull back further than they would if they were constrained within a fixed structure.  A real-life example is the filming of Silent Running which was done largely in an aircraft carrier (the Valley Forge) with very restricted spaces.  The camera operators' heads were measured to find the smallest one, so he could jamb himself deeper into corners of rooms behind the camera for the widest possible shot!  Also, the main set for Apollo 13 was very modular with parts that could be removed to poke cameras in.

From bitter experience this is definitely worth thinking about at the modelling stage, not once everything has been assembled and rigged and you can't get the camera where you need it!

Old Codger:
I'm already thinking exterior models and interior sets. Hadn't thought about lathing. Have to mess with that. And the offset from centerline is the radius of the lathe action. Hmmm. Food for thought. AND for good old empirical exploration. I downloaded both your example pix for further study. I'm trying to get the guy for whom I'm doing all this to decide what he really wants and needs. What microscopic measure of creativity I possess is not visually oriented. I keep trying to tell him that I just figure out how to implement whatever HE comes up with. He has an interesting little web comic I follow called "The Gentle Wolf". You can find it at: https://thegentlewolf.net/

Oh, and I'll have you know that set designers/builders are very much engineers and architects. A visual artist (like my buddy at TGW) dreams up the cool looking things then hands the drawings to engineer types to make the artist's vision real. If you think of it, 3D modelling is very much akin to what prop and set shops do. Almost nothing you see on a movie or television screen is "real". It looks real but it is almost always only skin deep. The trick is to fool the eye into believing that the object - building or prop - is what the story calls. Back in High School I got a teeny bit involved in the Drama dept and helped build sets. I know that the things aren't real. Heck! With CGI not even the furniture is real. It's just shapes that appear solid.

Oh and I figured that what the book calls "edge loops" are what I am working with when I do a drag mark over a chunk of a model to move it or scale it like when I turn a nice 3x3x3 cube with edges that look like a tic-tac-toe board into a thing with little squares in the corners. Never knew they had a name even though I've been manipulating them since almost day one.

ENSONIQ5:
I'm not saying set builders aren't engineers, just that they have different goals.  An engineer builds something that works, a set builder builds something that looks like it works but is filmable.

Take, for example, a train carriage.  A 3D CGI model builder who is into trains might start by building the wheels and bogeys, then the chassis, the wall frames, the exterior cladding, the windows, the interior panels, light fittings, seats, etc.  It might be a faithful model of a train carriage that satisfies the builder and might work very well for exterior shots, but it probably wouldn't be practical to use as a set for movie scenes taking place inside the carriage.  A set builder's approach would be to ignore the undercarriage entirely and build each wall and the ceiling as separate objects (or object groups with light fittings, windows etc.) that can be hidden at will to allow cameras to be positioned in different locations in an unrestricted way.

Building a real train carriage that way would be insane, so a train enthusiast hired to build a filmable movie set of a train carriage might have a hard time forcing themselves to ignore what they know about how real train carriages are built, and build something that's totally wrong but looks right :)

From personal experience it's helps A LOT if the director/writer/whoever you're working for can provide storyboards, or at least some visual idea of the 'shots' required.  This will inform how the models should be built and whether any sort of modularity is required.  I can also recommend a 'pre-vis' stage, where simple block-form models are used as stand-ins of the real, detailed models, with only basic lighting and texturing but with the cameras in position.  This can help to determine how a camera should track through animated scenes and allows the director to request adjustments that don't result in many more hours work for you.

Old Codger:
I understand where you're coming from. That's why I am a touch irritated with the guy for whom I am ramping up in Anim8or. He's wanting stuff that won't move the story along and which he'll probably never use. I'm pitching two different types of models. Exterior pieces (which would need wheels and other things but not much in the way of interior) and interior sets (which would look like they were inside the exterior models but which would not actually be part of the exterior). Part of the problem we're having is getting him to test the rough models for scale and send me at least a screen shot of the result. I don't know what format works best (.3ds or .obj) and what scaling factor - 1 to 1 or 12 to 1. Frankly, at this point in time I am having enough trouble learning how to make what I want/need in Anim8or without having also to learn Daz Studio just to try the models out for scale. Down the road I'm going to have to learn Daz Studio so I can just ship him finished, "camera ready" models. But for now Anim8or is as much as (more really) I can handle. My health isn't good. Some days all I do is get up, make a little breakfast, read a couple of web comics and blogs and go back to bed. Yesterday I crashed at around 3:00p.m. and didn't get back up till 7:00. Then I ate a quick sandwich, took my night meds and crashed until this morning. I'm making progress and I try to devote 2 hours minimum to learning Anim8or but it's an uphill slog.

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