Anim8or Community

From a basic concepts point of view, the workflow in Lithunwrap (V1.3) is as follows:

1) Load a 3D model (File > Model > Open)
2) Choose an UV mapping method that best suits the model (some experimentation required here, I most commonly choose Box but it depends on the model and what it will be used for)
3) If appropriate for the chosen method, tweak the spacing and positioning of the UV map
4) Export the UV map (File > UV map > Save)
5) Export the mapped object (File > Model > Save)

There are a bunch of available settings relating to the size, colours and other parameters of the exported UV map, the size will again be driven by what the model will be used for.  At this point, open the exported UV map in your 2D editor of choice and use it to construct your object's texture.  How you do this will depend on the 2D editor you're using and the complexity of the final texture.

In Anim8or (or any 3D editor):

1) Create a material with the finished UV map in the Ambient and Diffuse channels
2) Import the 3D model you exported from Lithunwrap
3) Apply the material to the imported model created by Lithunwrap.  The original model you imported into Lithunwrap will not have updated UV coordinates so the UV map won't match up.

I hope this helps!

Double-click the object with UV tool activated to access the Texture Coordinate Parameters dialog box which includes a 'Reset to default' option.

Achieving 'realism' in a CGI image is not easy, but it all boils down to attention to detail.  We all have pretty good built-in bulls&%t detectors and can tell when something doesn't look quite right, but in some cases it can be difficult to know exactly why.  There are a bunch of elements that all need to be considered when attempting to create a realistic-looking render:

1) The model: Using Rudy's excellent examples above, the 'Knobs' image in particular, notice the tiny gap between the knobs and the font panel, the rounding of the edges of the front panel as they meet the case, the gap in the case suggesting it's made of two halves.  In the MorseKey image, notice how the shiny metal armature is a bit convex on top, just as would happen when polishing a piece of metal like that.  Notice how its edges are not perfectly sharp, which is easy to achieve in the digital world but much harder (and more dangerous!) in reality.  This sort of attention to the reality of engineering is important and when it is overlooked the image can look too 'perfect', a sure sign that it's not real.

2) Materials: While Anim8or's materials are relatively simple compared to other 3D packages they are still complex with a massive range of possibilities.  Getting to grips with the ART parameters is critical, it has its own set of instructions and permits things like complex reflections, glossy surfaces, dielectrics, refractions etc.  What makes glass look like glass, considering it's effectively transparent?  Again, using Rudy's Vase6 render above, it's the complex interplay between transparency, dielectics, refraction and reflection that makes it look so real.  The best advice I can give is to learn what the material settings do, reconstruct the samples in the literature, and do a bunch of test renders to see what's going on.  There's really no trick to this, it just takes time.

3) Lighting: As has been said before, lighting is one of the most critical things to get right.  For example, consider a render of a comms satellite in Earth orbit.  Technically there will only be a single light source (the Sun) but it will also be illuminating the Earth below, which will be acting as a second, diffuse, bluish light source from 'below'. Parts of the satellite hidden from both the Sun and Earth will be totally black with nothing to illuminate them (other than starlight I guess).  However, a scene in a room lit by sunlight streaming through an open window will be very different, as the sunlight will be bouncing around the room banishing most shadows and casting different shades of light on the objects.  This 'secondary' illumination can be simulated in a rudimentary way with the ambient light setting and some more complex systems can simulate secondary (tertiary etc.) lighting, but well-considered positioning of fill lights in an Anim8or scene can go a long way towards improving the realism of a scene.  Having an understanding of how light behaves in different situations is critical in the accurate positioning of these fill lights.

4) Filth: As I said above, perfection is a sure sign that something's off.  Looking at Rudy's MorseKey image, imagine if there were fingerprints on the shiny metal part and the Bakelite knob or a bit of rust pitting; if this was the case I'm not sure I would have recognised it as anything other than a photograph of a real object.  Imperfection is everywhere, from the rough and damaged edges of a desktop to rain spots on a window pane or machining marks on a polished metal surface.  Simulating imperfection can go a long way towards achieving realism, mostly it will be done in the materials but thinking about it at the modelling stage is also worthwhile.

There are other things that can destroy the perception of reality, such as movement in an animation that doesn't respect physics, but I would say these are the main ones.  I don't believe there are 'tricks' to achieving realism, every realistic CGI image I have ever seen (here or elsewhere) has been created by someone with lots of experience and folders full of earlier renders, many of which they would be embarrassed to share now.  It's a learning curve, every render you do will be better than the one before it.  The best advice I can give is build, render, post in forums like this one and take on board what others say.

To summarise the steps in creating and applying basic materials:

• Click the Materials icon in the top bar (looks like 4 balls) to open the materials panel
• You have two panels to choose from, File and Object.  Materials created in File are available for all objects, materials in Object are only available for the specific object *
• Double click the empty material slot titled 'New' to open the material editor.  There's more to this editor than I can cover here, the manual covers it better than I can, but to start with use the colour selector to choose a basic colour in the Ambient and Diffuse channels, eg. red.  Click OK and your red material should show at the top of the materials panel
• To create a second material, double click the 'New' slot and do the same process as above
• In Object/Edit mode (arrow at top left of the toolbox), click the object, then click the colour slot you want, then click 'Apply' at the top of the materials panel.  This will apply that material to the whole object
• To apply your second colour to just one face, change to Object/Point edit mode (3 dots in toolbox), ensure Face select is selected in the toolbox below XYZ, ensure 'Front' is selected in the row below that, and click on the face whose material you want to change. As before, click the material you want in the materials panel and click Apply to apply that colour to just the selected face

Obviously you can select multiple faces to apply the second colour to as required.  UV mapping in Anim8or is quite powerful and easy to control but needs a bit more explanation, we can cover this once you have the gist of creating and applying materials.  I attempted to create a video but my screen capture software is prehistoric and the resolution is terrible, and W10's Game Bar capture software doesn't seem to capture pop-up menus, annoyingly.

* Copying and pasting a mesh from one Object to another Object within the same project also copies any object-specific materials it uses into the new object.  Since this can get a bit messy with duplicates if (like me) you tend to build meshes in one Object and assemble them in another, I normally use the 'File' panel pretty much exclusively.

Regarding the lifting points, I'm not sure what method you used to build them but (like so many things in Anim8or) there are several different approaches you could have taken.  The method outlined below took about 5 minutes, including the time to screenshot the steps.

Start with an N-gon, setting the number of steps to whatever seems reasonable (max is 100, in the example below I set it to 24). Copy/paste and enlarge the copy so there are two concentric circles, being the lifting point 'hole' and the outer rounded top part (2nd image).  Select both circles, Build > Join Splines, then Build > Extrude.  In the extrude dialog ensure end caps are selected and choose the extrusion axis that's towards you (ie. the axis not shown at bottom left of the screen - green arrow in the third image below).  Pull the points in the bottom part of the outer circle into a squared-off shape, snapping to the grid (4th image).  Adjust thickness of the object if required.

I should point out that I'm not saying this is the 'best' method, just a quick one.  The best method to use in any case depends largely on the ultimate purpose of the model, for example if the intention was to smooth or subdivide the object it would be better to use a method that doesn't create 3-sided polygons (such as using the lathe tool to create the 'donut' in step 3 before pulling the points out).  The Join Splines and Extrude tools can be a quick way to create complex perforated objects, such as the second attachment.

Using a geodesic sphere is a good solution, and as you say the topology lends itself to being easily bisected into halves, quarters etc.  I'm not a big fan of the irregularity of it though, starting with a polygonal primitive results in all 'panes' being identical.  But, like most things in Anim8or, there are multiple ways of achieving what you need

I've made a few domes with Anim8or, below is a way I've found that does a reasonably good job for smallish domes.  It's not strictly geodesic but has a regular appearance.  If the empty faces should be filled with 'glass' I would create a copy of the object at the third stage below, slightly reduce the size, give it a transparent material and overlay it with the 'frame' object.

This modelling technique doesn't give a triangular cross section of the frame elements, that could be simulated by (painstakingly) selecting the 'centreline' nodes in each frame segment and increasing the scale.

I don't have Daz but I do have Carrara which has Daz/Poser object import algorithms.  On creating some test cubes in Anim8or and importing them to Carrara via the OBJ format the following appears to be the case:

Anim8or: 1 units
OBJ: 0.0254 units
Carrara: .0254 metres
Poser/Daz: 2.439 metres

So it seems, at least for these tests, that 1 Anim8or unit translates to 1 inch as a straight import, and 96 inches for a Daz Studio or Poser import (which maps 96 'Carrara units' to 1 OBJ unit).