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Author Topic: Tools suggestions  (Read 11783 times)

hiperia3d

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Tools suggestions
« on: March 17, 2009, 06:04:05 pm »

Hello,

First of all I want to thanks Steve for his hard work. Anim9or is an excellent 3D editor, and I like it very much, specially since it does such a good OBJ import and export.

My usual modeler was AOI but it has problems with very big meshes with many polygons, and Anim8or works great with them. So I switch to Anim8or.

There are some tools that I miss, and I wonder if they're available on Anim8or as plugins or something. If they are, please tell me. If not, take this as feature suggestions:

- Tube tool: this is in fact a spline that goes following the path of another. This can be done in Anim8or, but a tube tool may be a good thing. This works this way: you draw  a spline, then use the tube tool, and it becomes a tube. THis is great for doing iron forge things.

- Array tool: to make copies of an object but with transformations. This is great for example for stairs.

- Make Live Duplicate: make a copy of the object that changes if you change the original.

- Boolean operations: union, extract, intersection, difference.

- Align objects to x y or z axis.

- Tree view of the objects of the scene

- Background image in the modeler, to watch while one works, as a reference

- Randomize points: randomizes the points of the mesh.

Thanks again Steve.
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Tanzim

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Re: Tools suggestions
« Reply #1 on: March 17, 2009, 09:43:19 pm »

"Make Live Duplicate"- Steve is making a real-time mirror tool, maybe that can be tweaked to just create a whole copy of the mesh, although, I don't see whats wrong with just making the object and then creating duplicates.

"Align objects to x y or z axis"- if you mean scale, rotate or move on a certain axis, you can turn off an axis by clicking on there corresponding letter. If you mean placing them in a certain area, I not sure that would be possible, because the axis's aren't at this one point, they are used to 'create' space for modeling, animation etc

"Tree view"- I believe hierarchy's are possible in Anim8or

"Background image"- Reference images are possible, Build->Reference Image (this is off memory, I don't have a copy of Anim8or with me ATM)

"Randomize points"- Try Terranim8or at: http://www.biederman.net/leslie/terranim8or/terranim8or.htm
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hihosilver

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Re: Tools suggestions
« Reply #2 on: March 17, 2009, 09:52:27 pm »

I can address a few.

Quote
- Tube tool: this is in fact a spline that goes following the path of another. This can be done in Anim8or, but a tube tool may be a good thing. This works this way: you draw  a spline, then use the tube tool, and it becomes a tube. THis is great for doing iron forge things.

There is no exact "tube tool", but as you mentioned, you can extrude one spline along the path of another.  To create a tube, you can simply create two circular splines, one inside the other, then join the splines ("Build>Join splines"), and extrude them along the path.

Quote
- Array tool: to make copies of an object but with transformations. This is great for example for stairs.

No, sadly there is no tool for this in Anim8or, and I know of no plugins/scripts for it either (there are some scripts where you can create arrays of objects along a path I believe, you may be able to find those on the forum (there is a tutorial using it somewhere on tank tracks.)

Quote
- Make Live Duplicate: make a copy of the object that changes if you change the original.
There is currently no tool for this, though I believe Steve is working on live mirroring, perhaps that would allow him to implement live instances as well.

Quote
- Boolean operations: union, extract, intersection, difference.
There is no tool within anim8or, but the newest version of Terranim8or does have the capability (it is a bit buggy, but it still works.)

Quote
- Tree view of the objects of the scene
Anim8or does have this, if you look down at the bottom of the screen in scene mode there is a "+" sign by text that says "scene01" or has the name of your scene.  Click that, then you can expand the tree by pressing the + by "world" and drag up the area with the bar on the left.

Quote
- Background image in the modeler, to watch while one works, as a reference
Go "Build>Reference image..."

Quote
- Randomize points: randomizes the points of the mesh.
I believe Claude or someone has a "noise" script which basically does this.  You may find it by searching the forum.

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kreator

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Re: Tools suggestions
« Reply #3 on: March 18, 2009, 02:44:12 am »

Quote
- Tube tool: this is in fact a spline that goes following the path of another. This can be done in Anim8or, but a tube tool may be a good thing. This works this way: you draw  a spline, then use the tube tool, and it becomes a tube. THis is great for doing iron forge things.

Quote
There is no exact "tube tool", but as you mentioned, you can extrude one spline along the path of another.  To create a tube, you can simply create two circular splines, one inside the other, then join the splines ("Build>Join splines"), and extrude them along the path.

You can use NickE`s tube to path script find it in Asl scripts somewhere.
it makes a tool icon on your GUI.....

See here 
csf,

Attached is the requested script.  I have simply converted Steve's spline.txt script to a parametric script.  It creates a tube along a spline that must be named "tubepath".  You can adjust the number of sides, the diameter, and the number of divisions.

*** Remember to convert the parametric shape to a mesh before using it
      in any other objects, in figures, or scenes.  It is totally dependent
      on the original "tubepath" spline while it remains
      a parametric shape.  As Steve stated: parametric scripts were never
      intended to work this way. ***

Quote
- Array tool: to make copies of an object but with transformations. This is great for example for stairs.

Quote
No, sadly there is no tool for this in Anim8or, and I know of no plugins/scripts for it either (there are some scripts where you can create arrays of objects along a path I believe, you may be able to find those on the forum (there is a tutorial using it somewhere on tank tracks.)

The tank tracks tutorial is here Plus some work using in in the animanon thread.

 http://www.tranceportsoftware.com/anim8orstuff/treads.htm
http://www.animanon.com/Forum/index.php?board=84.0
« Last Edit: March 18, 2009, 02:58:14 am by kreator »
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hiperia3d

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Re: Tools suggestions
« Reply #4 on: March 18, 2009, 01:35:47 pm »

Thanks to you all for all this information.

I see that most of these tools are available as the plugins that you say:

- Tube tool: the spline tube script (http://www.anim8or.com/smf/index.php?topic=21.30) does this.

- Array tool: These scripts make it better, as they work visually : http://www.tranceportsoftware.com/anim8orstuff/treads.htm

- Randomize points: This script that you said is what I wanted: http://www.anim8or.com/ubb/Forum6/HTML/000103.html


It may be good if they come packaged with Anim8or, people may appreciate them.

I still have some doubts for these features, please tell me:

- Boolean operations: union, extract, intersection, difference. I see they are in Terranim8or, and I like it, but can I execute them from inside Anim8or?

- Align objects to x y or z axis: I mean align an object to another in some axis, although this may be done by hand by copying the values of x y or z.

- Tree view of the objects of the scene: mainly for select by name in object edition mode. Is this possible?

- Background image in the modeler: Anim8or's reference image is perfect, much better to have it in 3D, I like how Anim8or does this.

And about "Make Live Duplicate", it is to make a copy of the object that changes if you change the original. It is as you say, as the "live mirroring" but with the full mesh. I used it very much, for example to model columns of a temple, and change them at a time. It may be a very good feature.


Thanks!
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lynn22

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Re: Tools suggestions
« Reply #5 on: March 18, 2009, 07:11:47 pm »

Quote
Tree view of the objects of the scene: mainly for select by name in object edition mode. Is this possible?

In any Mode you can click on the button with a few lines on it above the work space or hit Ctrl+L to get a clickable list of all meshes.
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neirao

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Re: Tools suggestions
« Reply #6 on: March 18, 2009, 09:59:59 pm »

Hi hiperia3d, :)

ALL your sugestions, there in Anim8or software and/or in your plugins,
only for BOOLEAN use Terranim8or ...

Please read the manual, or search in forum for your questions ok!
Wellcome to Anim8or!

[]īs ;)

 
 
« Last Edit: March 18, 2009, 10:04:52 pm by neirao »
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hiperia3d

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Re: Tools suggestions
« Reply #7 on: March 19, 2009, 07:17:21 am »

Thanks
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Jordi R. Cardona
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