Comments from the NEWBIE of the year

[Cowboybebop]

ok, feel free to comment on my idea's as I'm not a definative source;

I feel a way to select only the top layer of vertices, surfaces would be intutive because you can drag to select underlying vertices and surfaces which is great as you can select more than one surface. However when selecting the top layer of vertices and surfaces you have to hold control and click them all. On certain models this is not a big deal on others a nightmare.

So I was thinking maybe making left shift select all front to back vertices or surfaces(when adding more to your selection) and right shift select the top layer of vertices and surfaces(when adding more to your selection) or with caps lock on it selects the top layer and without it on it selects all when dragged. Or you could have everything stay the same and add a option(toggle) to surface and vertex mode.

Improve rotation- Object automatically pivoted from the objects center, which can be moved and rotation is based off where it's placed.

Light's- been mentioned in great detail already in other threads spot light, ambient , specular and etc

3d view- improvement is spin mode as it is needed, maybe a auto rotation and in walkthru mode a tilt or angle view. If possible to switch from spin to walk and vice versa without reseting view.

Nurbs- This I'd like imput on from what I am reading nurbs are great, smooth and a good base to start your model in. But how well would something like that run since it does a lot of calculations. Anyway I'd like to know how you feel about something like that.

Knife tool- been mention in other thread

Animation- i know something is in the works what would like is saving skeletal information to a seperate file like a .skl. A catalog of animations defined already that can be in different models. Example you make a nimation of a guy walking save the animation load a different model say a overwieght guy load the same animation and then if you wanted you could change it up a bit and make it more realistic as the bigger guy would walk a little different.

That's all for now I need to get back to modeling :D

As always AC3d is great I like it love it want more of it.

[Andy]

I think your ideas for selecting are good but would be confusing to use - especially for beginners. I agree that some kind of 'paint' select would be nice (dragging over the surfaces you want) - I have some ideas for this.

Objects can be rotated around their centre point - tick File->general->settings->rotate about object centres.

Lights - yes.

Switching between walk and spin - yes I agree that the jerking view can be annoying. You can tilt the view in walk mode using control+up/down.

Nurbs - sorry, won't happen. Subdivision surfaces are the way to go. Nurbs are nasty, unintuitive (my opinions!) and being used less and less. Subdivision surfaces are much logical, and easier to control.

Animation - yes

Better lights and animation are planned.

Andy

[Cowboybebop]

Ok, can you educate me on your opinion of nurbs, I went to this site;
http://coldfusion.art.msstate.edu/camenisch/thehumanhead/approaches3.html

And what it proposed seemed like a pretty good way of doing things, Start out in nurbs for more round well defined surfaces then convert to polygons. As I don't fully understand nor grasp 3d modeling yet can you elaborate. Just for FYI purposes thanks

[Willy]

Concerning the idea of selecting surfaces as mentioned in the first post: Are we talking about a way to select, say, only one hemisphere of a sphere because the other hemisphere is 'hidden'? I know MS has an option to do this by clicking on a 'ignore hidden surfaces' button. At least that's how I think it is done. I don't know if AC3D has some other way of doing it or not as I've not yet had occasion to hunt for it.

[Cowboybebop]

I think that's one of the options I mentioned, like a toggle that you can click and only one the surfaces or vertices in the view plane are selectable. Is that the same thing you mean willy ?

Anyway Andy one more thing I'd like to add to that list, modifiers

Basically bend, twist, curve and etc to preexisting models taking a pole and bending it without having to go in manually to move rotate vertices and surfaces. On some models it's not a big deal on others it would help greatly.

[Cowboybebop]

Rotate Active viewpoint

[Cowboybebop]

Ok scratch nurbs, what about a lathe tool ? Since revovle is kind of sort like it I figure some additions to that tool could be helpful.

[Cowboybebop]

I think your ideas for selecting are good but would be confusing to use - especially for beginners. I agree that some kind of 'paint' select would be nice (dragging over the surfaces you want) - I have some ideas for this.
Andy

Was thinking about this and it came to me, why not implement it in a layers(photoshop)like fashion. Make it so you can select portions of your model or scene your making and assign it to a layer, then you can make objects within a layer locked or hidden. Seems as simple enough of a implementation yet very powerful and flexible.

[halkun]

See my "implemnting Lightwave layers" comment. That's how lightwave handles that...