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Old 28th May 2006, 10:42 PM   #1
wsimike
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Default Extruding face "groups"?

Hello,

I've been trying to achieve a certain effect with AC3D and can't seem to get it to work. The general effect is of a rounded pillar (or any shape, really) with certain patterns "built in" to its core structure.. grooves and what-not.

The best way to describe it is just to show you what I'm trying to create..

Check the following screenshot:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...73/pillars.jpg

This is a screen-capture from Final Fantasy XI (inside Hall of Gods for those of you who might happen to play :-). Notice how the pillars with the statues along the right side have those cool patterns "carved" into them? I'm trying to get that sort of effect.

The process I'm taking is, making a cylinder with several sides, say 10 or so. and several segments along the Y axis. Then, with "click-through" enabled I'm grabbing vertices and sliding them up and down to get a given pattern. The resulting pattern is what I'd like to have "carved".

Now.. I've tried beveling and extruding and in all cases, the problem is that each face is being treated as an individual face - even when a contiguous group of them is selected. There's a polygon (perhaps two in the same space) separating each face around the entire circumference.

Now, I've seen options in other 3D programs where groups of polys/faces are treated as one and you end up with the entire set being extruded as a single piece.. not as individual faces. Does AC3D have anything like this?

If not.. is there another approach I might take to achieving this effect?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Mike
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Old 29th May 2006, 12:00 PM   #2
wsimike
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Hmm... seems I've presented a bit of a hum-dinger eh?

I have found a way to sorta get the effect I want.. but I'm not sure if it's the "preferred way.. basically I select all the faces I want inset, and delete them, then create an "ordered surface" from the vertices and extrude it a single surface.. then triangulate it later.

That's one way to go about it I suppose.. anyone have any better suggestions though?
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Old 29th May 2006, 12:03 PM   #3
nightoftheroundtable
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have you tryed using the smooth shape tool in ac3d? that might work for you.
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Old 29th May 2006, 12:25 PM   #4
wsimike
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Quote:
Originally Posted by nightoftheroundtable
have you tryed using the smooth shape tool in ac3d? that might work for you.

That tool doesn't provide the effect I'm going for. I'm looking to extrude/bevel/inset a group of faces into a cylinder (or other shape) as a single mass. Smooth "rounds out" the vertices to give the selection a more rounded shape.
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Old 29th May 2006, 12:29 PM   #5
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ooh lol my bad. XD. you might want to try the bevel tool and indent tool. those tools will help you give that rounded effect. for the indent and bevel tool I believe you have to have a negative numbers in there to get the effect you want. it thats not the case leave the negative out. hope that helps
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Old 29th May 2006, 01:28 PM   #6
Andy
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I'm sure it's Extrude that you want.
I'd start with a cylinder and extrude the bottom a few times to break up the surfaces into a 'grid' of squares.

Select surfaces in your pattern and select extrude. Make sure the settings for extrude are on,off,on and just click the bounding box to perform the extrude in place. Hold down the control key and drag a corner handle to scale the new surfaces outwards. Scale top to botton (middle handle +control) to reduce the height of the new extrusions.

I suspect a lot of the shape on the pics is really the texture and the model is probably not actually very detailed.
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Old 29th May 2006, 01:30 PM   #7
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You've hit on the most efficient way to do it I think.
All three I think of are simily time consuming.
Bump map em?
edit,
Select the surfaces then combine them, then away you go. No inner divisions.
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Old 29th May 2006, 01:30 PM   #8
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but andy wouldn't my idea work as well?
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Old 29th May 2006, 01:43 PM   #9
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There are many ways to get to the same result.

Bevel and indent work on individual surfaces. A bevel is really just a single surface extrude. Extrude will work across adjacent surfaces.
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Old 29th May 2006, 01:48 PM   #10
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ooh okay. hey andy I know this is off topic but have you taken a look at my finished projects they can be found in the wip section. my two projects are the stormhawk and W.A.S.P
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