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Old 4th November 2004, 09:33 AM   #1
ShaneS
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Join Date: Nov 2004
Posts: 15
Default General AC3D tips

Hi all,

I'm a new AC3D user and I have to say I *love* this program. The last thing I used for 3D work was Dream3D back in Corel 3 maybe 7 years ago and nothing since then (so I'm pretty much a newbie to 3D modelling as well) but I got up and working with AC3D almost immediately.

This is some of the models I've managed to do over the past few days (sorry if we shouldn't be posted lots of image links):





I'm now trying to texture them but am not having much success. A few questions:
1) I'm trying to achieve a "dirty metal" texture. I've tried a few textures but they all look rather poor. Does anyone have any tips perhaps using the
povray textures?
2) I've played around with the texture coordinate editor, but given that a lot of my ship bodies are fairly irregularly shaped, what's the best way to achieve a seamless texture? Is there any easy way to determine the dimensions of the texture? I tried creating a few in PSP, but I couldn't easily determine the correct shape, so they ended up being distorted (so text in the texture was warped beyond recognition). Are there any good tutorials?
3) I've had some success using the povray textures, but is there an easy way to set all selected object properties at once?
4) General question - is there a "snap to edge" option or an easy way to achieve this? I sometimes need to create an object that aligns to another one, but it begins halfway along the surface of the other object, so I can't use snap to nearest. I do it by hand, but the edges of the objects don't quite align and you can see it when the object renders. Is there an easier way to do this?
5) At the moment, I'm creating irregularly shaped bodies by creating a polygon and extruding it in segments, then resizing the surface that I've just extruded. What I would like to do is to define the polygon, and then define the path (at right angles to the polygon) along which I want it to be extruded. Is there a plugin that will do this?

Sorry about all the questions, but I am very new to this whole thing and I am teaching myself as I go along. Can anyone recommend a good book on the subject?

Shane.
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Old 4th November 2004, 09:05 PM   #2
LiveWire
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Location: Eugene OR, USA
Posts: 212
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great models.

1)Im pretty sure that ac3d auto scales the textures down when loaded, to save texture space, this of couse is not saved, just for viewing in ac3d.
2)http://bellsouthpwp.net/a/t/atomicd/plantex_beta2.zip this is a plugin for ac3d, made by dennis, that does some nice stuff with texturing, you might find it useful.
for more info: http://ac3d.org/forum/viewtopic.php?...er=asc&start=0
3)i dont think so...but i could be wrong.
4)no theres not, but that is a great idea.

good job, and good luck.
--Philip
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