This is an archive of CompuServe forum messages from 1985 to 1995, as saved in transcripts by John Foust.
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>>Just over six weeks, its like counting down for christmas. :*0 Still don't know if I can make it to L.A. I hope you can make it. Wouldn't want you to miss the excitement of Christmas morning ! – Phil
>>not sure if that would work for skin. It's actually Jamie Clay's tip, and yes it does work very well for renaming skin slices. The idea is that you have sliced an object and received far too many slices.You delete the ones you don't want but are now left the…
Select all the objects and use Create/Element/Explode with a 180 degree threshold. That will bust all the elements into sequentially named objects. – Phil
Sounds like your conference is shaping up to me a very worth while event! Best of luck in finishing all the details and being successful in achieving your surprises. – Phil
Hi James – how's Madison these days? Are you going to make it to Autodesk University in the Fall or, just as importantly, are you making it to Siggraph in LA this Summer? – Phil
>>How do you rebuild the ends to close the molding? Just lots of face building? They simply butted next to the door trim (like any good carpenter would do ) so there was end cap to be seen. – Phil
#What is Autodesk U?
Message #175901
>>And what is the Autodesk University, is it only for Autocad users? Definately not. I and several others are teaching courses on 3D Studio, Animator Studio/Pro and putting them all together. – Phil
By lofting both together I was thinking you were lofting the inside of the arch. This would work great if the archway was a defined by a change in material or surface (cobblestone for example). The lofted curve could then be allowed to intersect a much simpler wall form that…
>>Somehow I need to pull the first interpolated step on the path away from the inflection point. Try using Modify/Segment/Refine on the shape to place extra vertices where you want them and reduce the Shape steps accordingly. This allows you to put detail where you want it and keep the…
It sounds like your morph targets may have different transform origins – are they just clones of the original or did they come from other sources? Were they ever edited independently in the 3D Editor? – Phil
Thanks. You know Meir, LTUtil, KeyInp, Calc, etc. aren't bad either ! I probably use at least one of them every full 3DS day I put in. – Phil p.s. Feel free to convert it into a KXP – with screen interactivity it would be even more useful.
Glad it's working for you. It should still work if called from you autoexec.bat thoug (that's where mine is). – Phil
You're right, the line is: SET SCREENGRAB=YES and it should be working for you since it has changed since R3. You are pressing Ctrl+PrintScreen to activate it correct? Also, try typing "SET" at the DOS prompt – this will display every set and path statement you have. If the above…
#172324-
Lots of Balls
Message #172328
Try the Keyframer's Snapshot command. Place your pivot point at the center of your "array" and rotate the sphere on a frame that corresponds to the number of copies you want (frame 30 to get 30 spheres for example). Then use Snapshot to create the new spheres and the 3D…
>>When attempting to open them in 3Ds3 shaper and editor, … You're using Release ? R13 changed the DXF format significantly and earlier Releases of 3D Studio can not read them. You either need R4C1 or you can download the PATCH3DS.EXE (not sure on the download name) to patch R3…
Remember that when you're in Decal mode the upper left hand pixel of the bitmap is the key (transparent) color. Is it possible that this pixel is the same as the majority of your bitmap and so is making it transparent? – Phil
The effect volumetric lighting simulates is seen in real life when there's enough atmosphere to "show" the light beam – spot lights at a smokey rock concert is a perfect example. When an object, say the musician, steps in the beam of light a shadow is cast down the "volume"…
>> I asked specifically about the bias setting because I thought it might be a simple answer: does the setting affect the shadow placement along the entire shadow, or just where it is close to the casting object. From my experience, the Bias setting seems to affect where the edge…
There is no abilitiy in 3DS to see a bitmap without rendering it. It is a big wish list item though. A couple tips on the side for aligning maps and icons – pressing the Alt key while selecting an object will automatically scale the icon to the extents of…
Great! Now have fun with SEEZ (I use it at least once a week). – Phil
Have you made _sure_ that in the 3DS.SET file the entry is _exactly_: "VPOST-ZBUFFER = YES" ? It's very easy to miss something like the dash. All-caps may also impact how the variable is read (although I'm not 100% on that one). Like Kyle, I've messed up on a simple…
Glad it worked for ya! – Phil
The correct line in your 3DS.SET file is: VPOST-ZBUFFER = YES That should do it for you, – Phil
Are you using 3DS R4 C1? The first shipping release of R4 could not read R13 DXFs because R13 had not been released yet.
I'll have to check Strata Studio's radiosity abilities out. The other thing to note about radiosity is that it's _always_ Gouraud shading. That's why it tesselates the heck out of your model, so it can have enough vertices where it needs them to provide the correct lighting solution. Also, there…
Since you're going from 3DS->ACAD->3DS the data in the round trip should be lossless since you're going from single->double->singe precision. The only thing to be careful of is your 3DS Unit definition – make sure it's consistant and doesn't change. Nothing affects the location of the transfered data either, this…
Closed Polylines are capped whe you transfer the data from AutoCAD to 3D Studio via DXF. AutoCAD's 3DSOUT procedure does not support capping (and does not give control of arc segmentation). – Phil
>> Well, actually, I was trying to get a suggestion on how to give the object a "stretched" look, like an hourglass shape. Gotcha ya. The best way to make an elegent hourglass is actually to loft it. If you have an exsiting mesh and want to"pinch" it in to…
>>What is the best way to stretch an object so that the texture map stretches with it? When you move vertices the mapping coordnates move with them so it's kind of a no brainer. Now bear in mind that the orignal mapping coordinates are going to stretch on a vertex…
PMJI, The current 3DS can not run in a DOS window do to Pharlap. It runs as normal (as wellas everything else) when NT is configured with a DOS dual boot, and you boot to DOS however. – Phil
You'll have to configure your NT box for a dual boot to run the current DOS version of 3D Studio. – Phil
Let me know if you have more problems. – Phil
Align works according to the bounding box extents of the selected objects. What takes a little understanding is how the bounding box is calculated since it can be calculated according to local or world/screen space. If a selection of aligning objects is chosen their entire/group bounding box (in world) can…
Check out the ALIGN.K3D script here on the forum – with a some modification it could do exactly what you're saying. – Phil
You're _only_ option for radiosity, regardless of platform, is the product LightScape. This curently runs on the SGI but it does read 3DS files. Although time consuming, the images can be stunning. – Phil
>>By the way are there additional resources like books or articles on creating key scripts? Check out "Inside 3D Studio R4", the latest "3D Studio Applied", and the latest issue of "Planet Studio". – Phil
>> The dummy objects are apparently rotated in such a way as to provide the local coordinate systems in which to rotate on vertices aligned with the edge Ensure that the objects' pivot points are properly located. The pivot is the point about which objects _always_ rotate in the Keyframer.…
Scripting is your answer. Check out Pool1.zip in the Scripts library section – it calculates the collision of objects within a scene and does a lot of local to world data transformations. >>The programers need to know where that gas station is in the world coordinate system. The last 3…
>>If I'm successful, I'll make an announcement to anyone interested in the secrets of A.M. Please do! I look forward to anything you may write (however unpolished) concerning the use of other modelors in conjunction with 3DS. – Phil
Your points make sense – of course only the Tab key is respected for navigating in 3DS, so that only excludes Tab, Enter, and Escape. And sometimes it's fun to give a coworker a file with smile faces for names . – Phil
That's because you have access to the entire ASCII character set. Try using CTL+ some character or seen Shift+Backspace – all valid characters as far as 3DS is concerned (just don't try to DXF'em out ). – Phil
>> Is it possible to render a view without perspective using a camera rather than a user view? Only by using a very small FOV (large MM lens). >> Also the models we are creating are of a fixed scale, so we'd like the model to imply the size of…
When in a camera view, press U and then Enter (no mouse movement) and you've got a User view that matches the Camera as best it can. – Phil
Two approaches work – Apply from the top to parallel sides, rotate 90 degrees and apply to the other parallel sides. Or apply at an angle to each sloped plane. Believe it or not, there will be very little difference and the first method is _much_ easier to perform and…
>>I'm really puzzled by this one, and I'm starting to hate Windows (speed, conflicts, etc…) , I'm going to go for NT as soon as I can, means as soon as Acad13 NT is available. I'm puzzled as well – please voice this one on the ACAD forum. We really…
Select the desired background image in the 3D Editor's rendering conffiguration, then go to the 2D Shaper and select See Backgrnd from the Views Pulldown. – Phil
How much virtual memory do you have set asside for Windows? How large (MB) is the file in question? You got the same error when usind DXFOUT with a FACETRES setting of 0.01? Have you tried the same operation in R13 DOS? The reason I'm asking is that it's quite…
So it sounds like your problem is in exporting R13 ACIS entities. You are correct in that the only method for getting these into 3DS is via R13's 3DSOUT command. The important thing to realize is that ACIS entities are meshed "on the fly" by the Renderer and 3DSOUT. This…
RE Inside 3DS R4:>>(thank God for the proof reader this time around ). Yeah, it was the authors this time ! -Phil
>> Is the latest Inside 3D Studio the R3 or the R4 book? It's the R4 book (of course ), and it just started shipping two weeks ago. – Phil
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