CompuServe Messages

Chris, Thanks for the compliment. It was a lot of work. The way I modeled the sphere was to create an arc that, when lathed, would leave the object flat at the front and back. Then, since there are 12 body segments and 12 grooves, I took the number of degrees (360) chose 2 for the grooves, and 28 for the segments. Since AM does not support a selection of degree of sweep while lathing, I instead used the Clone and Rotate funtions to make copies of the arc. The original arc was in Front view, with the flat areas set to be at the top and bottom. (When complete, the seg would be rotated 90 degrees in the X axis in CHARACTER). The seg was centered top and bottom in the Y axis, and all points were Z=0. Then I cloned it, rotating it 7 degrees in the Y axis, cloned that 7 degrees, and then cloned the two clones and rotated them -21. I now had five arcs with 7 degrees of space between each; 7×4=28. Then I connected all the horizontal points in each arc to make a wedge shape that had an angle in the Y plane of 28 degrees. The grooves, or as I called them, dividers, used a modified arc similar to the original one, that was rotated 1 degree in Y, cloned and rotated -2 degrees. Then horizontal points were connected. It would take a few hours to explain how I created the segments and dividers that had to be flatened. One of the reasons that I am anxiously awaiting the Boolean funtion that are coming in the next version of AM is that I can recreate a much better hull in just a few minutes with Boolean funtions to replace what I have already done. I have uploaded the entire project files for the TIE and the TIE/In complete with all the materials and maps. It is a file called SW-PRJ'S.EXE. It is an SEA file using PKZip. Yes, eventually I intend to create a walker, and most of the other ships and vehicles. The walker might even be next. There is a file that was uploaded by someone who created a walker in Autocad and then rendered it. I don't really like to be overly critical of others work, but it irks me to see the lack of detail that he used, especially given that he has a $3,000 program at his disposal. My models have the detail because I personally think that it is important, and, as machines get cheaper and faster, detail will be a requirement. Michael S. Flynn