> Hi Garry, > For once I don't agree with you! I find SDS great fun to work with and very > intuitive, contrary to scripting. For a snake with a head I'd choose SDS > instead of nurbs any time. BTW: does a snake actually have a tail and if > so, where does it start? ;)
Hi Mark : I can agree easily that once you master SDS it must be a breeze to create such amazing shapes , easily , but I can't even get going on something simple . My super-simple extrusions look like crap ! > I made some snake-like creatures for a game and for my logo (see > http://www.xs4all.nl/~ath8n0r/ ). All done in SDS, no problems. The most > difficult part was the texturing. Just give me a shout and I'll send you a > version without claws and ears. Awesome ! Very very nice serpent creatures . This is basically what I wanted to do was create a couple serpents for a St. Patricks kind of theme scene . I to find a method that allows me to extrude a nice smooth shape and then scale it down at various rates . Imagine the sweaty hell I was in , trying to do something as simple as create a snake , with no luck at all ! > I don't see a problem with the SDS cylinder approach, repeatedly (10-20x) > extruding/scaling the end plane. > To get rid of the tail artifacts (or at least make them invisible): zoom in > closely, extrude the tiny end plane once more, shrink and move it a bit to > make a round tip. Maybe there still are some 'artifacts' but who cares if > they are invisible. Well , maybe that is the key then , just play with the end a bit more until it gets smoother , but if you look at that image you will see that it is not round but hexagonal , or something equally unusable . > My 2 cts: > - Practice. Especially practice the most common actions like extruding. > Become familiar with the handles and their modifiers. > - Avoid sharp edges etc in organic modeling, these tend to introduce > artifacts if you're not careful. > - Don't forget the Edge Loop tool (combined with CTRL and/or shift it's > great!). The button is usually off-screen (please fix that!). > - It helps if rotating, panning and scaling the view while modeling has > become second nature. > - switch to polygonal once in a while. > One of the more difficult things to keep in mind is object topology. One > missing or flipped plane can ruin a whole object. Hmmm , ok , practice is what I most definitely need to do , of course , but I think you mat have said something very interesting here . Polygonal !!! Perhaps this is the best way to start to learn RS SDS ? Not with all the 'magnets' working at once , but without a magnet at first , in order to get the hang of basic functions _THEN_ introduce the smoothing methods and see what they do to modify a "hard" shape . > Good luck & don't give up too quickly, > Mark H I'm just extremely frustrated ! It seems everything I attempt I run into a wall of some kind . Character animation , SDS ... see the forum for some of the other walls I've been hitting lately . Thanks for your reply . studio www.niagara.com/~studio www.studiodynamics.net
