Roger

Ok, I still can't seem to select individual parts of the swept object. I'll have to see if I can't get the path as close to the final shape as possible.

Well I don't know what I was doing wrong but I just deleted that bit and started over. Homeslice - PDF is really good btw.

Does a swept object appear as a just one piece to AM? I'm trying to select one of the cross sections that make it up to move it down or rotate it, but I can't. I don't get the yellow selection highlights like I normally do. I've tried Edit > Deselect all but all the CPs are still green. Any ideas what's going on?

I think I more or less figured out the basics - thank you Nancy. I'll have to check out the tutorials Homeslice posted. Anyway, here is my basic swept shape: I built in some bevels and I'm going to use this as the building block for my handle. I'm going to bend it as needed, hopefully that will work.

DOh. You're right - you even said to select the path. Guess I'll try this again...

If I go to plugins > wizards, though, I don't see Sweeper listed (which is strange because I could have sworn I saw it there before). Is there some way I could have hidden it, or maybe it is not visible in the view I'm in?

If I change the orientation of the cross section to vertical I get something a little more like what I was expecting, but one of the ends is still hosed:

I'm trying to extrude along a path but not getting anywhere. I created my path in the shape of an arc (working on a handle for my chest) and I created the cross section ( an ellipse). When I choose Plugins > Wizards > Extruder then choose the arc as the path and the ellipse as the cross section to extrude along, I am not getting the results I would expect. I get something that sort of looks like I wanted, but not quite. One end is pinched, and I was expecting the cross section to stay more or less vertical in the middle and then curve off in the opposite direction on each side, like an arch. Here are two screenshots:

This is cool. Jost, if I may ask - what procedure did you have to go through to self-publish via Kindle? It might be a way of funding my film, the book is already written I just need to clean the illustrations up and make things more or less presentable.

Its not the Ramen in and of itself that is dangerous - although a diet solely of Ramen, while it might keep you full, would leave you with severe deficiencies in nutrition. The danger with a diet heavy in Ramen is the amount of sodium in the flavor packets. Each flavor packet has about 1600mg of sodium, or like 2/3 your daily sodium intake. If you are subsisting on the stuff its bad for your kidneys and blood pressure. If you insist on using the flavor packet, try using only half. Or maybe make home made sauces to go with it. When I was broker-than-broke, I used to eat Ramen with cheap spaghetti sauce. Ramen is also good with fried egg whites (kinda like a fried rice with noodles instead of rice). Just about any citrus fruit will prevent scurvy. You would probably want to have an orange or two a week, along with a multi-vitamin (just in case). Would probably be best to supplement with whatever other cheap fresh or frozen vegetables and fruits you could find.

BTW unless you plan on paying for dialysis at some point, bulk beans and rice would be healthier for you than Ramen (you could always ditch the flavor packs, I guess). You would of course need to supplement this with appropriate vegetables to avoid scurvy. Yes, I've thought about this a lot.

I have to say unless you have a built-in fan base already, its going to be really hard to realize a fully funded Kickstarter campaign. I have had virtually no results from mine. But I don't have it in front of enough eyeballs and haven't figured out a way to drive traffic to it. If you already have some sort of online presence with a significant following then you probably would do ok. But if your webpage is getting like a couple dozen hits a month, I would not be terribly optimistic. I wish you luck but there seems to be a certain degree of randomness in what gets funded.

Yep, just got back from an image search and looks like props are wood, metal, fabric, etc. and characters are mostly clay but may also have fabric clothes. I think I like the all clay look better, I would have a heck of a time trying to mix the different materials and get it to look good.

That's a good question, been thinking about that. I'll need to search for some reference images, been a long time since I've seen one of their movies. Last one I can remember was the one with the chickens, can't for the life of me think of the name right now. But I do seem to remember there being other materials besides clay, except for the characters, which were all clay.

Here is one of the default wood textures from AM - this actually doesn't look half bad:

I hadn't really thought too much about textures. The original plan was to use the modelled clay shader from the Darktrees. I had also thought about incorporating the colored pencil look from my sketches, but I think everything would have to be rendered that way. While I like it, I think it may be very difficult to get it to look good in 3d given my lack of texture mojo. I had been planning on using modelled clay for just about everything except the water (was going to try for realistic or semi-realistic water) and things that need to be metal or reflective.

Ok, I've got the edges of the board with sort of a scalloped look to them now. I didn't do any adjusting of points along the vertical plane. I think this is starting to come along nicely. I just need some iron strapping to hold it together, and some handles on the side (not sure if I'm going to make a lid for it yet).

Do you mean the top and bottom edges of the board should not be straight, or the actual sides of the board?

Robcat, do you mean increase the number of cross sections that make up the board and then adjust the curvature so its not perfectly straight?

Here is the chest I have been working on but with smaller bevels:

Ok, not sure what happened to my last post. Here is a newer version of the chest with smaller bevels. I haven't bothered capping the ends of the planks, since I figure those are going to be covered up anyway by iron bracing.

Robcat, I did some new panels with smaller bevels. Let me know what you think.

Sorry for the lack of updates recently, I've been fighting off pneumonia and haven't been able to do much of anything. I'm hoping to get back on track soon.

Message board is acting strange, moving my image from one post to another.

I'll give that a try and see how it turns out. I don't want to lavish too much time on this one model.