A little help, please?

[GoNavy]

Well, first off, I'm completely clueless when it comes to just about everything on animation master. I know very simple things, such as the mirror button... which is the only way i know of to make my work 3-D. One of my problems.

 

Question #1:

How can you make images that arent the same all the way around-- I ask this stupid question because when you use mirror say you drew half a square, it turns it into a cylinder shaped figure. I know if you mess around with it, you could get it back to say, a cube shape, but I'm sure theres some easier way.

 

Question #2:

This may be normal, or not able to be changed, but when i go into shaded mode, my picture is not smooth at all, nor is it shaded very nicely. I've looked at pictures from others, and it looks like this in some of the less advanced, but nearly all of the advanced images are smooth and... shiny.

 

I probably will think of more questions, but thats all for now. I hope you understand what I'm asking, I'd really appriciate any help. Thanks!

[KenH]

Good to hear from you.....

 

1) You're probably lathing the square. That will always produce a cylindrical shape. You probably need to extrude your square to make a cube.

 

2) Press the PageUp on your keyboard.

 

Have you done the manual yet?

[GoNavy]

Oh my god. I'm just shocked at how just pressing page up made it all smooth. It was way to simple for me to figure out I always think things are harder than they are... well anyways. What exatly do you mean my manual?

 

I watched the demo, and i've been trying to make vases and such, and I'm actually capable of making a flower (yes, I know, amazing ) But anything beyond that simplicity, I dont think I can do.

 

"You're probably lathing the square. That will always produce a cylindrical shape. You probably need to extrude your square to make a cube."

 

Terribly sorry to sound stupid again, but what does it mean to extrude, exactly?

[MMZ_TimeLord]

When Ken is referring to the 'manual', he means the small book that came with your software titled 'The Art of Animation Master'.

 

It's basically a set of lessons to bring you up to speed on the software.

 

There are also video versions of most of those lessons in the first post of this thread.

 

Read through the manual and view the tutorials (if you have the bandwidth to download them quickly) and it should answer most of your basic quesitions.

 

Then you can start hitting us with ones we will scratch our collective heads at...

[GoNavy]

Oh boy, do I feel stupid. I thought manual was like.. a setting on the program. Hah. Well, I've done a few of the tutorials on the website-- I work much better when I see what i'm doing. But I've only done a few, such as the 'flower power' one, because that seemed like it would help me learn to do what I wanted to. But i'll take a look at the other ones. I'm sure they'll help me out more. Thank you so much.

[GoNavy]

Ok, here is my next question. It may be answered in one of the tutorials, but I'd rather not go looking around for the answer if someone can answer it here, hehe. So, my question is, I've been making my things (for example, just made a bowling pin, and to put the stripes on it, I made seperate parts, so I could color some white and some red and then I put it together). I'm sure theres got to be some easier way to do that, but I'm not sure how.

[Ganthofer]

Welcome To the AM Forum

 

next, let me suggest that you "do try" and find the answers in the manual or by using the Forum search feature. I realize that in the beginning, its hard to even know what words to search for.

 

Now to your question :

 

- Patch color - named groups made up of CP's (Control Points). Similar to Exercise 9: Flower Power. You can model all as one mesh (providing the model lends itself to this method) and then select the Patches and give the group a name, then in the PWS under Groups> named group properties Surface, you can set (among other things) the Diffuse color. This works well if the Splines follow where you want the color changes. You can also use Materials instead of (or in conjunction with) Surface attributes and apply them to the Patches, Named Groups or the entire model.

 

- Decals - This is covered in Exercise 10: FW-190 Fighter and mentioned in Exercise 11: Giraffe. There are a couple of tutorials on making and applying Decals. This requires some type of paint program.

 

Hope this points you in the right direction.

 

Here is a link to the Useful Links Forum page.

[GoNavy]

Oh, that helped a lot, thank you! I'm gonna go do a few of the tutorials now, heh.

[Kelley]

...my question is, I've been making my things (for example, just made a bowling pin, and to put the stripes on it, I made seperate parts, so I could color some white and some red and then I put it together).

 

Here's some pics that may help. It's not necessary to build in seperate pieces. I made a bowling pin [A] and selected a group of CP's When those are highlighted, you'll see a red eyeball in the Tools Menu that houses your Selection Arrows.

 

Click on that eyeball and everything disappears except what is highlighted. [C] Now that it's isolated, you'll see that it's no longer highlighted. Select it again and the Properties Menu will come up. [D] Below the 'Transforn' section you'll see 'Surfaces'. Click the tiny arrow by the word 'Diffuse Color' and three color bars show up. Click in any one of those and a Color Swatch appears. Click in it and you'll bring up a Color Picker Table. [E] Choose a color and click OK.[Forget about the 'F'...I got side-tracked]

 

Having clicked OK, you're back to the Modeling Window. Go to 'Shaded Mode' or make a snapshot, and you should have something that looks pretty close to [G]. Repeat until all horizontal bands are colored.

 

 

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