Need a little help with a little problem

[Telvak]

It's probably something really stupid that everyone knows how to fix but me, of course, I'd really appreciate any help.

 

I've attached a file to show my issue, see the little black things on the side of my mode? I want them gone, makes rendering fuzz, how do I fix it?

 

Thanks in advance for any help.

untitled.bmp

[johnl3d]

does it show on a final render? otherwise why not add a spline across the middle

[Telvak]

Hey that worked, thanks for the tip, but I managed to hit another snag, here's a pic, I wish I would stop making these mistakes.

 

Preferably than just giving me the solution, I'd appreciate it if someone told me what causes these things to happen, I do them all the time and I don't know how to prevent them.

 

Again, thanks for any and all help.

untitled.bmp

[Caroline]

Way too many splines is causing the creasing.

 

It looks like a very simple shape - you could probably do this with 4 - 6 splines meeting, instead of 40. Then you could do a cross over instead of a hole.

 

What is it you are modelling? Have you tried the giraffe tutorial in the Art of Animation Master? (Although that is a tricky one.) You could also look at the Primitives models that are on the Hash CD, and see how few splines they use. Maybe take a Primitive and change it to what you want?

 

Also, when you post, please could you put up a jpg instead of a bmp - they are a lot smaller to download!

[Telvak]

Thanks for the help,

 

Basically what I'm trying to shape is like an elephants foot, but with sort of a bump at the end, like a stub. I'll try making it with less splines, but I added so many because I wanted to do a perfect circle, but I'm sure I can work around it with less splines.

 

And I'll post as jpg from now on

 

I'll try that and give you an update

[phatso]

Och, mon! You do indeed have way more splines than you need. Did you maybe learn modelling in a polygon program? If so, you may be used to thinking complicated=smoother. In A:M it's simpler=smoother, at least up to a point.

 

There are 2 ways of doing a smooth circle with 4 control points. (2 that I know of, maybe more.)

 

1: In Options, set the lathe segments to 4. Draw a small vertical spline and then lathe it, giving you a ring or tube with a circle on top and a circle on the bottom. Delete one of the circular splines, giving you a single circle.

 

2. Turn on the snap to grid, so you'll get CPs in the right places. (Never mind about size, you can rescale later.) Click 4 control points in a square or diamond-shape pattern. You 'll get a spline that's roughly but not completely circular. Grab the bias handles and pull them out until the spline rounds out nicely. Or, if you need to be really precise, go into each of the CP's properties and type in a new value for the - Hmm, is it Gamma? There's a specific value, I forget, you can experiment. Once you get the shape you want, turn off the grid snap and resize the circle as needed.

 

For the shape you have (the roughly tubular one with a small hole at the end) you should try lathing with 4 sections. You'll be surprised!

 

I just got thru a job building about 180 models where the circular and tubular shapes were done using these methods.

[phatso]

Took another look at your model and thought of something else. When you shrink a circle down in A:M to try to close off the end of a tube, you can never get it completely closed - you'll get surface folding and all sorts of screwy things.

 

You may not be able to do a 4-section lathe; if you really are doing an elephant's foot you may need more detail if you want to make toes etc. But if you can... one of the things I like about lathing in 4 sections is that you can delete the end circle, join the opposing spline ends to form 2 continuous splines, and then join the resulting 2 control points to get a perfectly closed end to the model. Only with a 4-section lathe can you do this.

 

If you want it to narrow down to a bump and then have a closed end, when you're lathing it just ad another control point that, when lathed, will define the perimeter of the bump.

 

There's another way that works with, say, 6 lathe sections, but I can't remember it. Basically it involves forming 2 of the splines like the stitching on a baseball. Anybody else want to jump in on this?

[heyvern]

The way the leg and foot are splined depends on how much detail you need for the toes or "bumps" on the elephants foot.

 

Extrusion or lathing for something like this would seem to be the logical solution. However if you need more sections to create those toes then you end up with a ton of extra splines in the whole leg just for the foot. You could try having a "simple" leg (6 point extrusion) with fewer cross sections then use hooks to add in a denser mesh just for the foot area. Making sure the hooks would be in a place on the leg that doesn't bend.

 

A 12 point extrusion circle would work better for creating toes on the foot. You might need more than 12 for the foot though depending on the number of toes needed. Think of each "point" in the extrusion as a possible "toe" that can be pulled out.

 

Assuming a 12 point extrusion you could close the bottom of the foot treating it like a "grid". You would end up with 4, three point patches at the "corners" of the closed area, but the flat part of the foot would be "smooth". The 3 pointers could even be adjusted so they would be in the flat area and not even show that much. Just connect all the points straight across on with the last extrusion. You could "pull out" toes from the outer ring of the mesh of the foot. Then as I described above connect the foot to the leg with hooks.

 

If the leg only has 6 points in the extrusion then the 12 points of the foot would hook perfectly, with alternating hooks between each spline.

 

This explanation stinks without pictures to back it up.

 

 

The "dangling" points on the outside represent where the foot would "hook" or connect to the last extrusion of the leg. You can see how the shape of the splines for the foot and the bottom of the foot are arranged for "toes". The bottom of the foot would be pretty "flat". The 3 pointers might cause some bumps. You could increase the spline extrusion count to create more toes or have more patch detail for defining the toes, the only trick then would be how to connect to the leg. Maybe increase the leg section point density to 8 or 12.

 

 

-vern

[phatso]

Another thing about protrusions like toes - if you don't need a lot of detail, you can just lathe a closed tube,distort it if necessary to make a paw, and than make shapes that stick out thru its side. Cartoon claws are a perfect example; they're not an extension of skin and fur anyway so you'd expect them not to be smooth extensions of a paw.