Exact width on Booleans in Bryce
reserv888
Posts: 1,143
I am trying to create the letter "S" from combining booleans. Im doing it with combining (half) a torus and a cylinder. I have a hard time though to make it seemless.
Is there anyway to check the exact widht of - in this case - the torus?
Is there anyway to set an exakt width to - in this case - my cylinder so it matches the torus exactly thus making the combination seemless?
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Moved to Bryce Discussion Forum.
I've done such things before and it really is very fiddly indeed. I've never found an easy way to make this alighment possible. I recommend using Wings3D. Which is a free subdivision modeler. Very easy to use, nice simple interface and I have made quite a few short videos to offer a starting point on such a project.
This one relates to text.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fL7gU5dCdpI&list=PL790l24c49DROE86jFAMH3vKKe7-L6hgZ
The tous can be a bit tricky, even though it is a simple primitive. There's a short video Understanding the Torus that might be of help.
As for text as such, I highly recommend free EleFont. It is easy to use and gives excellent results. It takes the fonts you have installed in your system.
Already two excellent alternatives to making text (to import into Bryce).
Here's a third option: Google Sketchup exports .dae which Bryce will import and if I need text in my images as 3D models, I use Sketchup.
Following up with David Brinnen's comment about Wings 3D, if you really need it to be made of a torus, you can do it in Wings 3D as well. Here's a quick one I threw together. I can explain the steps if you need me to.
Art
Is this what you're after? I'm not keen on the way the seams look where the two tori meet (almost looks like there's a slight bulge), but I've prepared an obp file for you to take a look at/use. https://www.dropbox.com/s/1bdebxngwvw3h7r/S.obp
Maybe I'm way off the mark here, so let me know.
Art
@David. Thx for your tip about Wings. That was great. It solved my problem with the letter S, but I still don't understand how I should do if I for instance wan't a pipe to bend around a corner. I would still have the problem with fitting booleans together. Maybe I should do it another way, or not in Bryce at all? I have seen a tutorial where someone builds the Tower of Pisa with booleans, and - as far as I know - whithout going insane. Anyway, the Wings tip was great, for a lot of other reasons as well.
@Horo. Thx for the tip. I will check it out.
@Savage. Thx to you too. I will check that out as well.
@Fencepost. You have understood med completly (though I only used half a torus combined with a cylinder, but that is beside the point). I don't know (yet) how to open an .obp file. No! Don't laugh...Ok, you may laugh... But I'll check it out tomorrow. Anyway, I believed people made castles and starships in Bryce and I have a problem making an "S".... By the way, your "S" looks better than mine. Yours just have a bulge, while mine has a small but noticeable and sharp edge.
Thank you all for your efforts, skills and willingness to share it.
Long live EleFont and his big brother Spiralizer :lol: and ofc to the soft creator .
If you need an "S" just for 3d text input, Elefont (like Horo said) is your best friend and it makes good team with Bryce :lol:
If you need an "S" made from booleans to practice on booleans just forget it :lol: Start with things more simple :lol:
btw you can make an "S" from metaballs too .. but will look like a worm without legs or a cat poop :lol:
That you'll do with multireplicated metaballs on a path. Easiest way. Very old Tutorial by David and myself, written for Bryce 5 at the time but it still applies.
There is no right way to solve a problem such as bending a pipe around a corner.
Boolean modeling is one solution, but one I tend to avoid because I find it difficult, although there are some artists that create fantastically complex models in this fashion.
Metaspheres offer another way of doing this.
Wings 3D (or any other mesh modeling tool of your choice) yet another way.
Until you have to make this scene though, it's just hypothetical. And hypothetically you could argue for any one of these approaches and they might all seem to be equally valid.
However, when you are faced with building your scene, then other factors come into play which might influence your choices. Such as, how materials map onto your pipe, how far your camera is from the surface of the pipe, if this is the only bit of pipe in the scene and so forth.
So, my point is, don't spend too much time trying to solve problems you are not yet faced with, because there are too many variables. Build your scene, get as far as you can yourself, and then if you get stuck, come back to us with a few screen shots and explain what you are trying to achieve and there's a good chance, we will be able to offer you a potential solution that suits that scene.
I went ahead and prepared a quick video tutorial for creating it in Wings 3D. It's a pretty straightforward process. Check it out here: http://youtu.be/NaR3pd0s2DQ I hope you find it helpful.
Art
Thanks Art, I didn't know about the rotate on a vertex option, that is going to be really useful!
You're welcome. Glad you learned a new tool. Wings is great!
If all you need are letters then Horo's suggestion is probably the best as it will turn almost any font into 3D text and therefore will give you loads of variety. If however you're just looking for a simple 3D text solution another option is a product sold here at DAZ it's called Psi City Sampler & Signman 1-2 and can be found here http://www.daz3d.com/psi-city-sampler-signman-1-2. It's fairly inexpensive at $6.95. There are two sets one is the alphabet in Caps and the other set is numbers and symbols. Below is a scene I put together in a couple of minutes with set 1. Now if money is a problem for you there are also numberous free alphabets already available in 3D such as this one: http://www.sharecg.com/v/44757/browse/11/Poser/LL-Letter.
If however the alphabet only came up because it's something simple to use to practice building objects in Bryce rather then doing that how about a tutorial designed to teach you Boolean modeling and that rewards you with a nice scene at the end for your efforts? If that sounds appealing then I recommend this product: http://www.daz3d.com/bryce-masters-series-great-hall
That's a real nice video, Art.
@Horo. I began your tutorial but I got some problems with the parenting part. I realize it's due to lack of knowledge on my behalf of basic Bryce stuff, so I will come back to it when I've learned som more. Very interesting though, and the end rendering was great! Very cheap and safe dope. ;)
@David. Your skills are matched by your wisdom. That is of course the right way to tackle a problem.
@Fencepost. Great job. Absolutely great. Learned a lot! Big thx.
@LordHardDriven I am trying to make a CD cover just to give myself a "tutorial task". The pic is ready and I am now trying to put text on it. That's when I ran in to the "S"-problem. Now I have a few other solutions than to build letters with booleans. I am definitely going to check out your suggested tutorial as soon as I finished this reply.
Thx all for your tips and advices. You are really great!
You're welcome! Glad to be of service.
@Horo. I went through your metaball tutorial. (Thx again). I made quiet a few beginners mistake but finally got it to work. Then I added som more stuff... and some more...and played around with the volumetric world in Sky Lab (gee that shot the render time through the roof!) and came up with this in the end.
So now the metaball worm is a deep space cargo ship under construction where a second ship creates disaster when the pilot lost focus
because he just recieved the message his beloved dog had died. Or something...
That is a super cool idea and very nicely put through. Volumetric World is indeed a huge render hog. I've tried it a few times on test scenes. It may be worth it, if it were not so slow.
Another option is to create a b&w image of S and import this into the terrain editor and apply it (under Pictures tab) to a terrain or lattice. It would need a bit of tweaking to get it looking nice and smooth, but it's a quick option if anyone doesn't like, or know how to, model.
I've attached a really quick render showing terrain on the left, lattice on the right: