James Russell

Hey superstars of the VW forums, I'm currently working on several random ventures, one of which relies heavily on some exports I'm doing from VW into the .3ds and .fbx formats. My query relates to how VW handles rendering and exporting the normals of a surface. Most of my current exports come out looking like they are missing half their data. On further inspection it's just that the surfaces are inverted, often facing inwards of the object. Even some of the most basic cubes end up with half the sides facing out and half facing in. Have any of you had success with; A) Creating Double Normals, so that both sides of an object theoretical planar surfaces are rendered (yes double surface data I know). B) Reversing Normals, to face them to the exterior of an object. (To push them outwards of a central point) I have tried all the typical formats (.3ds .fbx .dwg .dae) and none of them have export settings relating to this data, nor is there any difference in the outcome. Hope you're all well. J

I can confirm that this issue is currently still actively happening for a select few of my students. It seems that something (unknown) causes a single press of Command + Z to change from a single instance undo to performing the entire undo history. The issue is worst than just a potential 50 undo actions. Although the Redo option is available it does nothing. Holding the action causes the menu to flash as though the command is being executed but nothing actually occurs. I've had this occur on 3 of 16 student's computers over the last month. All using either VW2016 SP2 or SP3 on MacBook laptops of various ages and specs. Once the issue has occurred it seems to lock the Command + Z to always perform this mass undo. Restarting the program has fixed it in the past but it's almost guaranteed to reoccur on the computer later in the lesson seemingly unpredictably. I can't as yet replicate the problem on my own machines but I would love to know if anyone has some preventive ideas. I have performed a preferences reset as above on a student's computer two days ago in our previous class and the problem has reoccured today. Hope you're all well otherwise. J

Michael, It's got something to do with the Generic Solid within Symbol 'Leaf Decorative 15A'. It's super weird though. If you enter that symbol and replace the solid with anything else the door renders correctly. But I can't seem to analyse the solid, nor break it down into anything else. I did notice that if you draw a rectangle the same size as the door and extrude it to the same height, then intersect solids between the Generic Solid and the new Rectangular Prism when you exit the symbol the extra pieces will be gone. Like buggery I know why. J

Just incase you wanted to see the manual result currently see attached. Welcome to ~800 keystrokes later. I'm getting a beer. Tell me if you have a better way!

Hi All, Need the help of the brains trust. Here's the scenario I've been trying to solve: Cone: 5000mm Radius - 25000mm High. On the surface of this cone are 200mm Diameter discs (circles) with a depth of 7mm. Each of these are spaced ~230mm apart both around the structure and up it. Surface array can generate the outside, but it is flawed in the fact that it does not retain the circular disc and instead it squashes/elongates the discs into an oval shape. Is there a method which will distribute the shapes evenly up the whole structure without overlapping? I'm currently attempting a linear array of circular NURBS curves with a descending size arrangement and Z displacement and then going to individually duplicate along a path, but there has to be a better way! Save me Tom Cruise! Hope you're all well. J

That's pretty super sexy. Awesome work!

I might check this out when I'm at my uni office tomorrow but I did have a similar thing the other day with a strange screen res causing my dialogs to shift off the page and the cancel button being the default button. I'll try and report back in 24hrs with a test. J

Hi Grant, On Windows it's Control + Up Arrow or Control + Down Arrow. On OSX it's Command + Up Arrow or Command + Down Arrow. This will loop you through design layers and then sheet layers in their stacking order. Hope that's what you were after. J

Getting old is a constant, icon and text size shouldn't be. Myself, several of my students and a few colleagues have the same issue with 4K screens and 4K laptops. Icons are way to small, text boxes aren't quite right (the About screen for example is completely scaled wrong). The Microsoft Surface and all new Asus laptops come with 4k screens now, so this issue is showing itself more and more. I know it's fixable on mac though... I've had a few lengthy emails to VW techs in Australia to no avail. I'm sure Jim will pipe up here and let us know if we should expect a 2016 fix or not. From what I understand it's quite a big reprogram of things, not just a easy patch. I'm keen for news too. J

No worries. I'm sure if I sat here and thought about it long enough I'd figure out a way to make it work from an existing line, but it's already 3am... so probably won't. Just call it to three decimal places, no-one really cares after that right? Cheers, J

Blergh! Try again now. Haha.

If it's any indicator I work on a Hardcore PC at home and a MacBook Pro / 27'iMac at the offices equally. An average day drafting (6ish hours) will involve at least 5 crashes. If I'm coding it'll be closer to 10-15. The biggest/most important thing for me is my AutoSave timer is set to 5 minutes, no dialog, writing to one backup folder on a separate drive, keeping the last 10 backups. I personally push the limits all the time and expect crashes for doing so, I would hope that my rate is higher than the norm but it would be interesting to see. J

It took me a while but I think I understand what you're asking. See this video, because if I'm correct it is a hard thing to show/describe. Perhaps a tweek needs to be added to the rotation tool so that the extension-line defined by the second click is also an interactive and snappable point that can have Object/Object interactions.

I beg to differ, you just need to get smart about it! - 2015 VW [img:center]http://s23.postimg.org/xkiavwsu3/Example0.png[/img] This was achieved using 8 specially placed nurbs in a profile loft creating two solid halves that were combined with an add solids. Notice the placement of the curves at the half way line is doubled to improve/force the tangent to behave. [img:center]http://s17.postimg.org/ed51vguxr/Example1.png[/img] !~~~Trickyness~~~! Haha, fun one though. J

Maybe it's time to update that Goodies Folder that hasn't changed for a few years. Maybe a competition is in order?

Hey All, I got bored today. And during my procrastination (6 hours of it...) I actually made something pretty cool. Check out the video link. Controls and a Dropboxed .vwx 2015 file are in the comments. Let me know what you think, some of it is a little crafty. I might annotate the script at some point but it's quite rough as a concept, with sections that could do with some refining later on (20/20 hindsight). Enjoy, J

It's all good. I'm using 2015 RW at home but had never tried the Su to VW import anywhere other than in classes on 2014! I'll be sure to give it a go next time I've got a few mins spare. As for subdivision (AKA Puppet Warp on drugs) it's going to be intense as! Can't wait! Cheers. J

Thanks for the responses guys. We've got 2014 in the Uni Labs at the moment, I'll get them to hit up 2015 for semester 2 and give it a go. Great channel Steve, you've got yourself a new Subscriber right here. Cheers!

Hi All, I've just been running a class and been reminded of a question. Often I'll grab items from a website such as 3D Warehouse or 3D Model Free in Sketchup form and bring it into a document. I've never been able to bring he textures across with these objects and mainly just been blessed that I've gotten the objects at all. Has anyone got a method where you can actually bring textures and mappings across with these objects? I'll post some examples of files I would generally bring in: https://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com/model.html?id=u0ad9a8ae-a1b2-49c3-8961-540fc6e90075 https://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com/model.html?id=68324f2404377819afe1d4530f4c6e24 https://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com/model.html?id=16e5119ed98b6956bd17d3757ed1e0f2 Would be great to one day bring things in rendered. Any approaches are appreciated. Cheers, J

Legend, I knew it was there somewhere!

Low levels of lit fog. A Renderworks custom background with a 90% black cloud breakup. Even if you're indoors for good measure. Fall of distances set to realistic. That's a good start... haha. J

Hey All, I've done a wicked seating arrangement for a theatre I'm drafting at the moment using the seating layout. After editing points for a while and getting the exact layout I want, I need the new polygon object to use for carpet creation. I've tried a convert to groups, convert to polygon, several other things. Does anyone have an idea how I can obtain this polygon? J

I have three third year students who run VW on a Surface Pro 3. It handles it like a boss! Rendering and general every day use it seems to handle quite well. I've had a few issues scripting wise (methinks windows 10 is being naughty) but for an everyday traveller it copes pretty well. The only MAJOR issue so far is the 4K screen size. Icons and text appear tiny! You either have to deal with it or change your screen resolution back to 1920 x 1080 to make it usable. I've had a discussion with Julian about this recently and it seems to be an issue rapidly being investigated as Asus and Thermaltake Laptops as of next year will all ship with 4K screens. Better keep up! J

Just after anyone's experience with the Space Mouse series or alternatives for 3D world navigation. Recently saw a video on here (@Mike White/DigitalMechanics) showing some navigation with this tool [or at least I believe it was]. Wondering if: A) Anyone uses one. B) Integration and control with VW, mainly how it feels, responds and if it's useful. C) If you have other alternatives let me know! Thanks in advance. J

I was bored a few weeks back operating a show and sketched the attached image from the pool deck. I tried two methods for the water (in the image you see the first). - Stock standard water texture in VW with additional noise bump mapping to increase effect. - Created texture from Noise Colour, Tinted Glass Transparancy, ~50 Mirror finish and Noise Bump. As for tiles: - The ones provided in the Library>Textures folder are pretty cool, they pop if you add a Bump map to them. - Make your own with the Tile/Brick Colour Modifier and add the same Bump map, probably with a low level reflectivity. Also I've had this link on my bookmarked bar for a while from a while ago on here: https://www.arroway-textures.ch/en/products/gravel-1 Good Luck, J