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Kaare Baekgaard

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Everything posted by Kaare Baekgaard

  1. Do you apply translucency to objects, that have thickness? I believe it needs to have that. For simple backlit graphic surface effect, I use 'Constant'. I use translucency often for fake fake etched glass effect on lamps. I seem to spend hours to get that particular effect right, but other than that, I have no issue with translucency.
  2. 'Our jobs live or die by a few hours of profit margin.' Skot, this is a symptom of crisis. Chances are, it will not become better, unless something is done about it, but worse. And sooner or later it will be like like the old tailor working 16 hours a day, failing to compete with the new tailor downtown, who has bought a sewing machine
  3. Skot: ' I'm still trying to see how a 3D model of a house/small commercial building can possibly be a cost effective way to create drawings.' I don't know about cost effiency, but to me, 3D is the only way. It is just a different way of thinking. I simply don't have the capability of former generations to hold a complete image in my head of how a building or a design would look like in real life. So I create that image with VW. The great advantage for a lesser spirit like myself is, that I can test and evaluate a number of variations, before I settle with the final solution - and at the end of the day, I can do it faster, than many 'old school' professionals do a similar 2D projects - as plans, sections, perspectives and presentations are all handled within the same workflow, and all changes in the design are implemented throughout the drawings almost automatically.
  4. Oh - and by the way: Go into the workspace editor. Make a workspace for your collegues that contain only the tools, you would find in version 8 - in the exact same positions. Install it on their machines. Chances are, they would never know the difference...
  5. Skot Jumping from 8 to 12 is a huge leap - like learning a whole new program. Its better to stay tuned with the updates as they come. Why use version 12, when you are perfectly happy with 8? Well try imagining, yourself asking 'Why use version 32, when I'm perfectly happy with version 8?' in 20 years. Your co-workers will look to you as a dinosaur, your boss will fire you. Maybe your coworkers are laughing at you now. But if you stick to the new version, who's laughing in 5 years?
  6. There is more than one way. The easiest is to use the cone object or cone tool. Make a regular cone. Convert to nurbs group. Reshape from top view, so the x-and y values match the elipse, you want. Ungroup and Add Solids. Or... make an elipse. Convert to nurbs curve. Add a 3D locus in the center of the elipse. Move the 3D locus up. Loft bvetween the locus point and the eliptical nurbs curve with the 'create solid' option on.
  7. Grant For some reason, background images give no reflections whatsoever, which in itself is quite annoying. In this case, however, you can use them instead of a coloured background - make a square all green or all blue image to use as a background image.
  8. Yes it is... Ungroup the spiral object. Convert it into a nurbs curve. Draw the rectangle and extrude along path with the nurbs curve as path. Edit group and select profile as component to edit. Rotate rectangle until it is right where you want it. But I am not sure this is what you are asking for so: Create helix spiral and adjust it to your needs. Draw rectangle. Extrude rectangle along helix spiral. Adjust as above. Or: Draw rectangle. Draw locuspoint. Sweep both. Enter - say - 7200 as sweep angle and - say - 5 inches as pich value. Adjust by double-clicking the object and move around with the elements relatively.
  9. 'Can you confirm that you were not able to make the Subtraction work using the two components?' Yes I can.
  10. Hi Roger The result is easily achieved by extruding a rectangle with rounded corners and a filleted edge in the bottom. Then subtract this figure from the shell. Extrude along paths are notoriously quirky. I spend a lot of time trying to find workarounds for solid operations, that don't work - appearently for no reason at all. I wish they would.
  11. I guess the scale could have remained, but the reason for that too was to save on disk space, which also is not such a problem since they are compressed now. This is not happy news. I often use textures & Image props created by a collegue in print quality - sometimes in pixel dimensions above what can be handled by VW. At any rate, rendering times are seriously - very seriously - affected by the pixel sizes of the textures. Now I will have to downsample all images used for textures in a separate workflow. Progress? I think not. Please reconsider.
  12. When importing an image for a texture, I used to get a dialogue, that allowed me to scale the image and set the image depth. Not so in 12.0 What is happening? - have NNA chosen to downgrade my ability to control textures or am I missing something?
  13. Nope. You are doing it right. Something else is the problem. Try to change the pen colour to ensure, that you have the texture and the class where you think they are.
  14. You can create the bends as symbol objects, that connect straight sections. Or you can create the pipes as continuous extrude along paths with rounded corners. Here you need to collect the nurbs sections of a pipeline into a single extrude along path object. You can join nurbs lines and curves (as well as 2D lines & curves) using the 'compose' comand. If you want to fillet them, however, the easist way is to create the path as a 2D polygon, round the corners and then convert the resulting shape into a nurbs curve. If the pipes bend in 3 planes its a bit more work, but you can still create long paths from shorter sections using the compose comand. It would be very nice if the fillet tool worked with nurbs curves as well as polygons. Perhaps it should go on the wishlist.
  15. 'AnimationWorks from OzCAD should be able to achieve what you want' Nope... You can rotate stuff in animationworks, but to my knowledge you can't ensure that the joints stay together. Chances are, that the elements will get out of sync. If yoy need to do it in 2D, there must be some flash animation applications out there, that does the trick. It might actually be faster to do the whole thing in stop-motion manually, though.
  16. 'Can an animation like this be modified to suit my "leg movements" needs?' If you are a programming wiz - then maybe. If not, there is a score of programs out there, that can do it easily. I use an ancient version af Stratas Studiopro, when the need arises.
  17. My collegues are complaining about my few over-used 2D human figures. They all look like something from the 1980's. I have had no succes finding good new ones. In Hemara Photo Objects there are 100+ figures, but for some reason the idiotic photographers have them all look straight into the camera. If you have any luch finding a decent set of figures, let me know.
  18. You may be right, JBC - the rendering did speed up at the last frames where geometry was less complex. Mclaugh, ease in/out is equivalent to accelleration / deceleration. In Animationworks I get very abrupt transitions between standstill and full speed in camera motion. In VW's own animation module, I can make gradual camera speed transitions.
  19. This is just a thought - I haven't tried it out: Get a trial version of a font creation application - or pay the 30$ for Sigmaker 2. Import the geometric pattern into the font program and include it in a font. Install the font. Extract a nurbs curve from the shape, you want the pattern on. Create text along path, using the new font to make a pattern, and postion the 'text' onto the surface. I admit this is a pretty wierd workaround, but it should function OK. I hope NNA spot this and include it somehow.
  20. Thanks for the tips, Mclaugh. Actually I have Animationworks - though I have never used it with the refinements, you describe - showing and hiding objects as you go along. The project was created with VW12 and AnimationWorks hasn't been updated to version 12 yet. I tried the 'export to VW11' , but it produced problems with disappearing solids. In retrospect, doing the animation in 12 was a bad call. But now it has finished, and it is pretty nice. One thing I get with VW's own animation tool, that I havent found in AnimationWorks is good 'ease in/ease out control.
  21. I am currently doing a 80 second animation of a rather complex model. I have noticed, that for every frame, that is completed, rendering takes longer. I started out with an estimate of 36 hours in the 'Time remaining' field. That was 3 days ago. I have now rendered 900 of 1200 frames and the 'Time remaining, estimate is currently 44 hours. Since there is no easy way to cut the animation into smaller segments to be rendered individually, I have decided to wait it out... In the activity Monitor provided by Apple, I can see, that VW seems to be drawing heavily on virtual memory. ( I have only 1 GB on the machine doing the job) Is this a case of 'memory leak'? I have heard the term, but don't know the exact meaning of it. Has anyone found a good way to divide animations into several jobs - and get a seamless result? For the wishlist: I would like the functionality of the animation function to be given a workover. And I would like to be able to include animations into a batch rendering joblist.
  22. Accidentally evoking the final quality radiocity command instead of the final quality renderworks is a real bummer! - They look so much alike, that I have been compelled to hide the radiocity command behind an extra menu folder.
  23. You are right - and it is a bug: The rotate tool doesn't work for 3D objects, on either of my macs. It ignores keyboard input into the angle field of the toolbar. The workaround is to draw a 2D object, select it along with any 3D object you need to rotate and then select the rotate tool. I asume it will be corrected in the next update.
  24. This should be on the wishlist. I manually unwrap items at least once a week by translating an object into 3D polygons and rotating them in succesion. I start by selecting all polygons minus one and then deselect them one by one as they are folded into place. I have a calculation method for dealing with bends in sheet metal, so I can alocate the right amount of material for these. Touchcad seems to be too expensive for this one feature, unless you need it on a daily basis.
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