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Wings3D A User Manual

1. Far Clipping Plane work the way you like rather than having to work in some predetermined manner There are five camera options to choose from Mirai Nendo Maya 3ds max and Blender Additionally there are options for setting up the scroll wheel for quick zooming with a user selected zoom factor You can also set the field of view and the depth of the near and far clipping planes This allows you to set Wings up to work the way you are used to working if you have used any of the other 3D modeling packages listed Each camera mode is briefly outlined below Note that Imb means left mouse button mmb means middle mouse button and rmb means right mouse button To make the settings take effect click the OK button To DRAFT 46 DRAFT return to Wings without making any changes click on the Cancel button A brief summery of the camera mode operations follows Mirai mode mmb click and release rotate mode mmb scroll wheel zoom arrow keys translate view rmb return the original view prior to tumbling Q toggle rotate translate while in rotate mode Nendo mode mmb click rotate mode while in rotate mode mmb or rmb drag to zoom Imb to exit rotate mode arrow keys translate view In Nendo mode you may use Ctrl rmb click to enter rotate mode if you don t have a middle mouse button Maya mode alt Imb rotate view alt mmb translate view alt Imb mmb z
2. Persistence of Vision Raytracer POV Ray Link http www povray org Poser character rendering and animation Link http www curiouslabs com Vue a landscape and general purpose renderer Link http www e onsoftware com DRAFT 109 DRAFT 7 5 Graphic Utilities Camtasia desktop video capture software Link http www techsmith com HyperCam desktop video capture shareware Link http www hyperionics com hc CamStudio an OpenSource desktop video capture package Link http www atomixbuttons com vsc index1 html Virtual Dub an OpenSource AVI editing software distributed under the GNU GPL Link http www virtualdub org 7 6 Specialty Applications 3D Dictionary an on line project that you can contribute to Very handy dictionary Link http oss ckk chalmers se dictionary Forester landscape generator with Arboretum a tree generator Link http www dartnall f9 co uk forester main htm Terragen a landscape generator renderer Link http www planetside co uk terragen World Machine a landscape generator Beta Link http students washington edu sschmitt world Radon Labs a 3D game engine Link http www radonlabs de Genesis3D a 3D game engine Link http www genesis3d com DRAFT 110 DRAFT 7 7 Books 3D Modeling and Surfacing by Bill Fleming 1999 by Academic Press 340 pp This is the best general introduction
3. Figure 6 Contest Sensitive Menus A sample of a context sensitive menu the Primitives Menu accessed via right clicking in an empty Workspace or in a Workspace where nothing is selected Note the option boxes and arrowheads to the right of some entries If vertices are selected the Vertex Menu will come up edges the Edge Menu faces the Face Menu Body full objects the Body Menu Each of these will be discussed in the DRAFT 7 DRAFT section titled Context Sensitive Menus in Section 5 Suffice it for now to say that the Vertex Menu performs functions on vertices the Edge menu on edges etc Option boxes allow you to specify some parameters for an operation Click directly on the box to bring them up Arrowheads indicate that there is another pop up sub menu for that operation 2 8 The Information String If you have an element of geometry selected Wings will display some basic information on that element or elements in a string at the top left hand side of the workspace The color of this text is set in the Edit Preferences menu via the Text Color parameter If you find this text string annoying you can hide it by simply changing the text color to match the background color of the workspace I do not recommend this course of action since you can glean some useful information here If you select an element a vertex for example Wings will inform you of the Vertex ID and it s position in X Y and Z Furthermore if you select
4. Del Body Delete 2 Edge Cut 2 3 Edge Cut 4 Edge Cut 5 Edge Cut 6 Edge Cut 7 Edge Cut 8 Edge Cut OII INIAN AJ W 9 Edge Cut 0 Edge Cut 10 Key Shift Key Ctrl Key Ctrl Shift Key Alt Ctrl Key DRAFT 102 DRAFT Section 6 Plug ins It is beyond the scope of this manual to delve deeply into the operation of all the plug ins available for Wings3D Please contact the authors of the given plug in for any additional documentation or guidance that may be available This section is largely of historical interest since many of these plug in have since been incorporated into the Wings core program However I include them here because they are still valuable as learning examples for anyone seeking to develop their own plug ins and because the authors of these plug ins deserve some public recognition here for the contributions they have made I make no effort to distinguish between historic and current plug ins because they change frequently enough to make that distinction irrelevant in this format A plug in today could easily be part of the Wings core tomorrow In this section I will briefly describe the known plug ins at this time give a brief description of what they do and provide a link to where they can be found or could be found at the time of this writing I apologize for any omissions on my part and will g
5. additions and corrections to jstro swbell net Wings3D is written in the Erlang programming language however there is no need for you to download the Erlang binaries since the ones needed for Wings are compiled right into the Wings distribution If you want to become a Wings developer you will need to download the full Erlang distribution You can download both the Erlang source and runtime libraries and Wings3D binaries for Windows from the Wings home page http www wings3d com These binaries will work for all versions of Windows The Wings binaries are small approximately 1 6 MB The Wings download is a self extracting installer simply double click on it to install Wings When a new version of Wings becomes available simply download the new binaries for Wings and reinstall it right over the old installation You may also want to download the sample plug ins located at the same site These should be installed in your Wings plug ins directory which was created when you installed Wings They are useful for developers to examine who are considering writing their own plug ins 1 2 Linux Binaries for Linux are now available for download thanks to the efforts of KayoslIL They are kindly hosted by waldomac and you can get them at www waldosworld org linux 01 tar bz2 Of course you can still download the Erlang and Wings source and build your own To do so you must download the source code package for both as found at the Sourcef
6. as an example you can go into Orthographic view and use a marque select to get both sets at once DRAFT D9 DRAFT 5 1 4 The Select Menu Select Menu General The Select Menu is one of the most important items in Wings3D as it contains many operations that lead to fast and efficient Weert ca modeling By being able to quickly select More t the elements you need to work with and Less 5 even combine or subtract that selection Region shift L with another selection set you can quickly Edge Loop L achieve the results you desire Edge Ring G Previous Edge Loop fal S EE ga F4 SELECT DESELECT Space Cin ilar I Deselect all selected items E SELECT MORE Ei Grows the selection set to include all the a adjacent items vertices edges or faces All objects Ctrl A of the same type on a given object For Inverse Ctrl Shift I example if a face is selected all adjacent faces will become selected as well If there are multiple objects in a scene it will not cause more objects to be selected however each object with a selection set active will have it s selection set grow Store selection Recall selection Exchange selection Union with stored Subtract with stored Intersection with stored SELECT LESS Figure 41 The Select Menu Shrinks the selection set in reverse order of it s growth If working with an initial selection set this will cause nothing to be selected As with More selection sets o
7. one of the most popular OpenSource licensing agreements GNU stands for GNU is Not Unix Ground plane usually an imaginary plane used as the horizontal reference plane GUI Graphic User Interface Linear a light setting which causes the light to fall off in a linear manner Material the underlying surface properties of an object or faces on an object A material is different than a color or texture Color is but one component of a material and can be applied to vertices as well and textures can be applied over a material Mesh a 3D object composed of interconnected faces usually composed of triangles or quads 5 From the on line 3D Computer Graphics Dictionary Entry contributed by Robert Karlsson 200 by Chalmers Medialab http oss ckk chalmers se dictionary 6 O Rourke p 99 DRAFT 112 DRAFT Metaform subdivision a subdivision method which shows the smoothed model with the unsmoothed cage floating about it Normal a vector that extends outward perpendicular to a graphic element NURBS curve Non Uniform Rational B Splines a mathematically defined curve of infinite resolution Object a self contained solid body composed of vertices edges and faces also know as a body Opacity the level of transparency for a face as set in the Material Editor Organic model a model of a non manufactured item such as living organic things Orthogonal A view that displays a parallel projecti
8. preserve the proportions of the selected objects i e all axes will be scaled the same amount This command will keep the scaled objects inside the saved bounding box TOOLS MOVE TO SAVED BB All X Y Z Will move the selected object s based on the center of their aggregate bounding box to the center of the saved bounding box TOOLS SET DEFAULT AXIS Sets the default axis for vertex commands TOOLS VIRTUAL MIRROR The Virtual Mirror tool puts you into a special modeling mode for creating perfectly symmetrical models To use it select a face to mirror around and then select Virtual Mirror The model will be mirrored from the selected face so that as you make changes on either side of the model they will be reflected on the other side of the model This has the potential for cutting your modeling time in half and can be used to do some things that are otherwise sometimes difficult to achieve such as rotating two surfaces in DRAFT 62 DRAFT opposite directions Note that if you want your model to stay centered in the workspace it is best to loop cut the model down the middle delete half the model select the resulting face and then start Virtual Mirror Create Creates the virtual half of the model which mirrors the real half Note that you can work with either the virtual or real half and actions will be reflected on the counterpart Break Destroys the virtual mirror so that only the real half of the model remains F
9. so I will stop telling you to right click in the Workspace to bring up the Face Operations menu to help speed things along The extruded face will still be selected so now do a Rotate in Z Move your mouse back and forth to see how the face will rotate about the Z axis rotating up when moved to the right and rotating down when moved to the left Rotate the face up until it looks about like the illustration in Figure 16 Left click to stop rotating Now do a series of extrusions This time we will Extrude Normal rather than along one of the primary axis Extruding in the normal simply means to move the extrusion along a vector perpendicular to its plane Then it is simply a matter of doing two more extrusions and we have a very crude model of a hand Figure 25 Extrude the thumb Extrude the base thumb face top left Then Rotate the end face about the Z axis top right Extrude in along the Normal three more times lower left to complete our rough in of a hand lower right DRAFT 28 DRAFT 3 5 Finishing It Off This hand admittedly looks very crude There is a little we can do to make it look better while introducing you to some more Wings3D tools and concepts So let s take the hand model just a little bit further before calling it quits We want to add some additional detail to make the hand look more natural But first let s see what it looks like as is in the smooth shaded mode and again with one Smooth applied to it I wil
10. vertices is contiguous More than one set of connects can be performed at a time Some applications require triangles rather than quads on import You can convert your Wings quads to triangles very simply by selecting the Body then pressing V to switch to vertex mode All vertices on the model will then be selected Then just do a Connect and all the quads will be turned into triangles VERTEX MENU TIGHTEN Tighten deserves a bit of explanation as it is not immediately obvious just what it does Tighten looks at each vertex and works out the direction they need to move in so as to create the most tension free surface It then allows you to interactively move those vertices along that direction by dragging the mouse left and right Another way to think of it is as a tool to get all the edges as similar in length as possible It will eventually smooth out your model into an amorphous blob You can use it to gently smooth out regions where you ve made changes in the surface too harsh by tightening select areas by small amounts You can get your model into a more UV friendly paintable state by tightening a lot thus avoiding areas where there s overhang or creases Alternatively you can tighten in the opposite direction un tighten by small amounts where your surface is too smooth It will make differences in edge length more extreme If you find a model is coming out too gooey when smoothed un tighten it a bit before DRAFT 71 DRAFT
11. References DRAFT iii DRAFT List Of Figures Figure 1 The Wings3D program window Figure 2 The Title Bar Figure 3 The Menu Bar Figure 4 The Icon Bar Figure 5 The Status Bar Figure 6 Contest Sensitive Menus Figure 7 A cube primitive has been added to the Workspace Figure8 Basic Wings navigation Figure 9 Working with the Wings interface Figure 10 Roughing in the basic form Figure 11 More basic construction Figure 12 Building the main roof Figure 13 The side roofs Figure 14 The porch overhang Figure 15 Under the porch Figure 16 Completing the project Figure 17 The dog house rendered in Vue Figure 18 Cube preparation Figure 19 A refresher Figure 20 Working with the context sensitive menus Figure 21 A palm is born Figure 22 Cut in the finger nubs Figure 23 Cut in the thumb nub Figure 24 Extrude the fingers Figure 25 Extrude the thumb Figure 26 The Smooth operation Figure 27 Adding details Figure 28 The hand completed Figure 29 The Wings Material Editor Figure 29a An example of the Material Editor sub menus Figure 30 Subdivision Figure 31 Edge loops and poles DRAFT iv DRAFT Figure 32 Basic topology Figure 33 The main menu bar Figure 34 The File Menu Figure 35 The Edit Menu Figure 36 The Material Editor Figure 37 Camera modes Figure 38 The Preferences Menu Figure 39 Compatibility Figure 40 The View Menu Figure 41
12. Ures Vres equals Major Minor Radius Turn edge plug in by Chris Osgood WingsOne Link www functionalfuture com wingsone Description Installation Unzip in your Wings folder Usage Use t hot key for normal turn T for optimized turn Virtual Mirror plug in by Chris Osgood WingsOne Link www functionalfuture com wingsone Description When completed this will enable virtual mirror modeling in Wings Installation None Usage The project is on hold as of this writing but the source code is available for anyone else who wants to pick up the torch Just as an historical note many former plug ins by Sean Hinde Anthony D Agostino and Chris Osgood have been incorporated into the standard Wings3D distributions and therefore no longer need to be installed as plug ins Notable among these are VRML export torus knot advanced menus virtual mirror and vector operations They also have lots of other goodies related to Wings at their web sites including the Windows installer Chris uses for his stuff and Mac OSX binaries and an Erlang Tutorial for C C and Java Programmers at Seans site DRAFT 106 DRAFT Section 7 Resources 7 1 Wings3D Links Wings3D Home Page Here you will find the latest source code and Windows binaries several tutorials and some useful links Link www wings3d com SourceForge Wings Project Page Here you can find both the current and historical source code and release notes file a bug re
13. and starts out as a neutral gray To change any of the first four settings simply click on the box to bring up a color mixer In the color mixer you can type in the RGB values in the fields on the left or use the slider bars to interactively mix the color Once satisfied click on OK The ball on the left will immediately change to reflect your settings Click OK again when you have finished adjusting all the settings to your liking The new material will be added to the list of materials along with Default and Hole with the name that you gave it This new material can then be applied to any face selection you choose with the Face Set Material command The materials are saved with the model In order to see it properly you will need to look at your model as Smooth Shaded which you can do by pressing the Tab key Note that a File New will purge the materials list Default will set the selected faces to the Default material color Hole will set the selected faces to the Hole material color DRAFT 84 DRAFT FACE TESSELATE Triangulate Will convert all the polygons in the selected faces to triangles Some programs such as game engines expect models to be triangulated before import Quadrangulate Will fix n gon faces by converting them to quads whenever possible or to triangles if necessary An n gon is a polygon with more than four edges These are generally considered bad things to have in your model This is often useful f
14. by default the Major Radius 1 0 by default and the Minor Radius 0 2 by default by clicking on the box on the right of the menu Lumpy Torus A variant of the UV Torus that adds two more parameters Lumps 8 by default and Lump Amplitude 0 5 Spiral Torus another variation on the UV Torus Here you have parameters for Loops and Loop Radius instead of Lumps and Lump Amplitude All of these More primitives are used rarely but can be used to great effect if you remember they are there You will need to play around with the settings to get a good feel for how to create them and how to use them effectively Figure 45a The Wings primitives Top row from left to right Tetrahedron Octahedron Octotoad Dodecahedron and Icosahedron Second row Cube Cylinder Cone Sphere and Torus Third row Grid Image Light and Text Bottom row Torus Knot Spiral Spring UV Torus Lumpy Torus and Spiral Torus DRAFT 69 DRAFT 5 2 2 The Vertex Operations Menu Vertex Operations Menu General If one or more vertices are selected right clicking in the workspace will bring up the Vertex Operations Menu This will allow you to perform operations unique to vertex manipulations Vertex operations Move Rotate VERTEX MENU MOVE Scale Normal moves the selected vertex vertices along their normal A normal is a vector line of direction Extrude that runs out perpendicular to the reference element Flatten Free Will move t
15. can model in Wings take the model into Nendo to do color assignments and save the model with colors Then you can use Wings File Import ndo and bring the model in with all the color assignments intact Some Wings operations still cannot work with color assignments but you can smooth the model to a greater degree than is possible in Nendo for a smoother looking model while still retaining the colors Currently Wings only import textures from the OBJ format not 3DS Acceptable file formats for textures are 24 bit BMP TGA and TIFF FILE EXPORT Nendo ndo ExtremeUV Experimental xndo 3D Studio 3ds DRAFT 43 DRAFT Wavefront obj RenderMan rib VRML 2 0 wrl Saves all objects in workspace in Nendo ndo ExtremeUV xndo 3D Studio 3ds Renderman rib Wavefront obj or VRML 2 0 wrl format There are option boxes for 3ds obj and rib exporters which bring up sub menus for specifying parameters The option box for 3ds allows you to enter an export scale The option box for obj allows this and a check box to create one group per material The option box for rib has settings for numerous parameters mesh type triangulate faces needed for BMRT expand faces BMRT export UV coordinates and export normals The xndo option is for an experimental stand alone texture mapping program currently under development by Mark Whittemore FILE EXPORT SELECTED Saves selected elements in one of t
16. compliant Points Polygons Mesh with a default lighting and material setup Materials are based on the first material found Expands vertex list so that the number of Vertex Coordinates the number of UV Coordinates If the model has UV coordinates these are written and texture maps if any are exported as TIFFs Note designed to work for Renders that do not support facevarying DRAFT 103 DRAFT Usage Geodesic Dome Primitive Plug in by Nathan Hauck Link http www liquid2k com deta_nate wpc_geosphere erl Installation Save file to plugin primitives in your wings directory Description Creates an 80 sided geodesic sphere good for low polygon spheres for games creating domes and other things Try Inset and then Intrude on this then go inside Usage It will appear in the object creation menu as geosphere Ggalien plug in by Sean Hinde earlyriser original C coding by Mark Whittemore Link http www earlyriser org Description When completed this will allow complex procedural primitives to be generated Installation Does not work with the current version of Wings However the original C program can be run as a stand alone and is available from marks url Usage The project is on hold as of this writing but the source code is available for anyone else who wants to pick up the torch Plane Plug in by Anthony D Agostino scorpius Link ourworld compuserve com homepages scorpius uvtorus zip Description This plug i
17. fly your camera around the model so that it appears to rotate The angle and speed of rotation can be set via the Edit Preferences menu Rotating gives you a good overall view of the model and can be used in conjunction with screen capture software to create an AVI to show off your model Left click to stop the rotation You can change the aspect of the camera with the middle mouse button during rotation and the rotation will continue Quick Tip View Orthographic in Wireframe Mode Sometimes it is not all that obvious what the difference between Orthographic and Perspective views do for you To see this graphically create a cube and hit the X key to look at it straight on Then hit the O key a couple of times It does not seem to do much other than change sizes right Now hit the W key to put the cube into Wireframe Mode and repeat the exercise You can definitely see the effects of perspective now even when looking dead on Now use the the marque select function drag a box to select the top left vertex of the cube while still in perspective view You get one vertex selected Clear the selection and go into Orthographic View Select the top left vertex via marque drag Rotate the camera a little and you will see that you got both the front and back vertices because you were in Orthographic view This can be very useful when you are working on a complex but symmetrical or nearly symmetrical model To get the vertices of the left and right thumb
18. in menus and other places try turning off this option Known to be an issue on some Matrox cards Show dummy axis letter The default is off If Wings crashes when trying to open menus when the axes and or axis letters are turned off try turning on this option Known to be an issue on some Matrox cards Early back buffer clear The default is off on Mac OS X and default on on all other platforms There is probably no reason to change this option There are two screen buffers a front buffer and a back buffer The front buffer is what you currently see on screen The back buffer is used for drawing what you will see next When everything is drawn the buffers are swapped On all platforms but Mac OS X Wings clears the back buffer immediately after swapping because that is somewhat faster That is what Bj rn calls early clear On Mac OS X it seems that the back buffer can be used by the OS which resulted in a blank Wings window When the option is turned off Wings does a late clear i e it will clear the back buffer immediately before starting to draw in it EDIT PURGE UNDO HISTORY This will purge the undo history as stated If you purge the history you will not be able to UNDO changes to your model The function is intended to reclaim memory It is especially useful in one situation when smoothing large models If you find that you are running out of memory purge the undo history after each smoothing Quick Tip Repeat
19. know as subdivision surfaces a technique favored by many to create organic or natural world type of models So it seems fitting that for our second model we attempt to create an organic type model in this case we will attempt a hand So do a File New to get a fresh slate and put a cube in your work area Since hands are not cubes let us begin by scaling the cube into a flatter shape more conducive to hand building Switch to Body selection mode by clicking on the Body icon on the icon bar or by hitting the B key Then click on the cube to select it Figure 18 Cube preparation A selected object becomes highlighted in the current Selection Color as set in the user s Color Preferences Here the cube is selected DRAFT 21 DRAFT Now that the cube is selected we can change its basic shape via some of the Body functions found in the Body Operations menu With the cube still selected right click out in the open workspace somewhere to call up the Body Menu A menu will pop up with all the available functions for full body manipulation Figure 19 A refresher With the cube selected right click in the Workspace to bring up the Object Menu Only operations relevant to object manipulation are available DRAFT 22 DRAFT Hover over Scale and a sidebar menu will come up with things you can do regarding the Scale function Figure 20 Working with the context sensitive menus Menu items with side arrows have associated Side Bar Menu
20. lists for text Show dummy axis letter and Early back buffer clear In general you shouldn t change these options from their default values unless you have some sort of problem using Wings Compatibility OK Une BUETON mou Cancel V Optimize display lists Use display lists for text gt Show dummy axis letter Early back buffer clear Figure 39 Compatibility Use the Edit Compatibility Menu to fix display and operational problems if you have difficulties ranning Wings on your system One button mouse The default is on To use the default Wings Blender camera mode on a Mac with a one button mouse you must first enable this option To emulate the middle mouse button hold down the Alt Option key To emulate the right mouse button hold down the Command key This option has no effect on Windows or Linux based systems Optimize display lists This is a toggle that tells Wings to optimize how it handles the internal list of drawing elements for screen refreshment It is generally recommended that this option be set to On However some combinations of drivers graphics card seems to DRAFT 30 DRAFT handle it incorrectly causing Wings to crash with a General Protection Fault or similar So if you have display problems or crashes try turning this off to see if that solves the problem The default setting is on which is the fastest setting Use display lists for text The default is on If text doesn t show up
21. of F3 continues on down the model until it no longer finds another loop to select then it reverses order and comes back up the model This is very powerful and when used in conjunction with other functions such as Scale Move Rotate etc and can greatly increase the efficiency of your modeling work flow SELECT NEXT EDGE LOOP F4 This will step up the model from one closed edge loop to the next deselecting the originally selected loop in favor of the next one it encounters Works just like F3 except it goes in the opposite direction so that you can use the two function keys to toggle back and forth between two edge loops or change directions at will SELECT SIMILAR 1 Selects items similar to the currently selected item SelectlSimilar is not that useful for organic modeling Its main strength is in what Jakob Cederlund calls geometric art i e objects that are highly symmetrical It is good for selecting faces widely apart The rules for similarity are as follows Faces Same number of edges Sum of edge lengths approximately equal Sum of angles between each pair of edges approximately equal Edges Approximate length of edge equal Angle and length of the nearest four edges approximately equal Vertices Angle and length of edges going out from the vertex approximately equal This may be the least useful of the bunch as it seldom finds many hits Note that Less does not deselect items selected via Similar i e it
22. out only shows two Had me tearing my hair out on more than one occasion Where it matters I use Shift Ctrl Quick Tip Provided by Puzzled Paul DRAFT 8 DRAFT Section 3 A Quick Start Guide 3 1 Finger exercises to get you started After starting Wings3D from your desktop you will be presented the Wings3D program window with an empty workspace Right click anywhere in the empty workspace and you will be presented with the Primitives context sensitive menu as illustrated in the section above Move your mouse over the Cube menu item It will become highlighted in blue Left click on the word Cube and a cube primitive will be added to your workspace Your workspace should look like this 4 Wings 3D Figure 7 A cube primitive has been added to the Workspace Now we will just play around with some of the basic functions so that you can get a feel for how the interface works Once you spend just a few minutes getting the hang of the interface you will be ready to do one of the tutorials that follow Remember that when I say to switch to vertex edge face or body selection mode that you can do so by either clicking on the appropriate icon on the Icon Bar the four in the middle or just by pressing the V E F or B hot keys on the keyboard Right clicking with an element DRAFT 9 DRAFT selected will bring up one of the context sensitive menus whereas right clicking without anything selected will bring up the Primitives menu T
23. runs on longer despite the fact that there are now triangles in the model Why Because there are now four edges at that intersection you have eliminated one pole which was not necessarily a good thing to do 4 3 Winged Edge Topology DRAFT 38 DRAFT Figure 31 Edge loops and poles On the left you can see where a pole stops an edge loop from encircling the object By inserting a new edge the loop can continue on a little further The edge loop at the center of the object does completely encircle the object because it encounters no poles On the right you can see an example of Edge Rings shown in pink One of the reasons Wings works so well with edge loops and edge rings is the fact that it is based on a topological data structure winged edge topology Winged edge topology is a method that mathematically defines all elements in a model by their relationships to other elements of the model This is done by a set of tables specifically face edge and node tables In Figure 32 I have selected one face Face 71 and then switched to Edge Mode to select its component edges The Status Line of Wings tells us that Face 71 is encircled by edges 9 16 70 and 72 Note that newer versions of Wings place this information in a string at the top left of the workspace It only knows this because the winged edge topology exists to provide the information DRAFT 39 DRAFT ANNE 4 Figure 32 Basic topology Because of the winged edge topology of
24. shape inside the selected face It works on one or more faces at a time creating a new face for each of the selected faces This could be used for example to create a picture inside a picture frame The inner face could then be extruded in the negative direction to cause the frame to stand out You can also Inset and make the new face larger than the original face See the Dog House Tutorial in Section 3 of this manual for an example of this in action FACE MENU INTRUDE You can make some very cool models very quickly with the intrude function It is especially handy for making lattice work type of objects such as the Eiffel Tower or a bird cage It works by creating an inverted copy of the entire object then doing a Bridge on all pairs of selected faces The thickness of the walls is controlled by how far you move the mouse during the operation The Dog House tutorial in this manual demonstrates the Intrude function quite nicely FACE MENU BEVEL Bevels all the edges of the selected face or faces simultaneously thus creating a smaller selected face and small surrounding faces FACE MENU BRIDGE Causes two co planer or nearly co planar faces to snap together thus fusing new geometry between them Only two faces can be selected at a time for Bridge The faces must have the exact same number of edges and vertices but can be shaped differently This can be used to attach one object to another one part of the same object to another part o
25. smoothing it might help Tighten may work slightly differently from Nendo Wings calculates all directions once before the drag is started Nendo might recalculate all directions after every mouse move It would probably make a difference if adjacent vertices are selected which they usually are VERTEX MENU BEVEL Bevels corners at selected vertices thus creating new faces It has no effect on isolated vertices where two edges fail to intersect with any other a single edge cut in two Such vertices should be eliminated by the way via the Collapse tool VERTEX MENU COLLAPSE Bksp Removes the vertex adjusting the faces and edges associated with it accordingly and leaves you in Face Selection Mode VERTEX MENU DISSOLVE Removes the vertex Unlike Collapse Dissolve leaves you in Vertex Selection Mode so that you can continue to select and eliminate vertices without having to switch back from Face Mode VERTEX MENU DEFORM Wings3D has several deformation tools available as listed below Crumple moves selected vertices randomly Good for adding noise Inflate moves selected vertices along their normal out from the center of mass of the selection If you have a hollow object and select vertices on the inside as well as the outside of the object Inflate will cause the vertices on the inside and outside to move outward just as if you were inflating a balloon In other words the outside vertices move on their po
26. the Middle Mouse Button MMB can be used to dolly the camera while working Subsequent scales can be made using the newly defined vector by choosing Last Axis from the standard Vertex Operations menu EDGE EXTRUDE LMB Select elements to define the vector Right Mouse Button RMB Execute the operation and Alt Right Mouse Button Alt RMB to bring up the options sub menu As with Move first define the vector to extrude along with the LMB then execute with the RMB To bring up the options menu Alt RMB This is where you can access magnets while working with vectors Note that the Middle Mouse Button MMB can be used to dolly the camera while working Subsequent extrusions can be made using the newly defined vector by choosing Last Axis from the standard Vertex Operations menu 5 5 3 Face Operations with Advanced Menus FACE MOVE LMB Select elements to define the vector Right Mouse Button RMB Execute the operation and Alt Right Mouse Button Alt RMB to bring up the DRAFT 97 DRAFT options sub menu First define the vector to move along with the LMB then execute with the RMB To bring up the options menu Alt RMB This is where you can access magnets while working with vectors Note that the Middle Mouse Button MMB can be used to dolly the camera while working Subsequent moves can be made using the newly defined vector by choosing Last Axis from the standard Vertex Operations menu FACE ROTATE LMB Select elements to d
27. the edges along the z axis Radial X YZ Scales the length of selected edges radially from the x axis 1 e The distances in y and z are effected while x remains constant Radial Y XZ Scales the length of selected edges radially from the y axis so that the y dimension remains constant Radial Z XY Scales the length of selected edges radially from the z axis so that the z dimension remains constant EDGE MENU EXTRUDE As with vertex extrusions you can use the plus and minus keys to increase or decrease the base area of the extrusion Normal extrudes the selected edge or edges along their normal s Free Will extrude the selected edge edges in the direction of mouse movement X constrains the extrusion along the x axis DRAFT 76 DRAFT Y constrains the extrusion along the y axis Z constrains the extrusion along the z axis When you extrude an edge new faces are created to connect the line to the main body of the object it is being extruded from That is to say the result will have thickness you cannot create a sheet that protrudes from the object EDGE MENU CUT 2 one edge is cut into two edges 3 one edge is cut into three edges 4 one edge is cut into four edges 5 one edge is cut into five edges 10 one edge is cut into ten edges Cuts the selected edge s into the number of equally sized segments as specified by the number chosen from the side bar menu Not
28. the model each element knows its relationship with all adjacent elements Similarly if we had just selected Edge 72 and then done a Edge Loop selection Wings would have know to select edges 60 68 28 and the others on the back of the model that we can not see to complete the loop For a more detailed description of the winged edge data structure you can read The Winged Edge Data Structure by Dr Ching Kuang Shenefound here http www cs mtu edu shene COURSES cs3621 NOTES model winged e html It is well beyond the scope of a User s Manual to get into a thorough discussion of the winged edge data structure It is enough to know that Wings is based on this data structure and it is used to make and manipulate selection sets very rapidly You can also find winged edge topology illustrated from a geographic point of view here http www bequia swinternet co uk edgeex html Section 5 The Wings3D Command Reference Guide 5 1 The Main Menu Figure 33 The main menu bar The Main Menu consists of logically organized functions that are generally global in nature throughout Wings3D that is they apply to vertices edges faces and objects or general environmental settings such as user preferences and camera manipulation The exception to this general rule is the Objects Menu which contains functions relevant to objects only The Main Menu items include File Edit View Select Tools Objects and DRAFT 40 DRAFT Help Each of these wil
29. 0 and a single edge bounding box is two dimensional Box modeling a common term for the type of polygon modeling used in Wings3D Central edge loop a set of edges that completely encircles a model on one of the primary axes usually the Z axis for example as the center line of a head Control cage the model in shaded wireframe mode prior to any smoothing operation Crease angle the angle between two faces that share an edge Diffuse color the overall color of a surface absent any highlights like a matte surface Display mode the way a model appears on the screen solid shaded smooth shaded or wireframe Dolly Moving the camera in and out towards or away from the model i e zooming Edge the boundary between two faces having exactly two vertices the line joining two vertices together Edge loop a set of edges that connect at vertices with 4 way intersections Edge rings the lateral edges that run between two adjacent edge loops Element a graphic element in the scene that can be selected a vertex edge face body or a light are all elements of a scene Emission a color setting that affect the overall brightness of the object Face an element of an object consisting of a set of interconnected edges facet subdivision breaking down a component of two dimensions i e a face into more and more faceted surfaces faces without doing any smoothing GNU GPL GNU General Public License
30. 23 to get a grasp on 3D concepts in general The VRML lessons are very good Lessons 27 32 and 40 45 Lessons 101 104 take you through human character modeling albeit via 3D Max but they are useful Unfortunately Mr Polevoi is no longer producing this series but it is still valuable reading Link http www webreference com 3d indexa htm l Subdivision Modeling Resource Page by Tamas Varga It is Mirai centric but there are good discussions on topics fairly universal to subdivision modeling such as the concept of Edge Loops Link http maxrovat sns hu subdiv Subdivision Surface Modeling 101 by Erik Asorson is a 3D Max web page but many of the concepts transfer nicely to other applications as well Link http www geocities com fyer_starter tut_lsubd html Mastering 3D Animation by Peter Ratner professor of Art at James Madison University An excellent trilogy of tutorials that cover modeling the human head the human body and adding muscles and details Link http www 3dlinks com tutorials GENERAL Face_Modeling_1 cfm Spiraloid Digital Sculpting Forum moderated discussions What reference guide would be complete without a link to the Spiraloid Digital Sculpting Forum This is a closely moderated community so be sure to read the rules before posting to avoid being ejected Very informative discussions from a great collection of master modelers Just go read and learn And if you post be polite ask d
31. Button RMB Execute the operation and Alt Right Mouse Button Alt RMB to bring up the options sub menu First define the vector to move along with the LMB then execute with the RMB To bring up the options menu Alt RMB This is where you can access magnets while working with vectors Note that the Middle Mouse Button MMB can be used to dolly the camera while working Subsequent moves can be made using the newly defined vector by choosing Last Axis from the standard Vertex Operations menu EDGE ROTATE LMB Select elements to define the vector Right Mouse Button RMB Execute the operation and Alt Right Mouse Button Alt RMB to bring up the options sub menu As with Move first define the vector to rotate about with the LMB then execute with the RMB To bring up the options menu Alt RMB This is where you can access magnets while working with vectors Note that the Middle Mouse Button MMB can be used to dolly the camera while working Subsequent rotations can be made using the newly defined vector by choosing Last Axis from the standard Vertex Operations menu EDGE SCALE LMB Select elements to define the vector Right Mouse Button RMB Execute the operation and Alt Right Mouse Button Alt RMB to bring up the options sub menu As with Move first define the vector to scale along with the LMB then execute with the RMB To bring up the options menu Alt RMB This is where you can access magnets while working with vectors Note that
32. EW ONE TWO LIGHTS Toggles one or two standard lights on in the scene To avoid confusion consider this menu item as a request That is if the menu reads One Light then two lights are currently on and vice versa Note that Scene lights negate the One Light Two Light option VIEW SHOW COLORS Vertex colors can be imported on pre existing models such as from Nendo To see the vertex colors use this option VIEW SHOW MATERIALS Materials can be created and assigned in Wings per face with the Face Set Material command They can also be present on models you have imported To show materials use this option VIEW SHOW TEXTURES Models with pre existing textures can be imported into Wings The textures are retained after import and can be seen via this option VIEW VIEW ALONG X Y Z Shift X Shift Y Shift Z X X Y Y Z Z X Shift X Y Shift Y Z Shift Z Sets the camera to view along the selected axis It is recommended that you look at your model from various angles as you go to get a good feel for how it is developing Using the X Y Z etc hot keys is a very quick and easy way to do this It is also very handy to view along a major axis while scaling as you can scale two vertices along a cross axis to spread them apart or move them towards each other Useful in conjunction with orthographic mode for certain tasks where precise movement alignment is required DRAFT 54 DRAFT VIEW ALIGN TO SELECTION Tur
33. Figure 14 b Switch to Vertex Mode Figure 14 c and Scale the vertices down in Y to bring the two lines close together and then Move them down in Y to bring them closer to the door Figure 14 d Select the two edges we just positioned Figure 14 e and Cut them by 3 then do a Connect on the resultant vertices Figure 14 f Scale them apart in X by 40 Figure 14 g Select the new face Figure 14 h and Extrude it Normal by 0 5 Figure 14 i Figure 14 The porch overhang Connect the side edges of the top front face a and then Connect the lower set again b Select the vertices and scale them down in Y to bring the edges closer together c Then Move them all down closer to the door d Cut the edges by 3 e and Connect the resulting vertices f and scale them apart g to form a face that will become the porch roof h Then Extrude that face i Select the top back edge of the porch roof Figure 15 a and Cut it by 2 Connect the resulting vertex with the two front top corner vertices as show in Figure 15 b Move the back center vertex up in Y by 0 5 Figure 15 c Now dolly the camera so that you can see the underside of the porch as in Figure 15 d DRAFT 17 DRAFT Connect the bottom side edges of the porch roof 15 e Move it forward in Z by 0 15 units 15 f Select the front and back bottom edges of the porch roof too Cut all three edges by 3 15 g Connect the vertices 15 h Scale them apart in X 130 to form small squa
34. NSELECTED Hides any object that is not currently selected Hidden objects are automatically locked and protected from any geometry orientation changes OBJECTS LOCK UNSELECTED Locks unselected objects but leaves them visible in the workspace as reference objects OBJECTS OBJECT LIST object1 would be cubel for the example shown above object Select Hide Hide Others Lock Rename object2 Select Hide Hide Others Lock Rename object3 Select Hide Hide Others Lock DRAFT 64 DRAFT Rename and so on The bottom part of the Objects Menu shows a list of all the current objects in the workspace They will initially have default names based on how they were created For example when a cube primitive is added to the workspace when Wings is first started it will be named cubel Note that if you do a File New the item numbers are not reinitialized So if you then added a cube to the new workspace it would be listed as cube2 The open eye icon to the left of the name represented in this document as brackets will show if it is currently visible and change to a closed eye icon if it is hidden Each object in the list has a sidebar menu from which you can do many handy things From this menu an object can be Selected Deselected Hidden Shown note if hidden Show is the only option in the side bar menu Locked Unlocked and Renamed Objects retain the name assigned to them upon Save and Export which is very useful in t
35. Replace your hard edges with bevels Not all renderers or other modeling programs can handle hard edges Therefore it is generally agreed that they should not be used especially in the final model But that does not mean that they can not be used effectively during the modeling process It is sometimes useful to set some edges as hard to hold the local form on a given area of a model and the do a Smooth You can then continue to work the model Once you are done do a Select By Hard Edges and then apply a slight Bevel If you find that your bevels do not hold the form true after a sample smooth it probably indicates an area of the model in need of more geometry Try adding some additional edges near the bevels and do another test smooth Now the bevels should hold the form of the model true while eliminating the hard edges from the final model EDGE MENU LOOP CUT This is one of the most important commands in Wings If you have a complete edge loop that closes on itself you can cut the model in two with Loop Cut For example if you have an edge loop that completely encircles the arm at the shoulder you can select that edge loop and do a Loop Cut to sever the arm from the model Then you can work with both parts independent of one another or even save one part out as a separate model This can also be useful in symmetrical modeling If you create your rough model with a clean central edge loop you can develop detail on one side of the model then
36. T LIMITED TO THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NON INFRINGEMENT THIS DOCUMENTATION IS PROVIDED ON AN AS IS BASIS AND THE AUTHORS AND DISTRIBUTORS HAVE NO OBLIGATION TO PROVIDE MAINTENANCE SUPPORT UPDATES ENHANCEMENTS OR MODIFICATIONS 3DS Max is a trademark of Autodesk Inc Adobe is a trademark of Adobe Systems Incorporated Blender is a trademark of NaN Technologies Camtasia is a trademark of TechSmith Corporation Genesis3D is a trademark of Eclipse Entertainment HyperCam is a trademark of Hyperionics Technology LLC Linux is a trademark of Linus Torvalds Mac OSX is a trademark of Apple Computer Inc Matrox is a trademark of Matrox Graphics Inc Maya is a trademark of Silicon Graphics Inc exclusively used by Alias Wavefront a division of Silicon Graphics Mirai is a trademark of Nichimen Graphics Nendo is a trademark of Nichimen Graphics OpenGL is a trademark of Silicon Graphics Inc Poser is a trademark of Curious Labs Inc Renderman is a trademark of Pixar Animation Studios Solaris is a trademark of Sun Microsystems Inc SourceForge is a trademark of VA Linux Systems Inc TGA is a trademark of Truevision Inc Vue d Esprit is a trademark of e on software Inc Wavefront is a trademark of Silicon Graphics Inc DRAFT DRAFT Table Of Contents Section 1 Installation 1 1 Windows 1 2 Linux 1 3 Solaris 1 4 Mac Section 2 The Wings3D User Interface 2 1 General Ove
37. The Select Menu Figure 42 The Tools Menu Figure 43 The Object Menu Figure 44 The Help Menu Figure 45 The Primitives pop up menu Figure 45a The Wings primitives Figure 46 The Vertex Operations pop up menu Figure 47 Twist and Torque Figure 48 Twist vs Torque Figure 49 Other factors Figure 50 The Edge Menu Figure 51 The Face Menu Figure 52 The Wings Material Editor Figure 53 The Body or Object Menu Figure 54 Standard vs Advanced Menus Figure 55 The Wings magnets Figure 56 The Influence Menu Figure 57 Vector Magnets revealed Figure 58 Magnet operations in Wings DRAFT DRAFT Dedication This book is dedicated to Bj rn Gustivson and the Wings3D development team for bringing us Wings3D to the developers of Wings3D plug ins to the OpenSource community at large and to Mike roadtoad Owen for starting and running the Wings3D web forum without which this manual and Wings3D itself would have taken much longer to develop DRAFT vi DRAFT Section 1 Installation 1 1 Windows This User s Manual was written to the Windows version of Wings3D however the concepts and commands discussed herein should be generally applicable to all platforms to the best of my knowledge An effort will be made to explain where operations differ via platform If you find differences that are not addressed please forward that information to the author so that the manual can be updated appropriately Send changes
38. Wings3D A User Manual DRAFT Current as of Rev 0 98 by Jon M Strother with contributions from the Wings3D user community DRAFT Copyright information This work is released under the same general guidelines as Wings3D itself as a contribution to the Open Source community This documentation is copyrighted by Jon M Strother The following terms apply to all files associated with the documentation unless explicitly disclaimed in individual files The author hereby grants permission to use copy modify distribute and license this documentation for any purpose provided that existing copyright notices are retained in all copies and that this notice is included verbatim in any distributions No written agreement license or royalty fee is required for any of the authorized uses Modifications to this documentation may be copyrighted by their authors and need not follow the licensing terms described here provided that the new terms are clearly indicated on the first page of each section where they apply All unmodified material remains subject to the original terms IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR DISTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE TO ANY PARTY FOR DIRECT INDIRECT SPECIAL INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OF THIS DOCUMENTATION OR ANY DERIVATIVES THEREOF EVEN IF THE AUTHORS HAVE BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE THE AUTHORS AND DISTRIBUTORS SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIM ANY WARRANTIES INCLUDING BUT NO
39. X YZ Scales the object radially from the x axis i e The size in y and z are effected while x remains constant Radial Y XZ Scales the object radially from the y axis so that the y dimension remains constant Radial Z XY Scales the object radially from the z axis so that the z dimension remains constant Figure 53 The Body or Object Menu BODY MENU FLIP X will flip the object on the X axis Y will flip the object on the X axis Z will flip the object on the X axis BODY MENU INVERT Invert will flip all the normals of the model in effect turning it inside out This can be DRAFT 86 DRAFT useful if an imported model loads into Wings inverted i e the normals all pointing inwards instead of outwards Invert will fix the normals so that they all point outward It can also be useful to fix model parts that are created via Extract Region on inward facing regions though it may take some getting used to working inverted Quick Tip A way to create the juice object inside a glass and have it line up On the inside of a glass or jug create a loop that defines the height of the liquid Then select the loop do a Shift L to select the region next to it Ctrl Shift I if it selects the wrong side Do an Extract Region Normal and click without moving This will separate off that area and make it solid Switch to Body Mode B then do an Invert which will flip the normals to align correctly You now have a se
40. ace Bar to deselect the new edge Repeat on the other side You should have something similar to that shown in Figure 10 b Move the horizontal mid edges up in the Y direction on both sides by 0 50 units Then Move the vertical mid edges forward in the Z direction on both sides by 0 50 units You can see the units change in the Status Bar at the bottom of the Wings window below the Icon Bar Simply stop dragging when the value reads 0 50 and left click the mouse You should have something similar to that shown in Figure 10 c Figure 10 Roughing in the basic form The top and bottom edges have been Connected in a The new edge and the two side edges were then Connected in b Do this on both sides of the model In c the edges have been Moved Do both sides of the model at the same time to ensure symmetry In d the sides have been Extruded The vertices on the front face have been Connected in e In the new edge and the bottom edge were Cut by 3 and the resulting vertices then Connected DRAFT 13 DRAFT Select the two large faces one on each side and Extrude Normal by 1 0 You should have something similar to that shown in Figure 10 d Then Select the two vertices on the front face and Connect them as shown in Figure 10 e Select the two long edges on the front face and Cut by 3 Connect the resulting vertices You should have something similar to that shown in Figure 10 f Select the front faces of the side sections and Inset s
41. and We will now attempt to make it look at least a little more natural by adding some finger nails some knuckle bumps and some tendons To save space and since you should have a pretty good feel for the basic operations by now I will not take you though the process of adding these details step by step Rather I will present you with a set of sample objects in Figure 27 and tell you in general what I did to get the details you see there I ve made the screen shots here a little bigger so that you can see more of the detail So take a moment to study the edges as they progress in the picture below Quick Tip Overlaying the wireframe on a smooth shaded view Some people find it very useful to overlay the wireframe on a smooth shaded view of their model This serves two purposes first it helps them find surface anomalies while at the same time being able to see what edges may be the culprits and second it gives new modelers a sense of how edges and edge loops affect the overall form of the model To get the wireframe on the smooth shaded view simply hit the Tab key to get the smooth shaded preview of the model then hit the W key to overlay the wireframe Note that you can change the color of the wireframe in the Edit Preferences menu DRAFT 30 DRAFT Figure 27 Adding details Detail has been added top by selecting edges or vertices as needed and Connecting them to rough in the knuckles and tendons Then more detail was added bottom ad
42. and the Function Keys You can do some quick and easy modifications to a model through the combination of the Repeat D and Repeat Drag Shift D operations and the F3 F4 Next Loop Previous Loop keys The Repeat and Repeat Drag operations can be performed over and over again on successive loops as you F3 and F4 your way up and down a portion of your model A simple example would be if you wanted to make a segmented body such as a worm You could start with a many segmented cylinder then choose the first loop that you wanted to adjust and do a Scale Uniform Then you would hit F3 twice to move up two loops and reapply the Scale Uniform by simply hitting Shift D Or to make the worm tapered hit D and use the mouse to adjust the amount of scaling Keep repeating the process until you have the entire cylinder done DRAFT ol DRAFT 5 1 3 The View Menu View Menu General The View Menu contains functions that set and control how you view your work i e Ground plane v Axes v Horkmode Tab Smoothed Preview Shift Tab Wireframe Shade Toggle wireframed shaded W v Show Saved BB v Show Edges Show Normals v Show Wireframe Backfaces Reset View R Aim A Frame Shift A Ortographic View D Scene Lights One light v Show Colors v Show Materials v Show Textures View Along Align to Selection Alt A Auto Rotate U Figure 40 The View Menu how far into the model you are going VIEW SHADE camera and work environ
43. ands To demonstrate this create a cube and Connect the left and right edges of one of its sides Then Connect the three horizontal edges of that side to form a square cross intersection in the middle of the face Select the vertex of the intersection and Bevel it to form a diamond shape in the middle of the face With the face selected do a Smooth Now select the four edges within the smoothed area DRAFT 7 DRAFT and Dissolve them You now have a roundish single face in the middle of the cube from which you can now extrude and scale several times to create an eye EDGE MENU COLLAPSE Collapse will eliminate an edge by snapping the vertices on each end together This is the same effect of Weld Vertices found in many modeling programs It can be used very effectively in conjunction with Select By Short Edges to remove microscopic edges that are interfering with your modeling EDGE MENU HARDNESS Hard Soft Edges can be Hard or Soft They are soft by default Hard edges are not moved when a model is smoothed and therefore are handy for maintaining sharp edges where they are needed in a model to maintain overall shape To make an edge hard select it then from the Edge Menu choose Hard To set it back to soft choose Soft If you have a lot of edges you want to make Hard you can use the Object Menu Auto Smooth which sets all edges at sharp angles to hard then use the Edge Menu Soft to set selected edges back to soft Quick Tip
44. ands in wireframe mode prior to smoothing and analyzed them to see where the artists had placed the edges and then tried to emulate their examples My thanks to Mike Rickard for providing the hand model that inspired this one His was much better but I needed to do this from scratch so that I could adequately describe what the steps were But there are plenty of cages posted out on the web simple screen shots of non smoothed models Use them as your guide until you develop a style of your own DRAFT 34 DRAFT Section 4 The Nature of Subdivision Modeling 4 1 Subdivision and Such Wings is a polygon modeling system with an implementation of subdivision surfaces as one of its core functions Because of that it and other modeling packages that use subdivision surfaces is often referred to as a subdivision modeler and the type of modeling done with it as subdivision modeling This is often also called box modeling since most models start out as a cube primitive There are fundamentally three types of subdivision surface styles available for polygon modelers facet smooth and metaform Wings has the ability to do facet and smooth but currently does not support metaform Facet smoothing simply subdivides the model without doing any smoothing Smooth does the subdivision and smooths the model making it look much more organic Which is why subdivision modeling has become so popular for organic modeling Figure 30 illustrates the difference betwee
45. another vertex so that two are selected at the same time it will tell you how far apart they are If you select a single edge it will tell you how long that edge is This can be very useful especially in modeling buildings and the like 2 9 Wings Units A Wings Unit wu is arbitrary in size and can be thought of in terms of any real world units desired The Wings grid is composed of squares each 1x1 wu in size The standard Wings cube is cube is 2 x 2 x 2 Wings Units in size If building a model from scratch you can arbitarily decide that a wu will represent inches feet meters or miles whichever is most appropriate for the task at hand It is not uncommon for Wings units and other 3D packages units to be vastly different in size Therefore you will need to experiment with the import export sizing options to get suitably sized objects on import export Scaling by 1000 for example brings in a Poser model at a decent working scale Quick Tip Working With Wings Units When working with many Wings commands dragging with the Shift key depressed will cause movement to be constrained to whole units while the Ctrl key will cause movement to be constrained to tenths of units Holding down Shift Ctrl keys constrains operations to hundredths of a wings unit While it seems the same as the readout as this is only 2 decimal places it is possible to do unconstrained drags and get elements that are 3 decimal places when measured even though the read
46. ate a texture map I will be able to pull the model apart and arrange the parts nicely in my texture mapping program of choice because I did this In fact if I were smart I would have assigned a different texture to the front and back of the hands so that they could be easily isolated for painting So to make these color assignments simply select the faces to be assigned a color and then use the Face Set Material operation You will be presented with a pop up box with New Default and Hole as choices Select New and you will be prompted for a material name Give the faces a short but logical name Skin and nails come to mind for me here The Material Editor will come up as shown in Figure 29 below DRAFT 32 DRAFT Figure 28 The hand completed Final detail cut in Top and with colors assigned Bottom Diffuse C oK Ambient Cancel Specular _ Emission E Shininess 1 0 Opacity 1 0 Figure 29 The Wings Material Editor DRAFT 33 DRAFT Click on the little boxes to bring up sub menus Figure 29a for setting the actual values for the first four parameters This is done via entering a number in the numeric entry fields or by using the slider bars You can set the diffuse ambient R e specular and emissive colors as G 255 Cancel well as the shininess and opacity B 255 of the selected faces The effects of your changes will show up Figure 29a An example of the Material Edito
47. begin using vector operations At the right of the status bar Wings will tell you to Select Axis for Face Move This is how you will define the vector Click on the positive Z face and notice the appearance of a blue vector Now click on the positive X face and notice that the direction of the vector changed You can continue to select and deselect faces until you get the vector going the way you want it to You can even use a remote object for this vector definition process Once you are happy with the direction of your vector then click the Right Mouse Button Now you can move the mouse and watch the face move along the vector you just defined Notice the instructions on the status bar as you are dragging It now tells you that you can constrain the movement by holding down modifier keys while dragging Dragging with the Shift key depressed will cause movement to be constrained to whole units while the Ctrl key will cause movement to be constrained to tenths of units That s it You now know how to use Wings vector operations Just try doing this a couple of times then try a few of the other commands You ll have the routine down in no time Now let s practice a little with magnets Delete your cube and bring up a Grid primitive right click to bring up the Primitives menu and look for Grid in the list of primitives Don t click it instead click the option box on the right to specify how big we want our grid to be A little pop up box will ask y
48. ctor Display Length and Width set just that the length and width of the line used to represent the active Vector in the advanced menus operations Vector Display Color sets the color of the Vector used in the advanced menus operations Colors are assigned just as described in the Color preferences section above Auto Rotate Auto Rotate Angel is entered as a real number in degrees of rotation The Auto Rotate Delay is entered as an whole number representing milliseconds between steps of rotation The Auto Rotate function itself is accessed and will be discussed in the View menu structure Axes Show Axis Letters check box is an On Off toggle If turned on small X Y and Z letters will float at the ends of the three axes to help keep you oriented The X Y Z and X Y Z Color boxes allows you to set the color for each axis which also helps keep you oriented while modeling These are set by the color preferences boxes for each just like in the Color options described above Miscellaneous There are several miscellaneous preferences as described below Auto save interval min saves to a temporary file with the extension wings_as It will NOT overwrite the current file If there is a crash the next time you try to open the file with wings extension you will get a prompt asking you if you want to load the auto saved file instead It compares the date time of the files Auto save won t start before you have done a save as once If you turn of
49. d turn Advanced Menus on and then leave them on forever since they offer so much additional modeling capability Here we will discuss the Advanced Menu system explain the mechanics of their use and detail the advanced menu options available to you You can turn on the Advanced Menus by selecting that option in the Edit Preferences Menu After doing so you will see some changes to the Wings pop up context sensitive menus Most notably the small sub menu indicators on the right side of the menus change from small arrowheads to small dots This is your visual clue that Advanced Menus are enabled Also the Lift command becomes available in the Face Operations menu What Advanced Menus do for you is enable secondary selections This does not sound all that significant at first but it is Just what a secondary selection is may need a little explanation After making your primary selection say you select an edge normally you will be given options to manipulate that edge along its normal free or along the positive or negative X Y Z axis only Sometimes you would like to use another axis or vector to work from This is what enabling secondary selections does for you It allows you to define just about any vector as the axis of operation for a given command Consider the simple example presented in Figure 54 In the top two panels are screen shots taken with the standard menus on In 54 a you can see that we can move the selected vertex along
50. dard Vertex Operations menu FACE FLATTEN LMB Select elements to define the vector Right Mouse Button RMB Execute the operation and Alt Right Mouse Button Alt RMB to bring up the options sub menu As with Move first define the vector to flatten to with the LMB then execute with the RMB To bring up the options menu Alt RMB This is where you can access magnets while working with vectors Note that the Middle Mouse Button MMB can be used to dolly the camera while working Subsequent flatten operations can be made using the newly defined vector by choosing Last Axis from the standard Vertex Operations menu FACE LIFT This is an Advanced Menu option only because it relies on a secondary selection to work To use Lift select a face you want to lift Then click on Lift in the Face menu Note the instructions on the status bar Select a point or edge to act as the pivot for the lift operation with the Left mouse button Then click the Right mouse button to execute the command Control the amount of lift by moving the mouse to the right or left Complete the operations with a left mouse click Try it out a few times on a simple object with an Inset face It is a very useful modeling tool 5 5 4 Body Operations with Advanced Menus BODY MOVE LMB Select elements to define the vector Right Mouse Button RMB Execute the operation and Alt Right Mouse Button Alt RMB to bring up the options sub menu First define the vector to move a
51. detail You can also select the necessary edges and set them to Hard Be sure the model export format and the rendering engine you intend to use supports Hard edges or you may not get the results you expected Bevels on the other hand will always do the trick Another reason to use Bevel instead of hard edges is that they help show off detail It seems that sharp edges don t show specularity well making details hard to see By giving man made objects softer edges via Bevel it increases their specularity thereby drawing out the detail that would otherwise be lost Some on line model stores will not even accept models for sale that do not use beveled edges to maintain detail so avoid hard edges if you can And as with smoothing some people tend to Bevel too soon in the modeling process It should be one of the last things you do unless you are using it to create new base geometry The reason is that it over complicates your model forcing you to manipulate many more elements than you otherwise would have had to deal with had you not beveled too soon 2 3D Modeling and Surfacing by Bill Fleming DRAFT 36 DRAFT 4 2 The Nature of Edge Loops Edge Loop is a term you will see used often in polygon modeling circles It is often confusing to new users just what edge loops are and what their significance to modeling is Edge loops can be thought of in two senses really the modeling structure that is an edge loop i e the physical set of edg
52. ding more edges via Connects and then Moving vertices to form knuckle bulges and round out the palm Finger nails were created by selecting faces and Extruding Region In the top portion of Figure 27 above I added more details by doing a series of Connects One set of Connects was done to create a loop that separates the hand front to back Then four loops were created the same way to completely encircle the hand down the length and each finger and into and around the palm Then another another set of edges was created to run from the index finger tendon up the side of the thumb and back down the other side Then to create more of a knuckle shape the vertices at the front and back of each knuckle were Scaled in Y to spread them apart thus creating the diamond shaped areas In the bottom section of Figure 27 I added yet more detail To add detail to to knuckles I DRAFT 31 DRAFT Dissolved the edges on the inside of the diamonds front and back and then Inset them a bit to create inner diamonds Then I used Connect on vertices to create the details you see here Then I Moved the inner vertices out to form bumps on the backside of the fingers and in to form creases on the inside of the fingers Then I selected the faces for the finger nails four per nail by the way not just two and did an Extrude Region slightly into the fingers Then I scaled down the region just a bit and then did another Extrude Region to raise the nails just past the lev
53. does not revert to the original selection set SELECT ADJACENT VERTICES selects vertices adjacent to the currently selected vertex vertices EDGES selects edges adjacent to the currently selected edge s FACES selects faces adjacent to the currently selected face s DRAFT a7 DRAFT If you press the same key several times the selection will grow each time In vertex selection mode pressing the v will grow the selection in exactly the same way as does SELECT MORE However in edge selection mode pressing e will grow the selection by selecting the four edges nearest each edge SELECT MORE on the other hand will select all edges that share a vertex with a selected edge To see the difference select one edge on an icosahedron or a grid and try both commands In face selection mode all faces that share an edge with a selected face will become selected SELECT MORE on the other hand will select all faces that share a vertex with a selected face Try it out on a grid to understand the difference Note that if there is no current selection set the keys v e f and b simply change selection mode to vertex edge face and body respectively SELECT BY Hard Edges Vertices with 2 Edges 3 Edges 4 Edges 5 Edges Faces With 2 Edges 3 Edges 4 Edges 5 Or More F5 Material Default Hole Random 10 20 90 Short Edges Click on the box to the right to specify how short Id Select By offers a wide variety of
54. e The last three icons represent quick change display toggles They are Perspective Orthogonal Ground Plane On Off and Reference Axes On Off DRAFT D DRAFT 2 5 The Status Bar At the bottom of the Wings3D Workspace below the Icon Bar is the Status Bar This is where Wings passes messages to you Keep an eye on the Status Bar as you model for it will give you context sensitive help as you go Figure 5 The Status Bar Here the status bar is telling us that a left mouse click L will select an element a right mouse click R will bring up a menu and a middle mouse click will allow you to tumble the object on screen It further explains that modifier keys plus the middle mouse click will let you track across the scene and dolly the camera in and out These instructions will change based on what you are doing and what you have selected 2 6 Dialog Boxes Occasionally you will need to enter values via keyboard as input parameters to perform some action in Wings This is done via pop up dialog boxes Preferences are entered via a large form dialog while numeric inputs for modeling commands are done via small pop up dialog boxes The preferences dialog box comes up when you select Preferences found in the Edit Menu When in the Preferences dialog you can click or Tab from field to field type in your preference setting or turn on off toggles with the mouse If you do not want to make any changes after selecting an item you can dismiss t
55. e FACE MENU TESSELATE QUADRANGULATE Takes each selected face in turn and quadrangulates those faces that contain five or more edges Quadrangulation means to divide into convex quadrilaterals sometimes this can t always be done so some triangles may remain The quadrangulation is supposed to be good in some technical sense VERTEX MENU TWEAK Puts Wings in a special mode for quickly editing vertex positions After invoking the tweak command the current selection mode and selection is saved Then you may click on and drag one vertex at a time The vertex moves in the plane parallel to the view plane the same as move free You may do camera operations in between dragging vertices but nothing else A right mouse button click exits tweak mode and restores the saved selection and selection mode Torus Plug in by Anthony D Agostino scorpius Link http ourworld compuserve com homepages scorpius uvtorus zip Description This plug in enables Wings to generate three types of tori a standard torus and two variations like those included with LightFlow It allows the user to specify the major and minor radius as well as the U and V resolution For the two variations a loop and loop radius can also be specified along with other parameters for finer control DRAFT 105 DRAFT Installation Unzip the archive in the Wings3d directory Usage Find the new primitives in the object creation menu Hint To keep faces square make sure
56. e facsimile of a tooth But the idea here was not to build a meaningful model but to get you used to the Wings3D user interface You should be fairly comfortable with it now and ready to go on to the Dog House Tutorial Quick Tip The Nature of Normals Assuming the reader may be new to 3D modeling as well as to Wings3D it may be useful to explain what a normal is and why they are useful in commands such as Move Normal Simply put a Normal is a vector that extends outward perpendicular to a graphic element Faces edges and vertices all have normals So when we move a face along its normal we will move it out along a line that extends from its center outward like a flag pole sticking up from the ground DRAFT 11 DRAFT Bevel Dissolve Collapse Hardness Loop Cut Turn i Optimized Turn Shift T Figure 9 Working with the Wings interface DRAFT 12 DRAFT 3 2 Your First Real Model a Dog House If you still have your finger exercise up do a File New Don t bother to save the tooth unless you really want it Now let s build a dog house Start with a primitive cube Select the lower and upper edge on one of the sides Then Connect them remember to right click to bring up the Edge menu Hit the Space Bar to deselect the new edge Repeat the operation on the opposite side of the cube You should have something similar to that shown in Figure 10 a Select the three vertical edges on one of the sides Connect Hit the Sp
57. e standard Vertex Operations menu As with standard scaling you must have at least two vertices in your initial selection to have any effect VERTEX EXTRUDE LMB Select elements to define the vector Right Mouse Button RMB Execute the operation and Alt Right Mouse Button Alt RMB to bring up the options sub menu As with Move first define the vector to extrude on with the LMB then execute with the RMB To bring up the options menu Alt RMB This is where you can access magnets while working with vectors Note that the Middle Mouse Button MMB can be used to dolly the camera while working Subsequent extrusions can be made about the newly defined vector by choosing Last Axis from the standard Vertex Operations menu VERTEX FLATTEN LMB Select elements to define the vector Right Mouse Button RMB Execute the operation and Alt Right Mouse Button Alt RMB to bring up the options sub menu As with Move first define the vector to flatten to with the LMB then execute with the RMB To bring up the options menu Alt RMB This is where you DRAFT 96 DRAFT can access magnets while working with vectors Note that the Middle Mouse Button MMB can be used to dolly the camera while working Subsequent flatten operations can be made using the newly defined vector by choosing Last Axis from the standard Vertex Operations menu 5 5 2 Edge Operations with Advanced Menus EDGE MOVE LMB Select elements to define the vector Right Mouse
58. e that the number keys on the main keyboard can be used in lieu of the Cut command The keys allow for an edge to be cut into 2 10 0 being 10 segments by the simple press of a key EDGE MENU CONNECT C New edges are created that connect the selected edges together Multiple edges can be connected at a time EDGE MENU BEVEL Creates a bevel or chamfer on selected edges If used on an edge in the middle of a flat face Bevel will open up a new face within the original face on the same plane Bevels interact with one another so that if you have adjacent edges selected and then Bevel them the new chamfered edges will join properly Many renderers do not work well with large flat straight edged surfaces causing artifacts to show up in textures and cast shadows These side effects can be reduced or even completely eliminated if you apply a very slight bevel to all such harsh edges Slight bevels will also help maintain the objects shape when you subdivide the object with the Smooth command EDGE MENU DISSOLVE Bksp Dissolve can be used to eliminate unwanted edges to refine your model or in preparation for other commands Be careful in the use of Dissolve for it can destroy the topological relationships between elements and thus the model very easily Quick Tip Creating round eyes from square holes You can create roundish eyes from the results of a Vertex Bevel by using a combination of Edge Dissolve and Face Smooth comm
59. ect D Edit Repeat D Repeat Drag E Edge Mode F Face Mode G Select Edge Ring I Select Similar I Select Inverse L Select Loop L Select Region L File Merge N File New O Orthographic View O File Open Q tumble track toggle in Mirai and Nendo camera modes Q File Quit R View Reset View R Reset OpenGL S Face Smooth S Body Smooth S File Save S File Save T Edge Turn U View Auto Rotate V Vertex Mode W View Wireframe X X axis view X X axis view Y Y axis view Y Y axis view Z Z axis view Z Z axis view Z Edit Undo Redo Z Edit Redo Z Edit Undo DRAFT 101 Tab View Workmode Tab View Smooth Preview DRAFT Tab Numeric Entry if in Drag Mode Space Select Deselect Select More increase of size sphere of influence for several commands Select Less decrease of size sphere of influence for several commands F3 Select Previous Edge Loop F4 Select Next Edge Loop F5 Select By Faces with 5 or more Bksp Vertex Collapse Bksp Edge Dissolve Bksp Face Dissolve Bksp Body Delete Del Vertex Dissolve Del Edge Dissolve Del Face Dissolve
60. ecular color the color of the reflected light off the surface Specularity a materials setting that controls the size of the brightest area on a surface created by reflection from the surrounding lights i e highlights Spot angle a light setting that controls the shape of the light cone generated by a spot light Spot Falloff a light setting that controls how quickly the light fades from full intensity at the center to completely dark at the edges i e How fuzzy the edge of illumination will be Subdivision creating two or more faces from a single face Subdivision modeling a method of modeling solids by dividing its faces into more 7 From the on line 3D Computer Graphics Dictionary Entry contributed by John Woolfrey DRAFT 113 DRAFT faces and manipulating them to approximate the overall shape of the subject matter Subdivision surfaces the faces that result from subdivision modeling Tessellate the division of one triangle into multiple triangles to achieve a smoother overall form Track moving the camera up and down or back and forth in front of the model Transparency the amount of opacity of a surface Triangulate the automated subdivision of faces with four or more edges into triangles Tumble moving the camera around the model in 3D space Vector a line of directionality Vertex a point as defined in its X Y and Z position in space Widgets tools Winged edge topolo
61. efine the vector Right Mouse Button RMB Execute the operation and Alt Right Mouse Button Alt RMB to bring up the options sub menu As with Move first define the vector to rotate about with the LMB then execute with the RMB To bring up the options menu Alt RMB This is where you can access magnets while working with vectors Note that the Middle Mouse Button MMB can be used to dolly the camera while working Subsequent rotations can be made using the newly defined vector by choosing Last Axis from the standard Vertex Operations menu FACE SCALE LMB Select elements to define the vector Right Mouse Button RMB Execute the operation and Alt Right Mouse Button Alt RMB to bring up the options sub menu As with Move first define the vector to scale along with the LMB then execute with the RMB To bring up the options menu Alt RMB This is where you can access magnets while working with vectors Note that the Middle Mouse Button MMB can be used to dolly the camera while working Subsequent scale operations can be made using the newly defined vector by choosing Last Axis from the standard Vertex Operations menu FACE EXTRUDE LMB Select elements to define the vector Right Mouse Button RMB Execute the operation and Alt Right Mouse Button Alt RMB to bring up the options sub menu As with Move first define the vector to extrude along with the LMB then execute with the RMB To bring up the options menu Alt RMB This is where y
62. el of the skin Of course I did all this stuff for the thumb too Now my attention turned to the hand itself I added four more edge loops that surrounded the hand Then I added edges to form the V shape around each of the tendons This allowed me to Move the edges for the tendons out so that they bump up a little Of course on the palm of the hand I Moved them into the hand a bit to form creases Then I went about the outside of the hand and in between the knuckles and tried to round things up a bit by moving vertices It s not looking too bad at this point in fact the hand is almost complete Figure 28 below shows some final detail I have cut into the palm of the hand the life lines as used in palm readings They were created by doing some Connects on the edges to include the curve of the lines Then the lines were Beveled to turn them into double lines and then the vertices were Moved into the hand to create the necessary creases This completed the modeling portion of the hand Be we are not done In the bottom half of Figure 28 you can see that I have assigned colors to the hand It is important for you to assign colors to your models before you consider your task complete because each different color assignment can be used to great effect in subsequent paint and rendering programs In the bottom half of Figure 28 you can see that I have made two distinct color assignments one for the skin of the hand and one for the nails later when I cre
63. en execute with the RMB To bring up the options menu A RMB This is where you can access magnets while working with vectors Note that the Middle Mouse Button MMB can be used to dolly the camera while working Subsequent moves can be made on the newly defined vector by choosing Last Axis from the standard Vertex Operations menu VERTEX ROTATE LMB Select elements to define the vector Right Mouse Button RMB Execute the operation and Alt Right Mouse Button Alt RMB to bring up the options sub menu As with Move first define the vector to rotate about with the LMB then execute with the RMB To bring up the options menu Alt RMB This is where you can access magnets while working with vectors Note that the Middle Mouse Button MMB can be used to dolly the camera while working Subsequent rotates can be made about the newly defined vector by choosing Last Axis from the standard Vertex Operations menu VERTEX SCALE LMB Select elements to define the vector Right Mouse Button RMB Execute the operation and Alt Right Mouse Button Alt RMB to bring up the options sub menu As with Move first define the vector to scale on with the LMB then execute with the RMB To bring up the options menu Alt RMB This is where you can access magnets while working with vectors Note that the Middle Mouse Button MMB can be used to dolly the camera while working Subsequent scales can be made about the newly defined vector by choosing Last Axis from th
64. en in Orthographic mode since it allows you to use the mouse to move faces in two cardinal directions while locking out movement in the third X constrains movement along the x axis Y constrains movement along the y axis Z constrains movement along the z axis FACE MENU ROTATE Connected faces Regions will rotate about their collective center of mass Non connected faces will rotate about their individual centers of mass Free Will rotate the selected faces in the direction of mouse movement X constrains rotation about the x axis Y constrains rotation about the y axis Z constrains rotation about the z axis FACE MENU SCALE Figure 51 The Face Menu Uniform Scales the face uniformly in all directions at once X Scales the face in the x axis Y Scales the face in the y axis Z Scales the face in the z axis Radial X YZ Scales the face radially from the x axis i e The distances in y and z are effected while x remains constant Radial Y XZ Scales the face radially from the y axis so that the y dimension remains constant Radial Z XY Scales the face radially from the z axis so that the z dimension remains constant FACE MENU EXTRUDE Normal extrudes the selected face s along their normal s By extruding in the negative normal direction you can create indentations into the body of the object such as DRAFT 80 DRAFT a mouth or nostrils F
65. ent example of what I mean Take a look back at Figure 26 then look at Figure 28 While neither hand looks all that great you will have to admit that the hand in Figure 28 is much better than the one in Figure 26 Why is this Because the modeler me in Figure 26 tried to rely on smoothing to make his hand look organic way too soon in the modeling process Whereas the modeler me again in Figure 28 took the time and effort to add in critical detail by connecting vertices and edges tediously moving points up down in and out until the hand looked much more natural without ever even doing a smooth When modelers smooth too soon and don t get the organic form they were hoping for they then often resort to smoothing again to make it look well smoother Some people will smooth a model three or four times to try and get it to look right This is almost always a mistake It creates very bloated models high in polygon count which devour lots of memory needlessly If you take the time to hand craft in details then one smooth is likely to give you the results you want the model will be much more efficient and it will most likely look better too Remember that hand in Figure 28 was never smoothed not even once Often a model will loose desired edges and creases when it is smoothed Fortunately there are a couple of ways to keep sharp details even on a smoothed model You can use Bevel on corners to add a slight chamfer which will help preserve the
66. eration Doing so bring up this little gem Yertex Move A Abort Command Figure 57 Vector Magnets revealed Just click on the little magnet icon and set up magnets as described before You get the power of both vectors and magnets combined Note that for users of Maya camera mode Hold Ctrl instead of Alt while right clicking This is shown in the help prompt in the status line Finally there is the new Face command Lift that becomes available when Advanced Menus are activated The reasons Lift is only available with Advanced Menus is that it requires a secondary selection to use as the pivot for performing the lift And secondary selections is what Advanced Menus are all about Lift is explained in more detail in the following section DRAFT 92 DRAFT 5 4 A little tutorial The first thing you need to do is make sure that you have Advanced Menus activated Under Edit Preferences make sure the Advanced Menus option near the bottom of the form is checked Then click OK to return to the workspace Create a cube and select the top face Then right click in the workspace to bring up the Face Operations Menu Now hover over Move Don t click anything Read the status bar and notice that a left click will use the standard axes whereas a right click will use custom vectors I hope you have realized by now just how important the message passing in the status bar is I cannot emphasis it enough Click the Right Mouse Button to
67. es that connect one edge to the another in series and in the aesthetic sense the controlling elements that define the overall form of the item you are trying to model In the first sense they are important to Wings if for no other reason than if you maintain them well you can breeze up and down the edge loop chain with the F3 and F4 keys to do all sorts of tweaks and adjustments in no time Let them fall apart and you ll be selecting things manually by hand constantly to make such adjustments But it s deeper than that It has to do with how the overall form of the model will eventually turn out whether or not it flows I am told that Bay Raitt first coined the term as a way to create and maintain overall aesthetic control over a model to use them to mimic the structure of the object such as muscles There is a whole section on the use of edge loops in an article written by Bay Raitt and Greg Minter located at http www izware com news indexa446 html I suggest you read it in it s entirety So you can see that there are edge loops and there are edge loops What I mean by that is that there are the physical loops themselves composed of a series of edges all joined together at non pole intersections and there are the edge loops that define the form and nature of your model as Bay Raitt describes in his excellent treatise Learning about the former is relatively easy and is necessary in order to develop the latter But the real power and bea
68. exture mapping applications later on Hide Others the middle option in the menu does not work on the selected object Rather it hides all the rest of them This is very useful when working in a multi object scene As mentioned elsewhere the Object Menu can be used to find objects you ve lost track of or to recenter around a specific object To do this simply choose Object Select and then use Tools Center All to find recenter on the elusive object Currently this is a single column non scrollable list so if your scene has a lot of objects in it they may not all be accessible via this menu DRAFT 65 DRAFT 5 1 7 The Help Menu Help Menu General The Help Menu contains some general information on selected topics They are pretty self explanatory and new users would be advised to read through them They are brief so it won t take very long Getting Started HELP GETTING STARTED Using a Mouse with One or Two Buttons Basics on program navigation French And German Keyboards Light Basics HELP USING A MOUSE Assigning Hotkeys et Oke OR TWO UEC A ee Explains how to tell Wings what OpenGL Info type of mouse you are using About Wings 3D HELP FRENCH AND Figure 44 The Help Menu GERMAN KEYBOARDS Explains how keyboard mapping differ for French and German keyboards HELP LIGHT BASICS Tells you how to create manipulate and use lights in Wings HELP ASSIGNING HOTKEYS Explains how to assign and delete hot keys
69. f auto save 0 and then turn it on again the auto start mechanism won t start until the next time you start wings It s not used for imported files Enabling Auto save also enables the auto backup function of Wings A backup file will be saved each time you save your work i e your previous file DRAFT 49 DRAFT will be stored as FILENAME wings_bup If you want to load a backup file use Open and look for wings_bup files Advanced Menus enables Wings advanced menus operations If advanced menus are turned on then you can use some of the advanced manipulation tools designed by Chris Osgood which have been incorporated into Wings Many of these functions operate on the premise of selecting and using a secondary vector as a reference about which the advanced functions work These vectors are visible if advanced menus are on and their appearance characteristics of width and color are user definable via the Vector Display Width and the Vector Display Color options here Show Debugging Info works as a toggle If activated the amount of memory currently being used by Wings the number of items in the display list and the number of binaries in use are displayed dynamically in the lower left of the workspace Another point Wings keeps your custom preferences even when you upgrade to a new version EDIT COMPATABILITY The Compatibility menu allows the user to toggle on off several options in Wings These are Optimize display lists Use display
70. f the same object or to create holes in an object if the selected faces are on opposite sides of the object FACE MENU BUMP Moves selected faces out along their normals while at the same time creating new faces that meld into the existing geometry via newly beveled faces that are created This is great for building up muscle tone on a model FACE LIFT The Lift Command is only available if Advanced Menus are activated Therefore Lift will be discussed in the Advanced Menus section DRAFT 82 DRAFT FACE PUT ON The Put On command allows you to drop one object onto another much like dropping a box to the ground Select the face you want to put onto another object then select Put On from the Face Menu The Icon Bar will change to show you that you can select a vertex edge or face to put the object on Select the vertex edge or face you want and then Right Click to execute The first object will jump into place right on the vertex edge or face you selected on the second object This can be very useful when you go to weld parts together with the Bridge command Quick Tip Put On and Bridge To perform a bridge like function at the same time select both faces prior to Put On and Store Selection Use Put On then Recall Selection Bridge Cleanup etc This is quite quick especially if on hot keys Tip provided by puzzeled paul FACE MENU MIRROR Mirrors an object around one or more selected faces By choosing multiple
71. faces to perform Mirror multiple mirrors are performed simultaneously in the direction each face points Thus care must be exercised on complex models least self colliding geometry be created The Mirror command is most effective for doing symmetrical modeling wherein only half of a model is built then a mid model face is selected and Mirror used to create the other half of the model If you maintain a clean central edge loop while modeling you can model Mirror continue to model select the middle edge loop and do a Loop Cut Delete the half of the model that needs to be updated and then Mirror again Quick Tip Fix that mirror plane If you use the Loop Cut model and Mirror method described above you will sometimes find that the object does not Mirror back together properly This is often caused by the mirror face getting out of kilter i e non planar while modeling Mirroring in such cases will cause a real mess To fix it up select the mirror face and do a Flatten on the appropriate axis to make it planar again Then do the Mirror to make a whole object from the half Finally select Tools Center All to get the whole thing re centered in the workspace FACE MENU DISSOLVE Bksp Deletes inner faces in a region of faces You can also slice an object into several parts with the Dissolve command by selecting the faces that would separate the parts and doing a Dissolve The parts will still be grouped as one object until you use the Separa
72. frame outline shows the extent of the box Wings can save a single vertex or single edge as a bounding box Bounding Boxes can be very useful for proportionally scaling and moving a large imported object to a desired volume and position and can also be used as reference points with vector magnet and snap to operations VIEW SHOW EDGES In flat shaded mode toggles the edges on off This can be useful for very large models as some otherwise fast graphics cards display edges slowly VIEW SHOW NORMALS A toggle that shows hides the normals of every face edge or vertex depending on which selection mode you are in of the model as a short thick blue line Handy for planning how things will be moved as a visual aid if rotating faces around an edge and to see the normals on an imported model which may have some or all of the normals inverted VIEW SHOW WIREFRAME BACKFACES Lets you see the wireframe from both front and back in wireframe mode This can be very useful when trying to position edges to match up on the inside and outside of a wall for example prior to using Bridge to cut in a window VIEW RESET VIEW R Resets the camera to default location and zoom Great if you get lost VIEW AIM A Points camera directly at selected objects faces edges or vertices Then when you pan and zoom in on the selected the item it will stay centered in the work space If there is no selection the aim point will be reset to the orig
73. from the Wings status bar when the item is selected So if you record an ID number you know you want to come back to you can later Select it then Aim at it to continue working in that area SELECT LIGHTS Will select all the lights in your scene SELECT ALL Vertices Edges Faces Objects Ctrl A Selects all the vertices edges faces or objects dependent on the current selection mode For objects it selects all within the scene that have not been hidden or locked via Object object name Hide or Lock to be discussed later SELECT INVERSE Ctrl Shift D Inverts the selected set That which was selected becomes unselected and vice versa SELECT STORE SELECTION Stores a selection set so that it can be used in conjunction with other selection sets SELECT RECALL SELECTION Recalls a selection set so that it can be used in conjunction with other selection sets SELECT EXCHANGE SELECTION Exchanges a selection set so that it can be used in conjunction with other selection sets The current selection set becomes the stored selection set while the stored selection set DRAFT 59 DRAFT becomes the active one SELECT UNION WITH STORED Creates a new selection set by combining the current selection set with one that has been stored SELECT SUBTRACT WITH STORED Creates a new selection set by subtracting the stored selection set from the current selection set That is all items in common between the two sets are de
74. g the number of sections in the cylinder 16 by default You may change this and then click OK or click Cancel If you do not click on the options button but simply click on the name Cylinder then a default cylinder will be added with 16 sides Cone Sections 16 by default Sphere Sections 16 by default and Slices 8 by default DRAFT 67 DRAFT Torus Sections 16 by default and Slices 8 by default Grid Rows Cols 10 by default There is only one variable so you must have the same number of rows and columns in your grid After it is added you can change this by Dissolving some of the edges or by Connecting some of the edges to suite your needs The default thickness of the grid is 0 2 units Light Adds a light to the scene Wings supports four types of lights Infinite Point Spot and Ambient Infinite lights act much as the sun so that the light rays are essentially parallel as they pass equally throughout the workspace in the same direction A point light is like a light bulb radiating light equally in all directions from it s source A spotlight casts light in a cone shape in a general direction but spreading out so that the rays are not parallel Finally ambient light is the general background light present everywhere It has no locational source nor direction Since ambient light is everywhere from all directions it can cause your model to look completely flat if used by itself So always use ambient
75. gy a method that mathematically defines all elements in a model by their relationships to other elements of the model A requirement of winged edge topology is that each edge is adjacent to exactly two faces Another condition that wings3d imposes not necessarily other programs that use winged edge topology is that a given face cannot contain the same edge more than once Wireframe a mode of viewing an object so that the edges are visible but the faces are not Wire shaded a mode of viewing an object so that the faces are visible as well as the edges that define them Workspace the working area of a program also called a view port DRAFT 114 DRAFT Credits Special thanks to all those that contributed to this effort Contributors include Mike Rickard of www 3dtotal com whose hand model inspired the Hand Tutorial Steve Lapham for the original dog house tutorial on which the one in this manual is based puzzeledpaul for assistance with the Advanced Menu options and for the Experiment with Deformers and the Put On and Bridge Quick Tips Mestela for the Create the Juice Invert Quick Tip Nathan Ryan John Moss Mike Owen Janool and Puzzled Paul for kindly editing this manual John Moss for usability testing And all the kind folks that contributed to my UM Project and Modeling 101 threads on the Wings Board where much of this information comes from A tip of the hat to ambient whisper bjorn Bob19971 bonner3d co
76. haves they way they prefer Can t repeat D it to work Can t repeat Shift D EDIT UNDO REDO Ctrl Z Material 5 Reverses last action The last Undo is Camera Mode redone the last Redo is undone Preferences Compatibility EDIT REDO Ctrl Shift Z Redo undone steps up to 32 steps Purge Undo History Figure 35 The Edit Menu EDIT UNDO Alt Ctrl Z Undo up to the last 32 steps EDIT REPEAT D Repeats the last command Note that the menu will read Cant repeat some command D if the selection mode has been changed and the command doesn t exist in the current selection mode Also if the selection has been cleared no command can be repeated There are limits on what can be repeated Interactive commands commands where you drag such as Extrude will only be repeated up to when the dragging phase starts You will have to do the dragging again even if you want to drag exactly the same distance EDIT REPEAT DRAG Shift D Repeat Drag repeats both the command and the interactive actions taken with the command In other words the mouse drag portion of an extrude for example is also repeated So if your did an Extrude on a face for 3 units selecting the Repeat Drag option Shift D would not only start the Extrude command but would also do the extrude the same distance EDIT MATERIAL Default Hole Brings up the Material Editor This both shows the current material settings for the included colors and allo
77. he Space Bar will deselect everything Let s begin by changing to Vertex Selection Mode click on the Vertex Icon or hit V You should now see your vertices at each corner of the cube Figure 8 a Click on the two top left vertices Note that they become highlighted They are selected Figure 8 b Now right click in the workspace The Vertex Operations menu comes up Figure 8 c It presents you with vertex specific commands only thus limiting the amount of confusion possible This context sensitive method of working is considered one of the strong points of Wings3D and leads to very short learning curve Click or hover on Move Note that a side bar menu of Move specific options comes up Figure 8 d Click on Normal and move the mouse around a little to see what happens Then move it to the right until the distance moved is 1 0 as indicated on the Status Bar at the bottom of the Wings window Left click to end the Move command Your cube should now look like figure 8 e Hit the Tab key to see a Smooth Shaded view of the modified cube Figure 8 f Hit the Tab Key again to go back to Shaded Wireframe mode Figure8 Basic Wings navigation If you did not hit the Space Bar the two vertices should still be selected In fact you should have noticed they were still selected even when we were in Smooth Shaded mode So now switch to Edge Selection Mode hit the E key Notice that all the edges that were adjacent to the selected vertices are now a
78. he export formats see FILE EXPORT Note that the selection can be of any type e g face selection FILE RENDER Renders the workspace using either the default OpenGL render routine or BMRT if you have installed and configured BMRT properly on your computer Support for other rendering engines may be added in the future The Option Button on the right will bring up a sub menu for several parameters you can set You can output to a preview window or to a file you can set the render quality the number of subdivisions performed the background color and check whether or not to render an alpha channel If you want to Keep your render be sure to render to file because Wings will not save a render done to the preview window FILE HISTORY If you have opened files previously you will see their filenames listed below File Export Clicking one will open that file provided it is still in the same location where you had it at the time The history list is currently limited to 4 files FILE EXIT Ctrl Q Exits Wings3D If changes have been made since your last save Wings will ask you if you want to save them before shutting down DRAFT 44 DRAFT 5 1 2 The Edit Menu Edit Menu General The Edit Menu allows for operations which can directly affect your model such as Undo Redo Repeat and Repeat Drag It is eee Cae also where the user can set up their BE SEER operational preferences so that Wings isi ODS looks and be
79. he selected vertex vertices in the direction of mouse movement This can be very useful when in Orthographic mode since it allows you to use the mouse to move vertices in two cardinal directions while locking out movement in the third X constrains movement along the x axis Y constrains movement along the y axis Deform Z constrains movement along the z axis Connect Tighten Bevel Collapse Dissolve Figure 46 The Vertex Operations pop up menu VERTEX MENU ROTATE Vertices will rotate about one center of mass for the entire selected set whether or not they are adjacent Note that this works fundamentally differently than how faces or edges rotate At least two vertices must be selected for this to have any effect at all Free Will rotate the selected vertices in the direction of mouse movement X constrains rotation about the x axis Y constrains rotation about the y axis Z constrains rotation about the z axis VERTEX MENU SCALE Requires two or more vertices to have any effect Scale operations work based on the center of mass of the selected set Uniform Scales the distance between the vertices uniformly in all three directions at once X Scales the distance between the vertices along the x axis Y Scales the distance between the vertices along the y axis Z Scales the distance between the vertices along the z axis Radial X YZ Scales the distance between the
80. he sub menu with the Cancel button Click the OK button to apply the changes To enable all the changes to your preferences click on the OK button in the main dialog box If you want to abandon all your changes click the Cancel button in the main Preferences dialog box to abort the changes you have made Dialog boxes are also used while modeling to allow for numeric entry of parameters To bring up modeling numeric input dialogs hit the TAB key after selecting the function you want to use For example to Move a face by 1 5 units in X select the face right click for the Face Menu choose Move select X and then hit Tab The little dialog box will come up and you can type in 1 5 and hit return DRAFT 6 DRAFT 2 7 Context Sensitive Menus The ease of use of the Wings3D user interface revolves around the implementation of context sensitive menus accessed via the Right Mouse Button If you are familiar with Nendo these will be intuitive to you but if you are a new user or migrating from another modeling system they bear some explanation The specific context sensitive menu that will be presented when the Right Mouse Button is pressed over the Workspace is dependent on which Edit Mode you are currently in as determined by the central icons on the Icon Bar while some element a vertex edge face or object is selected If the Workspace is empty or if no elements are selected you will get the Primitives Menu as illustrated here Wings 3D
81. ill be added to the center of the scene as an unselected object at it s default size You may need to turn other objects visibility off via the Objects Menu in order to find the newly added object The complete list of Cube standard primitives is given below Notice that some primitives have a little box icon to the right of their name This is the Options Box for that primitive If you click on the primitive name you will add a default primitive whereas if you click on the options icon you will be presented with some options number of sections number of slices etc that you can change Tetrahedron Octahedron Octotoad Dodecahedron Icosahedron Cylinder Cone Sphere Torus Grid Light Tetrahedron a four sided object a triangular pyramid Octrahedron an eight sided object __ ________ Octotoad A twenty six sided object unique to Wings Text Designed by Mike roadtoad the host of the Wings discussion Mere forum and added to the Wings primitives as a tribute to the great service this board provided in the further development of Figure 45 The Primitives Wings3D pop up menu Image More Dodecahedron a solid object with twelve faces Icosahedron a solid object with twenty faces Cube Plain and simple What most models start out as Cylinder Click on the options button the little box on the right for the Sections option A Windows dialog box will come up showin
82. in 0 0 0 This is very handy when doing detailed work and for doing high aspect ratio stuff such as a giraffe When working on the head select a face on the head and Aim Then all camera movement will be centered on the head Then when working on the feet select a face there and Aim there and the point of focus will be on the foot VIEW FRAME Shift A View Frame works similarly to Aim except that it adjusts the distance to the selection so that the selection will be visible in the Wings window If there is no selection the distance will be chosen so that all objects will be visible VIEW ORTHOGRAPHIC VIEW 0 DRAFT D3 DRAFT Toggles orthographic perspective views on off Orthographic views are the same as those traditionally used for engineering or technical drawing purposes i e front side and plan views Since there is essentially no single point of view as in perspective all lines and faces are seen in their true lengths and shapes provided they lie on a plane that is at right angles to the viewing direction This can offer an advantages when moving or editing geometry that for example bulges out towards the viewer The use of Orthographic View is well married with the use of Move Free allowing you to freely move selected items while automatically constraining such movement to only two directions at a time VIEW SCENE LIGHTS Turns on any lights you may have added to the scene via the Lights primitive VI
83. in Wings3D Figure 44 The Help Menu HELP ADVANCED MENUS Tells you how to turn on the advanced menus and why you would want to HELP OPENGL INFO Tells you some basic information about your graphics card and how it handles some of the OpenGL properties Could be useful information to include if you report a bug that deals with how Wings displays things on your system HELP ABOUT Displays the current revision number for Wings3D DRAFT 66 DRAFT 5 2 The Context Sensitive Menus The key to the Wings3D user interface is the use of context sensitive pop up menus These menus are accessed by right clicking in the workspace There are a total of five context sensitive menus the Primitives Menu the Vertex Menu the Edge Menu the Face Menu and the Body Menu or Object Menu not to be confused with the Objects Menu on the Main Menu Depending on what is selected different menus will pop up presenting the user with operations that are applicable to the current situation only In this way the interface is kept clean and simple a joy to work with compared to many overly complex user interfaces found in some graphics and modeling packages 5 2 1 The Primitives Menu Primitives Menu General To bring up the Primitives Menu right click on the empty workspace or on a workspace where nothing is selected You will be presented with a list of available primitives to add to your workspace Left click on one of the primitives to add it It w
84. ing Vector Display Auto Rotate Length 1 0 Angle 1 0 Width 12 0 Delay ms 60 Color E Axes Miscellanous M Show Axis Letters Auto save interval min 5 X Color E X Color 7 m Advanced Menus Y Color ij Y Color i Show Debugging Info Z Color Mf z Color _ Figure 38 The Preferences Menu Wings allows the user to set numerous user interface preferences This is accomplished via a preference dialog sheet which is accessed by selecting Preferences from the Edit Menu When the dialog sheet comes up set each preference as desired then click OK to apply them and dismiss the sheet If you change your mind or don t want to set any preferences click the Cancel button to dismiss the dialog sheet without applying them Above is a picture of the dialog sheet as it is set in my working version of Wings Note that by clicking on any of the color boxes a sub menu will pop up that allows you to set the colors interactively via RGB slider bars or by typing in individual vales for red green and blue These settings are likewise set or abandoned via clicking on the OK or Cancel buttons respectively Vertex Display sets the size of the vertices on the screen in pixels It is sometimes handy to increase vertex sizes to even as much as 12 16 pixels for doing screen grabs DRAFT 48 DRAFT to help clarify a point on a discussion forum or in a tutorial Edge Display sets the size thickness of the edges on the screen in pixel
85. its Normal Free or in the X Y or Z directions only 54 b shows the result of moving the vertex along X by 0 5 units Now take a look at panel 54 c where Advanced Menus have been turned on and compare it to panel 54 a Notice two things immediately First the arrowheads in 54 a have become small dots in 54 c Second the messages on the status bar have changed dramatically Be sure to pay attention to the status bar when modeling in Wings especially when you have Advanced Menus on for very important instructions are given there In this case the status bar is telling you that a Left mouse click L will allow you to move along the standard axis just like normal but that a Right mouse click R will allow you to select a user defined axis to move along In panel 54 c we have clicked the Right mouse button and are now presented with a new interface which will allow us to make our secondary selections which in turn will define our new axis often referred to as a vector Notice that the icon bar has changed to indicate that you can select vertices edges or even faces to define this vector and the status bar is giving you new instructions Panel 54 d Make your selections you can use more than one element to define the vector with the Left mouse button and then Execute with the Right mouse button Panel 54 e shows the newly defined axis as a thick blue line passing through the vertex we chose as the vector Finally panel 54 f shows the result of a
86. l So we left click on Move which brings DRAFT 91 Influence Radius up the Move menu with magnets enabled Then we 1 0 Cancel hover over the magnet icon Distance Route next to the X option and read the status line The status bar Falloff tells us that we must use the o Bell Dome o Straight o Spike left mouse button to define an I area of influence or fall off Figure 56 The Influence Menu Numeric entry of the magnetic zone for the magnet to affect fall off zone is accessed via the Middle mouse button that a Middle mouse button click would allow us to enter a numeric radius as seen in Figure 56 and that a Right mouse button would use the last radius used We then use the Left mouse button and select a set of vertices not too far from the initial selection in this case three one hidden from our current view which results in a big blue dot as seen in panel 55 c This dot indicates the center of the extent of our fall off zone Now the status bar is giving new instructions specifically that you can begin the magnetic move with the Right click of the mouse Panel 55 d shows the result of doing a magnetic Move Keep in mind that you can use of the Middle mouse button to dolly around during this operation to get a good look at things as you go Shortest o Midpoint o Surface Further more you can combine these two types of operations You can define a vector and then Alt Right Click to bring up a Vector Magnet op
87. l be covered in this section individually 5 1 1 The File Menu File Menu General The File Menu contains file handling options most of which are common to almost all New Ctr1 N applications but some warrant a little Open Ctrl 0 discussion Each option is described in its own Merge CtrltL section below Save Ctrl S Save As Ctrl Shift S Save Selected File New Ctrl N Default when starting the program giving you a clear workspace to work in When invoked later Wings will ask if you want to save your Inport changes with the standard Yes No Cancel Export options If you answer No Wings3D will delete all objects in a current workspace Export Selected Render File Open Ctrl O 15m inchain wings Will load a previously saved wings model into styS wings the workspace When invoked Wings will ask somepig wings if you want to save your changes with the 15m inc lock wings standard Yes No Cancel options If you answer No Wings3D will present you with a File Open Eei CIPRA dialog box You can then navigate to your file Figure 34 The File Menu and load it by typing in the name or double clicking on it from the list of available models If you cancel at this point Wings will keep what was in your workspace otherwise all objects in your workspace will be deleted before the requested file is opened DRAFT 41 DRAFT File Merge Ctrl L Adds the contents of another wings file to your current scene When in
88. l frequently do a Smooth operation while modeling just to get a feel for how things are going then Undo to continue modeling You may find that technique useful too And a Smooth will help you isolate and fix problems in your model caused by bad geometry that some times lurks in unexpected places Hit the Space Bar to make sure nothing is selected Now left click on the Smooth Shaded Icon the rightmost icon on the left set of icons on the Icon Bar to see what our un smoothed hand looks like Yikes Hit the Tab key to leave Smooth Shaded Mode Note that you can enter and leave Smooth Shaded either way via the icons or via the Tab key Now select the hand again and do a Smooth Hit the Space Bar to deselect the hand and then hit the Tab key to see the smoothed hand in smooth shaded mode Figure 26 The Smooth operation The hand in Flat Shaded Mode top left and in Smooth Shaded Mode top middle With the hand selected do one Smooth operation top right You can see the results of the Smooth in Flat Shaded Mode on the bottom image set here the left one while the hand is still selected On the far right is a smooth shaded view of the hand following the Smooth operation While it looks much more organic it still appears to be far from natural DRAFT 29 DRAFT Not very impressive Now undo the smooth by selecting the Undo function from the Edit Menu Do this as often as needed to get back to the un smoothed version of the h
89. ladly include any other plug ins that I am made aware of Draw Loop Plug in by clacos Link http membres lycos fr dong3d plugsdone Installation Place in the wings3d plugins commands directory Description Adds the Draw Loop command to the Tools menu When invoked Usage When invoked Extended Renderman Output Plug in Additions made by Danni Coy rgcoy midcoast com au Link http www midcoast com au rgcoy hobbies wings html Installation Run the windows installer no special requirements Description Adds 3 new menu entries to the export and export selected menus RM Subdivision Mesh rib Exports each Object to Renderman compliant Subdivision Mesh with a default lighting and material setup Materials are based on the first material found Hard edges are converted to creases Faces with the Hole material applied are converted to holes If the model has UV coordinates these are written and Texture maps if any are exported as TIFF Note that the renderer must support facevarying option for UV s to work RM Points Polygons rib Exports each object to Renderman compliant Points Polygons Mesh with a default lighting and material setup Materials are based on the first material found If the model has UV coordinates these are written and Texture maps if any are exported as TIFF Note that the renderer must support facevarying option for UV s to work RM Unoptomised Polygons rib Exports each object to Renderman
90. lights in conjunction with other light sources Lights in Wings are further explained in the Help Menu under Light Basics Light parameters are adjusted by selecting a light and then right clicking to bring up the Light Operations Menu Image The Image Primitive is simply a plane that has an image pasted on it The image can be a BMP TIFF or Targa file all of which must be 24 bits deep Simply select Image then select the type of image from the sub menu then navigate to the image file you want to use Be aware that Wings works with images sized by powers of 2 1024x1024 or 64x128 for example This does not mean that Wings will not load your image if it is not so sized but it will pad it to be powers of two prior to displaying it This should be transparent to the user Once you load the image a plane will appear centered on the screen standing up vertical on the Z axis You can use this as a reference plane to assist you in your modeling You can use two Image primitives to perform a modeling technique know as Rotoscoping where one image is from the front and the other from the side of a given subject You can then arrange the image planes into an L shape and use Orthogonal views to sculpt your model to fit the images Text Adds a text string as a 3D object If you click on the box to the right of Text you will get a pop up options box Here you can enter your text string the name of any TrueType font you have on your system the directory
91. long with the LMB then execute with the RMB To bring up the options menu Alt RMB This is where you can access magnets while working with vectors Note that the Middle Mouse Button MMB can be used to dolly the camera while working Subsequent moves can be made using the newly defined vector by choosing Last Axis from the standard Vertex Operations menu BODY ROTATE LMB Select elements to define the vector Right Mouse Button RMB Execute the operation and Alt Right Mouse Button Alt RMB to bring up the options sub menu As with Move first define the vector to rotate about with the LMB then execute with the RMB To bring up the options menu Alt RMB This is where you can access magnets while working with vectors Note that the Middle Mouse Button MMB can be used to dolly the camera while working Subsequent rotations can be made using the newly defined vector by choosing Last Axis from the standard Vertex Operations menu BODY SCALE LMB Select elements to define the vector Right Mouse Button DRAFT 99 DRAFT RMB Execute the operation and Alt Right Mouse Button Alt RMB to bring up the options sub menu As with Move first define the vector to scale along with the LMB then execute with the RMB To bring up the options menu Alt RMB This is where you can access magnets while working with vectors Note that the Middle Mouse Button MMB can be used to dolly the camera while working Subsequent scale operations can be made u
92. ls to your liking Select all the roof top faces Right click for the Face Operations menu and choose Set Material You will be prompted for a material name Call it Roof The Material Editor will come up Change the settings until you get a roof color you like on the preview globe on the left Then click OK DRAFT 19 DRAFT While you can see the materials on the shaded wireframe in Workmode you can get a better idea of how things will look in Smooth Shaded Mode To see the results deselect the roof faces and hit the Tab key for a shaded preview You should see the new roof color Now repeat material assignments as you did for the roof until your dog is happy Figure 16 c Figure 16 Completing the project Select the two circles a and position your model so that you can see it from the front with all the bottom edges lined up b Then Extrude Y to create the columns After assigning materials your model should resemble the one depicted in c Remember to hit the Tab key to see the colors in Smooth Shaded mode Save the model Optionally Export the model into one of the formats your renderer can accept and render the dog house to see how it turned out Here is mine Figure 17 Figure 17 The dog house rendered in Vue d Esprit DRAFT 20 DRAFT 3 3 Creating A Hand an intrinsically organic shape Now that you have the basics down you can try to model something more challenging than a dog house Wings3D uses a modeling technique
93. ment settings VIEW GROUND PLANE Toggles the ground plane visibility on off Each grid cell of the ground plane represents one unit in Wings A unit can be whatever you want it to be VIEW AXES Toggles axes visibility on off VIEW WORKMODE Tab Toggles the display between work mode and smoothed mode VIEW SMOOTH PREVIEW Shift Tab Sets the view mode to shaded and performs one level of smoothing on a temporary basis so that you can see what your model will look like after smoothing You cannot model in this mode VIEW WIREFRAME Sets the display mode to wireframe If you want to extrude a face into the model set your model to wireframe mode first and you will be able to see Sets the display mode to solid flat shading Toggles between smooth shaded view and solid view on your model In smooth shaded view the materials being used become visible This is sometimes referred to as a Wings render VIEW TOGGLE WIREFRAMED SHADED W Toggles between wireframe and shaded views of the model This is a handy toggle to use in conjunction with the Tab key Tab will show you a temporarily smooth shaded version of your model which you can then overlay with the wireframe by hitting the W key This DRAFT 52 DRAFT wire on smoothed view can be helpful to see how edges affect the overall form of the subject while modeling VIEW SHOW SAVED BB Shows hides the bounding box set in the Tools Menu If set on a dashed wire
94. methodology to choose selection sets These selections can be stored as discussed later and then used in conjunction with other selection sets via Union Subtract and Intersection also discussed later Hard Edges selects all Hard Edges in the selected object Vertices with 2 3 4 and 5 selects faces that have the given number of vertices as DRAFT 38 DRAFT designated by the number This is helpful in trying to maintain quads Select By Faces With 5 Or More has a hot key F5 so that you can quickly find any non quad or tri sided polygons Such polygons can cause problems in some 3D modeling and rendering packages and should therefore be resolved Material is used to select faces by their assigned materials Any user defined material will automatically be added to the Material sub menu and become available for selection Random 10 90 selects a random subset of the current selection type vertices edges faces or objects for manipulation Short Edges selects any edges that are too short as determined by the option box to the right of the command Short edges are often responsible for display anomalies and difficulties in continued modeling Often these edges will be so short and located such that you can not see them even after selecting them You can Extrude them to find them or simply Collapse them to eliminate them Id You can also select any item vertex edge or face by its ID number which can be gleaned
95. move along that axis also by 0 5 units As you DRAFT 89 Figure 54 Standard vs Advanced Menus can see you get very different results Note that you can use another object completely on which to make your secondary selections meaning that you can define virtually any vector with a bit of set up It is also handy to note that if you only need one selection to define your vector you can use a single right click to select it and then drag to execute all DRAFT 90 DRAFT at once But that is not all that Advanced Menus do for you By enabling Advanced Menus you also get access to the magnets in Wings Remember in the example above we Right clicked on the Move command to enable secondary selections We said if we left click we would get to work on standard axis only But we also would see the magnets suddenly appear as seen in Figure 55 below Figure 55 The Wings magnets With Advanced Menus enabled on many of the commands a Left click will reveal the Wings magnets as seen in Figure 55 a above If you click on the actual command Normal Free X Y or Z you will work as normal without the magnets But if you click on the little magnet icon to the right of the command then you will enable the magnets Also notice that important instructions are being passed to you via the status bar once again In panel 55 a we have a vertex selected that we want to move but we want the movement to affect some of the surrounding vertices as wel
96. n multiple objects can be manipulated at the same time SELECT REGION Shift L Select Region works in conjunction with a properly selected closed edge loop Given a properly selected edge loop Select Region will then select all the faces contained by that loop If a single edge is selected or if the loop is not closed then all the faces become selected SelectIRegion will also handle multiple loops For instance you can select both hands or both legs SelectIRegion and SelectIEdge Loop are the inverse of each other SELECT EDGE LOOP L Selects edges that flow in a line until a pole is encountered A pole is a non 4way intersection i e it has 3 edges or 5 or more edges joining at a single vertex SELECT EDGE RING G DRAFT 36 DRAFT Selects a set of edges that run between two edge loops These cross edges are sometimes referred to as struts If you think of the lines of latitude on a globe as edge loops then the lines of longitude between any two parallels would constitute an Edge Ring In Wings simply select one such strut then Select Edge Ring and the entire set of edges will become selected until the model is completely encircled or until a pole is encountered This can result in big time savings when modeling SELECT PREVIOUS EDGE LOOP F3 This will step down the model from one closed edge loop to the next deselecting the originally selected loop in favor of the next one it encounters Repeated use
97. n and immediately left click without moving the mouse to lock it in place You probably will not be able to successfully select the new object due to the underlying original and may have to use the Hide function in the Body Menu to hide the parent object so that you can work with the new object If you have created a new object from non abutting faces and want to work with them as separate objects then use the Separate command to break them into their component parts FACE MENU FLATTEN Normal X Y Z Last Axis Default Axis Region Sometimes faces can become non planar as you work with your model especially if you Move vertices This can cause problems latter One way to fix a non planar face is to Flatten it i e get all of its vertices onto the same plane Smoothing the model will also create planar faces but if you do not want to smooth your model you can Flatten offending faces It is also good for setting up geometry for further manipulation so that DRAFT 81 DRAFT extrusions go in the direction you want them to go for example If you have a default axis defined see Tools Set Default Axis you can flatten to that axis or you can flatten to the last axis used Flatten Region will flatten the edge loop the boundary between selected and non selected faces of the selected faces Note that the vertices on the edge loop become planar not the faces contained therein FACE MENU INSET This create a new face of the same
98. n enables Wings to generate four types of planes In addition to a standard plane it can create three variations wavy lumpy and a sombrero surface The user can specify the resolution and size the variations also allow one to specify the number of lumps waves wave height etc Installation Unzip the archive in the Wings3d directory Usage Find the new primitives in the object creation menu POV Ray Plug in by This Guy handle Link http www midcoast com au rgcoy hobbies wings html Installation tell them how Description The current version supports Mesh2 meshes to either Povray 3 5 or Megapov 0 7 Fixed a few problems including a conflict with either AutoUV or Draw Loop Fixed support for textures A small bug still remains temporary images are not deleted while rendering Usage How to use it Slide Plug in by clacos Link http membres lycos fr dong3d plugsdone Installation Place in the wings3d plugins commands directory Description Adds the Slide command to the Tools menu Usage Pick a vertex to slide and then choose an edge to slide it along DRAFT 104 DRAFT Text AI Triangulate Quadrangulate Tweak Plug in by Howard Trickey howardt Link http cm bell labs com cm cs who howard wplug ins html Description This plug in allows you to add 3D text via TrueType fonts import Adobe Illustrator ai files Triangulate Quadrangulate and Tweak your models Installation Extract it in your main
99. n facet and smooth subdivision on a simple cube To achieve the facet type subdivision all the edges on the left hand cube were made Hard prior to the Smooth operation This kept the cube from smoothing out as the one on the right did Smooth subdivision is one of the strong features of Wings as it lends itself quite nicely to very organic looking models Figure 30 Subdivision The cube on the left was facet subdivided while the cube on the right was smooth subdivided Met form subd sion is not supported by Wings Briefly stated metaforms shows the smoothed model with the un smoothed cage floating about it Wings currently does not fully support this modeling method but it is moving in that direction To get a feel for it create an object press the Shift Tab key combination to smooth preview it and then hit the W key to lay the wireframe on top of it This is similar to metaforms but with metaforms you would be able to specify the number of smooth levels and manipulating the un smoothed cage would give immediate feedback to the smoothed model so you could see how changes will affect the final form But since Wings does not yet support this feature we will not spend any further time discussing it here One of the mistakes new modelers often make is subdividing their models too soon 1 3D Modeling and Surfacing by Bill Fleming DRAFT 35 DRAFT and or too often Our hand exercise in the previous section provides an excell
100. nd down a chain of edge loops to do rapid model adjustments And of course there is the all important central edge loop The central edge loop is important if you want to use Mirror or Virtual Mirror to speed up your modeling If you maintain your central edge loop the loop that runs entirely around the long axis of your model then you will be able to model on one half of the model Loop Cut off the other half and then Mirror which will cut your modeling time in half By maintain I mean to keep the edges straight as an arrow true and to not have it interrupted by poles The first point is an absolute requirement or very strange things will happen when you Mirror You can work around the second point If when you go to select the loop it only partially encircles your model because of pole interruptions you can manually select other parts to get a full loop for the Loop Cut operation Keep in mind that quads faces with four edges do not ensure the absence of poles To demonstrate this create a cube and smooth it once Now select an edge one level down from the top vertex Do a Select Edge Loop The selected loop will not run all the way around the object despite the fact that it is made entirely of quads Examine where it stopped and you will see that there is indeed a three edged pole present where it stopped Figure 31 Connect that vertex to the top most vertex thus creating two triangles and try the experiment again The edge loops now
101. nd there are two links that may help you understand the winged edge data structure of Wings that I would like to point you to The first one is The Winged Edge Data Structure by Dr Ching Kuang Shene This is the reference used by Bjorn Gustravson to develop Wings Link http www cs mtu edu shene COURSES cs3621 NOTES model winged e html And you can find winged edge topology illustrated from a geographic point of view here Link http www bequia swinternet co uk edgeex html DRAFT 107 DRAFT 7 2 Polygon Modeling Links IZware Nendo download and discussions Mirai discussions Nendo is a fantastic modeler and was the inspiration for Wings The demo is fully functional except for the ability to export to other formats and the full version is only 99 Sadly hard to get Link www izware com Amim 8or Anim8or download tutorials and discussions Link www anim8or com The Human Head a reference for 3D artists by Ron Lemen This is not really a subdivision modeling tutorial but a drawing tutorial But it will help teach you the proper proportions and shapes needed for modeling a head Link http www anticz com heads htm 3D Animation Workshop by Robert Polevoi An excellent series of lessons on all things 3D The topics range from general 3D concepts to application specific techniques Lessons 51 52 and 53 deal with subdivision modeling with Nendo but take the time to read some of the earlier lessons 1
102. ns the camera to point in same direction as selected elements Wings then orientates the model such that you are viewing along the selected element s normal This can be very useful if a single flat face is selected and Align to Selection is used The face is then seen in its true shape since the viewer is looking at it from a right angle Selecting geometry forming that face edges or vertices and using Move gt Free for example allows movement on the same plane as the face This keeps the face flat which is required for clean geometry This is also useful in situations where you want to maintain a reference face so that other geometry not linked to that reference face can easily be moved on planes parallel to the reference face To accomplish further editing of this external geometry select the reference face use Align To Selection and the model re aligns to the correct position For example Align To Selection can be used on a flat face then an edge can be Cut by 2 to create a new vertex It is then possible to slide the new vertex along the edge to a new position The edge can either be kept straight via vector moves discussed later or distorted by moving the vertex accordingly to form a new apex In either case by first using Align To Selection the face will remain flat Similar operations can be preformed via other methods as well such as the Slide plug in which will be discussed later VIEW AUTO ROTATE U This will
103. nteresting results In my opinion ensuring you have sufficient sections along the length of your model is essential for producing satisfactory results For non organic technical models careful choice and matching of the number of linear and radial sectors can result in geometry that offers considerable scope for polygon reduction after twisting is complete Experimentation and keeping away from prime numbers can pay dividends in this area if low polygon counts are needed Rotating the model off a main axis and twisting at right angles to the models main axis can often prove an entertaining and fruitful exercise If you want to dirty up an object that s been twisted for maybe a more organic look try selecting sections of the twisted item rather than the whole and re applying a bit more twist Taper operates from the center of of the selection set along the axis chosen One end will Taper up while the other end Tapers down Like twist experiment with selecting parts rather than the whole of the model it is quite easy to get useful shapes this way Successive applications of taper should also be tried e g tapering a multi sectioned cylinder 100 in Y and then repeating the op will produce a concave spike like a Chinese hat whereas if you perform the second taper by 100 you get a beer barrel shape Tip ae by Puzzled Paul DRAFT 19 DRAFT 5 2 3 The Edge Operations Menu Edge Operations Menu General If one or m
104. okepuss dgud donkey32 Earlyriser HellBorn howardt KayosIII Mark Whittemore mestela Nathan Hauck nyugfu puzzledpaul roadtoad SheridanBoy Vagabond WingsOne and anyone else I may have inadvertently overlooked I am forever in your debt This document was entirely written and edited in StarOffice Rev 5 x and OpenOffice Rev 1 0 1 Screen captures were sized and edited with PaintShop Pro Rev 6 x jon DRAFT 115 DRAFT References 3D Animation Workshop by Robert Robert Robert Polevoi http www webreference com 3d indexa html INT Media Group Incorporated 2002 3D Computer Graphics Dictionary Various authors http oss ckk chalmers se dictionary Chalmers Medialab 2000 3D Modeling and Surfacing Bill Fleming Academic Press 1999 Rapid Evaluation of Catmull Clark Subdivision Surfaces Jeffrey Bolz and Peter Schroder Web3D 02 2002 The Winged Edge Data Structure Dr Ching Kuang Shenefound Michigan Technological University Principles of Three Dimensional Computer Animation Revised Edition Michael O Rourke W W Norton amp Company 1998 Digital Sculpting Techniques by Bay Raitt and Greg Minter Nichimen Graphics 1998 DRAFT 116
105. ollowing a Face Smooth since that type of smooth operation can result in adjoining n gon faces DRAFT 85 DRAFT 5 2 5 The Object Operations Menu Object Body Operations Menu General If one or more objects bodies are selected right clicking in the workspace will bring up the Object Operations Menu This will allow you to perform functions unique to body manipulations Move BODY MENU MOVE Rotate Free Will move the selected object or scale objects in the direction of mouse movement Flip This can be very useful when in Orthographic mode since it allows you to use the mouse to Invert move objects in two cardinal directions while locking out movement in the third X constrains movement along the x axis Y constrains movement along the y axis Z constrains movement along the z axis Tighten Smooth Combine Separate Cleanup BODY MENU ROTATE Auto Smooth Free Will rotate the selected object s in T agaaga o the direction of mouse movement Duplicate l Telete X constrains rotation about the x axis Y constrains rotation about the y axis Mode Z constrains rotation about the z axis Strip Texture Wn S o BODY MENU SCALE UV Mapping experinental Uniform Scales the object uniformly in all Figure 53 The Body or Object Menu directions at once X Scales the object along the x axis Y Scales the object along the y axis Z Scales the object along the z axis Radial
106. ome to a point where undoing will become a problem if further work does not pan out or at a point that you want to come back to for expanding in a different direction altogether File Save Selected Allows you to save the currently selected object or objects in the workspace as a wings file under a new file name A Save dialog box will come up allowing you to specify the path and file name to be saved File Revert Clears all work done since last save and restores last saved It does not clear the Undo history The idea is that you should be able to undo a Revert if did it by mistake Thus there is no question asking for confirmation File Import Nendo ndo 3D Studio 3ds import scale export scale ok cancel Adobe Illustrator ai Wavefront obj import scale export scale ok cancel Import files of selected format in current project Wings supports the importation of DRAFT 42 DRAFT Nendo ndo 3DS Max 3ds Adobe Illustrator ai and Wavefront obj format files Import has no limits on file size other than system resources Import implicitly always merges therefore you can add non native format models to your scene without loosing your current work The 3DS Max and Wavefront import commands both have option boxes on the right of the menu item The option boxes allow you to specify an Import Scale This is useful since many models will be very small or absolutely huge when imported in
107. ome windows as seen in Figure 11 a Move the front three edges that run horizontally across the front of the main cube down in Y by 0 50 to square up the door as shown in 11 b Then select the two windows and Scale them down in Y by 0 50 units to square them up as well You should have something similar to that shown in Figure 11 c Select the door windows and the three floor faces as shown in 11 e Now Intrude to hollow out the shell of the dog house Figure 11 f shows the results of the Intrude operation The thickness of the walls is determined by how much you move the mouse while Intruding Figure 11 More basic construction New faces have been Inset in a The three edges on the front face were then Moved down in Y b to resize the door face The windows are then resized in c Select all the faces that will be used for the Intrude command in e and Intrude The results of the Intrude are shown in f DRAFT 14 DRAFT Select the two edges that go from the side sections to the main roof and Dissolve them Figure 12 a Switch to Vertex Mode Select the two left over vertices on the roof lines and Collapse them Figure 12 b Then select the top face and Inset by 75 Figure 12 c Now Move the inset roof face up in the Y direction for 0 50 units Figure 12 d Now Inset the top face outward by 30 then Extrude it up in Y by 0 25 units Figure 12 e and then Scale it down Uniform by 90 to form a little roof cap The house should resemble
108. on along one of the major axis Orthographic view The view as it appears when in Orthographic View mode causing the scene to not show depth perspective Perspective A graphic technique that creates the illusion of depth on a two dimensional surface Perspective view The view as it appears when the Orthographic View option is turned off Lines not parallel to the viewing plane appear to converge towards an imaginary vanishing point thus creating the illusion of depth Pole anything other than a 4 way intersection of edges 2 3 5 or more edges intersecting Polygon modeling one of the two main modeling techniques wherein an object is subdivided into finer and finer polygons so as to approximate the shape of the intended model Wings3D is a polygon modeler Quadrangulate the automatic subdivision of faces with more than 4 edges into quads wherever possible and triangles when quads are not possible Quadratic a light setting that causes the light to Fall off in a quadratic manner Quads four sided faces Region a set of adjoining faces Shininess a material parameter that causes highlights on the surface Smooth shaded a mode of viewing the model that shows the faces without the edges as if one degree of smoothing has been done Smooth subdivision a method of subdivision modeling that causes the model to smooth out into a more organic form when subdivided as opposed to Facet subdivision Sp
109. on t demand and don t forget to put in that link or image in your post if you read the rules you know what I mean Link http cube phlatt net forums spiraloid DRAFT 108 DRAFT 7 3 UVMapping and Texturing Links UVMapper You can download the free Classic version or buy the new low cost Pro version if this UV mapping mainstay Has a live link to your paint program so that you can see changes to your texture map almost in real time Pro version Link www uvmapper com UltimateUnwrap3D Another mainstay in the UV mapping software area Link http www unwrap3d com Project Dogwaffle free natural paint program with an SDK for plug in developers Link http www geocities com SiliconValley Ridge 7251 cyberop htm The Gimp a very powerful OpenSource paint program Link http www gimp org Infinity Textures seamless texture generation software Very reasonably priced 69 Link http www i tex de 7 4 Rendering Links Air a RIB rendering front end The free version is limited to 4 lights Link http www sitexgraphics com index htm Agsis an OpenSource RIB renderer Link http www agsis com Art of Illusion an OpenSource 3D modeling animation and rendering package written entirely in Java download once run anywhere Now supports scripting Link http www artofillusion org Now3D a freeware rendering package Link http web tiscali it GiulianoComacchiola Eng
110. one But we already defined the radius so what is that for Well you can change the fall off zone radius interactively as you drag by using the plus and minus keys as indicated on the right side of the status bar Go ahead and press the Plus key a couple of times and see what happens After you have the feel for all this adjust the mouse until your D reads 0 50 and your R reads 1 00 again Your grid should now look like mine Figure 58 d Besides the plus minus keys you may have noticed the status bar indicates that the numeric keys 1 2 3 and 4 also do something Furthermore you may have noticed that the 2 option has lt lt braces gt gt around it The braces indicate the type of magnet you currently have implemented in this case Dome There are four types of magnets to choose from Bell Dome Straight and Spike selected by their respective number key So let s see what they look like Work in the other three sectors of our grid and set up and execute a magnet as we did before but this time when dragging out the distance press the number 1 on your keyboard to see the effect of a Bell magnet End with the settings D 0 50 and R 1 00 as before Left click to complete the operation and then hit the Space Bar to clear the selection Repeat the whole works again for Straight and Spike Your final grid should come out looking something like mine Figure 58 e Finally let s combine the effect of Vector Operations and Magnets Choose
111. oom view 3ds Max mode mmb rotate view ctrl mmb translate view alt ctrl mmb zoom view Blender mode mmb rotate view Shift mmb translate view Ctrl mmb zoom view If you don t have a middle mouse button use Alt Imb instead Note that both the Max and Maya modes require a three button mouse Perhaps a quick word on clipping planes is in order here The near and far clipping planes are simply the area in your workspace between which objects or parts of objects remain visible So with a near clipping plane setting of 0 25 any portion of the object that is closer to the camera than 0 25 Wings units will vanish With a setting of 1000 for the far clipping plane any portion of an object greater than 1000 units from the camera will likewise become invisible The most practical implication here is if you want to zoom in very close for detail work you may find the area of interest suddenly disappears To solve DRAFT 47 DRAFT this either zoom out slightly or reduce the near clipping plane setting to something smaller like 0 01 units EDIT PREFRENCES Vertex Display Edge Display OK Unselected Size ME Unselected Width 2 asi Selected Size 5 0 Selected Width 4 Colors Background Text JJ Selection Edges J Hard Edges Wire Edges E Grid Color E Force Axis Aligned Grid Highlighting M Vertices m Edges m Faces Objects Unselected jj Selected E m Smart Highlight
112. op of the Wings window is the Title Bar It identifies the application by name and if there is a previously saved model open displays the name of the model At the far right of the bar are the standard GUI widgets for Minimize Restore and Close a 4 Wings 3D Iof x Figure 2 The Title Bar 2 3 The Menu Bar Below the Title Bar is the Menu Bar Here you will find options common to Wings in general with a few exceptions The exception is the Objects Menu which works only on Objects an object is also know as a Body in Wings Each Menu will be discussed in full in Section 5 The Wings3D Command Reference Guide Figure 3 The Menu Bar 2 4 The Icon Bar There are three sets of Icons at the bottom of the Wings Workspace as illustrated here Figure 4 The Icon Bar The two on the left determine what Display Mode your model is in They are from left to right Wire shaded and Smooth shaded The next four icons display what Edit Selection Mode you are in They are Vertex Edge Face and Body The red highlighting gives you a quick visual key as to just what elements are affected in each mode and the white outline box indicate which mode you are currently in In the above illustration we are in Face selection mode Your Edit Mode will be important when it comes to using any of the modeling tools since most tools are presented in context sensitive menus within the Workspace The context of those menus is determined by the current Edit Mod
113. ore edges are selected right clicking in the workspace will bring up the Edge Context Sensitive Menu This will allow you to perform operations unique to edge manipulations Edge operations Move Rotate EDGE MENU MOVE Scale Normal moves the selected edge edges along their normal SEES Free Will move the selected edge edges in the direction Cut of mouse movement This can be very useful when in Connect Orthographic mode since it allows you to use the mouse to Bevel move edges in two cardinal directions while locking out movement in the third X constrains movement along the x axis CY constrains movement along the y axis Hardness Z constrains movement along the z axis Loop Cut Dissolve Collapse SSS EDGE MENU ROTATE Connected edges will rotate Turn about their collective center of mass Non connected edges Figure 50 The Edge Menu WI rotate about their individual centers of mass Free Will rotate the selected edge edges in the direction of mouse movement X constrains rotation about the x axis Y constrains rotation about the y axis Z constrains rotation about the z axis EDGE MENU SCALE Increases or decreases the length of the selected edges Uniform Scales the selected edges uniformly in all three directions at once X Scales the distance of the edges along the x axis Y Scales the distance of the edges along the y axis Z Scales the distance of
114. orge project page and compile them http www erlang org download html The system requirements in order to run Wings3D are 1 a computer and operating system that can run Erlang OTP and 2 OpenGL Mesa drivers You will need the DRAFT 1 DRAFT following components to run Wings Erlang OTP SDL ESDL Wings3D Download all four packages and compile them in this order Erlang OTP SDL ESDL and then Wings itself last Here are the complete build instructions for Wings from the README assuming that the OTP SDL and ESDL have been built 1 Set the environment variable ESDL_PATH to the root of your ESDL installation Example If you use bash or ksh export ESDL_PATH ldisk bjorn esdl 0 9 0906 If you use csh or tcsh setenv ESDL_PATH ldisk bjorn esdl 0 9 0906 2 Run a GNU compatible make Once Wings has been installed you can start Wings like this erl pa ESDL_PATH ebin MY_WINGS_PATH ebin run wings_start start_halt where you should substitute MY_WINGS_PATH with the actual path to your Wings directory Example erl pa ESDL_PATH ebin Idisk bjorn wings ebin run wings_start start_halt 1 3 Solaris The Solaris installation instructions are the same as for Linux 1 4 Mac The MAC installation instructions are the same as for Linux with the exception that an older version of ESDL is required And now MAC OSX compatible binaries of both ESDL and Wings3D can be found at DRAFT DRAFT ww
115. otate them as a single entity If you scale such a model without first using Combine the parts will either pull away from each other or collide with each other since they all have their own local origins Combine will allow you to scale everything together as if it were all one object because they do indeed become one object Objects need not be touching or even near each other to be combined Object names previously assigned are lost DRAFT 87 DRAFT BODY MENU SEPERATE If two or more objects have been fused via the Combine command this will Separate them into their component parts Former names will not be reestablished Bodies that were separated by a Face Dissolve operation can also be separated into separate bodies BODY MENU CLEANUP This command will find all non intersecting vertices in the model and Collapse them Good for maintaining the topological integrity of the model BODY MENU AUTO SMOOTH This command will find all edges formed by sharp angels and automatically set them to be hard edges Then when you Smooth the object it will retain much of the original form and detail By default the edge will be set to hard if the angle between the faces is more than 60 degrees However you can set the crease angle by clicking on the parameters box to the right on the menu to suite your own needs BODY MENU DUPLICATE Creates a copy of the selected object Moving the mouse before doing another click will move the copy in the de
116. ou can access magnets while working with vectors Note that the Middle Mouse Button MMB can be used to dolly the camera while working Subsequent extrusions can be made using the newly defined vector by choosing Last Axis from the standard Vertex Operations menu FACE EXTRUDE REGION LMB Select elements to define the vector Right Mouse Button RMB Execute the operation and Alt Right Mouse Button Alt RMB to bring up the options sub menu As with Move first define the vector to extrude along with the LMB then execute with the RMB To bring up the options menu Alt RMB This is where you can access magnets while working with vectors Note that the Middle Mouse Button MMB can be used to dolly the camera while working Subsequent extrusions can be made using the newly defined vector by choosing Last Axis from the standard Vertex Operations menu FACE EXTRACT REGION LMB Select elements to define the vector Right Mouse Button RMB Execute the operation and Alt Right Mouse Button Alt RMB DRAFT 98 DRAFT to bring up the options sub menu As with Move first define the vector to extract the region along with the LMB then execute with the RMB To bring up the options menu Alt RMB This is where you can access magnets while working with vectors Note that the Middle Mouse Button MMB can be used to dolly the camera while working Subsequent extractions can be made using the newly defined vector by choosing Last Axis from the stan
117. ou to specify the number of Rows cols Enter 20 and click OK Grids are great for seeing the effects of magnets Select a vertex four in from the Z X corner as shown below Figure 58 a Now Right Click to bring up the Vertex Operations menu Then Left Click on Move to bring up the options sub menu Figure 58 b Click on the little magnet icon to the right of Normal Now read the status bar and notice the icon bar has changed At the right of the status bar Wings is telling you what you need to do while to the left it is telling you how to do it Right now it is telling you that you need to select the magnet influence fall off zone for DRAFT 93 DRAFT the move operation and that you do this by Left Clicking some elements The Icon bar is telling you that those elements can be vertices edges or faces with vertices being the default The fall off zone is defined as a radius from the initial selection point so we only need to pick one other vertex to define it Pick one that is four vertices away from the initial selection Figure 58 c It shows up as a big blue square on the X edge of my grid in this case Notice that the status bar is still telling us that a Right Click will execute the command So let s Right Click now and see what happens when we move the mouse around As you move the mouse around watch the status bar again It will tell you by how much the original vertex is moving but it also tells you the radius of the fall off z
118. our fingers Figure 22 Cut in the finger nubs Select the top two edges top left Right click for the Edge Menu top middle and Cut by 4 This creates new vertices top right which are pre selected Another right click brings up the Vertex Menu bottom left where we can Connect the vertices to create four new faces bottom right DRAFT 25 DRAFT Now select the two side edges of the hand block Right click in the workspace to bring up the Edge Menu and select Connect A new edge will be created that connects the two sides thus breaking the side face into two equal faces while leaving the new edge in the selected state While it is still selected right click for the Edge Menu again and Move in the Y direction just a bit Hit the space bar to deselect everything and then select the two lower vertical edges on the side and Connect them Slide the resultant edged down with the Move Y function so that it is just above the base of the hand We now have faces in place that can form the base of the four fingers and the thumb Figure 23 Cut in the thumb nub Select the two side edges top left and Connect them Move the resultant edge top middle down in Y via the Edge Menu Move Y function top right Then select the two lower edges bottom left and connect them Then using the Edge Menu Move Y function again bottom middle move the new edge down along Y to form the base face that will become the thumb DRAFT 26 DRAFT Next we
119. parate juice object that fits the jug exactly Tip provided by Mestela Quick Tip Invert vs Intrude With Intrude you can create a hollow object but the inside will be the same shape as the outside Invert on the other hand can be useful to create an object that has a different shape on the inside than on the outside connected via a bridged tunnel Using invert can put a totally different object inside another invert the inner object and bridge a tunnel between inner and outer objects to get different inner outer volumes Tip provided by PuzzledPaul BODY MENU TIGHTEN This will move all the vertices of an object towards each other or away from each other The effect is to round out or soften the model with a slight Tighten or exaggerate the angles if you un tighten BODY MENU SMOOTH S This smooths the model by performing a Catmull Clarke subdivision on all the faces This will have the effect of smoothing out angles between faces if they have not been set to hard and eliminates poles by creating clean quad topology If you want to maintain sharp angles in your model be sure to set the necessary edges to hard either via the Edge Menu Hardness command or by first doing an Auto Smooth BODY MENU COMBINE This will combine the selected objects into one object Unlike Mirror it does not actually fuse or change any geometry This can be very useful if you have a model composed of several parts and want to Scale or R
120. periodically Loop Cut the model delete the non detailed side and then Mirror the detailed side to quickly duplicate all the detail from one side to the other This can be a great time saver EDGE MENU TURN This command is intended to be used on models that have been triangulated It can easily destroy models made of quads so be careful when and how you use it Some programs DRAFT 78 DRAFT such as game engines expect models to be composed entirely of triangles But the overall shape of a model can be determined by how those triangles are laid out Turn lets you create a better flow for the edges so that you can fine tune triangulated models EDGE MENU OPTIMIZED TURN Optimized Turn will triangulate your model by finding the shortest edges possible to create the triangles DRAFT 79 DRAFT 5 2 4 The Face Operations Menu Face Operations Menu General If one or more faces are selected right clicking in the workspace will bring up the Face Face operations Move Rotate Scale Extrude Extrude Region Extract Region Flatten Inset Intrude Bevel Bridge Bump Lift Put On Mirror Dissolve Collapse Smooth Set Material Tesselate Operations Menu This will allow you to perform functions unique to face manipulations FACE MENU MOVE Normal moves the selected face or faces along their normal s Free Will move the selected faces in the direction of mouse movement This can be very useful wh
121. ports or log feature requests Link http sourceforge net projects wings Erlang the Wings programming language The best reference is the PDF document Concurrent Programming in Erlang which is the first six chapters of a book by the same name Most of the people now writing plug ins for Wings got started by reading this document You will also find a Glossary an Index and a Getting Started guide at the same site Link http www erlang org Wings Warm amp Fuzzy 3D Wings discussions This is the unofficial Official Wings Board This is where most of the on line Wings discussion takes place especially oriented to helping new users and for hashing out development issues Link http pub33 ezboard com bnendowingsmirai CGChat Wings Board A Wings discussion board more centered around the art of modeling with Wings They tend to run Seminars on a given modeling topic Link http www cgchat com board forumdisplay php s amp forumid 69 Bernie s Downloads Many free models in wings format plus other 3D resources Link http www bernieloehn de downloads html 3dbaseart a Wings tutorial on building a drag car Link http www 3dbasedart com Wings3D Tutorial Soccer Ball a tutorial by Anthony D Agostino on making a soccer ball with wings Anthony is a master at modeling geometric shapes and this tutorial is Wings3D specific Link http ourworld compuserve com homepages scorpius tut wings soccer htm A
122. ppear in the Tools Menu if you have installed the available plug ins These include Draw Loop Locked Slide and Tweak_s from Clacos They are available at http members lycos co uk clacos I highly recommend them Apologies to any other tool makers if I m missing any Quick Tip Bounding Boxes Don t overlook the usefulness of bounding boxes You can use them to place an object at any given location such as putting a hat on a hat rack To do so select a vertex on the DRAFT 63 DRAFT hook of the hat rack and do a Save Bounding Box Then select a vertex on the inside of the hat and do a Move To Saved BB The hat will snap right into place 5 1 6 The Objects Menu Objects Menu General The Objects Menu presents you with options limited specifically to whole objects Shou And Unlock All OBJECTS SHOW AND UNLOCK ALL Hide Selected Pretty self explanatory It shows all objects in the workspace and if any of them were locked unlocks _ Lock Unselected lt them making all objects eligible for further S cube1 manipulation Figure 43 The Object Menu Hide Unselected OBJECTS HIDE SELECTED Hides any object or multiple objects that are currently selected This is handy to hide a large easily selected object so as to be able to get to and manipulated a smaller object that his mostly or completely obscured by the larger object Once hidden the objects are locked and therefore protected from any changes OBJECTS HIDE U
123. r placed in the center of the workspace a exhibits exactly the same result b when subjected to either Twist Y or TorquelY DRAFT 73 DRAFT In the image below TwistlY twists the off center cylinder around a vertical axis passing through the center of the cylinder TorquelY on the other hand will twist the cylinder around the workspace Y axis yielding different results Figure 48 Twist vs Torque A cylinder is moved off center in Z by 1 unit a Then a Twist Y by 180 is applied The result is exactly as in Figure 47 An Undo converts it back to a standard cylinder a and then Torque Y by 180 is applied The results are completely different DRAFT 74 DRAFT You can achieve dramatically different results between Twist and Torque on asymmetrical objects In the example below we have a cylinder that is centered in the workspace One set faces has had an Extrude Region Normal applied to make the object asymmetrical a In b we have applied a Twist Y by 180 degrees You can see that it caused the cylinder itself to become bent In c we have applied a Torque Y by 180 degrees and get an interesting screw like object with a straight shaft Figure 49 Other factors If your object is asymmetrical Torque can give you better results The above examples were kindly provided by Bj rn Gustavsson Quick Tip Experiment with Deformers Deliberately moving models off center and experimenting with Twist and Torque can give i
124. r sub menus interactively in the color box to the left When you click OK the effects will be reflected on the ball on the left side of the material editor window Once you are happy with your settings click the OK button on the material editor window You don t really need to get too fancy here especially at first so just make a color you like for skin and click OK The fastest way to do this is to set up the largest material first by selecting the object then switching to Face Mode so that all faces are selected Then assign all the faces that color in this case skin After hitting OK in the Material Editor you can then select the nails and do another Set Material and then dream up you nail color Say OK again Then hit the Space Bar to deselect everything so you see your creation in full color Don t forget to Save your model before quitting and you may also want to Export it into a format that your rendering program can read That should give you the basics for organic modeling in Wings since a hand is definitely an organic subject Not to say my model is a particularly good example of if It is not a lifelike hand at all But considering it is the first Human hand I ever modeled it did not turn out too badly And since subdivision surface modeling is known to be particularly good for organic type models this was a good exercise Now you can try something else organic I recommend you do what I did for the hand I found some cages finished h
125. re shaped faces at the front bottom corners of the porch roof 15 1 Now select the two intersecting vertices and Bevel to 0 07 units 15 j Select the resulting edges and Cut by 2 15 k Scale the resulting vertices from one side Uniform by 40 to form a roundish face 15 1 Now select the four vertices on the other side and do an Edit Repeat Drag to form an exact copy of the rounded face on the other side of the porch Select the two round faces and Extrude Y by 1 10 units which will make them even with the bottom of the house Switch to Body Mode and select the house by clicking on it Then switch to Edge Mode and all the edges will be selected Right click to bring up the Edge Operations menu and set Hardness to Hard DRAFT 18 DRAFT Figure 15 Under the porch Cut the back edge of the porch roof by 2 a and connect that vertex up with the two at the top front corners b Then Move the center vertex up in Y c Now roll the house over so that you can see the underside of the porch d Connect the two side edges e and Move the new edge towards the front Select the three long edges g and Cut by 3 and then Connect the resulting vertices h Bevel the intersecting vertices i Then select the edges of the new boxes and Cut by 2 One one side only Scale the new vertices Uniform to form a circle j Then use Repeat Drag k to create another circle 1 on the other side of the porch Pick faces and set materia
126. ree will extrude the selected face s in the direction of mouse movement X constrains the extrusion along the x axis Y constrains the extrusion along the y axis Z constrains the extrusion along the z axis FACE MENU EXTRUDE REGION Normal extrudes the selected face s along their normal s as a unit By extruding in the negative normal direction you can create indentations into the body of the object such as a mouth or nostrils By using Extrude Region on a group of faces rather than simply using Extrude you keep the faces joined together into one coherent surface which is often preferable to having distinct stems growing out of the object Free will extrude the selected face s in the direction of mouse movement X constrains the extrusion along the x axis Y constrains the extrusion along the y axis Z constrains the extrusion along the z axis FACE MENU EXTRACT REGION Normal extract faces and then move the faces along the regions normal Free extract faces and then move faces freely in all directions X extract faces and then move them along the X axis Y extract faces and then move them along the Y axis Z extract faces and then move them along the Z axis Extracts a region or group of faces from the parent object to create a completely new object Note that the faces do not have to be contiguous To create a new object that abuts the original object do an Extract Regio
127. reeze Makes the virtual half of the model into real geometry thus creating a perfectly symmetrical full model TOOLS TWEAK Tweak is a special modeling mode that allows you to drag vertices freely for fine movements It is a very useful and powerful tool that warrants getting used to Most of the controls are clearly explained on the status bar at the bottom of the workspace as outlined here L Left mouse button Drag vertices freely R Right mouse button Exit tweak mode M Middle mouse button Tumble Shift M Shift plus the middle mouse button Track Ctrl Shift M Control plus Shift plus the Middle mouse button Dolly 1 Turns the magnets on or off You can use Tweak with standard moves or with magnetic moves To turn on the magnets press the the number 1 key Doing so will cause the status bar to change While in magnet mode L will drag and R will exit Tweak mode The key will increase the fall off zone while the minus key will decrease the fall off zone The 2 3 and 4 keys will change the type of magnet in use Pressing the 1 key will turn the magnets off again These controls effectively turn Tweak into an interactive magnet with the area of influence for the magnet defined by the fall off zone Tweak was originally a plug in designed by Howard Trickey and has since been incorporated into the Wings3D core Quick Tip Additional Tools Note that some very useful tools for Wings will a
128. rview 2 2 The Title Bar 2 3 The Menu Bar 2 4 The Icon Bar 2 5 The Status Bar 2 6 Dialog Boxes 2 7 Context Sensitive Menus 2 8 The Information String Section 3 A Quick Start Guide 3 1 Finger exercises to get you started 3 2 Your First Real Model a Dog House 3 3 Creating A Hand an intrinsically organic shape 3 4 Adding Detail 3 5 Finishing It Off Section 4 The Nature of Subdivision Modeling 4 1 Subdivision and Such 4 2 The Nature of Edge Loops 4 3 Winged Edge Topology Section 5 The Wings3D Command Reference Guide 5 1 The Main Menu 5 1 1 The File Menu 5 1 2 The Edit Menu 5 1 3 The View Menu 5 1 4 The Select Menu 5 1 5 The Tools Menu 5 1 6 The Objects Menu 5 1 7 The Help Menu DRAFT ii DRAFT 5 2 The Context Sensitive Menus 5 2 1 The Primitives Menu 5 2 2 The Vertex Operations Menu 5 2 3 The Edge Operations Menu 5 2 4 The Face Operations Menu 5 2 5 The Object Operations Menu 5 3 Advanced Menus 5 4 A Little Tutorial 5 5 Advanced Menu Command Reference Guide 5 5 1 Vertex Operations with Advanced Menus 5 5 2 Edge Operations with Advanced Menus 5 5 3 Face Operations with Advanced Menus 5 5 4 Body Operations with Advanced Menus 5 6 Reference Guide to Hot Key Assignments Section 6 Plug ins Section 7 Resources 7 1 Wings3D Links 7 2 Polygon Modeling Links 7 3 UVMapping and Texturing Links 7 4 Rendering Links 7 5 Graphic Utilities 7 6 Specialty Applications 7 7 Books Glossary
129. s Colors sets the Background Text workspace text Selection Edges Hard Edges and Wire Edges colors By clicking on one of the boxes the color dialog box will come up allowing you to enter RGB values from 0 255 Enter each number then hit Return to accept the changes You can drag and drop color patches from one box to another Grid the two options are Color which works exactly as the Color options described above and the Force Axis Aligned Grid check box which acts as a toggle If turned on whenever you jump to a primary axis view by hitting the X Y Z Shift X Shift Y Shift Z keys the Grid will automatically turn on When you move out of such a view the grid will automatically turn back off Highlighting Vertex Edge Face and Object highlighting are also On Off toggles If turned on then the item of that type will auto highlight when the mouse passes over them This makes selecting the correct vertex edge etc much easier as it gives a visual confirmation of just what is being pointed at If the item the mouse is over is unselected it will highlight in the unselected color whereas if it is selected the item will highlight in the Selected color These colors are set just like the Color options as described above The Smart Highlighting check box allows Wings to automatically switch from the various selection modes vertex edge and face similar to how it works in Nendo This can speed up modeling quite a bit Vector Display Ve
130. s Selecting the menu item in this case Scale will bring up the Side Bar Menu Here we select Scale Z so that we can make the cube thinner DRAFT 23 DRAFT Click on Z to limit changes in scale to the Z axis and then drag your mouse to the left the Z direction to make the cube narrower Figure 21 A palm is born The cube has been adjusted to form the palm of our hand model Left click to end the Scale operation DRAFT 24 DRAFT 3 4 Adding Detail Now we will add some fingers and a thumb to the basic hand block Begin by clicking on the Edge Mode Icon at the bottom of the workspace to switch to Edge Selection Mode Notice that all the edges become highlighted because they were derived from a previously selected object Hit the Space Bar to deselect everything Now select the top two edges as illustrated below Right click in the workspace to bring up the Edge Operations menu and choose Cut and then 4 from the side bar menu to cut the top edges into four equal parts Notice that upon completing the Cut operation you are automatically switched to Vertex Mode with the affected vertices pre selected as seen on the top right frame of the picture below Right click in the workspace to bring up the Vertex Operations menu and select the Connect function New edges will snap into place as seen in the bottom right frame below thus forming four new faces on the top side of the hand block These will eventually become the base faces for
131. selected from the current selection set SELECT INTERSECTION WITH STORED Creates a new selection set intersecting the current and stored selection sets That is only those items that are common to both sets remain selected This can be used very effectively to add noise to an organic model You can store all the vertices on a tree trunk for example then Select By Random 30 which will select vertices on trunk branches and leaves Then do a Intersection With Stored and only random vertices on the trunk will remain selected which you can then Move Normal to make knobs DRAFT 60 DRAFT 5 1 5 The Tools Menu Tools Menu General The tools menu contains some functions that will interact with other Wings commands Align TOOLS ALIGN Center All Save Bounding Box X Scale to Saved BE Y Scale to Saved BB Proportionally gt Z Move to Saved BB gt Radial X YZ Set Default Axis ares o Virtual Mirror Tweak Figure 42 The Tools Menu Aligns all selected objects based on the bounding box of the selection for each element This can be useful to line things up once they have gotten off center For example by using a series of Aligns you could get wheels on a model that have become misaligned back into proper positions relative to each other It does not align vertices edges or faces to an axis on the same model TOOLS CENTER All X Y Z Radial X YZ Radial Y XZ Radial Z XY Centers objects in the
132. sing the newly defined vector by choosing Last Axis from the standard Vertex Operations menu BODY DUPLICATE LMB Select elements to define the vector Right Mouse Button RMB Execute the operation and Alt Right Mouse Button Alt RMB to bring up the options sub menu As with Move first define the vector to duplicate along with the LMB then execute with the RMB To bring up the options menu Alt RMB This is where you can access magnets while working with vectors Note that the Middle Mouse Button MMB can be used to dolly the camera while working Subsequent duplications can be made using the newly defined vector by choosing Last Axis from the standard Vertex Operations menu DRAFT 100 5 6 Reference Guide to Hot Key Assignments DRAFT Wings allows you to make your own hot key assignments To do so select the operation you want to do then with that operation still selected hit the Insert key on your key board then hit the key or key combination you want to use as the hot key for that command Similarly by pressing Delete on a command having a hot Key that hot key will be removed Of course Wings comes with a number of hot key assignments already The following is a quick guide to the predefined Wings hot keys Key Shift Key Ctrl Key Ctrl Shift Key Alt Alt Ctrl Key A Aim A View Frame A Select All Verts Edges Faces or Objects B Body Mode C Vertex Connect C Edge Conn
133. sired direction as chosen in the sub menu Free X Y or Z Free Moves the newly created object in the direction of mouse movement X The newly created object will move in X or X directions only Y The newly created object will move in Y or Y directions only Z The newly created object will move in Z or Z directions only BODY MENU DELETE Bksp or Del Will delete one or more selected objects They can be recalled via Undo BODY MENU MODE This lets you shift from Vertex Color mode to Material mode on selected objects Note that objects that have UV Texture coordinates cannot be shown with vertex colors BODY MENU STRIP TEXTURE This will strip the textures from an imported model BODY MENU UV MAPPING experimental This will bring up the AutoUV module Since this is still experimental it will not be discussed in depth at this time It will be discussed in full when it is no longer in an experimental state It is a complex subsystem to Wings and therefore will be treated with a section of it s own when the time comes For now please see the Wings discussion forum for more information on this important tool DRAFT 88 DRAFT 5 3 Advanced Menus We have put off discussion of advanced menus because it is generally agreed that new uses are best off leaving them alone until they have a firm grasp of basic Wings operations However I strongly recommend that you become proficient with the basic operations quickly an
134. sitive normals while the inside vertices move on their negative normals This can be a very powerful modeling tool Note however that Inflate can cause faces to collide with each other and can therefore ruin a model rather quickly Be judicious in its use especially in areas of dense geometry that may be oriented towards other parts of the model Taper X Y Z will evenly spread the vertices apart radially along the selected axis Note that the reference point for the Taper operation is at the middle of the model Twist X Y Z This twists the selected vertices around an axis parallel to the chosen major axis The axis will be pass through the center of bounding box for the selected vertices Note that the anchor stationary end of the model always faces the negative side of any axis chosen To twist round the other way the model has to be rotated 180 degrees first Torque X Y Z This twists the selected vertices around the chosen major axis X Y or Z Note that as with standard Twist the anchor stationary end of the model always faces the negative side of any axis chosen To twist round the other way the model has to be rotated 180 degrees first DRAFT 72 DRAFT Some Examples In the image below TwistlY and TorquelY will do exactly the same thing Both will twist the cylinder around the Y axis because the cylinder is exactly centered in the middle of the workspace Figure 47 Twist and Torque A cylinde
135. te command in Object selection mode to separate them FACE MENU COLLAPSE DRAFT 83 DRAFT Deletes the selected faces replacing each face with a vertex The selection mode will be changed to Vertex and the newly created vertices will be selected allowing you to apply further commands FACE MENU SMOOTH S Connects all the edges of a face and tightens up the vertices so as to form a smoother shape from the original face You can make round eyes from square faces with Smooth Quick Tip Smooth To Check For Anomalies To check for self colliding internal geometry smooth once and eyeball in wireframe mode as it won t usually be obvious as an unsmoothed wireframe Tip provided by puzzeled paul FACE MENU SET MATERIAL New Will prompt you for a Material Name in a pop up dialog Type in a new name of your choice and click OK This will bring up the Material Editor as pictured here Diffuse _ Ambient Specular Emission J Shininess 1 0 Opacity 1 0 Figure 52 The Wings Material Editor Materials are assigned to faces and therefore initially defined with the Material Editor accessed under the Face Menu They can later be edited via the Material Editor accessed under the Edit Menu Here you can custom design a material to be applied to the selected face by setting the properties Diffuse Ambient Specular Emission Shininess and Opacity The ball on the left will show a preview of your material design
136. that shown in Figure 12 f Figure 12 Building the main roof Dissolve the edges a and Collapse the vertices b that disrupt the roof face Then Inset the roof c Move the center face up in Y d then Inset outward and Extrude Y to form the roof cap e Then Scale the top of the cap DRAFT 15 DRAFT Select the top faces of the side sections and Inset outward by 40 Figure 13 a Then Extrude Normal up by 0 10 units Figure 13 b Switch to Edge Mode Deselect the front and back edges with the mouse This will leave the inside and outside edges still selected as in Figure 13 c I just rotated the house so you can see the back side and see that four edges remain selected Connect the side edges Figure 13 d Move the new edges up in Y 0 53 units to form gables Hit the Space Bar to deselect everything and switch to Vertex Mode Then select the vertices on the outside of the two gables and Scale X by 25 to bring them in as seen in Figure 13 e Then Connect the vertices on the top outside edges on the sides of the gables Figure 13 The side roofs Select the two side roofs and Inset outward a and then Extrude Normal up b Select the four edges two on each roof and Connect c Move the new edges up e Switch to Vertex Mode and Scale the two outer most vertices in X to form the gables DRAFT 16 DRAFT Connect the front side top edges Figure 14 a Then select the two lower edges of the front top and Connect them
137. the central vertex in the grid and right click to bring up the Vertex Operations menu as before This time Right Click on Move to bring up the Vector operations Left click on the initial vertex the one right in the center of the grid and on the vertex at the top of the dome we created at the beginning of this tutorial This will create a vector aiming towards the top of our dome Now Alt Right Click to bring up a small menu Notice that this menu has a magnet icon on it Click on the magnet icon Now click on a vertex to define the fall off zone again choose one about four vertices away from the initial selection point Right click to execute and drag the mouse to the old familiar settings of D 0 05 and R 1 00 Whoa It s going the wrong way into the ground So drag the mouse to D 0 50 and R 1 00 instead Press the 2 button to change the magnet back DRAFT 94 DRAFT Figure 58 Magnet operations in Wings to a Dome the last one we did was Spike so it was still selected Left click to complete the operation and examine the model It should look something like mine Figure 58 f DRAFT 95 DRAFT 5 5 Advanced Menu Command Reference Guide 5 5 1 Vertex Operations with Advanced Menus VERTEX MOVE Left Mouse Button LMB Select elements to define the vector Right Mouse Button RMB Execute the operation and Alt Right Mouse Button Alt RMB to bring up the options sub menu First define the vector to move along with the LMB th
138. to 3D Modeling I have found Over half the book is dedicated to principles of polygon modeling in one form or another plus he explains NURBS based modeling and the principles that deal with texturing This is not a tutorial it is a general discussion of principals and practices Well worth while Principles of Three Dimensional Computer Animation by Michael O Rourke 1998 by Michael O Rourke 285 pp I found the modeling portion of this book to be too elementary to be of much use but am finding the sections on Rendering and Animation very informative since I have little background in those areas He explains the theories behind lighting texturing atmospheric effects keyframing and inverse kinematics among other things It reads much more like a text book than I would like but it is very informative DRAFT 111 DRAFT Glossary Ambient color the overall color of an object When rendering scene ambiance is multiplied by face ambiance Attenuation the intensity of a light through the scene as it diminishes with distance from the source Backface the interior side of a face on a solid object Bezier a mathematically defined curve formed by the placement of control points Binaries machine readable files created by compiling source code Body a 3D object composed of vertices edges and faces Bounding box generally the minimum volume that can contain a selection However a single vertex bounding box is
139. to Wings By experimentation you can find the right scaling factor and then apply it each time you import models from another program Simply apply the inverse scale upon export if you wish to take the model back to the originating program The Nendo import works much better than the others because it is a one to one translation This is because both Nendo and Wings use winged edge data structures Import of other formats is trickier The other formats contains triangle or polygon meshes To import them Wings must combine the polygons into one or more closed objects that can be represented by the winged edge structure Combining gets tricky if the mesh contains defects and many meshes do since the defects usually are not a problem in other modelers or renderers Also if you import a model that has a texture associated with it you may get a Wings message box when attempting to modify it telling you that the operation can not be performed on a textured model This is because texture support in Wings is under development In a future release of Wings the question will be if you want to convert the texture to colors just as in Nendo But currently the workaround is to use the Strip Texture command in the Body pop up menu Or you can save the model as a Wings file and reload it One thing new users may find helpful is the knowledge that Wings and Nendo work well in tandem since Wings supports both the import and export of ndo files So you
140. utomatically selected Figure 9 a DRAFT 10 DRAFT Because Wings3D uses winged edge topology it can keep track of what elements are associated with what So Wings can carry forward selections from mode to mode which can greatly speed up your modeling Now right click in the workspace to bring up the Edge Operations menu Figure 9 b Choose Bevel from the menu and move the mouse to the right until the Status Bar reads 0 50 then left click to end the command Figure 9 c Note a couple of things here Bevel ended and put us into Face Selection Mode automatically See the faces are already highlighted and the active icon is now the Face Icon Wings attempts to end commands by making the elements that it just created active on the assumption that since you just made them you will want to do something with them Not always true but it s a pretty valid assumption most of the time and can help speed up your modeling Since we are in Face Mode lets right click again and bring up the Face Operations menu 9 d Extrude Normal by 0 25 Figure 9 e Now Switch to Body Mode hit the B key or click the Icon The whole object becomes highlighted Right click to bring up the Body Operations menu and choose Smooth Your object should like like that in Figure 9 f Hit the Space Bar to deselect it then hit the Tab Key to see it smoothed Now hit the U key to watch it rotate Left click to stop the rotation Well quite by accident we made a fairly reasonabl
141. uty of edge loops is in the latter on how they control and define the form and detail of the model Here is where the true art occurs I am capable I hope of describing the technical nature of edge loops As far as the artistic use of them well others will have to step in And most likely you just need to practice practice practice And keep an eye out on the on line forums for few words of enlightenment from master artists like Mr Raitt too As stated before physical edge loops are a series of edges joined together at non pole intersections A non pole intersection is an intersection of four edges at a given vertex This is why quads help maintain edge loops they help minimize poles The edges that encircle an arm are edge loops But if you look at the illustrations in Mr Raitt s article you will see there are other more important loops involved in the arm that link it to the chest and beyond But that gets more into the artistic aspect which I am not well qualified to discuss So back to the physical world 3 Digital Sculpting Techniques by Bay Raitt and Greg Minter Nichimen Graphics 1998 DRAFT 37 DRAFT In Wings there are tools that let you take advantage of edge loops in your modeling You can use Loop Cut to cut off parts of the model when needed You can select by Edge Loops and by Edge Rings the lateral connecting edges between two loops and then work with that selection You can use the F3 and F4 keys to march up a
142. vertices radially from their local geometric x axis i e The distances in y and z are effected while x remains constant Radial Y XZ Scales the distance between the vertices radially from their local geometric y axis so that the y dimension remains constant Radial Z XY Scales the distance between the vertices radially from their local geometric z axis so that the z dimension remains constant DRAFT 70 DRAFT VERTEX MENU EXTRUDE Can be performed on one or more vertices During the extrusion process you can use the plus and minus keys to change the size of the extruded spike s base Normal a spike type feature is extruded from each selected vertex along the vertex normals thus creating new faces Free the spikes are created in the direction of mouse movement X the spikes are created along the X axis Y the spikes are created along the Y axis Z the spikes are created along the Z axis VERTEX MENU FLATTEN Requires two or more vertices to have any effect X Flattens the selected vertices by averaging their position in the X direction This has the effect of aligning selected vertices in the X plane Y Flattens the selected vertices by averaging their position in the Y direction Z Flattens the selected vertices by averaging their position in the Z direction VERTEX MENU CONNECT C Connects selected vertices with edges if they have a common face or if the faces between
143. voked the Windows file open dialog appears By default it is set to add a wings file but the option all files is available The All Files option will only load a native Wings file such as one with the wrong extension or no extension Therefore trying to bring in anything but a wings file returns the error message Read failed no such file or directory as this command is for loading native Wings files only One handy use for the File Merge command is to load up a previously saved set of lights If you create a lighting environment you are particularly fond of delete all the non light objects from the scene and do a Save As Call it something like lights wings Then after doing a file new you can merge the lights into your current scene Note that FilelImport implicitly always merges if you want to add an non native format model to your scene File Save Ctrl S Saves the current workspace as a wings file If the model is new a Save File dialog box will come up allowing you to specify the path and file name to be saved If it is a previously existing file it will save to that file permanently incorporating any changes you have made since loading it File Save As Ctrl Shift S Allows you to save the current workspace as a wings file under a new file name A Save As File dialog box will come up allowing you to specify the path and file name to be saved This can save hours of labor being particularly useful whenever you either c
144. w earlyriser org Wings also runs under Windows emulation via Virtual PC DRAFT DRAFT Section 2 The Wings3D User Interface Please note that screen shots may vary as to exact layout based on different versions of Wings at the time of their capture Also some screen shots will be done with Advanced Menus enabled while most I hope are done with Advanced Menus disabled Sorry for any inconsistencies this may cause Also note that the Blender camera mode is assumed throughout the text unless noted otherwise Keep this in mind while reading especially if you use one of the other camera modes 2 1 General Overview Wings3D opens with an empty Workspace at its core Above the Workspace are the Title Bar and Menu Bar Below the Workspace is the Icon Bar and the Status Bar The rest of the user interface is accessed via context sensitive menus called up via clicking the Right Mouse Button over the Workspace i Wings 3D Figure 1 The Wings3D program window In the Workspace itself are the three main axes which are conveniently labeled X Y and DRAFT 4 DRAFT Z It is customary to think in terms of X as being the right and left Y the up and down and Z the front and back of a model Many of the commands are axis centric in operation working around these global axis or around local axes parallel to them Display colors for each axis can be set to your liking and they can be toggled on or off at will 2 2 The Title Bar At the t
145. where the font resides C windows fonts for example and the number of edge bisections to make The more bisections you make the more complex the model will be recommend you leave it set to zero at least for starters OK will create the text as a fully 3D model in your workspace Cancel will abort the operation MORE This brings up a sub menu of additional primitives available in Wings Torus Knot Originally a plug in by Anthony D Agostino scorpius it is now included as part of the standard Wings distribution This simple plug in creates a torus knot with the absolute minimum possible number of faces and vertices It is meant to be used as an input cage for the Catmull Clark subdivision algorithm The knot was created with Blender by extruding a Bezier circle along the path of a NURBS curve 4 Principles of Three Dimensional Computer Animation Revised Edition Michael O Rourke W W Norton amp Company 1998 pp 89 92 DRAFT 68 DRAFT Spiral Loops 2 by default segments 16 by default Sections 8 by default You can change the number of Loops Segments and Sections by clicking on the Options Box on the right side of the menu Spring Loops 2 by default segments 16 by default Sections 8 by default You can change the number of Loops by clicking on the Options Box to the right UV Torus A more sophisticated version of the torus Here you can specify the U Resolution 80 by default the V Resolution 16
146. will use the Face function Extrude to create some basic fingers Switch to Face Selection Mode by clicking on the Face Icon at the bottom of the Workspace Then click on the four faces that will form the base of the four fingers Right click for the Face Operations menu and select Extrude and then select Y Move your mouse to the right to extrude the faces up a bit then left click to end the extrusion Notice that the end faces remain selected facilitating another extrude So do another shorter extrusion This will later form knuckles Then carry on with the extrusions as illustrated in Figure 24 You do not have to constantly right click to bring up the context sensitive menu however Wings has a Repeat command accessed by simply hitting the D key on your keyboard It can Save you quite a bit of time if you are doing many of the same types of functions over and over as here with the finger extrusions Figure 24 Extrude the fingers Select the finger base faces top right and Extrude in Y a little top center Do a shorter Extrude for some knuckles top left Then carry on as shown in the lower frames DRAFT 27 DRAFT To add a thumb we will do another set of extrusions but we don t want the thumb to stick straight out from the side of the palm so we will also use the Rotate function Select the face we created earlier for the base of the thumb and do a Extrude in X By now you should have gotten the knack of the context sensitive menus
147. wings directory Usage This plug in adds five major functions to Wings This functionality is accessed as follows FILE IMPORT ADOBE ILLUSTRATOR FILE Creates an object from the closed outlines in an Adobe Illustrator file The plug in asks for the file name and the number of times to bisect edges higher numbers give shapes closer to the intended shapes and also may avoid problems due to self crossing of the polygonal approximation The plug in makes its own decision based on containment about which closed contours form holes within other faces The faces are extruded and then quadrangulated OBJECT MENU TEXT Creates an object formed from characters in a TrueType font The plug in asks for the font file name note this is usually different from the font name a string of characters to create the object from and a number of times to bisect the edges higher numbers will give shapes truer to their intended form The character outlines are extruded and then both sides are quadrangulated Now under Windows as an alternative to giving a font file name you can instead give a font name as it appears in a font browse dialog If you give a file name you must give the full path if you give a font name it must appear without a directory name FACE MENU TESSELATE TRIANGULATE Takes each selected face in turn and triangulates those faces that contain four or more edges The triangulation is supposed to be good in some technical sens
148. workspace based on the bounding box of all selected items If you work on a large model that has sort of grown off in one direction you can quickly center it in the workspace again Also if you have multiple objects in a complex model and you ve lost track of one of them you can select it via the Objects Menu to be discussed latter and then Center to find it again TOOLS SAVE BOUNDING BOX Saves the bonding box of selected items from one or more objects for later use Use Save Bounding Box without any selection to clear the bounding box An outline of the current bounding box is displayed if so chosen in the users preferences TOOLS SCALE TO SAVED BB All DRAFT 61 DRAFT X Y Z Radial X YZ Radial Y XZ Radial Z XY Scales the selected object s to the bounding box that has been previously saved This command will scale each selected object along one two or three axes The amount to scale could be different along each axis meaning that this command can distort the proportions of the objects i e a cube might no longer remain a cube The scale factor for each axis is computed by comparing the saved bounding box with the bounding box for the selection To avoid distorting the objects use Scale to Saved BB Proportionally TOOLS SAVE TO SAVED BB PROPORTIONALLY All X Y Z Radial X YZ Radial Y XZ Radial Z XY Similar to Scale to Saved Bounding Box but the idea with this one is that it should
149. ws you to set their properties You can set the color for the default object and hole colors and any materials you have created via the Face Set DRAFT 45 DRAFT Material command Editable properties include Diffuse Ambient Specular Emission Shininess and Opacity Diffuse ambient specular and emissive colors are set via pop up color mixers while shininess and opacity are set via sliders The resultant overall material is shown on the ball to the left Here is a screen shot of the Material Editor Diffuse Ambient E Specular Enission E Shininess 1 0 Opacity Figure 36 The Material Editor 0 5 S OK Cancel Note that new materials are not created here Use the FACE CONTEXT SENSIVIVE MENU SET MATERIAL NEW to create a new material Any new materials can then be edited via this EDIT MATERIAL menu EDIT CAMERA MODE Wings provides users with the ability to set their own camera options so that you can Mouse Buttons o One o Two Three m Camera Mode Mirai o Nendo o Maya o Sds max Blender Scroll Wheel P Wheel zooms Zoom Factor 20 2 45 0 Camera Parameters Field Of View Near Clipping Plane 0 25 1000 0 Figure 37 Camera modes The Camera Mode sub menu has options to set the camera up to your liking It also has settings to use the scroll wheel for zooming the field of view and the depth of the near and far clipping planes

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