Path and Walls – Request for Advice

Nice…easy when you know how ain’t it <!– s:) –><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_smile.gif" alt="" title="Smile" /><!– s:) –>
I’m off to work <!– s:( –><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_sad.gif" alt="" title="Sad" /><!– s:( –> Have fun.

Bazza

thanks for the plugin link bazaa, i’ve been looking for these…
thanks a lot, pirate

p.s. sorry i sent you to the wrong place butterpaw.

sorry for misspelling your name again bazza.

hee hee, pirate.. it just gave you another chance to say aaargh!

.. and it’s ok, occasional wild goose chases are good for keeping me on my toes. I am learning this new skill, and I really love it!

Well, after several false starts and a lot of interesting experiments … I’ve made a set of pieces for building my paths.

Only the straight piece and the interstion pieces are ‘solid’ at both ends. All the bend pieces are transparent at one end .. which is probably helpful for engines that dont’ handle LOD.

[span class=’ev_code_PURPLE[/img]
Butter’s Blocks[/span]: digital ‘legos’ for making paths

Straight and Intersection:
[img:2ege3qdm]http&#58;//img300&#46;imageshack&#46;us/img300/3464/pathstrthe3&#46;png[/img:2ege3qdm]
[img:2ege3qdm]http&#58;//img338&#46;imageshack&#46;us/img338/9183/gateintersctxt3&#46;png[/img:2ege3qdm]

I would like to build an arched doorway into the space in the tall wall of the intersection block

Bends 50 and 70 degrees, various radius settings and numbers of sections:
[img:2ege3qdm]http&#58;//img151&#46;imageshack&#46;us/img151/1425/butterblocks50deggk2&#46;png[/img:2ege3qdm]
[img:2ege3qdm]http&#58;//img529&#46;imageshack&#46;us/img529/4800/butterblocks70deglm5&#46;png[/img:2ege3qdm]

Criticisms, comments, further suggestions are most welcome!

Nice job…well done. Your archway can be created in quite a few different ways. If I get time I’ll post something later today.

Bazza

Ooh, wonderful! Thanks – I look forward to the tutorial, whenever you have the time to do it!

Meanwhile, since I’ve started building my paths, I’ll be looking up the tuts on hierarchy – might as well build in an order fashion.

Ok…this is how I would go about creating an arch between two walls…there are other methods but this gives you the best face layout IMO.
It starts with a basic cylinder, uses another of Paul’s plugins which I would be lost without, the Double Sided plugin, the extrude, shift and equalize operations. Another nice little exersize.

Make sure you have ‘ Edit using object coords’ selected on the top toolbar.

Fig 1) Drop a cylinder onto the scene, you will need to increase the longtitude to give you a smooth arch. there isn’t a set amount here it depends on the span of the arch…in this case I set it to 32.
You could just rotate the cylinder to get it laid on it’s side but for something like this it’s bad practice so get used to using the Shift operation.
The shift operation rotates the object either AROUND it’s axis , leaving the axis as it originally was, or shifts it along it’s xyz axis.
If you just rotate the object the axis moves with it…this can cause problems later.
So depending on the axis of your walls, select the cylinder, click the Shift operation and set the rotation amount in x or z to 90 degrees…click the Shift operation.
Position the cylinder between the walls and scale it till you get something like fig1

Fig 2) You only need the top faces of the cylinder that are between the walls so select all the faces you don’t need ( dont forget the end cap on the far side) and delete them. You end up with something like Fig 3.

Fig 4) Now to use the double sided plugin…Make sure you save the file BEFORE you run this plugin. It sometimes causes a crash…it could just be my system but if you ain’t saved the file you gotta start all over.
As it is at the moment this arch object only has faces on one side but I want faces on Both sides so I can extrude the top faces upward.
So select the arch object and run the Double Sided plugin you should end up with Fig 4, faces on both sides of the object.

Fig 5) Select all the TOP faces, Right click the Extrude Operation, set a small amount for the extrusion and have only Extrude as Region selected. Extrude the arch…you should have something like Fig 6.

Fig 7) With the top faces still selected, right click the Equalize operation set the axis to Y and left click the Equalize operation to flatten the top opf the arch.
This is where, using the Shift operation to flip the cylinder around it’s axis starts to take effect. The Y axis of the cylinder still points up, if you had just rotated it you would need select whatever axis is pointing up when you run the Equalize operation…hope this makes sense. It would still have worked ok but if you can get used to using the Shift operation you can keep all the axis pointing in the same direction…much less confusing this way, with larger scenes.

Fig Scale the arch so it’s the same depth as the walls, move it into position and scale it along it’s length so it just fits between the walls. Thats it.

BUT, suppose you want a door to fit this arch exactly…see if you can work it out, a bit of ‘homework’. HeHeHe
Tip, the faces on the underside of the arch would make a good start for extruding a door…maybe if you duplicated the arch then……What? <!– s:D –><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_biggrin.gif" alt="" title="Very Happy" /><!– s:D –>

[img:3m11knvk]http&#58;//img19&#46;imageshack&#46;us/img19/1972/arches1zf8&#46;jpg[/img:3m11knvk]

Bazza, I love the Arch between Two Walls tutorial, and will try it out soon. As a possible step toward setting up a wiki? or other? site for tutorials, I took the liberty of trying to frame your tutorial as a pdf document (which would have the images incorporated, as I’ve looked at a lot of older tutorials where the images have gone missing.) I hope you like my attempt, but if not.. I won’t do it again.. I promise!

Note 8/11/07: This attachment seems to have stopped working. Clicking on it freezed my browser, and rightclick and save will save it but I can’t get it to open. Having lost functionality so quickly, it seems not a good format to share a tutorial in this forum.

Hey.. thats a great idea, <!– s:D –><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_biggrin.gif" alt="" title="Very Happy" /><!– s:D –> use any of my stuff as you wish.
I finally joined deviantArt and uploaded some of my artwork.
[img:9c9g2k58]http&#58;//bazza2&#46;deviantart&#46;com/[/img:9c9g2k58]
<!– m –><a class="postlink" href="http://bazza2.deviantart.com/">http://bazza2.deviantart.com/</a>&lt;!– m –>

Still trying to sort it all out, I get comments from people who don’t speak English.
It shouldn’t be allowed. <!– s:D –><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_biggrin.gif" alt="" title="Very Happy" /><!– s:D –>

Bazza

Awesome! Butter zooms on over there …

Bazza: [BLOCKQUOTE class=’ip-ubbcode-quote[/img]
[div class=’ip-ubbcode-quote-title[/img]
quote:[/div][div class=’ip-ubbcode-quote-content[/img]
people who don’t speak English. [/div][/BLOCKQUOTE] hee hee .. hugely international community don’t worry.. just reply with thank you and a nice friendly emoticon

Also, [img:thpb2f47]http&#58;//babelfish&#46;altavista&#46;com/[/img:thpb2f47]
Babelfish
is quite handy..

nice job butterpaw your getting better and better…keep up the good work..with practice you can build anything you can imagine…
pirate

Oh wait, that tutorial was Bazza’s I just reformatted it..

I still have to do the Arch between two walls ;

However, I have come a long way the with the stone-wall-bordered paths for my game <!– s:D –><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_biggrin.gif" alt="" title="Very Happy" /><!– s:D –>

Oh-err.. duh.. that’s what you meant.. my butter blocks [img:3dd01x17]http&#58;//community&#46;groupee&#46;com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_rolleyes&#46;gif’%20alt=’Roll%20Eyes’%20width=’15’%20height=’15[/img:3dd01x17]