Hi
I have attached my Audi for inspection in case anybody wants to take a look. You might find some ways of doing things and things to avoid. I posted some comments on making it to the 'final rendering' thread. Please feel free to delete it Michael if its just taking up space.

I also attach a couple of other things made in Moi.
Keith

Added to the special thread gallery :)

Those are great explainations Michael. I always find it easier to learn a program if I can understand some of the theory and logic behind it. I hope your examples become part of the manual.

Ed

< I hope your examples become part of the manual.
or maybe inside the Wiki?

Hey Keith, these are nice renderings!

Quite a variety of different things you've got there.

I like the colorization / tone of the Zeppelin Chrysler Building one.

- Michael

Hi Michael !
Thank you very much for the explanation !
I´ve been away from my computer for the last 2 days
and therefore I can only reply now !
Yes the models look logical to me but that exactly is
the point where a smoothing tool would
tell the software that there is no edge but its
going on smoothly.
You paint the first curve then mirror and select the point and run
smooth. same with a curve !
Thank you very much !
Peter

The tool would be some kind of offspin of the fillettool.
Showing your example one can run filet on this one too !

Hi Peter, you can do a fillet there, but it is not quite the same shape as doing a large single flowing piece.

Like you mention a "match" tool will be useful as another way to get smooth shapes, no doubt about that.

But there are several issues that tend to make it more difficult to get a totally flowing result. Even when things are technically smooth to one another, it can be easy for there to be a kind of "bulging" between surfaces.

It is just a very difficult job to totally replicate the very smooth and proportioned flow of a single surface.

So even in the future when that tool becomes available, I would still really recommend building surfaces in larger pieces when possible, as shown above. It will always be the most reliable way to ensure smoothness.

- Michael

Michael you are right with what you say !
But it isnt that easy when you are designing a car....
I just did a conversion from the rar mesh of the Audi that we kindly got
as an example .... I did not do any thing to it just converted it to obj.
and imported into Ts and rendered ... and it doesnt look smooth either....
Peter

It looks like you have a fairly rough mesh export there though - at least some of non-smooth look is probably due to that.

Try moving the slider on mesh export more towards the right to get a higher polygon count, and also if you are still getting some longer polygons you might want to determine their length, and put in a distance under "Divide larger than" at about 1/3 of that length to force them to be subdivided further.

Also, when you import OBJ into trueSpace, is there any option available that says anything about using "vertex normals" for the import? If so make sure that is enabled. It kind of looks like it is not using the vertex normals currently.

Also if there are individual surfaces that are adjacent to one another, select them and use Edit/Join to connect them together, that will also improve the mesh generation as well.

- Michael

Well that did improve the quality....
but there is no setting to import vertex normal but there is a tool
I´m trying to run that.....
Thats what i got so far ....
The mesh is attached to one of the posts
before....from Keith 1961....
All the top was joined only the bottom wasnt ...
Peter

You are right with the flipped normals too !
But it has half of the car flipped and the other vice versa....
Tried on the front to flip the normals of every poly but one gerts old with
that procedure.. hahaha ; P
Peter

From the Truespace forums I got the
information that flipped normals ( partly) can be normalised
through a dummy boolean subtraction (with a second object not touching the first one ) !
Peter

Hi Peter, doesn't trueSpace have a "flip" direction command?

It looks like the car is in 2 separate meshes, can't you select the entire 2nd mesh and flip it?

- Michael

This car breaks down into many more pieces in Truespace(about 10 thats how it was posted by keith )
and can be flipped each one that way yes....
but I rather have an option to flip all at once.
I have a few Moi 3d files with dozens of seperate parts all stored in the file and only some are flipped.
The flip tool on each of them would be to difficult as some parts are just small screws...
The boolean subtraction did well on the whole model in one go.
For some reason i did not look into the detail yet the parts did
not all join easily... but I must look at that closer.....
Thanks
Peter

Hi people
I have been away from the discussion for a while. I'm sorry my car is causing problems. I didn't do a very good job of mirroring the body and there were numerous other small problems but it imported into carrara as a smooth object. The SLK that someone else has made looks like a much better model to play with if they will distribute the model.

Thanks for complementing my renders Michael.

Is there any method to forward the discussion to an email address as I forget to check back?
Keith

Hi Keith,

> Is there any method to forward the discussion to an
> email address as I forget to check back?

There isn't any way to forward the entire discussion to an e-mail address, but in the forum you can go to Options / Email & Privacy and turn on "Notify by email of posts to me".

That will send you an e-mail notification if anyone posts a reply to a message that you posted.

- Michael

Hi Keith !
Thank you for letting us look at your model.
Its a good way of trying out the software and
I have learned a ton from Michael and your help !
thanks a lot !
Peter