General Question Question about Anim8or tutorial (by Harmsway)

[Gothmog]

I'm working through Harmsway's tutorial Step by Step guide to making an Add-on using Spacecraft2.DLL.

I've gone through the first steps of creating the cylinder, turning it into a mesh, and then turning one end into a point and hollowing out the other end.

But then I come to this part:

[FONT=Verdana,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,Sans-serif,sans-serif][SIZE=-1]Now you're ready to add the wings and tail using the Add Cube function. Make a cube and convert it to a mesh, manipulate it like you did the cylinder until it look like this :[/SIZE][/FONT]

(then there's a a picture of top, side, and front views of the spacecraft, which looks somewhat like a fighter jet)

My questions are these: Why do I 'add a cube' and then stretch out the wings and stabilizer on it...what happens to the cylinder that I just finished making? Is the cylinder going to be the engine and the airplane-like shape the spacecraft? How do I bring the two meshes together?

I imagine there's another tutorial I was supposed to do prior to this. If there is, can somebody just point me in the right direction?

 

[IronRain]

Well, ar81 had made a wonderful tutorial about modeling planes: [ame="http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=2729"]Anim8or tutorial: How to model a plane[/ame]. Maybe it helps to make your spacecraft.

How do I bring the two meshes together?

Not sure if this answers your question, but when you export your spacecraft into an orbiter mesh, it becomes one mesh (but you have to put everything that needs to be one mesh in the same object window)..

 

[Gothmog]

Well, ar81 had made a wonderful tutorial about modeling planes: Anim8or tutorial: How to model a plane. Maybe it helps to make your spacecraft.

I tried this earlier, and experienced the same confusion of the same issue.

But I think I understand now.

Do you mean that I can have two or more meshes in a window, and when I export them both to an Orbiter mesh, they will automatically be merged into one piece? If so, it now makes sense why you're supposed to line up one cylinder to the side-view reference image and drag up the stabilizer, and then position a second cylinder over a top view to draw out the wings and elevators.

Is that the general idea?

 

[Hlynkacg]

Basically yes:

However you will still want to keep the number of overall shapes (what anim8or calls meshes) to a minimum to avoid frame-rate issues.

 

[Stoat]

Yeah, think of your mesh as being an assembled plastic model kit. This is good for building as you can turn off the visibility of the various parts to help you see what you're currently working on. One tip is to be careful with your naming, or numbering, of objects.

Now, when you take your initial model into a uvmapper, your objects can be selected one at a time, and be given a particular type of mapping. If it's a sphere shape, spherical mapping, cube shape, cubic mapping etc. Try them all and see what one looks the clearest.

Don't panic if you map looks like a dog's dinner. They always do. Don't fret over much if you first efforts at lining up your paint job are not brilliant. It's a skill like any other, and in the games industry it tends to be a different skillset to the job of a modeler.