We are going to draw a NURBS curve. Bezier curves are also available but
NURBS curves are smoother for what we are going to do.
Select "Curves -- Draw NURBS curve". |  |
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Draw the curve by clicking on the Left button
of your mouse in the OrthoY view.
Each click will append a point in the curve.
Click on the Right button of the mouse to end the curve without
closing it (see the status bar). The Control Points of the NURBS curve
appear in blue. |
Great!
Press "o" to enter the Orbit Mode and click on the View [2] to orbit
the Perspective view.
We can see that our curve has been drawn on the Y plane. |  |
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Now we need to work on the Control Points. We will use the "m" mode
to move the points.
Press "m", click on the point you want to move, then drag it.
Using the Perspective or OrthoZ view is a good idea for that job.
We need to intensively use the "m", "o" and "p" (Zoom) modes. |
Fine! This is quite a knot...
For making it solid, we are going to create a tube:
"Relations -- Tube". |  |
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Press on the "Wire" button of the title bar of the Perspective View.
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We need to ask for more polygons on the V direction of the surface.
Select "Shapes -- Dialog". The Shape Parameters Dialog appears.
Iconify the above dialogs since we don't need them. Moonlight guessed
37 polygons on the V direction.
Enter 60 in "Polygons, V" field, and
click Apply. Notice that the shape appears smoother. |  |
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Ok. We need to adjust the main curve. Let's organize our workspace.
On the View [4], click on "OrthoX", and select "Perspective". That
switches to the Perspective camera in this view. Let's link it to the
main camera of the view [2]: click on "Options" and select "Main Camera".
Then select the generating curve (Space + click and drag on the view 4
for instance). Then click on "Display" in the View 4 and select
"Only Selection" so that only selected objects are displayed in this
view. |
Fine! We can begin to adjust the main curve by using "m" to move the points
and "o" to orbit. The Views [2] and [4] orbit with the same camera.
Note that while you are adjusting the curve, the tube surface is adjusted
automatically... |  |
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Let's make the tube thicker. The tube is actually a sweep relation, whose
profile curve is a circle. We see this circle on the left, at the beginning
of the main curve.
We select it. |
For making it bigger, we just scale it. This is done by using the "x" mode:
press "x", click and drag the mouse up and down.
After ajusting the curve
again so that the tube doesn't intersect itself, we get a nicer model. |  |
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Now we are going to define its material and make a rendered image.
Select the tube and make it double sided ("Shapes -- Double sided")
Then "Materials -- Edit object material". We are asked if a new material
is to be created or not. Select "New material".
The Material dialog appears and we can define it.
We define Diffuse=RGB[0.45 0.45 0.90] and Transmission=HSV[0 0 0.3]. |
Since we use transmission, we need more than 2 rays. Edit the Renderer
Options ("Render -- Renderer options...") and set "Ray depth" to 4.
Then render this object ("Render -- Render"). |  |
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Waoo. My image is quite ugly !:-)
Press Esc to return to the work space.
We can save it ("Render -- Save previous rendering...").
Get the final model (50780 bytes).
We hope you enjoy Moonlight Atelier. |
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