Pocket Sundial

[simsmj]

This is an example of a pocket sundial, from the days when pocket watches were unknown, although some are still made today. It would fold flat, and had to be set with the user's Latitude, and the month, and also had to be oriented correctly with respect to the north, indeed some portable sundials had a small compass built in to help with this.

I based this one fairly closely on an image from the web, and of course discovered there is a very great variety of sundial designs around.

All the shapes were straightforward to make, and I had no trouble with artifacts this time, because every circle I used was reinforced with about 360 nodes before any merging and slicing! In fact I now keep several such useful shapes, including sets of 360 and 365 radial lines, for other such projects.

Mike

PS Merry Boxing Day and a Happy New Year!

[Grafixman]

Still working miracles with X3D, I see...
Amazing. As always .

[Soquili]

Mike, you make it look so easy
Great image, as always. Excellent lighting.

[Terry]

Mike,

Excellent image, as usual.

Fascinating object -- I had no idea such a thing ever existed.

[simsmj]

Thanks, Grafixman, Bill, Terry.

I'm finding that lighting can be the most endless fun! Once the virtual hardware is done, getting a clean orientation can occasionally be a little tricky with all the clutter getting in the way, but getting a good lighting solution on it can take ages of experimentation. Several times I thought it would be handy to have a few more lightsources to play with.

Mike

[Egg Bramhill]

Mike

You take Xara3D way beyond it's intended boundaries. I was wondering, do you ever use any other 3D programs? I'm only interested.

In creating the image above, and various other images that you've done, takes a great deal of the understanding of the limitations of Xara3D. I've dabbled with various 3D progs, and found them fasinating but very time consuming, but none very user freindly.

Just wanted to know which, if any 3D app you might use.

Egg

[simsmj]

Hi, Egg,
Xara3D is the only 3D app I am currently familiar with, though I have downloaded several shareware/free 3D packages, largely due to Grafixman's encouragement, but I am having trouble getting into any of them, as the learning curves seem so steep. Their approaches differ from the one I have grown used to with X3D/XaraX. I would still like to be able to use a more capable 3D package, but I know this will take time.

However, a long time ago I played with a package called QED II, for making 3D levels for various games, and I had no great trouble with that, but its approach again was different from the 3D modelling apps.

It seems to me that X3D still has a lot of life in it yet, and I think it wouldn't take too much to expand its capabilities.

1. An option not to force all imported shapes to a similar size, so that one didn't need workarounds with sizing pixels, etc. That would avoid all the clutter that I end up with.

2. A per-object animation option similar to Swing that allowed an adjustable rotation around each of the three axes, instead of only one at any one time.

3. The ability in some dialogue boxes to enter numbers to two decimal points, or even just one decimal point. I have often found myself wanting to increment an entry by less than one whole unit.

I realise that X3D isn't meant to be a modelling app, so I'm not expecting Xara to pay any attention to me as I must be well outside their target user profile for the application. Nevertheless, I suspect many of the limitations I actually bump into stem from the GUI, rather than from the core application. I am amazed how flexible X3D is even so, and I get a great deal of pleasure from creating these images.

And just demonstrate the point, another image. I think I like this one better than the first one I posted.

Mike

[Soquili]

Hi Mike and Egg,

Mike this latest post has more dramatic lighting, I like it a lot.

On the 3D apps discussion. I have tried some of the freeware programs and haven't had much luck with them, because of the learning curve. I like Wing3D for modeling, but you need another application to render the object. I have tried several commercial 3D applications and found I like Cinema 4D. I did take an on-line course which was taught by Randy Rivas who is a member of Talkgraphics (although he hasn't posted in over a year now ). I have also used TrueSpace which is very good and there is probably a link to the version 3 posted in the 3D forum, which is available for free. I have the learning edition of Maya and it has a big learning curve.

[simsmj]

Hi Bill,
this is threatening to go off-topic for this forum, but I have found Cinema 4D CE V6 on a cover disc, and it allows the import of .ai vector shapes, that can then be extruded. I have started playing with this, and seems it might be a useful way of bridging to another 3D package. I have also found Truespace 3 on another disc, but haven't done anything with it yet.

I think I'll always have a soft spot for X3D, though, as you can get such quick results, because most of the complicated stuff happens in XaraX, with which I am pretty familiar, and because X3d can do its own rendering.

I also thought the lighting on the second image was more dramatic, and I find it interesting that all the objects have the same texture and tints, but show up so differently under the lighting.

Mike

[DougW]

An amazing piece of artwork.. done in X3D? Really?

Is there a tutorial or list of steps explaining this? I sure havent' run across these capabilities myself.

...Doug