Battle Tank

[salaam]

Hi Pawel,
Experience comes from experimentation, patience, trial and error.
You should try looking through this X3D forum for past projects. Try to do and understand the posts that you see. Also, if I were you, at this early stage, don't bother with anything like the tank nor any of Mike Simsmj's designs, they are far ahead of even me.
X3D was not designed to do fancy things like tanks. If you look at Mike's threads you will quickly learn that he creates by problem solving and pushing back the 'barriers', not by following rules or manuals. If you can not think like he thinks, then you will have to spend much longer at reaching his level by following his 'rules' and 'manuals'. If you can not innovate, then I think that you will have problems with this software.

The tank uses the ripple animation, where the 'Frames per cycle' should be set to something like 5, and towards the top of the screen the 'Timeline' 'Frame rate' should be something like 2/5. The objects are postioned using the 'amplitude' % value (in the ripple animation section).
Lastly if you stop using the 'page break' most of your problems will be solved.

Anas

"Rome wasn't built in a day."
"Don't run before you can walk."
"Always start with the basics."

[pawel]

Hi Salaam,

Thanks for your patience with me.
I realy do not know what I should feel or think
right now.

Nevertheless I wil give the X3D a chance, and me too
for that mater.
I will check the others projects as you suggest and I will see
where it wil take me.

Thanks once again

Cheers
Pawel

[simsmj]

Hi, Pawel,
just to add to Anas reply, it is worth pointing out that Xara3D was originally a text-based application, and would apply its 3D wizardry to text typed in by the user, in any font available on the user's PC. Text is inherently 2D or flat. X3d would treat each flat character-shape as an object to be extruded (made non-flat) and manipulated in 3D.

That text-based architecture is still there, even though newer versions of Xara3D can now also import other flat shapes besides text. Essentially, that means shapes can sit beside each other on a page in the same line, or sit on separate lines, with each line ending in a Carriage Return.

For modelling type images like Anas's tank, it is usually the case that the different shapes need to overlap, and/or be rotated or shifted into position.
So one simple option is to put each object into a separate line, with Centred Justification, and set the line size to 0%. This puts all the shapes into the centre of the page/screen. You can then apply other tools to fine-tune postioning and sizing to acheive the desired result.

I will put together a simple tutorial to illustrate this using just text shapes, in the next day or two.

Mike

[simsmj]

This is just a very simple tutorial to supplement my last post in this thread. It is designed to illustrate the text-based roots of Xara3D, to show why things like carriage returns, line spacing and tracking are relevant in it.

The tutorial is based on the monogram that appears on JRR Tolkien's Lord of The Rings books. I have always liked it, and it occurred to me that it would serve the purpose of the tutorial very well.

The end result isn't exact, I don't have the right fonts, but that wasn't really the point of the exercise, and I also wanted to avoid using another app like Xara Xtreme to create more accurate shapes, but to do the whole thing entirely within Xara3D.

Mike

PS Oops, I forgot to mention that you need to pause the animation on frame 2 as soon as it is running.

[Egg Bramhill]

Mike,

I hope you don't mind but I've created a video tutorial to compliment and based on your tutorial above.

You can view it HERE

[simsmj]

Hi, Egg, be my guest, I'm glad it was suitable for presentation in video form. I'd heard of YouTube, but I hadn't seen it in operation. I'd be tongue-tied if I tried anything like that, I'd want a script!

Nicely done.

Mike

[Soquili]

Very clever Mike!!

Well done Egg! The video adds to the comprehension of the instructions.

[salaam]

I decided to complete the tank. I am having trouble with the rivets. They are too long and I can not seem to shorten them. They seem acceptable here but at different angles the look like spikes.

Anas

[salaam]

I was thinking...
This tank was constructed in 'Ripple aninmation' it would not be possible to create this object in this style using the tutorial above.
(Just in case anyone tried it and became confused.)

Anas

[simsmj]

The tank is really looking super, Anas, be proud of it, I would if it was mine.

The rivets might be toned down by a combination of bevel and Ripple percentage, and you might also need to make them out of smaller diameter circles, and not use a square bevel, but an angled one like a 45 degree bevel.

Of course, you might already have tried these, in which case I'll just sit quietly at the back and not say anything.

I often found myself wanting to specify some options to one or two decimal places, because the integer resolution was too big.

Mike