Armillary Sphere

**Grafixman** · 03 June 2005, 06:04 PM

Another masterpiece of ingenuity, Mike. You're right, the textures are mangled a bit. Like the graduations in the horizontal ring. So, is this thing going to be animated?

**Egg Bramhill** · 03 June 2005, 06:10 PM

FANTASTIC !
Is it just 1 Xara3D file?
I'm not sure about a tutorial but I'd like to see the strange shape it makes in an animation.
One thing, I think the wooden stand would look better in a darker wood, like rose wood.
Egg

**rssk** · 03 June 2005, 06:22 PM

That's a terrific piece of work, Mike.
Why don't you put it in the 3D section? I'd imagine it'd be a difficult task even with one of the mainstream 3D packages.

Cheers

Roger

**Egg Bramhill** · 03 June 2005, 07:38 PM

An hour and a half later I've got this far. Why do you do this to me Mike, I just have to see how it's done http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif
Egg
http://www.xlwebdesign.co.uk/tg/armillary1.png

**John Rayner** · 03 June 2005, 10:12 PM

Very Nice mike,

the only thing missing is a shadow... but who cares, it is still great! http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

**simsmj** · 04 June 2005, 02:00 AM

Terry, thanks, my wife is happy to tolerate my hobbies, as long as I get the chores done first!

G-man, thanks, and the two steel rings are more mangled than I realised, but I think I can fix that, but the other mangles were so extensive when I subtracted the graduations and circles from the rings and transferred the apparently clean results to X3D I just despaired, and applied them as textures instead. I'll post the one that broke my patience later. Meanwhile, attached is a top view showing the steel ecliptic rings, with the mangled gaps.

Egg, yes, this is just one X3D file, and I took your point about the wood, I had meant to do something about that, mea culpa http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/smile.gif but the image below has a darker wood, just by deepening the red tint of the X3D shape. Just for interest, the original sphere I based my sphere on is all brass, and is by no means the most complex example, and in fact I left off two additional rings that I was unable to place properly. I wasn't concerned much about that, as it would have made the sphere very confusing to look at, if you see what I mean, with too many similar rings all over the place. And your own image shows you've got the trick to it! The rest is just adjustments http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

Roger, thanks, I may just do that!

John, thanks, and I did try a shadow in X3D, but never got it to look right, and it didn't come out too well when I viewed the reduced-colour exported image.

Mike

http://www.xaracen.pwp.blueyonder.co...20view%202.png

**simsmj** · 04 June 2005, 04:16 AM

This is the import problem I had when I started creating the surface details. The left hand image is the XaraX shape, the right hand is the same shape imported to Xara3D. Not a pretty sight! It looks like X3d fed it through a mangle then tried to re-assemble it again. I can tell you I was not a happy bunny when I saw it.

Mike

http://www.xaracen.pwp.blueyonder.co...%20problem.png