Learning 3D

Primitives

The simple shapes where many models start are usually called primitives, from left to right.
Box/cube, Ball/sphere, Disk/cylinder, Cone, Capsule

They are all made of points polygons and edges.

They all have a fairly similar set of controls- to set Width, Height & Depth (XYZ) of the object and controls to set the number of segments on each axis. In fact its all pretty self explanatory, its one of those things that its quicker and easier to just do rather than have someone explain.



Lathe
This is one of the real fun tools, instant results with something verey different than what you started with.
From this
to this with one lathe- So its good for spiraly things(phone cords) but it also can be used for any thing generaly cylindrical such as bottles, glasses, torches, pencils and fruit(not so much for banannas though).
Lets make a quick wine glass



Start off by (in Lightwave) useing the pen tool to sketch out a polygon in the shape of a profile of half a wine glass. Now you want to make sure that the points of the center of the stem are on zero on the X-axis, this is where we will be latheing around and if they are not right there you will end up with a hole down the center of the glass, not exactly the most practical of designs for a glass.

And here with the default settings for the tool is a fairly simple wine glass.
Not too hard eh?
Wham, bam, wine glass mam
Almost forgot if you end up with somthing that looks strange, like it is inside out the the polygon that you startrd with has its normal faceing in the wrong direction, just press f to flip it.

Thats it for todays quick lesson, if anyone has a particular topic they would like me to have a stab at please ask.
Save now, save often