DOGA/Bryce (ship modelers read)

[trooper]

Originally posted by Katchoo:
The style of the ships are very similar to the art for the Children Cartoon/Books called "The Magic School Bus". That's the first think I thought of when I saw the Pexlerr Ships.

I see what you were thinking about... didn't know about these books before today.

The Pexlerr look great though. What did you use to create them?[/QB]

Photo shop ... and a pencil !

[trooper]

I'm discovering Bryce... it far less intuitive than doga, but I supposed it much more powerfull.

My main problem is the rendering only view mode... I miss my traditionnal top/side/front views. Do those views exist on bryce ?

Does anyone works only with Bryce for creating shipsets ?

[Phoenix-D]

I work 99% in Bryce, with some DOGA parts.

Bryce has it's points, but so does DOGA. Bryce only has one render window at once, period. However you can change to a top-down or side perspective at any time- click on the mountain right below the micro preview box to switch views, or click the drop-down arrow next to it to select a view from a list. Once you have aview you want, click on one of the gray oval pips next to the mini-preview. That'll save that view and you can access it again by pressing that pip.

Give yourself time to get used to the interface, it can be a bit confusing at first. Use whatever works best for you; there are other programs out there you could try, like Blender, moray, milkshape, etc.

They also have the advantage of creating lower-poly models that can be exported to the .x format. Once Starfury comes out you'll be able to make ships for it using them, but -not- DOGA or Bryce.

Phoenix-D

[trooper]

Phoenix, how do you create symetrical objects (like duplicate reversing in Doga). There is no grid and no coordinates displayed, so all you can do is "estimate" (with the eye) that two objects (like two wings on a ship) are symetrical, or that a hull part is centered ?

[chewy027]

There is no actual button to produce symmetry like in DOGA, but if you select the two objects that you wish to center at the same time (shift+click on both) then you can use the edit tab and use the align commands to center them. You can do this for as many Groups of objects as you want. So for example say you want to get your two wings as close to symmetric as possible in reference to the body of the ship. Eyeball as best you can and then select the wings and the body and align them either by the x, y or z axis.

note: To make centering objects easier try to do all your rotations with the camera angle and not the actual object itself. When you rotate the object itself it can skew the x, y and z axis and it will be much harder to align things properly.

[Phoenix-D]

There is a grid, but it isn't displayed. Click on edit, then on the drop-down arrow underneath the 5th icon group (the center control icons). There you can "snap to" a number of things, including the grid.

The second drop-down on the edit menu will allow you to reverse an object in any of the planes.

Another way is to select the center object, click Attributes (A), note its position, then check that both the other objects are off by the same amount- just in different directions.

Ex:
center cube, position 0,0,0
wing 1, position 10,0,0
wing 2, position -10,0,0

That -should- mean the wings are symetical. FYI you can move objects by typing in new locations on this screen as well, so you don't have to leave, adjust, check, repeat. You can also adjust using the keyobard

Left and Right move on the X axis
Up and Down move on the Z axis
Page up and Page down move on the Y

Holding Shift makes the movements larger, holding Alt makes them smaller, and holding CTRL lets you move the camera with the keyboard.

Phoenix-D