wwwmwww Wrote:
Yes... you do need a torus. May I ask what software you are using. Aside from POV-Ray I'm not aware of many ray tracers that still use CSGs. |
I use a program called Realsoft 3D
http://realsoft.fi. It was originally called Real|3D and started life on the Amiga which is what I had when I bought it back in 1993. They ported to Windows/Unix when the Amiga died, so I've stuck with it. It's not really well known, and the development team is small, but it has some very unique features and is very capable (plus I'm used to it... ;-) )
In Realsoft CSG's are called "analytics" and have been supported from the first versions. Also very well supported are boolean operations, so it's perfect for recreating a lightcycle. The only CSG they don't have is the torus, so I'll have to make one by sweeping a small circle around a larger circle to create a mesh.
wwwmwww Wrote:I script everything by hand. I like coding and I like having exact control over everything which you don't often get with point and click front ends. And again most of the modeling front ends that are out there are mesh based... I think.
If you want to get into POV-Ray I'd certainly encourage you. Its a great programing language and I'm starting to get very tempted to share even more of my code. If there were others out there that could learn from it or use it that would be enough to push me over the edge. |
Here, let me push a little... ;-) I'm actually a programmer too, and have this desire to have complete control like you do. However, I try to let go sometimes and use normal tools like everyone else. In the case of 3D, I figured a good modeling and animation program would be nice to have instead of trying to program or script everything. The nice thing about Realsoft is that it does provide very accurate control if you want, as well as a scripting language (currently JavaScript) for direct programming control.
I compiled POV-Ray on my FreeBSD box a few days ago after your first reply. I started breaking your model down to see the individual parts as you have them. The scripting seems very straight forward, so I'll probably have to start working with it more! ;-) So far playing with POV and your model has been pretty fun!
A couple of notes about your current model:
Rear fender (primitive 14): Currently you have it as a cylinder and use POV's "shear" macro to get it to the correct angle. However, I believe it is a cone which can be seen below. There are a few other shots I have where this can be seen clearly as well. But certainly, as you pointed out in a previous post, there seems to be several revisions of the lightcycles and we may never know which one made it as the final version.
Rear side cone (primitive 17): A very interesting way to create those, but again they look more like actual "cones" to me, maybe rotated and sunk into the side a little. I'm going to play with those at little and see what I can come up with.
I'm also trying to think of a way to avoid the torus. I wish I knew for sure what CSG's they had to work with. If they had the ability to create a cylinder with rounded edges, that may work. But I was looking closely at the front-on view in the image below, and it looks like the rounded canopy edges start to curve in a little before merging with the top-most part of the canopy. That could only be done with a torus...
| wwwmwww Wrote:There may very well have been more of that footage at some time. If it still exists... and who may have it... I have no idea. Dave is DaveTRON. He's the most prolific poster in these parts and isn't too hard to find. He probably knows personally half the people you emailed a year ago. |
Sweet. Well, let's hope he reads this and makes a few calls... [please!] :-)