matthew180 Wrote: Martin, those are very good observations, unfortunately we will probably never know for sure.

Agreed...

Some of the shapes are simple, others seem to complex for what we know about what MAGI could do, but there they are in pretty pink, purple, and blue.

And then again, described as implicit surface, these shapes are not that complex compared to "simpler" primitives.
But pretty they are indeed.

Martin

matthew180 Wrote:Carl, I think the torus is right on. How does it look with the other parts of the lightcycle?

I don't think that torus looks correct from the side. I tend to think it has too much curvature.


What do you think of the line it makes with the fender from this angle?

Carl

I had the same problem when I tried a torus for the taper. Basically your torus cross-section circle is too small. I had to actually make the cross-section an elipse to get a shape that looked correct:


However, I'm now having some quality issues where the torus mesh meets the analytic canopy. I sure wish I had a primitive torus... So, I'm considering actually making the whole canopy from a mesh since that is about the only way I can get the rounded edges that it seems MAGI could do quite easily.

Matthew

matthew180 Wrote:Oh, also I think your descriptions of MAGI's primitives are really accurate. Can POV do all of those?

Yes, it's done with the Isosurface Object in POV-Ray. All the Quadratic Surfaces are just Second Order Polynomials. And I don't even think the Isosurface Object in POV-Ray is limited to functions that can be expressed as
polynomials.

There are objects in POV-Ray that are limited to the polynomial.

Quadric Object = In POV-Ray is limited to 2nd Order Polynomials.
Cubic Object = In POV-Ray is limited to 3rd Order Polynomials.
Quartic Object = In POV-Ray is limited to 4rd Order Polynomials. (A torus is an examle of this.)

And there is also a Poly Object which can be used where you specify the order of the polynomial where the order is limited to an integer number from 2 to 15 inclusively.

However reading the documentation it sounds like the Isosurface Object replaces all the above and renders faster and is even more general. Here is a quote from the docs:

"However, the most mathematically oriented still like polys because isosurfaces are calculated just by approximating the right value, while the poly is calculated in a mathematically exact way. Usually isosurfaces are more than good enough for most applications, though."

It's been proven there isn't a close form solution to the general Quartic equation so even that exact mathematical way only works with the Cubic and Quadratic equations.

Carl

I've been meaning to post this for a while, just needed to finish it up. These are some rough angles I came up with while building my model, and they can help a lot with sizing and placement.


By the way, how is the canopy torus coming? I have not had much time to mess with mine lately, but I'll get something accomplished soon.

Also, we put off changing some of the part names before; how about hashing that over now? I think the geomerty is pretty set and we're only nit-picking smaller details at this point.

Matthew

Those are some nice Light-Cycle models! good work!

I just noticed your window cuts are at 70 and 35 degrees. I believe MAGI did this with a rotated box so I tend to think these two angles should add to 90 degrees.

Carl

wwwmwww Wrote:Nice pic. I wish POV-Ray would make images like that easily.

Thank you. However, my 3D software does not do such things that easily either, I did this one in Corel Draw. I rendered an ortho image, loaded into Corel and traced it, then added the angles, text, etc..

wwwmwww Wrote:Ok... I'll prepare something on that to post too. Give me till the weekend.

Take as long as you need. I'm pretty swamped right now too, mostly trying to find a paying j.o.b. (ouch!) Sure wish I could get paid for doing a lightcycle remake...

wwwmwww Wrote:I just noticed your window cuts are at 70 and 35 degrees. I believe MAGI did this with a rotated box so I tend to think these two angles should add to 90 degrees.

Damn, that's right! I thought about that after seeing that wire enhanced image posted, and I should have remembered that last night while finishing up. I'll have to recheck my model now too and make sure the two angles total 90. Good catch!

Matthew

wwwmwww Wrote:By the way... am I the only one to look at this and see a robot with one bloodshot eye, wearing glasses, with a mohawk, and his mouth gaping wide open?

Nope. That was actually my first thought before I saw your second post.