Learning Newton

The past two days I have been putting serious effort into trying to learn how to use Newton. I have tried in the past but didn't give it a lot of effort. I was just wondering how long did it take you to learn and what is the best way to learn it? I have been watching TheRealEntropy's youtube tutorials to start. Should I just keep building and practicing? Should I try to build full rides or just experiment making a bunch of different types of elements? What worked best for you?

2 days?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! God bless man... I don't think anybody 'learns' newton. You have to learn the features of newton, then you can build your tracks.

When I first started using Newton I just started experimenting with it and making a ride. After a few tries I began to see what worked, what didn't, and how to make stuff better. I started in the beta of Newton 1 though, so I wasn't dealing with muti-force zones right off the bat. When Newton 2 came out learning multi-force zones came fairly easily sense I messed with fvd's a bit back in the day.

Really my best suggestions are to just keep designing stuff and look at some good tracks other people have made with newton to see how to make elements "less newtony."

I don't really think it's a matter of learning how to use, for me anyway it was quite intuitive how it worked and it was just about gaining experience in how changing the different variables affects the shape of your elements.

I would definitely reccomend building entire tracks, mastering transitions between elements is as important as the elements themselves. Parhaps start a couple of different projects, maybe a hyper focussing on turns and airtime and something else with inversions. That's what worked for me.

Thanks for the insights. One thing that I kept questioning was when to use a multi-force zone and when to just make a separate section. Would you recommend not dealing with multi-force zones for a while and just making tracks using everything else? The multi-force zone option is what is messing me up the most.

I would say start with single-zones, but know that you're probably not get anything that's very realistic. Once you have a feel for what those zones can do, then you should definitely move on to multi-zone force sections so you can make some more realistic coasters.

The sooner you understand multi zones the better. You won't be able to build a decent track with just single zones, I only find them useful for perfectly straight hills, and there's nothing you can do with single zones that you can't do (better) with multi zones.

[yoshifreak]

Here's an infographic I made which shows one of the simplest benefits of multi-zone based construction.



You can see how the roll is allowed a longer period of time to complete the transition than it would have been with three 1 second single zone sections, while still maintaining the same relative area and direction traveled. The inclusion of lats could lessen the negative g forces applied during the transition, but just for this example I've made it as simple as possible. Obviously this only explores the most basic feature of multi-zone based forces but to be honest if you want to make any decent attempt at replicating the shaping of real life design, it's a must.

I'd suggest trying to replicate real life shaping you see on I305, Maverick, any B&M, or really any coaster and you'll begin to get a sense of how changing the g-forces or banking changes the shape of the track. It'll make creating your own coasters much simpler. Also don't forget to use lats, coasters having zero lats is absolutely incorrect.

Do also refer to my article for people new to newton.

(Rough estimates based off of my learning experience.)
To understand the basic features with the help of tutorials and examining other people rides in newton, about two weeks.
To full out understand the program and all it's features and be able to work with the track, about 1-4 months.
To become good at the program and be able to properly replicate track shaping and realism of forces and elements. Took me a good 6 or so months of making literally hundreds of scrap tracks (most of which are still on my system) to get to a point where I felt fair to say I was pretty legit with the program and didn't just bend the forces around and make "spaghetti tracks" (what I sometimes call "newtony" tracks that are essentially just pushing around the forces and seeing what becomes of your track if you will, with little or no regard to shaping of elements and manufacturer style, but more of just pushing around the track and deciding "Oh hey, this looks pretty cool! I'll keep it." Commonly you'll hear people whom are in this stage of the learning process, (yes I consider the "newtony" track making to be a stage in the learning development of newton) use the excuse of more or less "Keep in mind I am not trying to replicate any particular style, but was just trying to make it my own". Granted sometimes there are times where you want to experiment with a new style, but often enough you'll notice one thing about the tracks of about 90% of the people who say that nowadays, and that is that you can rather obviously tell that newton was controlling them rather than themself controlling the program and shaping it well, and that term I've been using "newtony" primarily stems off of this point, and you can definately tell when not a lot of time was put into shaping. Most of us had a point of using newton when we made tracks like that, and overlooked the shaping for the most part because we were kind of in awe of how much smoother the result was as opposed to handbuilding. Most users will work there way out of this phase as they become better with the program and get better at replicating shaping and element flow, etc. Time is key, dont try to rush yourself into understanding the program, there is a learning curve to become really good at it and I consider there to be stages in the learning development. Understanding the basics of the program takes not long at all in the scheme of things, mastering it is what takes a long time, myself, and I'm sure most of the, you could say, "Pro" newton users here on the site probably have a handful or so of things they still could improve on. I know I for one am still figuring out little tricks to properly shaping elements and etc and I've used it since around 4 months after the second came out. Newton is best for force based track designs, Elementary or Purgatorium are likely better for more geometrical based manufacturer's designs like CCI. You can use it along with AHG as well, some people say it achieves a more natural result from newtons heartline. But yeah, how it worked for me was pretty much just time, watching tutorials and making a lot of practice tracks... along with patience.

Originally posted by Wing-Over

The sooner you understand multi zones the better. You won't be able to build a decent track with just single zones, I only find them useful for perfectly straight hills, and there's nothing you can do with single zones that you can't do (better) with multi zones.

That might be true, but I feel like learning single zones is an important step in understanding force-based design. And I recommended single zones as a starting place rather than lined up multi zones because I imagine they would be easier for a beginner to wrap their head around. Differences of opinion maybe, but that's my two cents. BTW MF44, I wouldn't blame you at all if you trusted wing-over before me, since he's sort of a legend.

I would always use single zones when I first began, I just couldn't grasp the concept of the multi-zone inside my head. The tracks did not have any flow or good shaping at all, though I must say that it help to learn single zone before multi. This way you can experiment with all of the different features and get to know them well before attempting to try to overlap using multi-zone. The best way to get better at Newton though(and you're going to hate me for this) is practice. Practice makes perfect as they say. It helped me become more comfortable with the program and using it just became second nature after awhile.

Newton just doesnt really work for larger coasters... all the newton coasters ive seen are pretty low to the ground and short. most people on this site make whole tracks instead of individual elements so that's something to consider.

^That is completely false. Newton works for big coasters just as well as small coasters. Its just that small coasters are usually easier to support and such so they get published more. I've scrapped plenty of hypers that were well done with newton just becuase I was too lazy to support it.

Originally posted by richie5126

Newton just doesnt really work for larger coasters... all the newton coasters ive seen are pretty low to the ground and short. most people on this site make whole tracks instead of individual elements so that's something to consider.

Newton works for any coaster, you just have to know how to use it for each type. Also agreeing with Raptor, people are just lazy and want to put togeher a ride quick. I'm sure it you look around you'll find tons of larger scale Newton coasters.

Newton can do anything- with anything- with any size. You just have to be willing to take long enough to practice ways to make transitions differentiate into what you want them to be; I just don't like taking that time.

Even though people somehow still think my rides are Newton-made anyway, so it doesn't really matter to me. *sigh #ign'ance-at-its-best.

I actually find that Newton is easier with larger coasters...you have more personal "Hz" in a way...you can control more parts of the track "per second". When you design a tight track, to make detailed trackwork you have to make very tiny zones and minutely adjust all of them, and then sometimes Newton goes with that translucent track thing that indicates you're running out of steam. Which then means that designing with forces is very hard because of train length, etc.

Whereas large designs it's very easy to stay in control, make small adjustments, etc. So if anything it's easier on the large ones.

Originally posted by GerstlCrazy

Newton can do anything- with anything- with any size.

I've got to disagree with you. As much as I love Newton, there are some limitations, but they're mostly small and very insignificant. I mean, by the very nature of the program, there are transition shapes that you simply can't achieve in Newton. Sure, there are ways around it to make it "feel" right, but the fact remains that you can't make certain shapes. This is one thing that FVD/elementary has over Newton: the ability to enter custom transition functions, which is certainly something I would love to see in Newton, and something I could see instantly becoming a big hit among the more experienced users. I've actually tried to make a few of my own transition functions in FVD, and they came out pretty ok. The big one I made was a multi-wave sin curve to allow me to switch banking back and forth on one time zone without that awkward transition pause in the middle (which, by the way, is the biggest gripe I have about Newton: you either deal with the quick, "robotic" pause or you have sharp entrances to your transitions, and neither of them make for a very good track unfortunately). Ok, I'm done. Sorry for wasting your time [:)]

Originally posted by GerstlCrazy

Newton can do anything- with anything- with any size. You just have to be willing to take long enough to practice ways to make transitions differentiate into what you want them to be; I just don't like taking that time.

Even though people somehow still think my rides are Newton-made anyway, so it doesn't really matter to me. *sigh #ign'ance-at-its-best.

What program do you use then?

Hands and some AHG