need help with 3ds ??

hi all,

i am a big fan of no limits and i am currently making a 'black hole' track ...if you have been to alton towers , you know which ride i am on about. anyway my problem is a have made a sphere in 3ds max and as soon as the cars enter the sphere it views the outside ( sphere has no inside) , i am sure people know what i mean , how do i make an inside to a sphere (black /dark if possible ) ...please help if you know ??

tony

best person to ask is white wolf and bino maus

i admit , i am a bit thick when it comes to 3d images ...... so if you can please help .... i'd love to know how to do it ....

tony

Originally posted by tonytango

hi all,

i am a big fan of no limits and i am currently making a 'black hole' track ...if you have been to alton towers , you know which ride i am on about. anyway my problem is a have made a sphere in 3ds max and as soon as the cars enter the sphere it views the outside ( sphere has no inside) , i am sure people know what i mean , how do i make an inside to a sphere (black /dark if possible ) ...please help if you know ??

tony

OK, so you have a 3D object. The object is made up of triangles (faces) That all that what is called a "Normal". The normal is what defines what side of the face will be visible. The reason why you can not see the sphere from the inside is that the faces all have normals that point out. Now if you want it to be visible, they you have a few options.

You can make the texture that is applied to your sphere "2-sided" Generally, you try to stay away from using 2 sided textures, but in some cases, they are a best bet. On a really complex object with thousands of faces.... If you had all the textures 2 sided, it would take much longer to render the object. Not good, as we all know, as gamers (or simmers) FPS is king. Your object is simple though, and using a 2 sided texture would be OK.

Option 2 would only apply if you wanted the inside to be a different color. In that case, you would need to basically make an inner shere that had the normals pointing IN. Then you could apply the other material. As far as what the best way to make the inner shere depends on what program you are using. Also, you may not even need to make another sphere. Is the train tunneling through the sphere? There are many ways to fake things like that keeping the lowest amount of polygons, ESPECIALLY if you want to make it dark.

Knowing what program you are using would be really helpful, and also how you are using the sphere if you want some more specific help.

i am using 3ds max !

I don't really know what you mean, but if you don't get 3ds max, you'd better make it with anim8or or tia's object creator

i have got anim8or , better concept , how do i make a 2 sided object with anim8or ... i am thick !!

duh ..lol

Originally posted by Roelywoely

I don't really know what you mean, but if you don't get 3ds max, you'd better make it with anim8or or tia's object creator

You would have an easier time making a 2 sided texture in Max. There seems to be a problem with Anim8or properly pplacing the 2 sided material intructions in the 3ds file upon export. There are work arounds of course, but they are somewhat a pain. Max is not all that hard, and this sort of object can be made in under 5 minutes, if you are going for what I think you are going for. Since you did not reply to my other question, I am going to assume that you are making a spere that has an opening on both ends for the coaster to pass through. If you actually want a more hollow sphere, the easiest way would be to create a spline that is basically the inner and outer wall of the spere, (This could be made with as little as to arcs that connect on the ends) Make sure the arc is not a full 180 degrees though so you create the "holes" to pass through. Make sure the arc does not rest on the zero line (drawing a circle as a guide would be very helpful) and then move the pivot point to the zero line. Then simply lathe the spline from the modifiers rollout, and voila, you have your 2 sided sphere. Then you just have to texture it. The easiet way would be to create a multi/sub-object material and assign the faces of the object the appropriate material ids. That way you avoid the duplicate verticies from having to detach the inner wall so you can make it black.

Another method would be to create a sphere, and then make a cylinder that passes through it, and then do a boolean subtraction (compound objects>boolean) to make the hole. Then you could texture it in the same maner by either detaching the inner wall textures, or by applying a multi/sub-object material and assigning the material ids.

I know it sounds like a lot, but this is all fairly simple and either method can be done in under 5 minutes (under 2 probably).

If you need any more help let me know.

thanks ... that really has helped ... will post track on here soon

tony

Originally posted by RCFlyer

You would have an easier time making a 2 sided texture in Max. There seems to be a problem with Anim8or properly pplacing the 2 sided material intructions in the 3ds file upon export. There are work arounds of course, but they are somewhat a pain. Max is not all that hard, and this sort of object can be made in under 5 minutes, if you are going for what I think you are going for. Since you did not reply to my other question, I am going to assume that you are making a spere that has an opening on both ends for the coaster to pass through. If you actually want a more hollow sphere, the easiest way would be to create a spline that is basically the inner and outer wall of the spere, (This could be made with as little as to arcs that connect on the ends) Make sure the arc is not a full 180 degrees though so you create the "holes" to pass through. Make sure the arc does not rest on the zero line (drawing a circle as a guide would be very helpful) and then move the pivot point to the zero line. Then simply lathe the spline from the modifiers rollout, and voila, you have your 2 sided sphere. Then you just have to texture it. The easiet way would be to create a multi/sub-object material and assign the faces of the object the appropriate material ids. That way you avoid the duplicate verticies from having to detach the inner wall so you can make it black.

Another method would be to create a sphere, and then make a cylinder that passes through it, and then do a boolean subtraction (compound objects>boolean) to make the hole. Then you could texture it in the same maner by either detaching the inner wall textures, or by applying a multi/sub-object material and assigning the material ids.

I know it sounds like a lot, but this is all fairly simple and either method can be done in under 5 minutes (under 2 probably).

If you need any more help let me know.

with max just make a slightly smaller sphear and add a normal modifyer to it, this will automatically flip the normals on the selected sphere (in this case you would want to me selecting the inner one) to apply the modifyer, just select the inner one, and go to the modify tab, modifier list, and select normal.

You've got mail tonytango!

Bino

yeah, like whitey said, or make a copy of the sphere, thats in the exaxt place, and add the normal modifier, that way you have an exact size spehre, not a smaller one..

Great job zan. I am glad you felt the need to repeat exactly what someone else has said.

Whitey's techique is great, except, again, assuming that the coaster is going to go THROUGH the object, where does it enter and exit. And using that method, if you need holes in the sphere...

Apply a the color to the Outer and the seperate color to the inner sphere. Select either sphere, choose ATTACH from the rollout, and selct the other shpere. A dialogue box will come up, make sure "match material IDs..., and click OK (this should be the defaultoption). Now you can boolean the holes into the object and they will appear joined. If you skip this step before cutting the holes, then you will have a gab between the two spheres and you will have to create all the polygons and/or faces.

My idea would be (without 3dstudiomax) to make a sphere in anim8tor, then create a cube made out of a few brushes in object creator. Position them so you have the proper holes. Make the brushes 6-sided, then flatten the brushes so that they're 2d. Then, mark invisible the outside faces, then run the object optimizer. Export the objects, then merge them together. (cube inside the sphere.) I don't have the money for 3dstudio, so I use the eval version of OC, combined with An8 for my 3ds's. Hope this is well explained.

..... i wish to express my thanks to all that have helped me with this problem ... and we should see the black hole coaster on here soon ....

many thanks

tony