Simple Complexity   [Next][Main]

In the next few pages I'm going to walk through building a room using lathe, extrude, rotate, copy and paste.
You'll see these tools in action and see some techniques for applying them to make complex structures easy to build.
I'll be rebuilding a room from Vortex1 so you'll have an idea of what we're trying for.

I'm assuming you have read through Quick Tool Review and have a basic understanding of how to use the tools
found in to Modify, Face, and Vertex sections of the Room bar.

The idea is to learn the old "Right Tool for the Right Job" concept.  As with anything there's more than one way.
These are some techniques that I've found to be effective.

We're going to build the Vortex room with the windows to the viewports on either side.  I recommend printing this out and following along.
I've also included a zip file containing some .orf's from this tutorial.  Get  it from here and open Sctut01orf.  It has the verts laid out and ready to lathe.

To the left I have laid out the verts I'm going to lathe creating the sphere.  I've also worked the pipes into it.  Remember to always insert verts continuously.  You can't pop verts into the middle of a string; the lathe will be trashed.  I went bottom to top.

Mark all the verts, set it for 12 sides, normals pointing outward, and lathe around the Y axis.  Save your room.

Remember, there's no undo so save often and sometimes with a new name.  You can always delete extras when you're happy with the results.

Now lets use Copy and Paste-On-Top to divide it into quarters.
First make Top view active, then set it's grid to 50.
Set the mode to Face (crtl+F)
 
First mark all the lower half by stretching a window around it.
Then Copy it.		 Mark them again and delete them. Now use Paste-On-Top.  While the inserted portion is still marked, hit the down arrow on your keypad once to move it 50 units.
This is a good technique for segmenting rooms.
Now do the same vertically.
Mark the one half (shown on left), then copy it.  Mark again, delete it, Paste-On-Top, and move it 50 to the right.

I want it to stay centered on zero so change the grid to 5, Mark ALL (M) and move it 25 units left.

Your results should look like mine to the right.

Before we get to far lets throw on some textures.  While all the faces are still marked started make all the faces LWwall
using "To Marked".

Yoiks!!!! I just noticed the faces or the wrong way.  Hmmmm looking at the previous examples you can see the normals
are on the outside instead of in....... Oooooops.  Mark all and Flip Faces if your room is also inside out.  Anyway.........
 
Unmark all (U) then stretch a window to mark the center faces. (left)

Make them LWpend

Unmark all (U)
Stretch a window to mark the faces as shown to the left.

Make them P-NovPipes1.

The pipes are all the wrong direction in mine.  Check yours and , if necessary, go to Align, set it for Marked Faces and Rot90.

It should like the example to the right.

We'll align the textures later.  I just wanted something to give it some depth for now.

On to the next page.

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