Atomic Systems

I've written a new tutorial for those who are interested in making 'real' 3D chain for our RR sims using 3D Canvas Pro.
I've tried to keep the poly count down as much as possible and still have good looking chain. Which is the real point of this tutorial.
Yuri from down under at the Steam4me site has graciously hosted it for me.
He's given it a bit of a more professional re-write and I'm really excited about it.
Take a look-n-see;
http://msts.steam4me.net/tutorials/3d_chain_3dc.html

Thanks again, Yuri



Oops, this may be in the wrong category thread... Sorry. [Mod Edit] No probs.....moved to correct section[/Mod Edit]

Hi Rick

Excellent tutorial.

Many thanks

John

Very good. Lots of little pointers about using the 3DC tools and a superb looking chain for use in many places.

It works -

Thanks guys.
Hey! You got red chain, Geoff... LOL Lookin' real good, there...
Makes me feel good that someone tried it and it worked for them. I was writing it as I was building it myself but sometimes somethings get overlooked or left off.
I guess I did good this time. LOL

Hi Rick

I did not get the object to mirror properly at the end but that is just me. I cloned the half link and joined the two together. There are some techniques in your tutorial that I had not used before so I am happy to have leaned something new today.

Chains are used everywhere so keeping some links in the component library will save some time in the future.

Your tutorial was well written -- any more?

There is another way.

Select a cube primitive and then chamfer the edges. Select the edges of one face and run pipe engineer and you have a chainlink.



Squash the cube and/or increase the diameter of the pipe to obtain the shape and size you require.

Its a bit quick and dirty because you need to tidy up the ends where the pipe starts and finishes, but an option.

I keep a number of varied link types in my Library, too. I have 'em in the vertical and horizontal positions at 90 degree angles from each other. Saves time. I also have some links at 15 and 30 degree angles. These angles seem to work well when trying to round a corner or wrap 'em around a log.

I'm rewriting an old tutorial of mine about depth shading and sun shadow angles using Paint.NET. I'll post it when I've finished.

Phil, sounds like your way will be loaded with polys. A cube will bring in at least 80 per link.
This tutorial is about making good lookin' low poly chain.

ngnut wrote:I keep a number of varied link types in my Library, too. I have 'em in the vertical and horizontal positions at 90 degree angles from each other. Saves time. I also have some links at 15 and 30 degree angles. These angles seem to work well when trying to round a corner or wrap 'em around a log.

I'm rewriting an old tutorial of mine about depth shading and sun shadow angles using Paint.NET. I'll post it when I've finished.

Phil, sounds like your way will be loaded with polys. A cube will bring in at least 80 per link.
This tutorial is about making good lookin' low poly chain.

Rick,

Obviously the cube is deleted after you've created the link. There will be 8* the number of sides on the pipe, for example 32 polys for 4-sided pipe.

There are many ways of achieving the same sort of results.

Here's the way I would build a detailed chain. A different way of creating the single link....and an extension to all three ways to make the assembly of a chain a little easier....

I start with a cube primitive and select a face and extrude it twice in one direction...

...and then three times to the left...

...twice upwards, and then to the right....

..joining up to form a "squared" loop. Here's the plan view.

Don't be fooled by it being fatter than its height.

Now, I get rid of four faces on the left and right edges by shrinking the width to zero. I've done three here...and the fourth is partly done.

Now select the whole shape and use the "Weld to Range" plug in to weld the corners together.

Use the Group selection tool and select all the points in the top half and stretch the link to an approx size, and shape the outline of the link to suit. Here's the bottom half done...

Now select all of the outside edge faces and shrink the height down like so...

Finish off by using the "Weld to Range" plug in again. My link has 28 faces and 22 points.

My final step is to use the "Shift Tool" to move the centre of rotation to make building a chain easier. Select the Shift Tool, and holding Ctrl down, shift the axis indicator to where I have indicated below...


Now to build a chain.....

Copy and paste the link...I've done it three times.

Alter the Hierarchy tree to cascade the links...like this:

In plan view, adjust the links so they overlap. Move them in order down the hierarchy...the top link is the highest level link, and the bottom one is the lowest. Here's the result

Now the clever bit. Select the second link from the top....and twist it 90 degrees and swing it in any direction a bit. Note how the lower level links move with the higher level!

Then twist and rotate the next one down...and finally the last one. You're shaping the chain!!! Here's my end result..


And there we are. Hopefully a couple of new techniques for the toolbox!!

Yup, that's another way alright, been there and done that, but the poly count is pretty strong. (Although, yours looks to be about 60 as well, Doug. What does 3DC say the poly count is?)



I see you're using the Shift Tool to center your object. It's much easier to L. Click on the Center Selection thingy in Object Operations to do this. It'll snap to center for you with one click.
Yours looks pretty good, too, Doug.

As we can see here in this thread, there are about as many ways to do it as there are modelers.

I've been trying to build a low poly chain link and my tutorial does that pretty well. (We all know MSTS is not a poly lover.)
A cubed link will bring in about 80 polys or more while mine is down to about 60.
Now, if you change the Bend Sections to 3 instead of 4 in my tutorial, you can drop the polys to 40 but I don't believe anyone can do any better then that and still have a good looking low poly 3D chain link, IMO.
And, that's what my tutorial is all about.

I believe the reasons we don't see as much chain as we should is because of the time involved in making it and the high poly count it adds to a model.

Have fun,

Looks strange at first....2 less faces but 14 less polys....but my link has a higher proportion of triangular faces. More by luck than judgement!

I see you're using the Shift Tool to center your object. It's much easier to L. Click on the Center Selection thingy in Object Operations to do this. It'll snap to center for you with one click.

I know.....but I didn't want the axis in the centre of the the link. I wanted it at the point where the link would "swivel" against the previous link. The trick is to make setting the "path" of the chain an easy thing to do.

And if you're worried about the poly count....what about this beauty?

More polys than the plane it goes in! And it looks superb in FSX!!

I hope you have a texture on ALL of the faces Doug

Of course I do!

Looks like a Pobjoy to me