Lathing

[ozmart2006]

I am fairly new to carrara (5) and I have spent the last hour or so trying to figure out how to make a simple lathe object, e.g. a wine glass...and I am really none the wiser! The explanation in the documentation is not very well put..it doesn't really make sense to me at all...honestly to someone who isn't familiar with how its done it is an almighty mystery! I have attempted to follow all the instructions to the letter but have yet to make a successful lathe object.

Why is something so simple made so complicated? I have used other 3D apps where this is a breeze. Maybe I am missing something here?

I'm sorry, I don't mean to be rude, but I am feeling very frustrated by this seemingly unneccessary complexity....making something simple complicated!

Can anyone explain, for us here in the cheap seats, in simple, step by step points how to do this?

Help Much appreciated

thks

[Aunty Betty]

Make sure after drawing and centering your initial cross section on the back plane that you set you Geometry > extrusion method to translation and your Extrusion Envelope to Symmetrical, then when you select the extrusion plane you can begin drawing your symmetrical profile ( area marked in blue ). What you draw with you pen above the extrusion direction line ( in red ) will be reflected below.

Alternatively if you find Carrara frustrating for certain modelling functions do it in an app your happy with and import it as a vertex model.

However you won't be able to edit it the spline object on the fly in Carrara if you do.

In Carrara your when lathing your basically sweeping a lathe profile along an extrusion path using profile splines.

[bwtr]

Ozmart, one of the best investments you can make is the CD available from www.3dxtract.com which is at the Xmas special price still. The C5 manual/help seems to lack some of the tutes in earlier ones. 3D is a bit like learning algebra--it all of a sudden seems to make (well some) sense.

[ozmart2006]

Thks for your comments.

Here's what I did..is this the correct way?

I made a cross section, drew another bit of the line on the drawing plane with the pen tool, then made another cross section, adjusted the width etc, then drew another part of the line on the drawing plane, then created another cross section and so on until I had a glass like object? Is that it?

I think I was trying to create the whole thing with one or two steps..i guess this way gives you more control but its a lot more work..or am I stll barking up the wrong tree? :-)

[Nate Owens]

This might work... no cross sections needed.
Go to insert spline object
1. draw circle in front view
2. choose center to center the circle
3. choose pipeline type under geometry/extrusion method
3. select envelope symmetrical
4. on director's view pull the right (top of glass) end very near the beginning dot
5. select pen tool (it's a bezier type pen)
6. on the right wall, click on that point (top projection above the center line) you moved near the base, then draw the shape of half of the glass on the wall making the contours you want - this all done on the upper line above the center line... think of that as the lathe line... you are just doing all of this sideways. back in the assembly room you can rotate it as required. You can also double click this object in the assembly room to jump back to the spline and tweak it

you can tweak the points and curves on that side wall.
if this doesn't work, i will try to do some screen caps for you later

[woodboat]

Hi bwtr, the CD you mention - is that the one for 25.00 with "all the issues"? I'd sure like to access some of the basics myself. Been using the Demo user guide until my shipment arrives and it is not much. Actually I'm utterly amazed at the waste of paper - I had it printed at Kinkos. Nearly 900 single sided pages and it truly could have been on about 150. Oh well.... Maybe that CD is what I actually need.
thanks

[bwtr]

Thats the one woodboat.

[woodboat]

Thanks bwtr - I got it! It should be here about the same time as my v.5 software!
wb