Questions About Bending

[Ablaze]

When I select Bend Clamped, how does the multiple steps of selection work, and what am I supposed to select with each step? I can't seem to find a tutorial that thoroughly explains this.

Also, I'd like to know how to bend out either a segmented line, surface, or a line of vertices, without moving the ends or edges that I want to stay fixed. Like for instance, if I wanted to create the individual bumps in the surface of a car seat, like in this picture.



Or if I wanted to bend out the curvature of a car hood, without disturbing the outer edges:

[Fonte Boa]

Have you already read PuzzledPaul documentation about Bend?

http://www.wings3d.com/paulthepuzzles/aabend.html

[oort]

There is also lots of good info on using Bend in the thread in the following link to the old forum... Using Bend old forum

oort

[puzzledpaul]

Although this is a comment made without actually trying Bend in the 2 examples you mention - I suspect it's not the best tool for the task.

Magnet based moves and Edge | Circularise come to mind as starters.

In the case of the seat, consider how the 'bumps' are created with a real seat ... the bumps are a by-product of the alleys between the bumps being formed, as the material is pulled in via the stitching?

pp

[Ablaze]

What little information is available seems to be scattered at best, and when I do find a video tutorial, its either too quickly paced, you can't understand the person talking or whats going on (video), or for both video and written tutorials its either just a quick run through of the tools or it seems to be made for people who already know how to do it... which makes it totally pointless.

Wings really needs some good tutorials. Hasn't anyone put any energy into doing this? If no, why the heck not! This is a great program and it deserves it! I get the feeling the lack of quality tutorials is why no one I've talked to knows anything about Wings3d or has ever even heard of it. Seriously, no one I've talked to. Not a single person I know who models.

I love this program, so this is really frustrating. I think this is why I ended up quitting using Wings the first time a few years ago. The interface is great and it doesn't feel stifled by tons of endless menus and clutter filling up the screen. And it gives you the flexibility of customizing your own hotkeys instead of using every key available so there's no flexibility. The total opposite of Blender, which made me feel like I wanted to throw my computer out the window. But the lack of quality tutorials is just as frustrating. The Blender community has tons of great quality tutorials using step by step explanations for new users, lots of pictures, videos, and good explanations by narrators who speak clearly with no accents or bad microphones. Its obvious the people who made those tutorials, did it with a lot of care and understood that they were making it for people who were unfamiliar with the program. I loved them, but the interface of the program was just infuriating.

[oort]

Ablaze,
Please spread the word about how great Wings3D is...

I think part of why there are so few tutorials for Wings3D is because it is so intuitive for most things. Bend is one of those tools that isn't quite as intuitive... Blender is unintuitive as I see you agree and which is why there are so many tutorials for it. Even simple things in Blender are complicated. At least to me they seemed that way... Ran13 will probably disagree...

The tutorials that are available for Wings3D were done with great care as well. Fonte Boa has done some for beginners and also some for more advanced things. He is working on doing some in HD recently. As for accents, I haven't had trouble understanding the ones I have looked at in the past. No matter who may do a tutorial you are going to encounter an accent of some kind. Be happy that they are in English instead of in the native tongue of the person who took the time to do the tutorial.

oort

[puzzledpaul]

I love this program, so this is really frustrating. I think this is why I ended up quitting using Wings the first time a few years ago. ...

So, can we assume that if you decide to continue using wings this time around, become familiar with its toolset, that you'll consider redressing the balance re decent tuts ...and write some yourself, aimed at users at a similar stage you're at now?

pp

[Ablaze]

I have an idea.

How about we start a community topic, that categorizes and provide links to EVERY possible anything that explains how to use any part of Wings3D. Tutorials, guides, videos, pictures, what ever helps. And make one big list all consolidated in one thread? But no forum topics, its annoying being linked to a forum topic and have to read through a bunch of stuff you don't need to find the one nugget of gold that you do. It shouldn't be that difficult.

Better would be a Wings Wiki... but that would take some work, with a list of what I just said. It would have to be up kept by the community though. You know like Wookieepedia or Fallout Wiki.

BTW, circularize is helping a lot.

[micheus]

How about we start a community topic, that categorizes and provide links to EVERY possible anything that explains how to use any part of Wings3D. Tutorials, guides, videos, pictures, what ever helps. And make one big list all consolidated in one thread?

You can find something at Interface & Usage / Wings3d Channel Tutorials. Fonte Boa, just started recording new videos.

Better would be a Wings Wiki... but that would take some work, with a list of what I just said. It would have to be up kept by the community though. You know like Wookieepedia or Fallout Wiki.

Take a look at Documentation Project (in the forum index)

[PeterC (PC)]

*looks over the info line*.. No problem, I got this.. *goes through selecting 5 reference points*..
"Configuration doesn't result in Bending"... O_o

I did a Chandelier, and a 'wire/cord' a few days back, and to be honest I hopped over to 3dsmax to use splines>geometry and OBJ exported those back to wings to edit rather than trying to figure out the more complex clamped Bend types. And I hate trying to model in max
Ok I feel bad now, I gave it a shot just now and played around with it for a few minutes.. I think I finally figured out how to bend a rod in multiple spots
I think the biggest problem with Bend/Clamped Bend might be the completely arbitrary names, like rod "top","bottom" and "center" (according to whom? what if the rod is laying horizontally and there is no top or bottom? ) Whenever it asked for 'rod center' for example I would.. well.. selected the center of the section I wanted to bend.. :} but that would always result in both ends of the section bending out and away from the rest of the mesh, making it useless. I thought I just 'clamped' the bottom dammit, why is it moving away from the mesh? I would think.. Rod "center" actually = Rod 'bend around/from point'??? with that in mind things started to behave more as I'd expect.

I'd also change Bend normal to always be bend axis I think.. if I'm gonna bend a pipe to the Left or Right, I'm obviously gonna look at it from the Front.. so selecting a point in the center of the rod (facing me, an axis to bend around) seems much more logical than having to rotate the view, and selecting a point on the side.. facing left/right.. but that's a separate issue I guess

So... I just said a lot and I'm not sure what my point was..
Ahh yes, play around with it, and see if thinking of 'rod center' as 'rod point to bend around/from' instead does what you're after.
All that being said, I gotta agree with PzPaul, I'm not sure I see where bend would be used to make the seat.. A lot of face inset/extrude etc, but bending?