newer than than newbie?

ok i think i've got the creases figured out.. thanks irev

Still stuck on the other part that i showed above from franks axe movie. And also i've found that tg's world movie didnt show me how to solve my problem there. As far as i can tell everything works up to the 2nd click on the record button. But doing that still doesnt open the "rotation . X" track in the key editor

Greg
 
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are you still watching Frank?

cuz everyone else seems to have left this thread. Maybe irev, tg and the rest figured i was hopeless case:| i just discovered another 3D app... Blender... its actually free... but i cant even open the blender.app. When i click on the icon, it pops up in the doc for a split second, then goes away. hahahaha......:???:
 
Thanks Martin

I pretty much had the creases figured out thanks to irevs description from a few days ago. And now with those movies tg made I should be able to do the axe properly. The thing I'm still stuck on is the animation in hello world. As i said in the post at the top of this page "As far as i can tell everything works up to the 2nd click on the record button. But doing that still doesnt open the "rotation . X" track in the key editor"

Greg
 
Hi, mayday.

I am not sure exactly what happened with you, Cheetah3D key animation is very simple.

1. go to start frame. and check the value that you want animate. and then click record.
2. go to end frame. and change the value. the values of start frame and end frame must be different to edit it in Key editor view.
3. click record. after click, the values that you changed appear in Key editor view.

that movie is not so good (sometime too fast), because I failed to capture it. maybe I will make new one...

Regards.

tg_jp
 
hi tg...

changing the value? it doesnt say anything about that in the tutorial but i guess that you mean dragging and dropping the time marker from the start point to 1.0? If thats not what you mean then i dunno :confused: if that is what you mean, i've done it a bunch of times now and never has that rotation . X track opened up when i click the record button again

i dont know what happened with me either :neutral:

Greg
 
hi, mayday.

in this case, I meant that it is the value of rotation H . rotation H value at first frame is 0 (by default), and the value at last frame is 360. these values of first frame and last frame must be different. please check it again.

regards.

tg_jp
 
I havent done much animation but movement,rotation etc...(i think) must be specified in the editor menu as image suggest.If you have more than one object that you want to move in unison,place all objects into a file and move ,rotate (making sure you have file selected in editor)and i suppose if you have more than one model in the scene that you want to move etc. independently,you have to select each individual model in the editor and specify position as you desire using the editor AS SHOWN.

PS .Could be totally wrong.
 

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H = 360

Yes tg it mentions that in the tutorial. I've changed H to 360 every time before i click the record button the second time. As far as i can tell im doing all the steps mentioned in the tutorial. What i'm not doing are things that arent mentioned in the toturial... but then, i dont know what they are. Something to do with puting stuff in files like Royaly mentioned? I dunno... don't know how to do that anyway... getting more :confused: all the time

I notice Royaly has the "set creases" option in his main menu so he must have the older version of cheetah like Frank. Maybe i should be trying the older version... seems like it might be easier to use...

how do you guys draw those lines on your screen caps?
 
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mayday said:
I notice Royaly has the "set creases" option in his main menu so he must have the older version of cheetah like Frank. Maybe i should be trying the older version... seems like it might be easier to use...
Click to expand...

Hi,
the new 3.x way it easier. In Cheetah3D 2.x there were 4 menu commands which did the job of the two menu command in Cheetah3D 3.x. So less menu clutter but the same functionality. -> Better.

If you follow the movie I've posted a few days ago setting creases should be really no problem.

By,
Martin
 
Just tried animation test in cheetah 2.6 and 3.1 and this process worked for me fine every time.

Step1- Create a box (you can add a material if you choose).

Step2-make sure the box is selected (highlighted) in the object browser.

Step3-Now go to animation time line and click on the little red round icon which is next to the little green triangle.

Step4-Now grab the little triangle which is pointing in a down postion
from 0.0 to 1.0 (this arrow is situated on top of the red line).

Step5-Now go to properties(making sure the box is still highlighted in object browser) select rotation and in the (H: field change to 360.000


Step6-Go to time line and click on the little red round icon once.

Step7-Now click on little green triangle to preview movie.
 
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Ah hah!

i have a spinning globe at last :shock: thanks Royaly

Martin. I realize you must be busy and stuff and so you probably only look at this thread the odd time. Thanks for taking the time to try help me out but I've already mentioned a couple times in here that i had the creases figured out. I only mentioned them again in my last message because in both screen caps Royaly left earlier, the "set creases" option was selected. So it got me thinking, if so many people are still using the older version, maybe its easier to use. But I believe you when you say that the newer version is easier

Anyway it seems i found the problem as to why I couldnt get my globe animated. First i followed Royalys steps exactly and the animation still didnt work. Since I'd gone through all this so many times before, i realized there was one step that he must have forgot... the step where you change the box in the upper left corner from modelling to animating. So i added that along with his other steps and eventually i had a spinning cube world. I tried it again with a ball and that time it didnt work, so i undid a bunch of steps and tried again making sure i was following the steps exactly. i finally realized what had been the problem all along. As Royaly says in his step 2 "make sure the box [ball in my case] is selected (highlighted) in the object browser." That is the key to making the animation work. In the tutorial there is no mention of that. There is the one picture where it shows how to change the ball rotation H to 360, so that was always when i was selecting the ball... after I'd already pressed the record button the first time. I had no way to know i needed to select the ball earlier than that, so thats why it never worked. i went back to tg's movie and when you're looking for it, you can see that he selects the ball before pressing the record button at all, but that movie goes really fast and cant be paused so its hard to notice that detail unless you're looking for and expecting it.

Martin, in this thread a few people have praised your work on cheetah and said how powerful it can be... in the right hands. Maybe one day I'll realize myself how good it really is, but it took me 2 weeks with alot of different people advising me to get that globe animated and really it was just one small but important detail "make sure the box is selected (highlighted) in the object browser." that was making it not work for me. As I've said before... I'm totally knew at this stuff. Maybe most of the people that try cheetah have some experience so they automatically know those kinds of things, but I wonder how many beginners like me have tried that hello world tutorial, not had success with it and just given up? Most people would have long before 2 weeks. You would do yourself a big favor to have some video tutorials like the 3 that tg made up. The ones that can be paused and slowed down. Especially for the hello world tutorial since its the first one.

Well, next I'll watch tg's axe movie and see if i can make an axe :rolleyes:

should be easy now, but thats tomorrow

Greg
 
Hi mayday
regarding the drop down menu in the screen shot i provided was purely to show you where to specify movement for animation,nothing else,i simply just grabbed it from Franks post.So cheetah 2.6 is not easier to use,if anything 3.0 is.
It does not make any difference for this animation purpose whether you are using the modeling layout or animation layout as long as the time line is displayed.

You stated in your thread that you followed the steps exactly and it didnt work and then stated again that you had forgotten to make sure the box was
highlighted which is obviously very important as i had mentioned it twice.I am far from an expert at any of this stuff,but my point is take your time,read things carefully and maybe just experiment with settings,commands etc.and im sure you will achieve what you intend to.
 
I see....

i tried it without changing the right top box from modeling to animation and it does work. The thing is now i can do all those steps in less than a minute so its easy to just do them and see if works. When i started i was continually refering back to the tutorial and then later tg's movie and so it took me a long time to do all the steps and so i got to thinking, when it didnt work, as usual "f**k:mad: i could have missed a step anywhere along the way, time to smash something". Little did i know there was one step, Royalys step 2 "make sure the box is selected (highlighted) in the object browser." that i didnt even know about. It got to be that seeing the "rotation . X" track open up in the key editor was the holy grail. Until last night i had not seen that in my cheetah window, ever! So everytime when i hit the record button for the second time and saw no rotation X track open up it seemed to me that once again it didnt work. But when you dont change from modeling to animation the key editor doesnt even open up all the way so i guess the rotation X track is in there but you just dont see it? To my beginners eye [last night] that looked like the same kind of failure as all the other times

I must seem like real bonehead to some on here:roll:
 
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Hi mayday,

Really glad that you’re able to finally make the Globe animate. Like you said, sometimes it’s just one small detail that can put the brakes on one’s progress to move forward and understand. It’s really nice that so many generous people have contributed to that understanding.

Something to ponder: Martin is just a one person company. Not only does he develop this professional program and meet his own high standards and deadlines, he monitors the web forum, reads and studies development literature, answers all inquiries off line, maintains the web site, writes and rewrites the manual, surveys his customers, data bases his customers, does the accounting, sends out email announcements, writes marketing copy and press releases, lets out the dog and brings in the cat, etc, etc, etc, all while learning how to proficiently read and write a foreign language.

I would guess eighteen plus hour days have been the norm for many years, and that’s why Cheetah 3D only cost $99.00. I would also venture to guess that its pretty much been a labour of love to this point, and we have all been the fortunate beneficiaries.

Now, if we could only clone Martin. Mmmm

Best regards,
 
sorry...

i guess im a bonehead and an as**ole :roll:

Martin seems like he must be a good guy... everyone seems to agree and he has tried to help me even though i may be hopless

Speaking of that I've been watching the start of tg's axe movie and trying to manipulate my own axe and its coming back to me how it took me over 3 hours just to get to the point where it was time to set the creases... of course i didnt know how to do that then... now i do... but the manipulation is quite difficult. I have all the squares selected like tg has but all i can do is make those sections huge or small. i don't know how to make it go the way tg does. Not even close.

The thing is, i have a project i want to do and thats why 3 weeks ago i decided i needed to learn some kind of 3D design program. At this rate it will be a really long time before i can acomplish what i need to be able to do. I only have about 2 1/2 months left to get that project done. I know its my problem and not anyones problem on here but dont have time to spend 2 weeks getting the axe tutorial figured out and then spend another 2 weeks to do the next one. I wonder if theres small but important detail im not aware of for the axe?

Greg
 
Hi Greg,

Maybe it's a good idea to leave the tutorials for a moment and start experimenting. For example. Make a cube. Double click on the cube icon in the objectbrowser so that it becomes editable. And start playing with the transform tool. Click/drag on the arrows to move the cube around. The balls to rotate and the cubes to scale. Then also try this with the different edit modes. ie. point, edge and facemode (on the top of the screen next to the x, y and z). Try selecting one point, edge or face and use all the stuff from the transformtool (move,rotate and scale). Also try this with multiple points/edges and faces. If you already tried these things, please ignore this post. But it seems to me that you're holding on too much on the tutorials instead of just experimenting. Experimenting can't harm Cheetah as you can just close the drawing and start a new one. I also tried the tutorials first but also couldn't find some stuff you're describing in your posts. I just started with a simple cube and used all the tools and modifiers I could find on this object. I hope you can make your goal and create some beautiful 3d models to make us jealous here!! Cheetah is by far one of the most easiest to learn programs around. And it's also incredibly powerful.

Regards and good luck,

Peter
 
hi, mayday.

thanks for watching the movie.

the movie has no caption. actually, I was using some tips in the movie.

* Expand Selection and Reduce Selection with short cut key.
* Switch Modifier On/Off with hot key. you can set hot key in Prefereces... .
* Ring Select and Loop Select with hot key. watch the Tool view for checking what tool I was using.

this axe is not same as Cheetah3D tutorial make. this movie is not so good for tutorial, I think.:(

the movie shows just my modeling style, and what you can make with Cheetah3D.

Regards.

tg_jp
 
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