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       This topic requires some knowledge about splines, and thus they will be described here.
       Splines are the ordered sequence of vertices which, in fact, are polylines. Splines are indepent and do not belongs to any of objects. To operate with splines there are two levels in ZModeler:

  • Splines
  • Spline-vertices.
           The first one can be switched with combination of Objects and Splines buttons in toolbar and aimed to operate with the whole spline (move it etc.) The second can be switched with combination of Vertices and Splines buttons in toolbar and aimed to adjust splines' vertices.
           To create splines there are several tools that are in Create\Splines subbranch:

           The most recently used tools are Linestrip (variable polyline) and NGon (elliptic polyline).
           Linestrip tool creates polyline with left mouse clicks and right-click is used to stop creation.
           NGon tool creates a polyline that is fitted into specified ellipse. N-Gon tool uses Numeric Bar #1 (View\Floaters\Numeric Bar #1) where you specify amount of vertices in n-gon. You should left-click and drag to draw an ellipse.


           First we have to create the wheels' shape. The shape is the half of the wheel cross-section which is shown on the left:

           We shall use splines to make the simplified shape; the one on the right. To create it, we shall create the following figure with linestrip in front view:

           We shall use Surface of revolution tool to create the wheel. This tool works the following way:

    - it rotates Source spline (cross-section) around the Rotation axis. Spline can have any form, (e.g. our spline can be used) In our case, the First vertex (the bigger one) lies on rotation axis. Also, we shall not need start and end capping.
           Choose tool Create\Surface\Revolution and switch to side view. Activate the spline (it will be drawn in blue) and click on it ones to pick the source spline (point where you have to click is #1 on the image):

    ... then move mouse down (where the bigger vertex of spline is) and click second time to pick rotation axis (#2 on the image above).
           The dialog box will appear where you should enter objects' name and amount of intermediate steps (16):

           Hit OK and answer NO to both upcoming questions.
           Switch to level of objects (by unpressing splines button in toolbar) and reorient object (if necessary). If object looks normally (has normal proportions), than switch to level of splines back (by pressing splines button in toolbar) and delete the spline. Then back to level of objects.
           The wheel might look like this:

           Now switch the wheel to vertices level and weld the center vertices into one vertex (by selecting them and using Create\Object\UniteSelect. tool):

           Then you move the wheel to it's place and rescale it. Then accurately map texture onto it and create four copies of wheels.
           Finally you get complete mesh of the car:


           The result file is
    HERE.


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