topic Re: Custom Circular Rail in Libraries & objects

Custom Circular Rail

Anonymous — Fri, 22 Jul 2005 15:14:03 GMT

Hello,

I have a very elaborate rail that I made using slabs and saved it as an object. I want it to follow a circular pattern. Is it possible for me to give the railing a radius?

I'm not too familiar with GDL, but I will definitely be willing to give it a try to work this one out, my rendering is due in two days.

I know it can be done, just need some help.

Thanks.

Re: Custom Circular Rail

Anonymous — Fri, 22 Jul 2005 16:09:27 GMT

i would say doing it in gdl in under 2 days is probably unfeasible

could you post a screenshot of the railing?

bill

Re: Custom Circular Rail

Richard Morrison — Fri, 22 Jul 2005 16:30:47 GMT

You might consider applying it as an image file to a circular (transparent) object.

Re: Custom Circular Rail

Anonymous — Fri, 22 Jul 2005 19:01:40 GMT

its probably possible using the new MaxonFrom add-on. I saw an online demo last week and it looked pretty capable. That would be way quicker than trying to do it with gdl manually...

your GS reseller should be able to get you the info

Re: Custom Circular Rail

__archiben — Sat, 23 Jul 2005 03:36:01 GMT

muddasick wrote:
I have a very elaborate rail that I made using slabs and saved it as an object. I want it to follow a circular pattern. Is it possible for me to give the railing a radius?

you're talking about the cross sectional shape of the handrail right? there are many ways of achieving what you want relatively quickly. a couple of things spring to mind:

1. use the 'profiler' tool - simply draw your shape as a fill, select it and activate the profiler. (a quick read of the manual might be helpful before you begin). this is probably the simplest way but a 'static' solution: you will not be able to easily change the radius of the rail without generating the whole thing again but you can make the railing follow a complex path pretty quickly.

2. drag and drop the fill into one of the GDL window - archiCAD generates the code for the polygon. you then need to modify that code to fit into the syntax of the GDL solid that best suits your needs . . . more complex and requires more explanation than i've given, but i'm not at my laptop right now (net cafe) so i don't want to start giving more detailed advice without being able to check that i'm heading in the right direction myself.

you could always e-mail me the profile/path or both with a quick description of what you want and i'll see what i can do . . . (e-mail address is in my signature)

HTH
~/archiben

Re: Custom Circular Rail

Anonymous — Sat, 23 Jul 2005 20:44:02 GMT

Here's shot of the railing.

This is really a difficult one, because profile is no good because it's not a solid continuous object.

Thanks for all the help so far, I wish there was an easier way to do this. Maybe a custom railing tool or something.

I could easily do this if the railing didn't have a radius, I would simply use slabs to build the railing and then save it as an object. But the frickin CIRCULAR thing is a killer.

Re: Custom Circular Rail

Anonymous — Sat, 23 Jul 2005 21:02:32 GMT

Here's the pla file...

Re: Custom Circular Rail

Richard Morrison — Sat, 23 Jul 2005 22:07:19 GMT

I'm tellin' ya, just save your image as an alpha channel and apply it to a curved wall. This only took a couple of minutes.

Re: Custom Circular Rail

Richard Morrison — Sat, 23 Jul 2005 23:06:42 GMT

To save you a little time, here's the image file I used for the above. It's a TIF file. You can probably create a higher resolution file on your own if you need a better image. This was just off of your JPG.

Re: Custom Circular Rail

Anonymous — Sun, 24 Jul 2005 09:28:46 GMT

richard's solution is definitely the way to go

even if you did manage to model/gdl it the rendering time will likely become untenable

bill

Re: Custom Circular Rail

Vitruvius — Sun, 24 Jul 2005 15:41:23 GMT

Hi Richard,

Any chance of posting a 1,2,3 about how you achieved that? The results speak for themselves, and thanks, but I'd really like your tutorial in taking the thing from xy plane to round!!

Cheers,

Re: Custom Circular Rail

Richard Morrison — Sun, 24 Jul 2005 16:30:25 GMT

Here's a copy of a PM to muddasick-

Okay, I'm no expert, but I'll tell you what I did. You need to create a new material - let's say called "Railing" and apply the alpha channel TIF image to it. (This is under the "Texture" drop down) You'll probably want to use Internal Engine for preview so you can check off the Alpha Channel Effects. You can play around with width/height of texture, but you'll probably want to have a height of 3' or so, so you'll only get one band high, and "keep orginal proportion". That's pretty much it.

I applied this material to a wall on one face, and made the other faces glass. (You'll want full transparency etc. for this glass material so it shows as little as possible). Only one face is used so you don't get two layers of the image.

You can use Lightworks rendering engine, too, and the intricate shadows will show up beautifully. (In the material setup, for Lightworks, there is a "Match Internal Engine" setting that makes things simpler). You will have to actually render to get the transparency of the railing to show. Play around with it, but it WILL work.

Hope that helps --

I haven't done a whole lot of this and I'm sure there are others who can explain the whole alpha channel thing better than I can. And I'm sure there are nuances in the process that I've missed, but the above is what I did.