ok, here is a quick tut to make facets in lights parabolas with AST.
If you have any questions, feel free to ask. I have surely forgotten lots of little details, so i'll try to improve the tuts with your suggestions (and take time to correct my orthograph and grammar :P)
ok here is my clio rear light.
isolate the bottom parabolas (it was a draft made with a curve, edited a little bit using cv to give the vertical curvature) - it's trimmed now
and untrim it
it's important to work with a four sided surface, much wider than the final visible surface. YOu'll see why while reading the tut.
my surface is of degree 3, and has 3 isoparms is the u direction. I didn't really paid attention while building it, but it's of little importance here, since we are gonna rebuild it soon...
rebuild the surface with 10 isoparms in the u direction and 5 in the v direction.
to do this use the rebuild tool or just type in the right menu 10 and 5 in the box and press Enter....
we get a regular isoparms network...adjust the number to have a square grid...
ok then i'm gonna trim the surface with this isoparms network.
to do this we can use the Detach tool, but it's gonna take days to splitt everything. So much faster method here :
choose the Curve Edit/Duplicate Curve tool :
and click each isoparms we build just before.
we now have curves, in the space (and not on surface)
double click the Trim tool to configure it this way (choose 3D trimming)
IMPORTANT : before trimming, be sure to delete all curves on surface you had before.
then pick the surface, and click Go,
then pick all the curves (at one time) and click one time in each square to define the zones we want to divide. (Those who know the trim tool will directly understand)
click divide and you have now 50 facets.
we're gonna use know for each one the Trim Convert tool
to convert this trimmed surface to simple four sided square surfaces.
i tried to configure the tool to have directly surfaces of degree 3 in each direction and with only one isoparm, but it didn't work, and i got surface with 15 isoparms.....weird thing....
so i had to rebuild each surface.
and here is what i get :
we now have a network of square we're gonna edit with their cv....
click the move CV button :
choose NUV and CV Mode, check the step soze box and use a value of 0.1
NUV stands for normal to UV plane....ie we gonna be able to move the cvs of the surfaces along the normal of the surface....cool
so we first select of the green cvs of the next pic (and for the whole network )
we move them a little bit to the inside of the parabola.
then we select the red cvs of the last pic and move them a bit inside of the parabola, but a twice more than the green one.
we now have a nice facetted parabola we can replace and retrim with the other surfaces of the light....
you are the only pioneer of AST.
well done and explained... you can easily grab this technique to other 3d applications...
i've installed on my system autostudio but i have fear of it...
another program to learn... neverending story to improve designing skills...
as i can see in your clio post that i follow whitout saying a word, the results are really impressive...
i know, like a good appz for automotive icem surf and style... i'm totally noob... if you know those progs, can i have a feedback or suggestions... is the technique similar to nurbs modellers or different?
yes nurbs is nurbs you only have to find the tools that are not always the same from one app to another. In maya it should be the same (depending on the version, here it's AST 13, don't know the maya equivalent version in terms of nurbs tools...)
sefs, i know Icem surf well cos we're using it at work too...don't use it much atm but it looks like a powerfull tool, maybe better than AST in some areas...
mecha, for the last time plz stop saying such things about rhino or other apps...i know many companies who are using Rhino every day to design new products and this is real good.
If you don't consider it as a professional too, at least consider this a affordable mean to learn nurbs before getting further with other tools like AST or Icem etc...
and plz don't argue about this here. thx.
I cant really understand its interface, but it doesnt make it a bad soft, because there are lots of people there using it very well and doing cool things...
andrei, nice work ! you even filleted it ! actually it's never filleted or only due to the mold milling operation. But even in this case its really small vakue of radius.
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you can easily grab this technique to other 3d applications...
