Getting started on meshing - part II
16. Creating the first shape for the belt
Alright, onto the
belt.
I'll start with a cylinder. From the model tab I get the cylinder
tool and set stacks to 12 and slices to 8. As I'm gonna be bending the
cylinder into a closed ring there's no need to close the cylinder, so I
uncheck the Close Cylinder box.
Now I drag a cylinder next to my mesh
in front view.
This is an ok size, I'll be able to scale it later if I
want to. Now I zoom in on the cylinder.
I deselect the bottom row of
vertices (shift+right-drag) and click the rotate button, I set the options
to User Point. The selection will now rotate around where ever I place the
mouse. I place the mouse somewhere in the vertices I just deselected and
drag the mouse to rotate the cylinder. I deselect another row of vertices
and rotate again.
I continue this way to form a rough circle.
To close the
circle I snap and weld the matching vertices from both ends. I select the
vertices 2 by 2 (one in each end), click Vertex -> Snap Together and
then Vertex -> Weld Together. It's important that you check in all
views that you've only got the right two vertices selected or bad things
will happen.
I weld the 16 vertices 2 by 2 so I'm left with 8 and a
nice closed ring.
Now this ring is pretty ugly and as I want to make a big
chain kinda belt it is also too big.
In the front view I select a row
of vertices at a time, and move them closer to eachother and try to
distribute them better to make a circle shape.
I also had to
rotate some of the rows... the angles of the rows have to be like the arms
of a clock, that will give a smooth round look.
