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Arena 3DPlayer User's Guide.book Page 113 Wednesday, June 1, 2005 9:21 AM
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B • SHAPE DRAWING: BEYOND THE BASICS
Presto! You have a stop sign!
B • Shapes: Beyond Basics
Your sign is about 25.5 units across. Note the distance units before using this shape. If your
distance unit is inches you are probably all set. Otherwise, you will have to scale the shape.
(If you save the shape to your library, you should probably scale the shape definition by 1/12
because library shapes are all in feet for consistency. If you want the shape to be stored in
meters, or your drawing is in meters, scale by 1/39.37.)
Tutorial 9: Revolutions
Revolutions come in handy for many types of non-cylindrical shapes such as tires and
wheels, tanks or other containment vessels, and similar forms. This exercise shows how
you can use revolutions creatively to make a coffee mug.
Your first impulse in designing a coffee mug in 3D might be to use a cylinder. After all,
that is the shape of most mugs. However, a cylinder has many disadvantages. There is no
way to show the “inside wall” of a standard cylinder in Arena 3DPlayer, so your cup
would always be full to the brim (even if you used texture mapping to “color” the top
surface only). The edges would be too sharp. And you would still need to draw a handle.
Revolutions answer all three of those concerns.
Your first step is to make the basic coffee mug shape. To do this, first visualize a coffee
mug. Remove the handle and cut the mug in half vertically. Imagine the cut surface…it is
basically a “U” shape. What you want to do is take half of that “U” and rotate it around the
center axis of the cup.
This time instead of starting with a static shape, let’s start with a new library shape.
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