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Question about creating fuselage with splines

hank.chadwick

hank.chadwick

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7
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us-arkansas
Hello,
I a new to creating things in GMAX and I have a question about useing splines to creat a aircraft fuselage. How come the inside of the object is not there with a crosssection and surface applied to it? If I need explain futher, please let me know.

Hank Chadwick
hank.chadwick@sbcglobal.net
 
hank.chadwick said:
Hello,
I a new to creating things in GMAX and I have a question about useing splines to creat a aircraft fuselage. How come the inside of the object is not there with a crosssection and surface applied to it? If I need explain futher, please let me know.

Hank Chadwick
hank.chadwick@sbcglobal.net
Click to expand...

Well, you need to understand that in any modeling program, regardless of how you create any part, what you "see" is a set of triangles, consisting of three vertices (points) with a "face" (polygon). Polygon faces have only "one side visible" normally (which is why the visible side is called "normal")...

Using splines/crossections/sufaces only creates an assembly of polygons all of which have their normals facing "outwards."

If you were to collapse your stack (convert to E-Mesh), clone it, and then select all polys and "Flip Normals," then you would have an "inside" to accompany your "outside," although there would be "ZERO THICKNESS" (IOW, the outside/inside polygons would be infinitely "thin")... :D

There are several methods to choose from to create "thickness," but that's beyond the scope of your question, and is best described in the form of tutorials, some of which at available at:

http://www.freeflightdesign.com/tutorials.html
http://www.oregon-coast.net/Tutorials/index.htm
 
Thank You for the help

Wow, I never would have thought of that. Thank you for the help. I am very excited about learning this program and this forum is going to be really help. Again, thank you for passing on the knowledge.

Hank Chadwick
 
I have another question

I was wondering if there is anyone who can offer me some advise on a subject. I am creating a Falcon 7X in GMAX and I am using spline circles to create the fuselage. It is working well, but there are certain points on the fuselage that have angels on the skin because of the increase in hieght of each spline circle as the fuselage gets thicker. I tried adding more splines, but this just adds more angels. I thought of bending the cross section lines, but with success. Maybe there is something I haven't thought of.

Hank Chadwick
hank.chadwick@sbcglobal.net
 
Last edited:
Hi,

could you post a screenie of the "Angels"? I'm not sure what you mean. In my experience, it seems that extrusion or wrapping works best with a fairly dense mesh that can get simplified later. Too few vertices can cause all kinds of weird things in GMax, an area that is greatly improved in more recent (or more expensive) modeling packages.

I was spoiled when I used Unigraphics...
 
Sorry

Thats a type error. I meant angles. here is what I mean and also I included the pictures of the fuselage with crosssection and then just the spline object. Thanks!

Hank
 
Pictures

here are the pictures.
 

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I see what you mean.

Have you considered starting with a fairly dense cylinder mesh (in terms of sections) and manually align the vertices on the cross sections? This wrapping technique seems to work better for me when I need to match complex shapes with relatively few vertices.
 
I see what you mean, thanks for the screen shots.

Have you considered starting with a fairly dense cylinder mesh (in terms of sections) and manually align the vertices on the cross sections? This wrapping technique seems to work better for me when I need to match complex shapes in Gmax with relatively few vertices.

Etienne
 
Thanks for the reply

Well, the way I created the green part of the fuselage is by starting with a circle spline and then copied it out several times. I then adjusted the size and location of each according to the shape of a 7X. What I am trying now is I added about 8 times as many circle splines to the same amount of space. This allows for alot more fine tuning, as far as I can tell. I'm not done yet with the "sculpting" as I like to call it, but it seems to be having a better look than just a few splines. I'll post pictures of what I come up with in a day or so. I would still like any suggestions you or anyone has because I have only been doing this for a few days now and this is my first ever model, so "tips and tricks" of the trade are welcome. :)

Hank Chadwick
hank.chadwick@sbcglobal.net
 
Question about "fixing" and round Edit Mesh

I have a fuselage of a jet I working on. I deleted a vert. on the fuselage by mistake and saved my work, not noticing it. Now there is a big hole int he side of the jet. Any idea's on how to replace the hole without using the "cap hole' feature because it fills in the inside and doesn't look so good. Thanks.

Hank Chadwick
 
hank.chadwick said:
I have a fuselage of a jet I working on. I deleted a vert. on the fuselage by mistake and saved my work, not noticing it. Now there is a big hole int he side of the jet. Any idea's on how to replace the hole without using the "cap hole' feature because it fills in the inside and doesn't look so good. Thanks.

Hank Chadwick
Click to expand...

If you haven't let GMax run too long after deleting the part, you can recover the last Autosave file...

Look in the ..\GMax\Autobak folder for the recovery file(s):

Autobak1.gx
Autobak2.gx
etc.

I have my configuration set to Autosave every 10 minutes, with 5 files max. This way, during any given hour, I'll have FIVE chances to recover.

BTW, you can also simply Merge any part from the Autobak files, but you'll need to set the filter in the browse window to show "All Formats" to "see" the AutobakX.gx files... ;)

Why are you saving OVER your existing file anyway? You should always click the + key (or turn on the auto-increment feature in the configuratin menu) to prevent these problems.
 
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