• Zaxwerks

  3D Serpentine Body Thickness

  Posted by Eric Kuentz on April 21, 2010 at 6:58 pm

  I’m loving 3D Serpentine! It can do so many awesome things.

  I’m finding a great many uses for these Serpens, both with heads (and tails) and without. That said, when I am creating objects without heads it would be great to be able to thicken the walls of the Serpen body (similar to Edge Scale in ProAnimator).
  Is there a way to do this (aside from using multiple serpens at varying scales) or is that an upgrade to look forward to in version 2?

  Thanks.

  Eric Kuentz replied 16 years, 3 months ago 2 Members · 2 Replies
• 2 Replies

• 

  Edward Wu

  April 21, 2010 at 10:01 pm

  Hi Eric,

  Glad to hear that you are enjoying 3D Serpentine. Maltaannon showed off some great 3D Serpentine demos at the NAB show this past week. It was very interesting to see him build a very complex looking animation with just 3-4 layers, and a wiggle expression.

  In regards to your question, ProAnimator and 3D Serpentine works similarly. Both create the body (sides), as well as the front face and a bevel. When you are increasing the Bevel Scale/Edge Offset in ProAnimator, you are essentially increasing the size of the front face. To do this in 3D Serpentine, you can change the size of the Serpent body by controlling the size of the path layer, or the Custom Cross Section layer (if you are using custom cross sections).

  Then, you can add a bevel to the end cap by choosing “Beveled” for the “Head End Cap”, and adjusting the Head End Cap Size setting. However, like ProAnimator, if you take the front face off (Selecting “None” for the Head End Cap), then you’ll see that the side/body is just a flat plane surface.

  Therefore, if you want to “thicken” the walls of the Serpent body, I was recommend making an outlined shape as the Custom Cross Section. This means, if your Serpent body is a circle, draw a “doughnut” shape as the Custom Cross Section shape, and use “Flat” as the “Head End Cap”. This way, when the Serpent is extruded, it will look like the Serpent body has some thickness to it.

  If you have any questions regarding this, let me know.

  Best,
  Edward
• 

  Eric Kuentz

  April 21, 2010 at 11:38 pm

  Thanks. That’s a great idea. I’ll give that a try on my next project!
  I’d love to see some of Maltaannon’s work on this. I missed out on NAB this year.

Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up