Welcome to New Tutorial

[thyme]

dear seamless friends
I have got the link to a new tutorial where anyone can start now:

www.seamless3d.com/tut/build_av/index.html

This tutorial has step by step lessons showing how to make a simple avatar to begin with using only build nodes.
I hope this new tutorials will serve as the foundations for many other sub tutorials that revolve around building an avatar or any animated model using Build nodes.
Its not fully done yet the lessons but Ep tested it yesterday branch joining the neck to the head and torso surface so this far should be tested thanks to Ep
I have left room in the tutorial for any questions to keep the clutter down.
Please when you post a question create a new thread. If you cant think of a title for the question use the title of the lesson where you are at
Happy I am finally getting how to branch join in more detail ;D Though the BranchJoin nodes never have to be used when using seamless when using a minimalist approach, the BranchJoin nodes lie at the centre of seamless's design
best wishes everyone
thyme

[thyme]

hi everyone
I have updated the tutorial and changed it a little to use Seamless3d 2.046's simplified approach to how BranchJoin nodes can be made to transform descendent parts. So please download 2.046 (or later) if you want to do this tutorial:

Download latest Seamless from here:
www.seamless3d.com/download/index.html

Build an Avatar Tutorial:
www.seamless3d.com/tut/build_av/index.html

All of the tutorial should be there now for a static av but It really needs some more time to check over it for typos. Anyone who wants to test it out now please go for it and let me know
thyme

[bumpy]

hi thyme

been doing the tutorial and it's going seamlessly well so far ;D. Just noticed a very minor something wrong in one of the lovely pictures of the scene tree in "BranchJoin the Neck to Torso Surface". The picture shows the headSurface used. It's no biggy coz the instructions correctly says torsoSurface.

all the best
bumpy

[thyme]

Many thanks bumpy for spotting that I had the wrong image in the scene tree, I fixed the pic now so that its neck0 to torso surface like is says
Glad the tutorial overall is going well
Hope to write more for it soon. I added a undo / redo feature for 2.047 ;D and added a new node, a CoordSweep node, I had a function like this back in my C++ seamless libraries in 2001! I am now working on adding one more node a TransferBBox. This node will be simular to a TransferVertex except it will use a bounding box to determine which verities to transfer the ownership instead of direct indices. I am currently adding a visual clue Bound Box to make it friendly to use.
Hope some of these new visual clue aids and the undo I been working on lately will make the tutorials and seamless in general easier to follow
All the best
thyme

[bumpy]

hi thyme

Just finished the seamless av
I have still got a few spare parts after putting the av together though... its a bit like when i try to fix the car myself
Seriously though, it's a brilliant tutorial and I can't wait to start using the spare parts ;D

Found a few more minor for you too...

BranchJoin the leg to the foot surface:
To do this insert a new Place node before the Stem that generates the legfoot. (right click on the Stem that generates the legfoot and select paste/sibling above/new/Place)

BranchJoin the Leg to the Torso Surface:
USE the Parts l_hip and l_ankle for the BranchJoinPosY's part

USE l_shoulder and l_wristl_hip and l_ankle for the CopyPart's source
USE r_shoulder and r_wristr_hip and r_ankle for the CopyPart's dest

All the best,
bumpy

[thyme]

Many Thanks again bumpy for spotting more misprints in the tutorial and reporting them they are fixed for all now thanks to you and thanks for making it so clear where the mistakes were and what I had to do to fix them. You made it easy enough to fix in auto pilot mode ;D
Very sorry for getting back so late. Some how I assumed there had been no new post's from the forum for the last few days, probably because of getting so much spam lately and I remember now a few days ago no link outside Australia would work and so somehow forgot to get back to the notifier I was sent that morning from the forum.
Been very busy the last few days making 2.047 able to let the user specify background colours for different blocks of nodes in the scene tree. This tutorial brings this issue forward how difficult it can be to locate and differentiate easily one section of build nodes from another. I hope by having a different background color for say building the legs to the arms it will be as clear what is going on as it would be if you are making just an arm all by it self in a single smls file. So far the background color looks like a great way to go I ended up rewriting my own code to paste in the node sprites for the scene tree window to do this after finding out the Win32 functions were either to out of date or the new ones would end up needing some other dll to link in and sure to be another unproductive battle to get right heheheh. Its so much more satisfying and liberating writing your own code when up against such ugly round about ways of doing such simple things. Geez! there was a time when my life was writing sprite subroutines from scratch. What was I thinking when I thought using standard clumsy complex system structures and functions, full of endless red tape, would some how make life easier! So glad to rid of handles for some device in context to some something. Just copy the pixels blast it! You know what I mean ;D
kind regards
thyme

[miniwarrior]

How do you get your numbers so exact for stuff on the Tutorials?

[thyme]

Thanks for your question miniwarrior
All fields that display a value in the form of text can also be edited directly using the keyboard. If you click to the right of the field's up down buttons you will see a winking caret for editing text. It is also possible to copy values straight from the tutorial by highlighting the text from the html page (this wont work if the values are part of an image) using the mouse and then right clicking and selecting copy from the menu and then pasting the copied text to the field's text cell using the standard short cut keys (Ctrl V)

If you are new to seamless you may like to know that the build an av tutorial can now be demonstrated by an inbuilt help robot.
This needs more work done on it to make it a lot more useful but for now it still should be helpful just to watch it go through the motions.
To see the robot in action press f10 and select help/branch join av demo/create skeleton of parts.

[miniwarrior]

What i ment by how did you get the numbers so exact is why did you pick that number insted of .5 added on to it or what i meen is are those the only numbers the only ones that will work together?

[thyme]

Ok sorry for the misunderstanding.
Good question
Many of the numbers don't have to be exactly what I specify and can be played about with to change the size and shape.
You can also play about with the number of staves and/or bands in the stem nodes to alter how smooth or efficient to render the shapes will be. However many of the numbers are what they are for a reason. For example you will notice numbers like 1.5708 (or 1.570796 to be more exact) popping up a lot in my tutorials. This is because this value is half a PI. Half a PI, can be used for rotating an object to a clean right angle or it can be used to make a curve end up bending a right angle to what the curve began at. You could get by just guessing the values using trial and error but if for example you guessed all your values for a branch join, imperfections may be noticeable in your curved joins if great care is not taken and you will probably find it easier in the end to remember and use values like 1.5708.

Twice the value of PI, 3.1416 will also appear again and again. Also you may notice numbers like .0001 which is a value close to zero but is not quite. The reason why a CCLathe is given a curve of .0001 instead of just 0 is because it can only deal with curves never straight lines but a curve of .0001 looks like a straight line to the human eye for shapes no bigger than an avatar so we can usually get away with never needing an exact straight line here.
Some numbers too have to add up. For example if we make an arm with so many staves and so many bands then we have to have the correct number of vertices specified for a BranchJoin node. Also the correct number of vertices must be specified for tasks like transferring the ownership of a portion of vertices from one part to another when using a TransferVertex node.
Its important to play about with different values to learn how to use seamless however the tutorials serve as an example of what values will work with each other and it can save a lot of time to keep to a standard like for example if you always use 10 staves for an arm then you will be familiar with the number of vertices to specify for nodes that require this sort of information.