This week I started work on the three dimensional joints. My first problem was creating a shell thick enough to support the ball. Joe suggested that I find a way to subtract one object from another object. I found a way to do it but there are certain limitations to the subtracting tool. To create the shell I first created a ball and cut it into a wedge with two squares.
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I then created another ball and cut the wedge out of it. After this I had a solid shell. To make it hollow I duplicated the solid shell and made it bigger than the existing one. I then subtracted the smaller shell from the bigger one. By creating the shell this way I can get as much or ass little thickness as I want. After creating the shell I created rectangular interlocking ring. I created the rectangle in much the same way as I created the shell. There are now three different versions of the rectangles: thin, thick that don’t rattle, and thick that do rattle.
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Today I learned how to render objects and turn then into jpeg files. The pictures are very beautiful. I have been playing around with the light sources and was able to create a rather nice picture. This week I also worked on my temple and found a limitation to the subtracting tool. You can’t subtract things that are sticking out of an object. I was trying to make stairs and the program wouldn’t subtract the thinner blocks from the bigger block if they were sticking out. So I subtracted the top block from the bigger block and did every block one by one after that. It took a long time but I got the stairs I wanted.
Before I tried subtracting the stairs I was duplication them. I made one stair 3 cm long .25 cm high and 2 cm wide and then duplicated it eleven times moving it .25cm in the X and Z directions. This created a nice stair case that was exact. Also while working on my temple I have mostly mastered the duplicate tool and the mirror tool. I wanted to duplicate a column I had created to the other side. So I duplicated it and moved it. Then I realized I wanted the right halved mirrored to the other side so I deleted the column and mirrored it to the other side.
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