Which tool should I use for drawing a 3 D bubble wrap ?

Community Forums/Developer Stations/Which tool should I use for drawing a 3 D bubble wrap ?

Psycoach(Posted 2003) [#1]
I have never modelled before, but I thought making an half sphere in a glass texture shouldn't be that difficult.

Obviously I was wrong, and I am getting angry because I didn't thought I'd loose so much time with this... :-(

I have : Maplet, Caligari Truespace V3 (Free), Amapi V4 (free). I tried Wings3D, but didn't manage to start anything (it doesn't look intuitive enough for me).

What should I use ? (I am willing to learn a new tool, even one I'll have to buy later if want to use it after the trial period, but it shouldn't be an expensive one).

Please help me, that's terrible to feel stuck in the starting blocks :-(


(tu) sinu(Posted 2003) [#2]
i use max, where are you stuck at?


jhocking(Posted 2003) [#3]
Half a sphere is a pretty basic model. It sounds to me like you are just having trouble how to figure out the buttons in a given tool. In which case pick something and ask how to use it.

In Wings you right click in a blank scene and choose "Sphere." Now hit X to switch to a side view. Click and drag to select the bottom half (hit Space to unselect if you don't do it right the first time) and then hit Delete.


sswift(Posted 2003) [#4]
One way to model bubble wrap, if not for realtime use, would be to make a highly tesselated plane, and then create a heightmap for it with little raised spherical sections with some noticeable amount of deformation and noise in them.

In Max, a heightmap is known as a displacement map, and you can find the tool to apply one I think up on the modeling toolbar with all the graphical icons.


WendellM(Posted 2003) [#5]
jhocking wrote: "It sounds to me like you are just having trouble how to figure out the buttons in a given tool. In which case pick something and ask how to use it."

Excellent advice! I looked through maybe a half-dozen modelers and chose the one whose interface made the most sense for me (no point in mentioning which one: each individual's will be different). They largely all do the same thing anyway (well, within general classes from low-capability to high-capability) - find the one whose interface is most intuitive for you. Most have free evaluation versions; trying those out is the best way to find what works best for you.


Psycoach(Posted 2003) [#6]
Thanks for your hints.

Among the softwares I propose, which are more (or the less)adapted for the use with B3D ?

In the meanwhile, I'll use the pictures I took in despair from my bubble wrap sheet, I will then developp this game in 2D first :-(

If my code is clean, I should be able to incorporate a third dimension later...


Beaker(Posted 2003) [#7]
What about just using a bubblewrap scanned texture on a flat surface?


jhocking(Posted 2003) [#8]
I am assuming your game is on a very small scale and/or the camera zooms in close to the bubble wrap. Otherwise modeling the bubbles is just a waste of geometry. If you are doing a "normal" scaled game (ie. the player is a normal sized human) then do what MasterBeaker suggests.