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# 1 13-05-2003 , 10:37 PM
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Strings to use in my musical instrument

I wish to model little strings to use in my piano (Cravo) project (just as guitar strings). Is there a benefit when using nurbs instead of polygons, or it doesn't matter at all in this case?

Thanks.

Mário.


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# 2 13-05-2003 , 10:58 PM
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Also I tried using curves, but in my renders the curves didn't show up. Curves aren't intended for this purpose?

Thanks.

Mário.


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# 3 13-05-2003 , 11:07 PM
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Remember only surfaces count for render mate. Since they are tesselable. You could try creating small nurbs circle, extruded along a path curve.

There should be a thread around here regarding that process.

# 4 13-05-2003 , 11:12 PM
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# 5 13-05-2003 , 11:33 PM
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He posted this in the polygons area as well, and I gave him the same answer there as you did here, BEFORE I noticed your post here adluser added image

..great minds think alikeuser added image


Israel "Izzy" Long
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# 6 13-05-2003 , 11:59 PM
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Man, you all dudes really help everybody here at SM.

thx alot.

I read the link Adl showed me and understood how to do that (great), but with the settings pure morning suggested, my string stands out with 8 sections along its depth. Since my model will use at least 60 strings, that number of sections isn't too much? (Or it isn't significant at all?).

Thx again.

Mário.


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# 7 14-05-2003 , 12:07 AM
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Ok, when you create the extrude, look for an extrude attribute either in the Attribute Editor, or the Channel Editor.
You should be able to change the sections there.
Check the docs first for more detailed information on making the extrude.

If you can´t, just rebuild the surface with only one section. (assuming it´s a straight string)

# 8 14-05-2003 , 12:46 AM
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Sorry, what are the "docs"?


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# 9 14-05-2003 , 12:48 AM
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Maya´s Documentation.
Hit F1 when working in Maya.
(or just navigate with Explorer to your Maya Help folder)

# 10 14-05-2003 , 02:00 AM
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I already modelled the string itself...but
Is there a way I can duplicate it following a path (like a curve, or the shape of my model), so I wouldn't have to position and resize everyone of the 60 duplicated strings?

Should I post my image?


Thanks

Mário.


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# 11 14-05-2003 , 02:01 AM
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Yeah, post an image so we can better help yauser added image


Israel "Izzy" Long
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izzylong.com
# 12 14-05-2003 , 03:51 AM
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I tried to post this image, let's see...


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# 13 14-05-2003 , 03:58 AM
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Nice... It worked w/ rendered images: I turned them into JPEG and posted... Right... here's what I want:

All of those grey tinny lines are my strings. I duplicated them but I want the size of each one to fit the brown box. Was wondering if there is a way to duplicate with the sizes correctly - maybe using a curve as reference - or I should resize each one of them after duplicating?

Hope it's more clear...

thx

Mário


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# 14 17-05-2003 , 03:10 PM
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Hey, everybody's gone?
How Adl said there was a battle for answering these posts, and now nobody answers me...I'm sad...

About my picture: I noticed that the strings brought me a kind of new problem called "aliasing", am I right?
Do you think this problem in this case is "solvable"? I'm kind of concerned with the results when I start to animate the camera around those strings...

Tkx

Mário.


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# 15 17-05-2003 , 05:35 PM
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Everybody's gone?

A. It's the weekend.

B. The folks kind enough to answer your posts have their own lives outside of SM.

C. You need to read the help documents and try some things for yourself rather than relying on being spoonfed every little technique.

Now, back to your problem: as far as duplicating the sizes exactly. If you go to edit > duplicate > option box...you can input numbers in the scale, translate, and rotate boxes. This way when you make your 60 duplicates, you can specify the distance between the strings and scale them slightly as each duplicate is made. Scaling it along a path....not sure if you can do that. I believe there are advanced workarounds using some of the animation tools. Personally, I would just duplicate each string so that they're equidistant from one another, then simply scale each manually.

That being said, I'm wondering, and maybe one of the other guys can chime in, if it might be possible to model the string area as a planar shape, assign a blinn shader to it, then create a "string" texture in photoshop (along with a string alpha to plug into the shader's transparency node) so that only the strings themselves show up while making the spaces between transparent.


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