Flux basics

From Flux Developer Wiki

The following is a write up to the Flux Studio email group that Bob Crispen was good enough to write. This document is an attempt to preserve that wisdom and share it with a broader audience.

If you're puzzled by how the various buttons and features on Flux Studio work, just play with them and see what they do. I'm perfectly serious about that.  Building 3D models should be fun, not a chore, and it definitely shouldn't be a reason to panic or be frustrated, nor to go searching for college textbooks on computer graphics.  Of the folks on this list who've read Foley & Van Dam, I'll bet 90% don't remember anything from it that's of much use in building 3D scenes and objects. Play with Flux Studio's tools and have fun. 

Here's a couple of things to get you started. In case you don't remember the lingo of sets from high school math class (high school was a *long* time ago for me) "union" means everything thats in the one object *and* everything that's in the other (so it'll join two objects if they're overlapping or touching), and "intersection" means only the things that are in *both*. Position a couple of cylinders (radius 1, height 4) so that they cross in the middle.  A union will turn the two cylinders into one rounded X.  An intersection will give you this weird sort of thing that looks like a pillow.

Here's a little experiment for cut.  Make a box.  Now make another one and scale it so it's a little bit smaller (say 90% of the first box).  Move the boxes so that the second box fits inside the first one, but sticks out a little bit at the top.  Now try "cut" and you should have something that looks like the concrete walls of a swimming pool or the walls and floor of the basement of a house.

For the revolution surface (some modelers call that function "lathing") draw half the cross section of a lamp or vase or space ship (just draw the part that's to the right of the Y axis -- the tool will take care of the other side).

For extrusion, you remember that thing you stuck Play-Doh in and pushed the lever down and it squeezed out in the shape that you stuck over where the stuff comes out?  Same thing. Make a shape (a whole shape this time) -- start simple: make it a triangle or a square.  Click the thumbs-up button and out comes the extrusion.  Now tweak the length of the extrusion and you're done.

For the one in between, it's the same as extrusion, but then you get to go in and play with the points on the spine -- like you're bending the Play-Doh shape you just extruded.  Remember the last time you were at a swimming pool (sorry, I've got swimming pools on the brain) and you grabbed this curved metal thing that supported the ladder in the deep end?  A round metal tube that was sort of U-shaped?  The middle button is how you make one of those -- but you have to play with points in between to get it to bend.  Here's a hint: you can rotate the spine points, and sometimes you have to if your shape is getting twisted.

+-------------------------------+ | Rev. Bob "Bob" Crispen     | | crispen@hiwaay.net         |  +-------------------------------+