GETTING THROUGH THE INTRODUCTORY ANIM8OR "EGGPLANT" TUTORIAL
Click here to see my first output with Anim8or

Anim8or (http://www.anim8or.com/main/index.html) has been said to be the "best" free 3D software. You can use it to create 3D stills and AVI format movies. Probably the best way to learn apps like Anim8or is to start with the most basic tutorial example. The introductory tutorial in anim8or is the "eggplant tutorial" (http://www.anim8or.com/tutorials/eggplant/index.html). You can download an anim8or .an8 suffix type file from the anim8or site called the "eggplant tutorial" (http://www.anim8or.com/tutorials/eggplant/tutorial_eggplant.zip), but all you will find in this anim8or project file when you open it with the Anim8or app is the simple pentagon you start with to build the eggplant. This page is is designed to help you through this first tutorial which can be confusing frustrating and hard to understand.

If you mouse over the buttons in the Anim8or user interface you will not see any popups telling you what the button is. In Anim8or when you mouse over a button the name of the button is displayed in the bottom left corner of the screen in the status bar

First off what the tutorial fails to mention is that one needs to after drawing the pentagon and giving the extrude directions to switch to the "ortho" view through altV-0. If you do not do this the pentagon you start with will look different than the pentagon in the tutorial and you will become confused.

Then the tutorial says: "To build the "feet" of the base, you will need to select thel 5 outer faces on the base and extrude them. Switch to face mode and drag-select . When you click the mouse and drag to select an area, and polygon that is entirely contained within the rectangle will be selected. Remember that the left mouse button will deselect any previously selected areas before adding the new ones, and the right button will add to existing selections. When you are selecting faces, it may help to switch among the ortho, top, front, etc. views to make it easier to select things. Now select all 5 outer faces".

By this the tutorial writer means first experiment with selecting the whole pentagon, and then go on to selecting the five sides of the pentagon leaving out the top and the bottom. He leaves it basically up to you to figure out how to select the five sides of the pentagon leaving out the top and the bottom. He says switch among various views in order to select the five sides of the pentagon. I found I needed to activate the "select" button to select the sides of the pentagon one by one, but I found that no matter from which perspective I viewed the Pentagon using the view menu, I was unable to select all the sides of the pentagon without selecting the top and the bottom of the pentagon also. The only view in which I was even able to click on the back side of the pentagon, produced a situation wherein every time I tried to select the back side of the pentagon I ended up selecting the roof of the pentagon also.

The way to solve this problem of selecting the five sides of the pentagon without selecting the top or the bottom is to click the button with a circle like diagram in the top row of the user interface, the button that is the third from the right. That is the "arc rotate" button that allows you to rotate the object. Clicking on the little green square on the right side of the green circle that appears around the object after you click this arc rotate button will allow you to rotate the object. If you click in this green square and drag to the right, the object will be rotated counter-clockwise. If you click drag from this square to the left the object will be rotated clockwise. By rotating the object and selecting sides of the pentagon you will be able to get to the point where you have selected the five sides of the object without selecting the top or the bottom. You will have to deselect the "arc rotate" button every time you want to select a section of the pentagon by clicking on it which you can do when the "select" button that is in the left pane is activated.

Generally when you use the "select" button to select an area of a 3d object for example the pentagon you start with, when you click on a point corresponding' to the roof of the pentagon and also to a side of the pentagon, only the side of the pentagon will be selected. But if you click on an area corresponding to the floor of the pentagon and also a side of the pentagon, both the floor of the pentagon and the side of the pentagon also will be selected.

The tutorial states "You will notice that some faces are yellow while others are blue. The yellow ones are facing towards the screen while the blue ones are facing the other way. This makes it easier to see what's what in wire frame views." Actually such is only the case for the sides of the pentagon that you have selected.

After as instructed you click the "extrude" button if you drag the mouse upwards the sides of the object that are selected will be extruded but if you drag the mouse downwards the sides of of the object that are selected will be intruded. If after selecting the extrude button you drag the mouse to the right the sides you have selected will be extruded but if you drag to the left they will be intruded.

Next you are instructed to select the top face or the roof of the central portion of the flower-like figure you have created. You could go crazy trying to select this roof in the alt-V-O ortho view of the object that is presented in the tutorial. You will need to switch to the top view (alt-V-t) in order to select this central roof area. Then switch back to the ortho view to see the object as it is presented in the tutorial. According to the tutorial if the selected area appears blue rather than yellow what you have done is that you have selected the bottom or floor area instead of the top or roof area but actually in practice this top area when selected could appear blue rather than yellow (this could be because in the process of experimenting with the arc rotation you have turned the pentagon you started with upside down but in the case of a pentagon it being "upside down" in this instance is irrelevant).

Then as ordered in the tutorial extrude this top face upwards.

Then as ordered in the tutorial use the face scale button to narrow down the roof of the central portion of the structure.

Then the tutorial commands you to extrude the innermost roof of this flower-like pentagon you have created up about five times the height of the base. But if you do this, you will find that you have run out of space in the work area. If you make the pentagon at the beginning the size you are instructed to, when you get to this point in the tutorial you will find that you have run out of space!!! Therefore at this point you will have to click the "object/viewpoint" button with an eye-like diagram on it at the top of the left pane, and use the "move view" button in the left pane to click-drag the object to the bottom of the page and/or use the "zoom view" button in the left pane to make the object smaller.

Then hit frist the "object-edit" and then the "object/point edit" buttons to switch back to the mode you need to accomplish the next task, extruding the roof of the structure upwards. Note that this extrusion upwards is done in four to five separate click-drag extrusions, not one click drag extrusion.

At this point the tutorial states, Scale the face out about 25%. Extrude a bit more, and scale back to the original size", which is frustratingly almost incomprehensible. Looking at the diagram in the tutorial it is hard to figure out what is meant here. Are the sides of the tower supposed to be scaled out, or the roof of the tower? What the tutorial means here is that the topmost roof of the tower should be scaled out about 25% using the "scale faces" button; then this roof should be extruded using the "extrude faces" button; and finally this roof should be narrowed again using the "scale faces" button so a bulb like structure is formed at the top of the tower.

After this the tutorial states, "Now select the 5 surrounding upper faces. You may need to switch between the point-select and drag-select tools, and switch views to get the right faces selected". The best way to do this is to view the object from the top and select these five top faces. Then after you extrude these five sides at the top, as instructed by the tutorial, without extruding the roof, viewed in the ortho perspective it may appear as if the top is also being extruded; however if you view from the side perspective you will see that the top is not being extruded only the sides are.

Then you are told to "scale them up (the five sides at the top) until they are close to touching, but not quite". Here the tutorial means that you use the "scale faces" button to get the horizontal edges of the five sides at the top to almost touch each other. The best way to do this is to switch to viewing the object from the top, and then use the "scale faces" button.

Then the tutorial states, "use the face rotate tool to tilt the faces so that they are facing a little bit more vertically. To do this, click and drag the left mouse button carefully in the vertical direction only". You would think that this means that the five faces at the top, that are slanting inwards, should be altered so that they are facing UPWARDS more, pointing to the sky rather than inwards so to speak. ACTUALLY what is meant here by facing "more vertically" is that the inwards slant of the five faces should be INCREASED. You can see this by viewing the object from the front (alt v-f). The goal here is to end up with the five faces pointing upwards and slanting outwards slightly.

Next you are told to extrude again, and then tilt angle again using the "face rotate" button, and finally extrude again.

Then you are told to change the edge properties of the bottom of the structure; when the tutorial says "Drag select the bottom row of the model" it means you use the "drag select" button to select the bottom edge.

Then you are instructed to change the view of the structure which is straightforward enough.

Next you are told to "select the Build->Subdivide menu item"; to change the appearance of the object you have created thereby rendering it more lifelike. By this the tutorial means build-SUBDIVIDE FACES (alt b-v), not build-convert to subdivided.

Next you are told how to bend the stem of the eggplant you have created to the left. This process is straightforward enough. But the step that comes after this is under-explained and is the most difficult step in the tutorial. You are told to bend the stem you have bent to the left back to the right, but you are not told exactly how to do this. You could end up driving yourself temporarily insane and cursing computer nerds attempting to use the bend modifier to bend the stem you have bent to the left back to the right. You are not told how to draw the modifier that bends the stem back to the right after it has been bent to the left, even though this is the first tutorial. If this modifier is even just slightly misdrawn the end result is chaos, the eggplant stem you have drawn looking like a pillar broken in two and things like that. To get a good result according with the plan of development in the tutorial draw the yellow modifier rectangle that is used to bend the stem back to the right, so that the upper left corner of this rectangle is beneath the intersection of the left edge of the stem and the beginning of the outward branching of the stem, and so the right edge of the stem extends past the right edge of the base of the stem (by left and right I mean left as being to your left as you look at the screen).

The egg according to the tutorial should be given a diameter of 20. By the time I finished up with the supporting branch portion of the eggplant, my settings in the anim8or app were such that an egg of 20 diameter was so small on the screen that it was impossible to work with, and would be much too small for the stem portion of the eggplant. Therefore I set the diameter of the sphere/eggplant to 60 so it would fit the stem and be visible to work with. But I kept the longitude and latitude the same as instructed in the tutorial.

In order to be able to as instructed "bind the modifier to the object", with regards to the taper modifier for the egg part of the eggplant, you will have to drag select the egg and then using the "point Select" (the arrow diagram "select" button) button, and right clicks of the mouse, select the egg/sphere and also the modifier. Previously when the stem portion of the eggplant was the only object on the anim8or screen you did not need to do this and you could simply point select the modifier and the object without drag selecting the object.

Follow the general outline for modifiers established by the tutorial when it explained how to modify the stem of the eggplant, to apply the taper modifier to the egg portion of the eggplant. Then you can use the "rotate" button to rotate the egg to the appropriate angle and the move button to move it into place in the eggplant stem.

Next the tutorial states: "To add your materials, select Options->Materials from the menu to show the material panel. Double click on the "New" material and select the stem's properties. Then select the stem and click on the "Apply" button at the top of the material panel." This is somewhat confusing. The paragraph states, "select the stem's properties". You would in the dialog box that opens be selecting the stem's properties if all along you had the stem selected as opposed to the egg. You would in the dialog box be selecting the egg's properties if all along you had the egg selected as opposed to the stem. If you had not selected either the egg or the stem when selecting properties in the dialog box, you would be selecting properties that you could later apply to the egg or the stem. In any case if you had either the egg or the stem selected when making your input into the dialog box that opens when you click "new", after you made your input into the dialog box you could apply the specs you created by such input to either the egg or the stem. When the dialog box opens, you are not as implied by the text of the tutorial confronted with a choice between selecting this or that object such as the egg or the stem.

In this dialog box there is a cube in the lower left corner that allows you to choose the general color you are going to apply to the object, and a slide bar that allows you to choose how light or dark the color will be. In the tutorial AFTER you are instructed to close this dialog box, you are told what the specular weight roughness and brilliance should be set to if you want to be just like the example in the tutorial. Opening up the dialog box to make such inputs after you have closed the dialog box could be a mystifying pain in the ass for a novice. If you have closed the dialog box in which you set the color, to add such inputs double click on the sphere in the materials panel that is colored the color you set in the dialog box and it will open again so you can adjust things like brilliance roughness and specular weight.

After you click OK in this new material dialog box, a sphere appears in the materials panel. Select the object you wish to apply the color of this sphere to, and hit apply in the materials panel as instructed.

The tutorial does not explain how to turn what you have created into jpg or bmp type output. To do this, click Alt-F-R (file/render preview), and click OK in the Frame Spec Editor dialog box that opens. The preview of the object you have created will be shown, and the preview pane will be visible to the left of the screen. Click the save button in this pane and you can proceed to save a jpg or bmp version of the object.