[tutorial very incomplete ... please bear with me]
Why should you be learning Wings 3D? because it’s a great 3D modeling package, less flexible and powerful than, for example, Blender but with a much less daunting learning curve. And because, like Blender, you can export your objects as ’sculpties’ for use in Second life.
Modelling ’sculpties’ for Second Life
For tutorials specifically related to sculpting objects to be imported into Second Life, Read:
» http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Wings_3D
Two sample video tutorials worth working through:
‘Daniel’s Second Life Sculpted Prim Tutorial #1′ (sculpting a staircase)
» http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5695483392055008122
‘Second Life Sculpted Prim Tutorial’ from PauleeP
» http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzgb2BrOjbw
You’ll also need the ‘Sculpty exporter for Wings 3D’, downloadable (with instructions) from:
» http://forums.secondlife.com/showthread.php?…
There are many other good online tutorials for Wings 3D, as well as an excellent downloadable 131 page manual; and you will be expected to use these. The purpose of the present document therefore is simply to familiarise you with the Wings interface, and some basic concepts and commands.
Note: all the descriptions below refer to the Linux and Mac versions, which are also the source of the screenshots; these may vary slightly from the Windows version.
The interface
The interface comprises, from top, the Menu Bar, the Icon Bar, the Workspace, and the Status Bar. In addition, useful information (the ‘Information String’) relating to any operation is always displayed in the top-left corner of the Workspace.
The Menu Bar
The [t.b.c.]
The Icon Bar
The two icons on the left of the bar determine what Display Mode your model is in; respectively, Wire-shaded (toggles on/off) and Perspective (toggles on/off).
The four icons in the middle of the bar display what Edit/Selection Mode you are in; respectively, Vertex (where edges meet), Edge, Face (any area bounded by edges), and Body (i.e., the whole object). (You can select them with the mouse; otherwise, the hot keys V, E, F, and B respectively will also select the required edit mode.) Any vertex, edge, or face, when passing the mouse over it, is highlighted in green; and, when selected, is highlighted in red in order to give you visual confirmation that you’ve selected the right one; once selected, right-clicking will display a context-sensitive pop-up menu of options for each. To deselect, hit the space-bar.
The two icons to the right of the bar allow to toggle on and off the Ground Plane (i.e., the grid) and the Reference Axis lines.
The Status Bar
The status bar shows the mouse options (Left, Middle, and Right buttons); and, with a mouse action selected, further options for that selection, e.g. switching between free rotation (‘tumble’) and panning (‘track’).
The X-Y-Z axes
Your expectations, from working in Second Life, are that X and Y represent horizontal positions and sizes, and that the Z axis represents vertical positions and sizes. In Wings 3D this is somewhat different: X is left/right, Y is up/down, and Z is front back.
Wings units of measurement
Wings Units (wu) are an arbitrary size which which you can represent any scale you want: feet, metres, inches, miles, … The standard Wings cube is 2*2*2 wu.
The Context-Sensitive Menus
Context-sensitive menus are accessed by right-clicking. On an empty Workspace, or anywhere in the Workspace outside of an existing deselected object, this will bring up the Primitives Menu. Right-clicking on the model in any of the Edit modes will bring up the menu for that mode.
Tip: selecting an operation with the contextual menu, and then hitting the Tab key, will bring up a mini-dialog in which you can enter numeric values for that operation. You can hit the Tab key at any time (as indicated in the Status Bar) to enter a precise value, even if you have already started re-shaping the object with a mouse-drag. If no other option for Tab is shown in the Status bar, hitting the Tab key will toggle between ’smooth shaded’ and ’shaded wireframe’.
Tip: selecting an operation, then using Shift-drag will constrain movement to whole units; using Ctrl-Shift-drag will constrain movement to hundredths of a unit.
Creating a new model
Right-click anywhere in the Workspace to bring up the Primitives Menu. Select a primitive (basic object) from the menu by left-clicking on its name. Its X-Y-Z coordinates will all be set to zero; its default size is 2*2*2..
You can zoom in and out on your model by rolling the mousewheel back and forth; you can rotate the model by pressing ‘u’ on the keyboard; you can free-rotate the model by clicking on the mouse-button.
Using the context-sensitive menus
Pretty much everything you’ll want to do when modeling you’ll do from the contextual menus, in any one of the edit modes. To use a contextual menu with a vertex, edge, or face, make your selection with the left mouse button and then right-click to select an operation from the menu; left-click once you’ve finished the operation, or right-click to cancel and revert. Left-click a [vertex | edge | face | body] to select it; click it again to deselect it; hit the spacebar to deselect everything.
The following simple practice tasks (leading to the modeling of a very rudimentary car) are intended solely to help you familiarise yourself with common operations. In each case, if not mentioned, it will be presumed that you will have already right-clicked in the Workspace and selected Cube from the contextual menu.
… in face edit mode …
Select the Face icon in the icon bar (or hit the F key on the keyboard). Click on the leftmost face to select it. Right-click and choose Move>Normal, then use your mouse to extend the cube, as in the illustration below:
What you have done is to move the leftmost face out further left; or, in other words, extend the cube into an oblong. The Move>Normal operation extends the face out along its natural axis (in this case, the Z axis).
In the following three examples we’ve selected the top face (in red) and respectively ‘moved’ the face along its X (left/right), Y (up/down), and Z (back/front) axes:
Get the idea? OK, good. The final option we’ll look at in the Move sub-menu is ‘Free’. Wiggle the mouse around, and you’ll see that this allows you to move the face around all three axes.
Now, in readiness for the next group of tasks in ‘edge’ mode, go back to your original cube, and again move the leftmost (i.e. front) face along the Z-axis using Move>Normal. Stop when you reach 4 (or choose Move>Normal+Tab and enter 4 in the dialog). Now select the long face of the oblong and move that out to 2 on the X-axis. Since your original 2*2*2 cube was centered at coordinates 0-0-0, your model is now 5 units front-to-back, 3 units left-to-right, and still 2 units vertically. Now switch to Edge edit mode …
… in edge edit mode …
First, to ensure that nothing is selected, hit the spacebar. Now select the two long edges of the top of the model, and choose Connect from the contextual menu (or hit hot key C on the keyboard): you’ll see that this has created a new edge, exactly bisecting the top face. We’ll want to move that forward, so right-click and from the menu select Slide+Tab with a value of -35 (that 35% of the total distance from its originating point to the next edge at the very front end of the model). This is where we’ll put the windscreen in a minute.
Next, select the edge at the top and very front of your model. Choose Move>Y and enter a value of -0.75 (i.e. we’ll drop that front edge by 0.75 on the vertical Y-axis): this will form the bonnet of the car. And with that same edge selected, choose Bevel and give it a value of 2.5 (note that Bevel effectively creates two edges from the selected edge, and consequently another face).
Now again selected the two long edges of the top of the model and again Connect to create another new edge. Slide this back 30% towards the rear: behind this on the Z-axis will be the small boot of the car. You model should now look as in the screenshot below:
And now again select the longer top edges and Connect; slide the edge 95% towards the front; then from the menu choose Extrude>Y and enter a value of 1.5 (this will create your basic windscreen).
Now select all the faces of the windscreen and Rotate>X by -30 to give a slant to the windscreen. The last two operations are shown in the screenshots below.
… in vertex edit mode …
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Keyboard shortcuts
B: selects Body (edit) mode
E: selects Edge (edit) mode
F: selects Face (edit) mode
O: toggle orthographic view
U: rotates an object
V: selects Vertex (edit) mode
[X | Y | Z]: view along X / Y / Z axis
