Essential LightWave 3D- P7

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Essential LightWave 3D- P7: What you have in your hands is, quite simply, a collection of tools and techniques that many professional LightWave artists use every single day doing what we do in our various fields. The tools and techniques explored in this book are essential to creating the caliber of imagery that you see on film and television and in print and video games.

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Chapter 5 · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · • Segment by Part does the same thing after doing this, forget about using Select but with the polygon groupings (parts) Connected until you reunite all the points you’ve got set up. again.) An odd thing with atlas maps is that on the Note map itself, not every polygon has points to drag around. When two or more polygons After using Unweld to tweak your UV map, you use Detail | Points | Merge Points with share a point, only one polygon has that the Range set to Automatic to “re-fuse” all point represented on the atlas map! This the points that are in exactly the same posi- would mean trouble when tweaking an atlas tion. map or laying one out by hand, if it weren’t This could cause smoothing problems where the surfaces of a Boolean operation for Unweld. meet (and you have purposely not merged Detail | Points | Unweld takes any those points). If you know you’re going to point shared by more than one polygon and want to make an atlas UV map for an object “breaks it apart” into as many exact copies that for whatever reason has points sitting exactly on top of one another, and they need as there need to be so each polygon “owns” to stay that way, set these points as part of a one of the copies. After using Unweld on a Point Selection Set so you can unweld them selection, no one point (of that selection) is again after merging everything back into one piece after adjusting your atlas map. “owned” by more than one polygon. (So, Figure 5-68: After having used Unweld, the faces of the cube can be moved, rotated, scaled, and generally “pushed about,” so you get the exact look on your object you are trying to achieve. How do the default settings for creating an exactly in the same space that we will atlas map work for something complex, like need to watch out for after we tweak a character? Not too well for this artist’s our atlas map layout. The Information tastes. Here is a quick and simple way I window that comes up after we merge would set up Wolfie’s head for an atlas map: points tells us that there were “no 1. Load Objects\Chapter05\Cartoon- points eliminated,” which means no WolfHead.lwo. points were in exactly the same space. We can proceed without worrying 2. Select Merge Points | Automatic — about messing something up when we just to see if there are any points lying merge points later. 168
· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · M o d e l i n g 2 : A d d i t i o n a l To o l s Figure 5-69: This character’s head belongs to Wolfie, one of the characters that ships, ready to animate, with LightWave 3D 8 Character Animation. 3. Select the surface Wolf (which is the what you’ve got hidden. You can treat only surface that we’ll be applying the what you’ve got visible and what you’ve map to), and hide everything else. got hidden as if they were two separate 4. Activate Symmetry so we know that groups of polys. Hiding a poly from one when we select a poly on one side of group makes it “belong” to the other our mesh, we’re not leaving out the group.) poly on the other side; Wolfie is 8. Using Detail | Polygons | Sketch symmetrical. Color, assign the sketch color for this 5. Set your Perspective viewport to part of Wolfie to Black. (This way, Sketch so we can really see where the we’ll be able to select them easily, “bands” of polys lie, and so we can see without messing up the parts I already the sketch colors that we’ll be applying have assigned to differentiate between to polygons as another way of us being his upper and lower jaws.) able to quickly select them when it 9. Select Hide Invert, and then select comes time for tweaking our atlas map. just the front of Wolfie’s ears. 6. Using a combination of lassoing and 10. Once you have the insides of Wolfie’s direct polygon selection, select only ears selected, assign them a sketch Wolfie’s ears. color of Dark Blue. (See Figure 5-70.) 7. Hide the polys you’ve got selected, and 11. With all of the polys of the insides of then clean up any strays that might Wolfie’s ears selected and set to Dark have been missed before. (Remember Blue as their sketch color, hide them. the trick of using Hide Invert to see Then select the backs of Wolfie’s ears, 169
Chapter 5 · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · Figure 5-70: With the Display Type set to Sketch, the “stray” polygons easily stand out when you assign your sketch color. setting them to a sketch color of Yel- sketch color of black; hide everything low. (See Figure 5-71.) else. 12. When you know you’re not missing any polys from the backs of Wolfie’s ears, Note unhide and save your work so far. If you’re not sure if the Unweld command did its thing, you can always check the Point 13. Deactivate Symmetry. Statistics window. All of Wolfie’s points should fall under the category “1 polygon.” Note I’ve found that Symmetry mode doesn’t 15. Create a UV texture map using Planar quite work as well with unwelded objects. Symmetry also doesn’t work well when mapping along the X axis. (This gives a manipulating UV maps. profile of Wolfie, where each map poly from his left is in exactly the same place on the map as the map poly on his 14. Unweld and, using the Polygon Statis- right.) tics window, select just the polys with a Figure 5-71 170
· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · M o d e l i n g 2 : A d d i t i o n a l To o l s Figure 5-72 16. Using the Stretch tool, resize the UV map’s polys so Wolfie doesn’t look quite so dorky. 17. Next unhide everything. Select just the dark blue sketch color (assigned to the insides of Wolfie’s ears), and select Map | Texture | Make UVs. This assigns a planar map type to the selected geometry along the Z axis. 18. Using Scale and Move, orient these Figure 5-73 polys on the UV Texture viewport so that the right ear-inside fits nicely in the upper-right corner of the map. (Don’t worry about the left ear-inside; just leave it selected as you work, so it is the same size and shape as the right.) 19. Deselect the polys of the right ear- inside, and then use Map | Texture | Flip UVs. With Flip U active, clicking Figure 5-74 OK flips the map polys for the left ear-inside along the U axis, as shown in Figure 5-76. 20. Now move the map polys for the left ear-inside to exactly cover the map polys of the right. (You may want to use the Maximize icon on the UV Texture viewport to maximize that viewport so you can zoom in extremely close while you’re doing this.) Figure 5-77 shows Figure 5-75 171
Chapter 5 · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · both ear-insides selected but occupying 21. Repeat what you did for Figures 5-74 the same UV texture map space. through 5-77 for the ear-outsides. 22. Merge points to get your model back to being one contiguous mesh again. 23. Now you can save a screen capture and bring the image into your favorite paint program, making sure your painted texture’s size exactly matches the outer area of the UV grid. You now have a template to precisely paint anything you want on your models. Figure 5-76 Note Now that we have both ear-insides occupying the same UV texture map coordi- nates, we can paint one area of the texture map and have it applied to both ear-insides! Figure 5-77 Figure 5-78 Figure 5-79: Wolfie, with a quick, painted UV texture map. 172
· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · M o d e l i n g 2 : A d d i t i o n a l To o l s Note Another great way to get your UV map into points of the object. Since EPS files are reso- your paint program is to export it as an EPS lution independent, they can be placed into file. Go to the File | Export menu and select most paint and illustration programs at any the Export Encapsulated Postscript option. size the user desires without sacrificing You can determine which viewports Modeler image clarity. That’s just the type of flexibility will export (in this case, we’d simply use the you want when working on high-resolution Texture UV view). You also have options for image maps for television and film. rendering the background grid and the Note It is vitally important that you not move, map must be done while you have the rotate, or scale the pieces of your object’s “junk” endomorph “map” active! It should actual geometry while it is unwelded and be done before merging points; otherwise, you are adjusting sections of map polys. If points that are no longer in the same posi- you do, your model will not go back tion on the endomorph will not be merged, together again when you merge points. even if they are in exactly the same position (Sifting through a character’s many points to on the object’s “base” state. find the ones that are micrometers off is a Be aware: If you have your UV texture torture I’d not wish on anyone.) map active instead of the “junk” endo- One way to “CYA” in this respect is to cre- morph, Clear Map will erase what you have ate a “junk” endomorph (see the LightWave selected from your UV map! manual) to have active as you work your Obviously, it is important to have a good, mapping placements. Having an endomorph clear working knowledge of using maps active won’t affect the placement of the tex- (weight, texture, morph, color, and selection) ture polys within a UV Texture viewport, but before using a technique like this if you any accidental nudging or bumping to your don’t plan on saving a revision of your work. actual geometry polys in the regular But I want you to be aware of this technique viewports can be easily gotten rid of using — it’s what the pros do. Map | General | Clear Map. Clearing the ... You’ve added some cool, powerful tools to Yet, we’re still just scratching the surface your “bag-o’-tricks.” They’re things the of what you can do in Modeler. So, when pros use every day to get their jobs done you’re done exploring the things you’ve just well and done fast! Now they’re a part of learned, clear your desktop! In the next what you can do as well! With practice, chapter, we’re going to put some of what they’ll become so second nature, you won’t you’ve learned to work. ever want to work without them. 173
Chapter 6 Architectural Modeling Exercise: Interior Set Now we’re going to use what you’ve Note learned to actually build something. We In the exercise in this chapter, if you find may even pick up a new tool or two along yourself getting stuck somewhere, go back the way! Most of what we’ll be doing fits and carefully reread the instructions for that and the previous step(s). The book was with how you’ve probably imagined a par- examined by some very good tech checkers, ticular tool to be used. But some of it may so we know everything does indeed work. leave you thinking, “Oh! I hadn’t thought of Don’t be afraid to have the LW manual open using that that way!” And that’s great! If it beside you as you work. I’ve been using LW since 1989, and my LW manual still occupies gets the job done, and done well, there’s no a place of honor within arm’s reach on my such thing as using it wrong. desk at all times. Use the tools you’ve got to do the job you Being a professional often means that you do! are unafraid to do whatever it takes to get the job done — regardless of anyone else’s opinion of what you need to do to achieve your goal. Floor Plan Believe it or not, I find the most grinding Note part of doing an architectural interior to be making the floor plan. This is because in Bear in mind that this is just one way of working. This is the way I’ve found that order to get all the rest of the stuff to go works most smoothly with the way I think. smoothly, including shadow casting in ren- You’ll have to take this information with a dering, the floor plan can’t be haphazardly grain (or a gram) of salt. It is by no means laid down. It has to be built in such a way the only way to work. It is just the process I’ve developed to go from the uncarved that doors and windows can be Booleaned block to having a completed, interior set out of it. The floor plan will also be used to with as little stress as possible. “trim” the carpeting or whatever flooring I encourage you to find out all you can will be laid in later. The floor plan, in the about how other modelers work as well. Put all this together, throw out what doesn’t way I work, is used in shaping every other work for you, and keep the rest! element of the structure. 174
· · · · · · · · A r c h i t e c t u r a l M o d e l i n g E xe r c i s e : I n t e r i o r S e t Even though I am a big fan of the metric Two-Point Polyline Work system, when I build interior sets, my mind I lay out the walls of my set with two-point seems only to function in the English sys- polylines. They’re easy to work with, quick tem of measurements. To me, ceilings are to resize, and easily transform into what I most easily thought of as being eight or ten need later on. feet high. It’s just the way I’ve been trained, and I haven’t retrained my mind for metric 1. Make two points on the same axis (X units. So, my apologies to those of you who or Z) and press to make a two- are more comfortable thinking in metric point poly out of them. (You should be units, but for the sake of everyone being on aiming for a straight line along either the same page, here’s how to change your the X or Z axis — no diagonals.) settings to English units: 2. With Polygons as your selection mode, 1. Set your Unit System to English the polyline you just created should be (Display Options | Units) and your selected. (If it isn’t, select it now.) Default Unit to feet. 3. Press + and then press 2. Next, set your Grid Snap to Fixed and + to copy the polyline your Snap Value to 1' (one foot). and paste a new, unselected copy of it right in its place. (The polyline you With a sizable, fixed grid snap, we can more have selected stays selected.) quickly and accurately lay foundation. All 4. Press to rotate your selection 90º our dragging around of walls, windows, and clockwise. whatnot will now perfectly adhere to being at one-foot intervals, no matter what level 5. Press to move your selection so of zoom we are using to inspect the detail of that it forms a right angle with the end our set. (We’ll change this value as we of your unselected polyline. (See the left work, depending on what we’re doing — side of Figure 6-1.) sometimes snapping to half-foot intervals, 6. Repeat Steps 3-5 to mimic what is sometimes to one-inch intervals.) shown in Figure 6-1. 3. Maximize the Top viewport by clicking on its Maximize icon or by placing your mouse over the viewport and pressing on the numeric pad. Figure 6-1: What if we don’t quite have the end of one of our walls where we need it to be? There’s a cool tool that lets you click and drag any point of your selection: Drag. 175
Chapter 6 · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · Note Note Drag, like all of LightWave’s tools, only Again, so that we’re all working from the works with the points, polys, or volumes that same place, as we’re doing something are selected. You can use this fact to your rather complex and precision focused, let advantage if you have two points almost on me save you the trouble of laying out a floor top of each other and you want to move plan and point you to Objects\Chapter06\ only one. If you can select the polygon that Floorplan_Root.lwo. owns the point you wish to move, by select- Load this object so we’re all working from ing the poly, you can isolate its point from the same framework. the other! Select the poly. Drag the point! This is an extreme help when working with 9. Select the polyline shown in Figure character modeling when there’s a lot of 6-3, and press to bring up information filling the screen. By selecting the polys that contain the points that you Multiply | Subdivide | Knife. want to tweak, you are temporarily isolating them from the rest of your model’s points. Note The Knife tool will slice any selected polygon 7. Press + to activate that its line of action comes in contact with, Modify | Move | Drag. creating two connected polys. You click and 8. Drag the “offending” point of the drag to create and position this line of action. polyline that extends past the end of Because we have Grid Snap set at 1', the our “room” onto the point two grid way we’ve positioned our walls makes them squares to its left. (See Figure 6-2.) fall on these 1' grid lines. Knife will also obey the 1' Grid Snap, so slicing our long wall into segments that meet up exactly with the intersecting walls is just a matter of click- ing and dragging the Knife tool’s line of action as if it were an extension of the inter- secting wall. 10. After using Knife to cut the long wall into segments where it intersects the other walls, double-check that all your walls are segmented where they inter- sect the other walls as well. (The quick way to do this is to select the entire Figure 6-2: You can continue this process of floor plan and, one by one, click on the “Copy-Paste-Rotate-Move-Drag” to complete any walls to deselect them segment by right angle-based floor plan. segment!) 11. Return to a Quad layout and verify that your floor plan is lying on the ground plane by pressing and entering 0 feet for the Y axis. 176
· · · · · · · · A r c h i t e c t u r a l M o d e l i n g E xe r c i s e : I n t e r i o r S e t Figure 6-3: Our base floor plan. For the way we’ll be working here, wherever two walls meet, you should Copy-Paste-Move-Drag to create another section so that all your walls have a “break” in them where they touch. (In Floorplan_Root.lwo, I’ve purposely left one wall “incorrect” so that it spans the length of the entire floor plan.) Figure 6-4: The quick way to accept your knifing and move on to another place you want to knife is to just right-click. 12. Now, merge points, and use a Fixed but with the Distance setting of 9/10ths of Range with a Distance of 0.9". With our an inch, we’ll be able to use these settings Grid Snap settings, we shouldn’t have for our later, more detailed work as well. any points within a foot of one another, 177
Chapter 6 · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · Figure 6-7 Figure 6-5 13. Extrude the floor plan up about five 14. Activate the Bevel tool and its Numeric feet. (No, we’re not building a hobbit- window. Enter 1" for both Shift and sized house. We just need to get some Inset. room to work to prepare for transform- 15. Using Volume Select: Include (click the ing our polylines into walls with View | Selection | Volume button thickness.) twice), drag a selection box around the top of your model and press the Delete key to delete it. You are left with only its bottom (see Fig- ure 6-8). Figure 6-6: When we extruded the two-point polys, the “walls” became sets of two polygons back to back. So, beveling each “face” by 1 inch gives a total wall thickness of 2 inches. (Using the same value for the Inset as we used for the Shift means that where walls meet at right angles, the new points lie directly on top of one another — it saves us a little bit of time when merging points a bit later.) 178
· · · · · · · · A r c h i t e c t u r a l M o d e l i n g E xe r c i s e : I n t e r i o r S e t Note You can cover great distances by using the hot key to center your viewport around where the tip of the mouse’s cursor is. Figure 6-8 16. Now deselect everything () and set the value for the Y axis to 0' (zero feet), so all these points and polys once again lie flat on the ground. Figure 6-10 18. Do the same for every corner as well. 19. Merge points, again with a Fixed Dis- tance of 0.9". You should get a message telling you that 44 points were elimi- nated. (If you’re working with this floor plan and you get some other number, go back and check your work! Working from the same model and going through the same steps, we should get the same Figure 6-9 results.) 17. Now, from a Top viewport and with a Grid Snap Value of 1" (one inch), go around the walls, and anywhere you see a gap like that shown in Figure 6-9, drag the points together so they meet. (Points are shown selected in the figure so they can be seen easier — this step is quickest to do with nothing selected.) 179
Chapter 6 · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · Figure 6-11 20. Now, using the Numeric window, extrude this version of your floor plan up 8'. You’ll see your walls have some thickness to them. Figure 6-12 21. Now, create some boxes on a back- Note ground layer where you’d like your windows to be. Place them in positions There are a couple of ways to do this quickly. similar to those shown in Figure 6-12 One way is to create one cookie cutter, so that they can be used as Boolean select it, and copy and paste it, moving it to “cookie cutters” for our floor plan. its new location and using to rotate it (Make sure you have at least five 90º if necessary. Another way is to get one window cookie inches between window boxes.) cutter sized the way you want it and then right-click and drag on the “+” in the center of the box to drag a new one to a different location. 180
· · · · · · · · A r c h i t e c t u r a l M o d e l i n g E xe r c i s e : I n t e r i o r S e t 23. With the new boxes created in Figure 6-13 in the background layer and your floor plan in the foreground layer, Solid Drill | Stencil a new surface with the name Window_Molding onto your floor plan. (You may want to go into the Surface Editor afterward and adjust the color of this new surface so it stands out from the default surface on the rest of the model.) 24. With the old window boxes (the smaller ones) in the background layer Figure 6-13 and your floor plan in the foreground layer, Boolean | Subtract the holes 22. Now, copy and paste those “window for your windows. boxes” into a fresh layer and Smooth 25. Merge points using the same fixed set- Scale them 2". This will have the effect tings we’ve been using, and delete both of making these boxes one inch larger the window boxes and the new boxes. all the way around (shown in Figure 26. Next, with a Grid Snap Value of 6", cre- 6-13 with both the “old” window boxes ate two boxes that will be used to and the floor plan in the background Boolean the walkways that will not layers). We will be using these “new” have doors in them, as shown in Figure boxes to stencil an area we will use 6-15. They should be three feet wide, later as a molding around each window. extend just below the ground plane, Figure 6-14: I’m not sure why, but sometimes Modeler doesn’t quite know how to display a Boolean that is completely inside a large, flat surface like this wall. In Layout’s Shaded preview, the Boolean looks fine; more importantly, it renders correctly. This little display error is just one of those things where, after testing to be absolutely sure, you have to be content with knowing that you’re right and the computer is wrong. 181
Chapter 6 · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · and have their tops at 6'9". (Use Set as shown in Figure 6-16. It should be Value for the tops of the walkway surfaced with the name Ceiling. Its cutters.) Smoothing Threshold should be set to 27. Boolean the walkways out of the floor 23°, its normal should be facing down, plan, and merge points again (still with and you should use Set Value to put it the same settings). You’ll want to keep exactly at 7' high on the Y axis. these walkway cutters on a background 29. With Ceiling in the foreground layer layer, out of the way, for use later when and the floor plan in the background cutting the other doors. layer, use Solid Drill | Tunnel to cut 28. Next, make a polygon that extends the exact shape of the floor plan into the beyond the boundaries of our floor plan, ceiling. (See Figure 6-17.) Figure 6-15 Figure 6-16 Figure 6-17 182
· · · · · · · · A r c h i t e c t u r a l M o d e l i n g E xe r c i s e : I n t e r i o r S e t Figure 6-18 30. Delete the edge that extends outside 32. Copy and paste this into a clean fore- the floor plan (Figure 6-18). Then ground layer of your model with the delete all points from those polygons floor plan and the ceiling in the back- that do not fall directly on a corner of ground layers. Press to zoom in those polygons. on the cornice rail in the foreground 31. Now we’re going to do the cornice layer. We can see that the cornice rail work on the ceiling. You could draw a starts where we put our ceiling polys cornice yourself, but a cool thing about (at seven feet) and “does its thing,” Rail Bevel is that you can save neat ending up gracefully blending to the bevels for later. Load Objects\Chap- height of the top of our walls at eight ter06\Cornice_SubtleElegant.lwo. feet (where one would normally expect an eight-foot ceiling to be). 33. Now, with only our ceiling in the fore- ground layer and only our cornice rail in the background layer, activate Rail Bevel, and in the Numeric window, enter –100% for the Shift (pushing it up 100% of the distance outlined by the cornice rail) and –140% for the Inset, so our bevel’s points line up directly with the cornice rail that we can see in the background layer. Instant cornices! (See Figure 6-20.) Figure 6-19 183
Chapter 6 · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · Figure 6-20 Note polygon, just like you did in Figure Something to be aware of is that currently 6-16. This polygon should be surfaced the Rail Bevel tool will only work properly with a shape defined by points that sculpt with the name Floor, its Smoothing their curve when looking at them along the should be Off, its normal should be fac- Z axis, as the cornice rail’s points do. Rail ing up, and you should use Set Value to Bevel won’t work properly if the shape reads position it at exactly 4" “high” on the Y as a flat, straight-up-and-down line when viewed from a Back or Front viewport. axis. 35. Use Solid Drill | Tunnel to have the floor plan cut the exact shape of your 34. Leaving your cornice and ceiling in flooring into your polygon (shown in their layers, bring up an empty fore- Figure 6-22 with the “excess” polygon ground layer, put the floor plan in a around the edge already removed). background layer, and create another Figure 6-21 184
· · · · · · · · A r c h i t e c t u r a l M o d e l i n g E xe r c i s e : I n t e r i o r S e t Figure 6-22 36. Once again, we’re going to load in a Note prefabricated piece to use in rail bevel- You don’t necessarily have to work with ing the floor molding. Load Objects\ these prefab rails for rail beveling. It’s just Chapter06\Molding_Rail.lwo. Copy that I’ve already built them to fit the dimen- sions with which we’re working; the values and paste it onto a blank foreground in the Numeric: Rail Bevel window shown in layer of your floor plan work-in-prog- Figure 6-23 will give you exactly what you’re ress. With it alone on the foreground looking at in this book. If you find the ornamentation that these layer, select View | Viewports | Fit prefab rails produce too staid for your Selected so you’ll have a clear view of tastes, by all means feel free to create your it when you do your rail bevel. own rails to rail bevel. When building your own rails, it’s best if they span the distance you want the actual ornamentation to cover, so the value you enter for Shift is +/–100% (depending on an obscure combination of the poly’s normal and the rail’s start point). The rail should also be positioned along the X axis so that it silhouettes the shape you want to create (the Molding_Rail file with the flooring in the background touches the right edge of one of the flooring sections). With the rail in the side view and positioned along the X axis, adjusting the Inset value will make the geometry generated by the Rail Bevel tool “push” more and more to conform to the rail in the background layer. If you've already approved the shape of the rail, you know the new geometry has an appropriate height/depth ratio when the Inset value makes the new geometry line up perfectly with the rail’s profile in the back- ground layer. 185
Chapter 6 · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · Figure 6-23 37. With the molding rail in the background oddities the rail beveled molding may layer and the flooring in the foreground have (be sure you use Automatic set- layer, Rail Bevel with a Shift of 100%, tings when merging points here, not and an Inset of –150% — we have the settings we’ve been using up to instant molding! this point). We’re leaving the actual floor on its own layer, separating the floor from the molding for the moment. Figure 6-24 38. Select just the four polys that make up Figure 6-25 the actual “floor” and hide them, so you’re just looking at the molding that 39. With the floor plan in the foreground you’ve created. Assign it a surface layer, use the Polygon Statistics win- named Molding with a Smoothing dow to select only the surface Threshold of 42°, and cut and paste it Window_Molding. Hide everything onto the layer on which you’ve got the else. rest of your floor plan. Select Merge Points | Automatic to clean up any 186
· · · · · · · · A r c h i t e c t u r a l M o d e l i n g E xe r c i s e : I n t e r i o r S e t Note We’re about to make the window moldings. Instead of doing all of them at once, I want us to just do one, which we’ll copy and paste to where the others should be. The reason for this is that we’re about to see a situation where Rail Bevel doesn’t quite work per- fectly. When you have a polygon that has a hole cut out of it, that poly has a “seam” — a bit of a slice where the poly meets itself coming from the other direction. (Think of taking the Figure 6-26 ends of a U and bending them around to make an O.) When Rail Bevel encounters this, it splits those points apart by the same 40. Put the window moldings in the back- distance it is shifting the rest of the bevel. ground layer and the Molding_Rail You’ll probably encounter this problem at some point in your modeling career. The fol- (from creating the floor moldings) in lowing step shows how to fix it. the foreground layer. Zoom in on the Molding_Rail in a Back viewport, and with your mouse near the top of the 41. With your reoriented Molding_Rail in rail, press to rotate that rail 90° the background layer and the high- clockwise around the mouse’s position. lighted Window Molding shown in (This will get the window moldings to Figure 6-25 selected in the foreground have the same basic shape as the floor layer, activate Rail Bevel, using 50% molding. To rail bevel, the rail’s place- for the Shift and –15% for the Inset. ment in relation to the polys to be rail (See Figure 6-27.) beveled doesn’t matter, but its orienta- tion does. I’m not quite sure why the Molding_Rail has to be angled this way in order for the window moldings to be the same basic shape as the floor mold- ings, but if it works, go with it!) Figure 6-27 187