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A
sphere is a marvellous object to study some of the many features that
Curvy 3D has to offer when it comes to painting onto the 3D objects, be
it to define the color maps, add transparency holes through the alpha
channel, defining highlight maps, bump maps or even real-time
displacement maps, called Curvy maps.
But how do you start making a sphere in the first place? And I mean, a
perfect sphere.
Creating the Perfect
Sphere
Here's a quick tutorial to get the sphere, and then some experiments
with painting on it.
We will draw a profile of the sphere, just half of it, actually. Just a
semi-circle will do, such as the left half or right half. We will use
the Lathe tool so that the circular arc will be swept around the
vertical axis.
Start by using the Lathe creation tool.
Use a single view, perhaps the Front or Perspective view, and make sure
you're reset the view. Start fresh from scratch if you're not sure how
to. Or click in the upper-left corner of the view: click on the name of
the view (such as Perspective or Front) and you will see a menu with,
amongst other things, a Reset View option as well as Reset All Views.
Now, with the Lathe tool selected, just draw a semi-circle like the one
below. Now this will only be an
approximation. Don't worry about it not being perfect.
click image to enlarge
Ok, so we've drawn one long
brush stroke. The Lathe tool normally expects you to draw another line.
Instead, we will now want to select this first curve we just drew.
Right-click the object to locate and select the curve.
With the curve now selected,
you can have it reshaped with one of the
modifiers from the Curve menu. Select the Semi-Circle option:
In the lower-left of the view, click the centering icon to center the
object into the middle of the view.
You may also need to resize it or zoom in.
Here you go, a nicely shaped
perfect sphere. If you switch back to
multiple views you can reset (center) them each and easily get to about
this look:
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