Tinkeratrix: Wings 3D - Sculpty Friendly Functions

Several people have asked for help / how to's on using Wings 3D to create aircraft parts. In order to create those I had to sit down and figure out how I actually use Wings 3D in the first place - like driving home, I know how to get there but couldn't tell someone without stopping to think about it.

I'm going to try and document the basic functions separately so that people can refer to them as needed and I don't wind up re-explaining everything as I go.

At least that's the plan :)

Wings 3D - Sculpty Friendly Functions

Wings 3D isn't actually designed specifically for creating sculpties and as such it has lots of functions which don't apply to what we're doing. In fact many of these functions can damage the object and make it impossible to export it as a sculpt map. Happily most of what we want to do doesn't require them.

Most of the functions work the same way no matter what selection method (vertex, edge, face, or object) is being used, so things will apply more or less universally.

Before you can do anything you need to select part or all of the object. For the sake of example I'll select an edge and use the L function for select the entire circumference.

Next right click anywhere on the screen and you'll see a menu similar to this one:

The first thing we'll do is move our selection so click move. A sub menu will appear:

The options I use most of the time are X, Y, and Z which as you might suspect move the selection on the designated axis. In this case I've selected the Z axis and moved my selection in the negative direction. When you've reached the desired location LEFT click the mouse - right clicking undoes the change, to save the move.

Notice that the upper left hand corner of the window has an indicator of the direction that I'm moving the selection and how far it's going? This is hugely useful because in addition to using the mouse to move your selection you can also specify the distance by entering it using the keyboard.

Highlight the area you want to move and right click to bring up the menu, then select Move and the desired axis. I'll undo the changes I just made, so I'll select the Z axis. Now instead of moving the mouse I'll press the Tab key:

Since I made a note of the distance I moved the selection originally (told you it was useful) I can undo my change by entering the opposite value - in this case a positive .2008, and hitting Enter.

Of course like most programs you can also use Control Z to undo changes - it's much easier :)

The rotation function works in about the same fashion, except that it works in degrees, and of course that it rotates the selection rather than moving it. One important thing to remember about rotation is that it happens at the center of the selection which is almost always not where you want it to happen.

For example I've selected half of my cylinder and will rotate it 90 degrees on the Z axis.

I hate that. Here's one of the areas where I'm probably missing a useful and simple tool in Wings. At this point I typically just move the selection manually until it's in what I deem the proper position. I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out that there's a way of doing this automatically that I simply have stumbled across yet.

Scale is probably my favorite function (how sad, I have a favorite function), but it's a tad more complex so I'll save it till last.

Slide is sort of like Move except it will only work with edges, only moves the selected edges in the direction which is perpendicular to the edge, and in the proper circumstances it will dynamically resize the selection to try to preserve the shape of the object. Quite a mouthful isn't it. It's better with pictures - first I made a rough half sphere:

Then I select an edge and used L to highlight the entire circumference of that edge.

Then I selected the Slide function

And moved my mouse to slide the selection up and down the object.

As you can see it resizes it to try and match the new position - though since this was somewhat rounded it's not that accurate.

Flatten is another goodie. It's fairly self explanatory, it flattens the selected area in the selected direction. Like the Rotate function though it tends to move things a little unpredictably, but since it's only in one dimension it's easily corrected.

In addition to the X, Y, and Z sub commands there are also Normal and Region. Normal is useful when you don't want to flatten something exactly on one of the three primary axes. For example

Flattened on the Z or X axis looks neat but not what I want:

Flattening using Normal is more what I had in mind:

And to be honest, I can't tell precisely how Flatten Region is any different from Flatten Normal, so I simply avoid using it :)

And last but not least my old friend Scale. Scale resizes the selection, and while there are lots of options with it I only use the X, Y, and Z axis, and the Uniform function. Unlike the other functions I've covered, Scale behaves differently depending on the selection mode. Rather than try to cover all the functions I'll suggest that you play with it some before you get too involved in a project so you've got a feel for how it works.

A very useful Scale trick I've found is to select two groups of vertexes in different locations on the object, then scale them on an axis to move them equally distant from the center of the object. Again easier to show than to tell :)

First press Y to position the camera directly above the object, then I'll select two faces on opposite sides of it.