User manual ELECTRIC RAIN SWIFT 3D VERSION 5

[. . . ] Swift 3D V5 User Guide Copyright This manual and the software described within its pages are furnished under license and may only be used or copied in accordance of the terms of such license. No part of this manual may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the expressed written consent of Electric Rain, Inc. 5171 Eldorado Springs Drive Boulder, CO 80303 www. erain. com Trademarks Swift 3D, the Swift 3D logo, ZAM 3D, the ZAM 3D logo, RAViX and Crystal Trackball are trademarks of Electric Rain Inc. Electric Rain reserves the right to seize all your assets. . . Hey, what are you doing reading this ridiculous fine print. [. . . ] Before the Soft Select area is locked down you can move this slider to its different settings (2 through 10) and as the cursor moves over the mesh you will see the changes in the size of the Soft Select area. Once the Soft Select area is permanently selected you can no longer adjust the Vertex Radius unless you deselect the Soft Select by clicking in the background and going back into Soft Select mode. If you are not able to refine your selection accurately enough, you may need to create additional faces within the desired Soft Select area so that the Vertex Radius control has more vertices to choose from. This can be done through the Subdivide feature, which is discussed later on in this chapter. Also keep in mind that the way your mesh is balanced and the direction that edges are turned will have a major impact on which vertices are included in the Soft Select region. See Balance Mesh (under Subdivide) and Turn Edge for details on these using these features. 138 Swift 3D V5 User Guide Choosing Curve Type The next decision to make in the Soft Select process is whether you want the pull or push of the Soft Select field to take on a nice, smooth rounded shape or more of a sharply pointed shape. A smooth curve is achieved by choosing the Parabolic Curve Type, while the Exponential Curve Type results in a sharper curve. Form Factor Soft Select = Exponential Soft Select = Parabolic The intensity or falloff of the Curve Type can be controlled through the Form Factor slider. This slider ranges from . 01 to 1. 00, with . 01 representing the gentlest curve and 1. 00 the steepest. And if there is any doubt, the graph located above the slider serves as a great way to visualize what type of falloff each value will generate. To soft select: 1. Go to the Selection property page and make sure that Enable Mouseover is on. Roll the mouse over the sphere to detect the range of vertices that will be included in the Soft Select. Adjust the Vertex Radius slider until the area encompassed by the Soft Select is as desired. Note that the cursor will automatically turn into the Move cursor, but you can switch to the Rotate or Scale tool as well. From the Soft Select property page, set the Curve Type to be Parabolic or Exponential. Adjust the Form Factor slider to control the intensity of the curve's falloff. Use the Move, Rotate or Scale tools to manipulate the selected area. Edit Menu These additional selection-related functions can be found under the Edit menu: Hide/Unhide: Mesh can be hidden from view by either choosing Edit > Hide Selection [CTRL + E], which will hide your current selection, or Edit > Hide All [CTRL + H], which will hide all mesh currently contained within the Viewports. To view a mesh that has been hidden, choose Edit > Unhide All [CTRL + U]. An option also exists on the Surface Groups property page for hiding individual surface groups. (See "Surface Groups (Editing Mesh Mode Only)" on page 141 for more information on this topic. ) As in the Scene Editor, the Object property page also has an option for hiding entire objects. Duplicate Selection: In the Advanced Modeler you can only duplicate or delete a mesh or object, so you will not find the traditional cut, copy or paste functions. A duplicate of the selected mesh (faces and surface groups only) or object can be made by going to Edit > Duplicate on the main menu or by right clicking (Win) or CTRL + clicking (Mac) to bring up the object context sensitive menu. You can choose to have the duplicate appear in the same place or adjacent to the original object along the X, Y or Z axis. [. . . ] Break Out Selection is an extremely useful function that can be used to remove a selected object from others with which it is combined, as well as the individual faces of a mesh from the rest of the model. Hide Selection will hide from view currently selection objects or elements. Hide All will hide all objects currently contained within the Viewports. Unhide All will bring back into view any objects that have previously been hidden. [. . . ]