I'm making a spacecraft and I want a special gate/door in it.
I don't know how to describe it but I have attached a very
small monocrome image so you can see what I mean.
I don't know how to get the curves just right so they fit
together when the gate opens and closes.

I'd also like some links to web pages with detailed 3D
spacecraft images which I can use for inspiration.

Thanks,

Rune S. Johansen
http://hjem.get2net.dk/rsj

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Attachments:
Download 'Gate.gif' (1 KB)

Preview of image 'Gate.gif'

Rune S. Johansen wrote:

> I'm making a spacecraft and I want a special gate/door in it.
> I don't know how to describe it but I have attached a very
> small monocrome image so you can see what I mean.
> I don't know how to get the curves just right so they fit
> together when the gate opens and closes.

I'm not even going to try to tell you how to animate your "gate"(it's
called an iris). It gives me a headache just thinking about
it. The individual pieces can be done either with simple csg
operations or can be done with bezier patches or traingles.

> I'd also like some links to web pages with detailed 3D
> spacecraft images which I can use for inspiration.

Try this news server in the povray.binaries.images groupfor some
excellent spacecraft images. Also the i.r.t.c has
images available as well as some 2.234 billion sites on the
web. I would think a yahoo search would easily turn these
up.

Ken Tyler

> Thanks,
> Rune S. Johansen
> http://hjem.get2net.dk/rsj

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I think you could model each segment as the difference between
two discs (or scaled spheres).  I don't have a handy example, but
think of a small disc minus a larger (but offset) one... you should
end up with something like a crescent moon.

As for getting them to fit together right, start by making some
assumptions about the distance between the center of the
iris and the center of each disc.  You might find some cool
relationship that allows you to animate, but you didn't say
you were going to animate, so maybe I am just running off
at the mouth again...

Rune S. Johansen wrote in message <36645109.0@news.povray.org>...
>I'm making a spacecraft and I want a special gate/door in it.

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I've written a macro which will create a simple openable iris.
I'll post a sample image to p.b.images and the code to p.t.scene-files.

    Bye for now,
        Mike Andrews.

Rune S. Johansen wrote:

> I'm making a spacecraft and I want a special gate/door in it.
> I don't know how to describe it but I have attached a very
> small monocrome image so you can see what I mean.
> I don't know how to get the curves just right so they fit
> together when the gate opens and closes.
>
> I'd also like some links to web pages with detailed 3D
> spacecraft images which I can use for inspiration.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Rune S. Johansen
> http://hjem.get2net.dk/rsj
>
>  [Image]

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Rune,

I took a quick look at the gate/door and came up with a model in Moray
for Windows that can be animated to open & close.  I am posting the
image in the povray.binaries.images newsgroup under the same subject as
you used here.  I can send to you the Moray model and/or the pov
file(s).  This model uses cylinders for each of the slices, slightly
rotated about the Y-axis, then translated & rotated a required.

I created the model in about 5 minutes.  I hope this helps!

Tony

"Rune S. Johansen" wrote:

> I'm making a spacecraft and I want a special gate/door in it.
> I don't know how to describe it but I have attached a very
> small monocrome image so you can see what I mean.
> I don't know how to get the curves just right so they fit
> together when the gate opens and closes.
>
> I'd also like some links to web pages with detailed 3D
> spacecraft images which I can use for inspiration.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Rune S. Johansen
> http://hjem.get2net.dk/rsj
>
>  [Image]

Post a reply to this message