inventor
 

Hey it's me again,

Quick question from my cad team.
Here's the problem.
The cad team saves a file Ex: (the goal) and exports it to igs. When I go to import it, it is all saved as one object is a level0nurbs file. Hence I cannot change the color of individual pieces.
Is there a way to change this?? shoudl it be inported into another format? Or should it be made a differant way???
Thanks,
Tyler Olds
Head Animator
Team 93
email Tman_86@yahoo.com
P.S. the cad team did change the color of the indivual objects in inventor.

Most likely solution...
 

With MOST nurbs object, is that they are actually made up of smaller surfaces. So if you were to click the sub-object button, you could select the surfaces you want to modify. Then simply give each object you want to have a different color a different material number. The material spinner should be down a bit on the sidebar after you've selected your surfaces.

Now if you go into the material editor, you change the material type to MULTI, and this will give you a list of different materials, each with a different number next to it. These numbers correspond to the material number you gave the individual surfaces. Then you can go in and modify each material individually and it will correspond to the proper surfaces. With enough surfaces selected, it should look like whole objects in this singular NURBS object are being modified. MULTI materials is also how you have more than just the standard 24 materials. This was a fun trick on MAX 1.2 back in the day B^P...

Wow. That sounds quite confusing and complex. Perhaps a tutorial is in need? With a request, I can throw one together encompassing dealing with IGES imported into MAX then broken into the materials or even separated into different object. But both the MULTI material and surface modifying in NURBS objects should be in the manuals. Flip through em and see what you find first. If things are still confusing, pop in with another post, and probably at latest, Wed, I could have a quickie tutorial written with graphics.

Then again, there are a couple of tutorials I'd like to write and havent gotten around to. Off the web and on the bouncing ball, preferably a geosphere with optimize high in the viewport and low in the renderer... Oh, and something to always keep in mind is that Animation and graphic arts, in general, is an illusion. How you create that final image is up to you. No one will know for sure how you did it, and most wont care. Though I'm sure after nationals this year, we'll all be in here nitpicking over little details and tricks we caught.

Good luck and happy animating!

-Robby O
FIRSTanimators Moderator
oshortwan@hotmail.com