Using Misfit Model 3D
This is a general guide on how to create models using Misfit. If you have not already read the Overview you should do that now. This section assumes you are familiar with terms defined in that section and know how to navigate around Misfit's windows and menus.
There are also links to many tools and commands in this document. If you can't figure out how to use a specific feature, follow the link to get more information on that feature.
Faces
Faces are sets of 3 connected vertices that form a polygon. The polygon is filled and may have a texture applied to it. The polygons of the model can be drawn as a wireframe, a set of flat polygons, a set of smooth polygons, and a set of smooth textured polygons. When you start Misfit Model 3D for the first time, the perspective viewport will display textured polygons and the orthographic canvas viewports will display polygon wireframes with vertices. The drawing mode for the canvas and perspective viewports can be changed using the View menu.
Creating faces is generally done by selecting a creation tool and left-clicking in a model canvas view. In addition to tools, some commands may also create faces. Faces are often created in connected meshes. In these cases the polygons will share vertices. For example, the cube tool creates 12 triangular faces which form the 6 sides of the cube; however, it creates only 8 vertices between them, rather than 36. Keep this in mind when moving faces, since moving a face will likely move the vertex of one or more other adjacent faces.
Use the Cube tool to create a cube. After you have created the cube you can use the Move, Rotate, Scale, and Shear, tools to change the position, size, or shape of the cube.
Notice that if you create a second cube, only the vertices which are selected (in red) are modified by using the tools. To change the current selection click on a Select tool. Try using both the Vertices and Faces selection tools. Groups can be ignored for now, but will be useful later when you have a more complex model to work with.
You may want to manipulate faces on one side of an object without changing the faces on the far side. The easiest way to select faces on one side of an object is uncheck the Include Back-facing checkbox. Alternate you may Select the faces (both sides), then use a canvas view from another angle and right-click to unselect the faces on the far side. Using "View | Frame Selected" may be useful when selecting and unselecting in this manner.
The Select Connected tool is useful for reselecting faces in a connected mesh. When you select faces with the Select Connected tool, it recursively selects any faces that share an edges with newly-selected faces. Objects like cubes, spheres, and cylinders can be reselected easily using this tool.
In addition to using tools you can also modify the model with Commands. Commands are non-interactive model operations. Some are rather self-explanatory, such as Duplicate and Delete. Others require some explanation and are covered below.
If you continue to create vertices and faces you may end up with a number of objects in your viewport at once. If you need to work on a specific section of the model and don't want other parts to get in your way you can use the Hide command to temporarily hide faces.
Faces are often created in connected meshes. In some cases you may want to disconnect a face from the mesh it was created with. Select the face in question and use the Unweld vertices command. To rejoin the vertices, select the vertices that you want to join and use the Weld vertices command. Note that vertices have to be very close to each other to be welded. If the vertices are far apart you can use the Snap Together command.
Extrude takes faces that you have selected and extends them in a direction you specify. When those faces are extended, each edge becomes another face which is connected to the face's original locations. For example if you select the front of a cube and extrude it along the positive Z axis two times, you will have three connected cubes which form one long bar along the Z axis.
Some users create their models using existing images or scanned hand-drawn sketches as a reference. You can do this by selecting the Set Background Image option from the File menu. Select the view direction to which the background should apply by clicking on the appropriate tab. Chose the image you want to use as a reference You can then use the Scale Background Image and Move Background Image tools to reposition the background image.
Grouping
Faces can be organized into groups. Grouping is required if you want to apply textures to your model. You may also want to use groups for the convenience of selecting a set of faces at once for manipulation.
To create a new group, select the faces you want to group and open the Groups Window. Use the New group button to create a group. That group will appear in the group drop-down box at the top of the window. While you have that group name in the drop-down box click the Assign as group button or the Add to group button.
When you close the Groups Window you can use the Select Groups tool to select this group or others in a canvas view. Ungrouped faces cannot be selected while in group selection mode.
You can also set a group's texture from the Groups Window. Texturing is covered in the next section.
Texturing
Once you have faces organized into one or more groups, you can apply textures to those groups. To begin applying textures, open the Materials Window from the Groups menu. Use the New Texture button to select an image to use as a material. USe the New Color button to create a solid color material.
Important note: Texture image dimensions should be a power of 2. In other words the height and width should be 16, 32, 64, 128 and so on. The height and width do not need to be equal to each other (256x128 is legitimate). MM3D should handle improperly sized textures, but other rendering systems may not.
When you have created one or more materials you can close that window by selecting Ok and open the group window again.
Open the Groups Window again and select a group. Then select a texture in the texture drop-down box. This texture will now be applied to the specified group. You can then select another group and assign a texture to it as well.
The default texture coordinates will probably not be appropriate for your model. To change how the texture is applied to your group, select a group and use the Texture Coordinates Window.
The texture coordinate window gives you three options for starting to edit texture coordinates. The first is a triangle mapping. If you select this mode the same three texture coordinates will be applied to all faces in your group.
The second mapping option is quad. The quad option will create two triangles and each will be mapped to every other face in your group.
The third mapping option is group. The group option creates coordinates for each vertex in your group which you can move independently (though you may not be able to select individual vertices if they overlap). When you select this mode you will be prompted for a direction. This direction is the angle from which the vertex coordinates will be projected onto the texture. From there you can modify the coordinates by moving them around as needed.
You may also select a subset of faces from within your group and then open the Texture Coordinates Window. This will allow you to modify the texture coordinates of specific faces without altering the texture coordinates of the rest of the group's faces.
More useful methods of texturing are planned for future versions. If you have any specific suggestions for improving texture coordinate editing, contact me and I'll see what I can do about getting those featuers in a future version.
Joints
You can give your model a skeleton by creating bone joints. Bone joints are primitives that you can attach vertices to. When animating a model if you move or rotate a bone joint, the attached vertices will move with the joint. Generally you only need to create bone joints if you want to use Skeletal Animations.
Select the Create Bone Joint tool. Click in a canvas view to create the root bone joint. You should see a single dot appear under the cursor. Click the mouse again to create a second bone joint. The bone joints will be connected to each other.
The first bone joint will be the parent of the second (child) bone joint. The child joint is always connected to the nearest joint to its creation point. If you want to create a joint that is parented by a joint other than the one closest to its creation point, create the joint near the parent and then move it to the desired location.
You can move, rotate, and scale bone joints just like you manipulate vertices. Use the Select Bone Joints tool to select bone joints and then use the Move, Rotate, or Scale tool to reposition the bone joints as you desire.
To assign vertices to a joint, select the vertices you want to assign and then select Joints... from the Primitives menu. This will open the Joints Window. Select the bone joint you want to assign the vertices to from the combo box, and then click the Assign Vertices to Joint button. This button will connect all the selected vertices to the bone joint named in the combo box.
If other vertices are already assigned to the same joint, they will be unaffected. If the selected vertices are assigned to another joint, they will no longer be connected to the first joint (a vertex can only be assigned to one joint).
If you have a joint selected when you open the Joints Window, that joint will be the joint selected in the combo box. Knowing this, if you already have a joint selected you can use the Select Vertices tool and Shift-Select the vertices to add them to the current selection. This will allow you to skip the joint selection step in the Joints Window
You can also use the Assign Vertices to Bone Joint command to assign the currently selected vertices to the currently selected bone joint.When animating a model, moving a parent joint will cause all the child joints to move also (as opposed to model edit, where mode all bone joints move and rotate independently of each other). Attached vertices will also move with the bone joint.
Animations
Animations can be Skeletal animations or Frame animations. Frame animations are animations where you specify the position of each vertex for each frame of the animation. Skeletal animations are animations where you attach vertices to bone joints and then you rotate or move bone joints. The vertices attached to those joints move with the joints.
Skeletal animations are generally easier and quicker to work with. If you need to create frame animations (for example, so that you can save your model in the Quake MD2 or MD3 format) it is often easier to create the animations as skeletal animations and convert them to Frame animations before you export the model to a specific format.
To create animations select Start Animation Mode from the Animations menu. Select either the Skeletal or Frame tab and then use the New button to create an animation. Set the number of frames and frame rate (in frames-per-second).
Once you have created an animation you can use the frame slider to set a current frame. After setting a frame you can use the standard tools and commands to move the model to the position you want for the current frame. How you move the model depends on the type of animation you want to create.
Frame animations are simple to create, but can be rather tedious to edit. Each vertex of a polygon must be positioned where you want it for every frame of the animation. Use the vertex or face selection tools to select vertices and then you can move them with the move, rotate, or scale tools.
Note that if you have frame animations you will be unable to add or delete polygons. You may only use the Merge function to add polygons to the model. If you need to change the number of polygons in a model after creating frame animations, you will have to delete the frame animations.
If you need frame animations (for example, if you want to create a quake MD2 or MD3 model), it is generally a better idea to create Skeletal animations and then convert them to Frame animations. Any time you need to change an animation you can change the skeletal version and then convert it to a frame animation.
Skeletal animations are animations where you manipulate the bone joints that vertices are attached to rather than manipulating the vertices directly.
Use the Select Bone Joints tool to select a bone joint and then use Rotate or Move to change the orientation or position of the joint for the current frame. Most of the time you will want to use the Rotate tool instead of the Move tool. If you consider the way your own skeleton moves, you will notice that your joints only move relative to each other as the result of a joint rotation. The Move tool is typically only useful for moving the root joint for an animation in which the entire model moves.
Any time you move or rotate a joint it sets a keyframe for the joint. Keyframes can be rotation or translation keyframes. A joint can have a rotation keyframe, translation keyframe, both or neither for every frame of an animation.
You can also set a rotation or translation keyframe by selecting the Set Rotation Keyframe and Set Translation Keyframe commands from the Animation menu.
Unselected joints that have a keyframe for the current animation will appear green. Unselected joints without a keyframe in the current animation will appear blue.
Joint positions and orientations are interpolated between keyframes. This means that if you set a joint's rotation in frames 1 and 5 of an animation, frames 2 through 4 will show the joint rotating between those two keyframes even if you did not explicitly set the rotation for the intermediate frames. This also means that if the frame rate of an application is running faster than your animation's frame rate the joints can be interpolated between frames. Also note that if you set the animation to loop then keyframe interpolation will wrap at the beginning and end of the animation--so the model will animate back to its first frame during its last frame.
If you want to make copies of animations, split one animation into separate animations, join animations together, or convert skeletal animations to frame animations; you can use the Animation Sets Window to perform these operations.