3dgraphics

As a hobby, I enjoy making 3D images and animations. I started with Animation:Master, then did some work with Wings 3D, and am now concentrating on LightWave, with some dabbling in Blender, Messiah, and Zbrush.

As my day job and training involves computer programming, I can’t help applying those skills to my 3D hobby. I wrote a “Font Wizard” for Animation:Master (now distributed with A:M), which patches, bevels and extrudes character outlines. Pretty much the same code works for importing vector art, so I also made a wizard for importing Adobe Illustrator files. Here’s a tutorial written by Jeff Cantin showing how to use it. For the technically curious, I wrote a Font Wizard Algorithm description.

I then moved on to Wings 3D programming, where I wrote a popular “tweak” plugin, and also font and AI plugins similar to the A:M ones. They are all now distributed with Wings 3D.

Next I tried LightWave. One of the first uses I made of LightWave was to model how our bathroom would look after a remodel. Way over the top, but it gave the contractor and tile guy a good laugh.

I moved onto Blender, and started writing some general vector art utilities in Python. Now I'm also doing C programming in Blender, and have been responsible for its knife and bevel tools.