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              <p><font color="#0000FF"><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#0000CC">volume 
                1, issue 9</font></b></font></p>
              <p><font color="#0000FF"><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#0000CC"> 
                </font></b></font></p>
              <p>  <p><font face="Courier New, Courier, mono"><b><font color="#339900" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Today 
                in loonygames:</font></b></font></p>

<P><font color="#000000" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-1">New!!</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2"> The Archives have been cleaned up, fead links fixed, and printable versions restored! Also, don't miss the new comments <a href="../../../index.html">on the front page</a>!</font></p>
              
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        <p align="LEFT"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#0022A8"><b><a target="" href="../../corner/index.html"><font size="-1">Thinking 
          Outside the Box</font></a><font size="-1">:</font></b></font><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="+3" color="#0022A8"><br>
          Exercise</font></p>
        <p align="right"><font color="#804000"><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">By 
          Paul &quot;<a target="_self" href="mailto:paul@loonygames.com">Villam</a>&quot; 
          Steed</font></b></font></p>
        <p align="right"> <br>
        </p>
        <p align="LEFT"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Okay, but still, 
          103 faces for one tentacle puts us at 555 faces without the guns, hose 
          connecting the guns, head/body or brain case. Uh, …not good, Grasshopper. 
          Let's get rid of the top 3 segments of the rascally appendage and see 
          where we are.</font></p>
        <p align="CENTER"><img src="images/totb9_11.jpg" width="239" height="186"></p>
        <p align="LEFT"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Hmm. 73 faces. 
          SOLD! We'll sit with that for the time being and move on. But first 
          let me adjust the tentacle mesh to accommodate the animations better. 
          From experience I know that the majority of the animations for this 
          type of appendage take place in the bottom two-thirds of the things 
          so I'll adjust the segments incrementally to support this. Let's also 
          make it less smooth and slightly more wavy. </font></p>
        <p align="CENTER"><img src="images/totb9_12.jpg" width="82" height="187"></p>
        <p align="LEFT"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Notice that 
          we make the tentacle hanging straight down. Contrary to bending it to 
          ensure accommodation, we are going to rely on bending and undulating 
          the thing in the animation tool with a skeleton inside the mesh. Now 
          to the body.</font></p>

        <p align="LEFT"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">In <b>3D Studio 
          4</b> we can start the body with a primitive called a g-sphere or geodesic 
          sphere. An l-sphere primitive or latitudinal/longitudinal sphere could 
          be used as well and it is cleaner than a g-sphere, but this is one of 
          the few time a less symmetrical approach is better. Actually g-spheres 
          are better for round objects when modeling low-poly because we get more 
          bang for our buck. Also the fact that a g-sphere can be specified by 
          total number of faces as opposed to segments is a nice touch. Here's 
          the difference between a 144-face g-sphere and a 14 segment (diameter) 
          l-sphere…</font></p>
        <p align="CENTER"><img src="images/totb9_13.jpg" width="377" height="187"></p>
        <p align="LEFT"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">They look about 
          the same in resolution but if you look at them top down (with the g-sphere's 
          top edges turned as a modest concession to symmetry) you'll see that 
          the g-sphere actually has 15 segments in diameter while the l-sphere 
          only has 14 segments. This is even more significant when you consider 
          that the l-sphere has 168 faces vs. the g-sphere's 144. More rounded 
          diameter with fewer faces.</font></p>
        <p align="CENTER"><img src="images/totb9_14.jpg" width="409" height="197"></p>
        <p align="RIGHT"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">(<a href="index6.php" target="">Continued 
          on the next page</a>)</font></p>
        <p align="RIGHT">&nbsp;</p>
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      <p><i><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-2"> </font></i><i><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-2"><b>Credits:</b> 
        Thinking Outside the Box logo illustrated and is &copy; 1998 Dan Zalkus. 
        Thinking Outside the Box is &copy; 1998 Paul Steed. All other content 
        is &copy; 1998 <a target="_self" href="http://www.loonyboi.com">loonyboi 
        productions</a>. Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited, so 
        don't even try it. We've got really big guns, and we're ripped, baby.</font></i></p>
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