Posts made by Alan Fraser

Very Nice Eric. Now try one of these.
http://www.lets-have-a-party.co.uk/cat--Adult-Pirate-Costumes--AF160G.html

No, they have to contribute stuff on the same basis as everyone else, Tom. It's just that they are already registered. All very "co-operative"
We are thinking of using this flyer.

Paul,
As with the FF artists, all models are rated the same. Fred Abler and I agonised about this some years ago, but decided that there is simply no way of formulating a system to grade models.

Everyone knows an "easy" model when they see one, but actually categorising it is a whole different thing. You can't grade according to the type of model (saying chairs are easy compared to cars) because what about some of the very fluid modern designs or a Louis XV, covered in mouldings and gold ormalu? Nor can you go on the number of polys (Just leave the arcs and circles at their default values and you can end up with tens of thousands of polys in seconds). And it would simply get too argumentative classifying each model individually...and somewhat subjectively.

The site actually says 4 downloads for 1 upload, but I've never had cause to test it. Jo Spo won't be able to upload a cube...because I won't approve it. Remember, it's not an automatic upload as on certain other sites, everything goes through QC. I can (and do) edit models that haven't followed the guidelines correctly, just as I have refused a few models that were too far wide of the mark (usually lousy quality or obvious copyright infringement). It'd be just as easy for me to simply delete extra configs that I thought were milking the system.

I'm hoping to put up a clearer list of guidelines shortly, to minimise such problems.

I'd just like to clarify a few points which have arisen since I posted this notice.

1. Existing FormFonts subscribers don't need to sign up for the Exchange...they already have access to it as part of their subscription.

2. We take the quality of submissions very seriously:
   Any work uploaded must be your own. We have had submissions of models acknowledged to be by other people; we are not going down that route.
   The model must be of good quality and fully purged...and of reasonable size. No 7MB cars please.
   The thumbnail must be at least visually square and around 400 pixels on a white background.
   (In Photoshop you can force a square crop by holding down Shift; in Corel Photopaint use Ctrl.)

Failure to do this may, at least, result in a delay in the model being approved onto the site. If the submission is too far wide of the guidelines it may not make it at all.

Thanks

Yes. If you look at Section 3: subsection 3 here https://www.formfonts.com/information/exchange_artist_license.php (sorry, it was drafted by real lawyers, so isn't the easiest thing to read). You'll see that FF assumes all rights to the uploaded content (for legal reasons that will become apparent) but immediately grants those rights back to the artist to do pretty much anything you like with them...including posting to other sites. They are your models, after all.

What FF doesn't do is grant all those rights to anyone else who downloads them. They can use your models in their renderings for clients, illustrations etc, but can't take your models and post them anywhere else as their own (because FF has already assumed copyright of them). It means we'll chase them up; individual artists don't have to. So no one else can take your stuff off the Exchange and post it to the 3DW or another modelling forum without our say so...and we aren't about to give that.

This isn't just academic. I personally had a case of someone downloading a model of a church I posted to Objective Networks (the forerunner of FF) and posting it to the 3DW as his own work.

The legalese always tends to look pretty scary, but that's not peculiar to FF. It's pretty much the same as any other Terms of Use.Yes. If you look at Section 3: subsection 3 here https://www.formfonts.com/information/exchange_artist_license.php (sorry, it was drafted by real lawyers, so isn't the easiest thing to read). You'll see that FF assumes all rights to the uploaded content (for legal reasons that will become apparent) but immediately grants those rights back to the artist to do pretty much anything you like with them...including posting to other sites. They are your models, after all.

What FF doesn't do is grant all those rights to anyone else who downloads them. They can use your models in their renderings for clients, illustrations etc, but can't take your models and post them anywhere else as their own (because FF has already assumed copyright of them). It means we'll chase them up; individual artists don't have to. So no one else can take your stuff off the Exchange and post it to the 3DW or another modelling forum without our say so...and we aren't about to give that.

This isn't just academic. I personally had a case of someone downloading a model of a church I posted to Objective Networks (the forerunner of FF) and posting it to the 3DW as his own work.

The legalese always tends to look pretty scary, but that's not peculiar to FF. It's pretty much the same as any other Terms of Use.

Justin, I don't think your models would have any trouble at all in meeting our standards. I believe the system is as it always was...that once you have download credit, you can download what you like. But I think there are only 2 of Ross's styles in the Exchange so far. The Free Exchange doesn't give you access to the commercial stuff...just the other Exchange content...but there are several hundred decent models in there now; and now that it's open to all, that number is likely to grow quite quickly.
http://www.formfonts.com/search.php?query=top%20ffexchange%20models&action=&orderBy=downloads&area=1&startingRow=0&active=&affiliate=

No problem, Eric. I'll get back to you later on the email BTW. Right now I'm trying to balance getting some work done with barrowing several tons of gravel round into my backyard, so I can get the cars back into the driveway...now THERE'S a way to lose weight and get fit.

I thought it worth mentioning that FormFonts has now thrown the doors open to non-subscribers and made the Exchange a free resource. Well, it's not exactly free...you have to upload some of your own stuff before you can download someone else's (my idea...fair's fair). I believe the download/upload ratio is still 3:1...that is, upload 1 model. you can download 3 others.

We apply the same quality control as we do on the commercial site. Thumbs need to be 400x400 on a plain white background (unless you've modelled a snowman or something) and the models themselves need to be purged, faces correctly oriented etc. It's a little more trouble, but the payoff is that you know what you're getting in return; and can rely on the stuff being less hassle to work with than most other generally free stuff. It's also necessary to give a decent list of search-engine keywords and such to ensure that your masterpiece can be easily found by generations still to come.

You can sign on by going to the sign up link at at the top of http://www.formfonts.com/index.php then change the radio button from FF subscription to the Free Exchange.

Mods, feel free to copy/move this anywhere appropriate.

No Coen, there are not "plenty" of models that aren't SketchUp meshes. There are those couple of dozen cars...that's about it. And I've only put the "about" in just in case there is some individual models somewhere that I don't know about.

I might add that I wouldn't be this picky if you hadn't seen your way to wading into another thread with some other "facts" about Form Fonts.

Gai, I've only had the time to do a few variations of a man in a simple tunic yet. I am planning on some female characters, both pleb and pat, as well as other male figures in toga, pallium, paenula and military. I just haven't had the time to do them yet, but I'm working on them...in SKETCHUP. See attached. A few very low poly statues probably wouldn't hurt, either.

Actually Coen, you are wrong. The textured cars are not original FF models...certainly...we offer them under licence from another company. They were imported into SU and tweaked by Allister.
However, the Roman figures of mine were most certainly done in Sketchup...how else could I keep them that low-poly?

I just thought I'd jump in here and clear up a few points.
I believe the number of models is about right. The Search function has limitations as to the number of returns it will display. Just like 3D warehouse which (last time I checked) seemed to be limited to about 10 pages. Also, 3D models doesn't cover all the 2D Face Me stuff which most people would also count as useful 3D content.

Regarding the question of selling models through FF...basically, you can't. We are not a retail site, we are an on-line database paid for by subscription, so the remuneration system is not really set up to buy and sell models piecemeal. For that you would need to go to somewhere like SketchUpmodels.com.
Obviously, in terms of income, all the models are "pre-sold" inasmuch as we receive a certain income each month from subscriptions. This income is then divided up between the FF artists according to a formula based on how many of their models get downloaded compared to the total downloads. So you can see it's a little difficult injecting "extras" into such a formula. If you are taken on as such a share artist then you have to fulfil a monthly quota.

We have a natural balance between the number of modellers thus employed and the amount of income we receive. There are certain forum members being considered at the moment for addition to that group because we could do with the extra input and (equally importantly) can cope with it financially without our current crop of artists suffering a fall in income because the pie needs to be cut into more slices...obviously it does, but it's a bigger pie, so everyone is happy.

We have been known to buy collections of models (or an ongoing string of models) from people cash-on-the-barrel, but obviously we will only do that if we feel that they are going to add extra value to the site. For instance, there would not be much call for buying a ton of generic furniture...however good it's quality...when we have masses of such content already. We'd basically be laying out money for zero return, because we, ourselves, wouldn't derive any extra income from including it alongside our existing content. If someone had modelled a low poly version of a substantial part of the Kohler range,for example, that might be different, as it might have a beneficial effect on the number of people signing up for subscriptions.

I hope that's answered a few questions. I've given out about as much as I can without being too indiscreet, but if there's any other points you'd like to raise, I'll answer them if I can.

Excellent, Jan. The original function was a global control. The ability to now apply it to selected items will be very useful.

[Alan Fraser]

Up to V3 (I think) there was a control for adjusting the threshold at which transparent surfaces would begin to cast a shadow...you could take it above or below the now-standard 70%. As with the present fixed value, it was a global control.

Given that so much junk still resides within the program (like old splash screens and Elmer Fudd), I was just wondering if it was still possible to call the appropriate routine via a Ruby (assuming it could be found)...much like the Fog script did before the control was eventually taken off the debug menu and built into the program proper.

I'd have thought that the ability to adjust the shadow threshold would have been quite useful in some circumstances. I can't imagine why the facility was dropped.

[Alan Fraser]

Just click on the relevant mode on the Face Style toolbar. Presumably, you don't have it loaded at the moment. View > Toolbars > Face Style

P: Alan Fraser

Thanks guys. That was very helpful.

Another question. How do I show the shaded objects. I have played around with the views for ever and only once have I gotten it to show color, texture or shade. Any one know how to switch from wire frame view to shaded object view?

P: artisan

Ir sounds like you might be only hovering over a single module with the Move tool instead of pre-selecting all of them.
The Move tool will only move an object that is selected, so if you have a number of modules forming a larger whole, you have a choice.

1. You can select all the relevant modules and group them...then the entire group will move together when the Move tool cursor is hovered over it....or you can select it first (with the Select tool) then move it.

2. You can select all the relevant modules, then switch to the Move tool while they are all selected and move all of them together.

Multiple selection can be made in 1 of 3 ways: You can hold down Shift and simply click on different objects to add to the selection. You can drag a selection box from the left and it will select anything that falls completely within it. You can drag a selection box from the right and it will select anything it merely touches.

Also, selection is Boolean...you can select/deselect additional items by holding down Shift.

P: Alan Fraser

It took about 10 hours, Justin. It would have been quicker if I'd had the plans, but I was working from (small) photos, so had to do a load of "feeling around" the building and making constant small adjustments.

I don't think it's cheating at all Phil...as we know, it's just a tool...like a ruler or that camera obscura that Canaletto used to tote around Venice.

I'm an illustrator by training, not an architect, so I empathise with you guys. Marvel have pretty much gone over, company-wise, to using SU to rough out the sets...especially now the free version is out.
Even if you don't do anything more than a rough massing model, from my own experience, it must save hours in working out those dynamic extreme perspectives...plus you get absolute consistency of form from one viewpoint to another.

[Allan Fraser]

I've was doing a number of buildings recently for Marvel comics. This is the Baxster Building...HQ of the Fantastic Four . It's actually based on the Marine Building in Vancouver, which is used in the Spiderman movies. The artists need the buildings to work in Hidden Line, so the stuff on the 3D Warehouse isn't much good to them as all the mapping disappears.

It's a question of putting enough detail in to make the 3 point perspective drawings much easier to produce...and allow the artists to add a little more where required...without putting in so much that when a number of these puppies are loaded into a scene the computer doesn't go Poof!

Hey Tom,
Nope and nope. As far as I know there is no way to default-save as V5 and the only way to change association is to open V6. As a Beta tester, long used to having multiple versions on my system, the standard way of shifting association is to simply open the relevant version from it's icon. So you'll need to open and close V6 to dbl-click other people's V6 skp files, then do the same to V5 to get back to your own work.

Alan

Yes, it does have a nice exclusive, cosy feel to it, doesn't it? My thoughts were that it would leave the resource less open to abuse (as in this thread) and prevent all the good stuff being buried under a torrent of garbage.

poster-Alan Fraser