by Paul Hempsall
MODELING THE SHOCKWAVE
The first step is to set the grid size. For this tutorial use a grid size of 10km (after all an explosion shockwave is not meant to be small). To accomplish this press the "," key until the GRID indicator shows 10km.
Draw a disc on the x-axis (left view) with the radii measurements x=0, y=10km and z=10km. Press "n" to bring up the numeric input. Press enter to accept these values and then hit the spacebar to end the use of the disc tool.
Press "a" to allow the views to concentrate fully on the newly created disc. Highlight the points shown below and press the delete key.
Press "k" to kill all polygons. Select two points at a time as shown below left (make sure you choose these in order, working in a clockwise direct from the upper-left point) and press the "p" key after each pair of points is selected.
You should end up with a horseshoe shaped object (shown above right). Press the "/" key to deselect any points. Select the two left most points in the horseshoe and drag them to the left (in the left view) approximately 106km. You will have to zoom out using the "," key in order to accomplish this easily. To keep the points in line as you drag them to the left, hold down the CTRL key. (The keyboard shortcut for the move tool is "t").
Once the above step is completed press "H" (make sure you use a capitol "H") and size the points as shown. Once again hold down the CTRL key to stop the points from straying. Refer to the illustration below to see the result.
Press the "/" key. Press "E" to initialise the extrude tool. Press "n" to bring up the numeric requester. Match the values shown in the diagram below.
OK the requester and press enter upon entry back into the modeling screen.
*Just a little explanation for you to consider. The more segments that are created in the extrude tool's dialogue box the more defined and smooth the edge of the explosion ring will be. I used 180 in this tutorial - this may too much for some machines to handle, so if your computer gets dog slow you may like to consider reducing the number of segments used.
It's now time to assign a polygon name to the object. Press the "q" key and name the surface "Shockwave", turn on smooth. Select apply. Save this object as shock.lwo
Zoom out to a grid size of about 50km. Line up your left view so that it roughly matches the one shown below.
Press the "~" key to start the bend tool. Move the pointer to the position shown as a red line in the previous picture. Press and hold down the mouse button as you move your pointer to the left, watch the top view for when the points swing around. Keep them aligned as you may have to adjust the y axis position of the object (it may get out of level as the bend tool is used, simply move the pointer down whilst holding down the mouse button.) If all is aligned and level as shown below, release the mouse button.
You should now have a mesh of a shockwave ring. Save this new object as shockring.lwo
Go to next section: Surfacing the Shockwave
