by ggunners » Tue Sep 02, 2003 9:32 pm
Nope, I'm from Virginia in the USA. The best tutorial I found for Metasequoia is located at It is very good for working up a first time model.
The only thing I would have added was a bit of up front information like explaining what the controls and panes of the application are and how they're used.
Pane on far right, shows the viewable and lockable parts of your model. Turn locks on to prevent selection and changes to completed pieds. Turn viewing on or off to concentrate on related parts.
The pane on the far right bottom is for color application and defining the texture map. To change color on an object face or all of an object, first select it by rectangle (rect), rope (rp or lasso) or object select and then go to the "selected" menu and then click "set material to faces".
So lets say you want to color the wing. First uncheck the lock button on the wing in the far right pane. Then move your cursor to the far left pane under "Edit" and press "Sel All" to select all. Now you have the wing selected. Create, clone or select a new color, double click it to edit the properties, when you're happy with the color, select the "Selected" menu item and then "set material to faces" and the color will change. Once the color is applied to a face, changing the color properties will affect all objects identified with the specific color.
F1 button, side view
F2 button, top view
F3 button, front view
F5 button perspective view
If you want to create a 3D model of a real RC plane. Take a picture of the plane from the top, side and front of the plane and use the "view" "set background images" to one of the 3 views to provide a template for working with.
It works really well for profile planes.
The other thing to remember is to check all views of your model to make sure model parts are aligned in all 3 dimensions. You'd be surprised how it can mess things up if they're not.
Now say you want to make the fuse longer. Just select the front portion of the plane, nose area by using the rectangular selection and then on the edit panel, click on the blue z under the 4 way arrows, hold and slide to the left, the selected portion of the fuse will get longer. Unselect All to return to normal.
And of course, remember undo works great (Ctrl-Z). Hope that helps you get started.
-- ggunners