How do i do freeform?

[harbor freight 5 gallon bucket]

Im trying to make a WW1 lanship and i cannot for the life of me figure out how to do a freeform asymmetrical hull. any help?

[kubanskiloewe]

i´m also new to all this but after a while i manage a bit and after a day i forget how i did it :-)
Ehm, you can split edges and get new points or you can move points over others and below there is the next area "face". click "faces" and than right click on one and you can "expand" it separately. Or set a turret, restrict its rotation to zero degrees and so you can save it as your "turret" or whatever and use it for the next project too, tomorrow i do a short vid ;-)

[x.god.of.hate.x]

Well to start you're gonna wanna go up to the top left hand screen where it says the Era of tank, prob wanna select WW1. From there you're going to come across 2 menus, top right where it says "Points, Faces, Edges," and just below that a few drop down menus itll say "select all" Pressing that, while selecting all edges or faces or points, THEN pressing S and moving your mouse away or closer too those highlighted points will scale your block.

The other menu is that lower left hand menu with "symmetry, translate, scale and rotate" (can hover your mouse over (most) things to tell you what they are fun fact). Those things are how you rotate, thicken or extend armor plates, anything place able and the faces points and just the hull itself, or just move linearly or horizontally. That circle that's highlighted in that menu box called "rotation step" is just how you rotate faster, deselecting that will allow for fine adjustments. That black dot shows all the points on a hull or if edges or faces are selected it'll show all of them as well.

From experience you're gonna wanna start with a free-form turret square block for the turret specifically, then use 'faces' and the "translate" button to shape with the arrows. using the scale will warp things and tends to break later on the more complicated the build gets but if you want to make things thicker or shorter thinner, or scale anything that's the way to go. Rotation is pretty simple, as long as your rotation step is on itll kinda "click" into various positions, but like i said if you want to fine adjust, deselect that rotation step. Selecting the middle point of a selected edge or point (that grey one in the center of the arrows) will free place selected item instead of moving horizontally or linearly.

Some of the keys when selecting edges pressing J will split them, S to scale selected points, Cntrl+Z to step back.

Hope that helps, but for engines there's a guide in "Guides" on the top of this thread. As thats a little more complicated.

[HUGE]

judging by your responses free form seems pretty complicated and i just wanna stay away from it. hopefully they simplify it

[slapworthjr]

Originally posted by HUGE:

judging by your responses free form seems pretty complicated and i just wanna stay away from it. hopefully they simplify it

Freeform is very easy once you get used to it, and is practically required for making most advanced tanks.

It also means you can do cool things like this: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2972669369

[LasagnaMan12]

Originally posted by HUGE:

judging by your responses free form seems pretty complicated and i just wanna stay away from it. hopefully they simplify it

It just takes some (lots) of trial and error, learning what all the buttons do, the limits, etc; tho Hamish has stated he wants to overhaul the freeform designer due to introducing geometric internals and open topped vehicles.