Here are some examples to get you started with Ballnstick Pro:

• Basic Ballnstick
• Custom objects
• Grid rendering
• Alternative grids
• Animation
• Triangulation

Some of these tutorials refer to the standard values of the plug-in. Because the plugs save the latest entered values it's recommended that you reload the plug-ins (press zero while in the editor window) before you do a tutorial.

This is the original type of ballnstick object, a sphere on each point and a cylinder on each edge:

• First we create an Icosahedron with the standard radius. (Objects->3D-Object->Platonic Object->Icosahedron...)
• Then choose "Ballnstick Pro 1.2" from the plug-in menu. Use the standard settings with the built-in sphere and cylinder shapes and 16m and 8m radius respectively.
• A new object named "Ballnstick Result" appears in the editor. Render and see the result:

• Now open the resulting object's hierarchy in the Object Manager. You can see that the 12 balls and the 30 sticks are each placed inside a ball-group and a stick-group that are then placed inside an object-group inside the parent-object.
• Create two textures, for example red and blue plastic, and apply one of them to the balls and one to the sticks. Also hide the original object so that we can see through it. This is the result:

• With such a low-poly model as this one you could also afford to raise the stick resolution to for example 16 so that there wouldn't be any errors where the stick meets the ball.

• Create a custom stick by (from left to right) creating two splines, putting them in a Lathe NURBS each and placing them together and then assigning a chrome-material to one of them and an orange glass material to the other one. Then group the two parts. (you can look at/copy the custom object from customstick.c4d if you want)
  

• Create a sphere with 400m radius and choose "Ballnstick Pro 1.2" from the plug-in menu.
• Enter "0" in the Balltype field because we have no balls and "2" in the Sticktype field because we have a custom stick. Then click OK.
• In the next dialog enter the name and the Z-length of the custom stick in the appropriate fields. ("Custom Stick" and 200m if you copied my stick) Click OK again.
• This object is created:

• Create a Sphere and an Icosahedron with 200m radius ("R" in the latter's dialog). The sphere will be used for rendering and the Icosahedron for placement (as it has uniformly distributed points). Then also create a Cone with 60m radius, 200m height and no base.
• Move the cone's axis 80m down (Y = -80m) and adjust it's pitch -90° so that the Z-axis is pointing down (the cone should still point upwards).
• Create an Empty Object and name it "Center".
• Place an "Align to Object"-track, sequence and key on the cone and enter "Center" as the target.
• Now select the Icosahedron and choose "Ballnstick Pro 1.2" from the plug-in menu. Enter "2" as Balltype and "0" as Sticktype in the first dialog. In the second dialog change the Stickname to "Cone".
• Hide the Icosahedron and the original Cone. Texture the result and the sphere as metal. This is what it should look like:
  

• Create another 200m Icosahedron and choose "Ballnstick Pro 1.2" from the plug-in menu.
• Set the object types to "1" (built-in) and the two radiuses to 2m.
• Then create a totally black material and apply it to the result.
• This creates a white object with black edges:

• First you can get rid of the shading by applying a texture with just Luminance to the Icosahedron:

• Then you can make a colored grid against black instead by applying the black texture to the Icosahedron and applying a texture with only red Luminance to the Ballnstick-object:

• You can also turn off the "Backface Culling" by hiding the Icosahedron:

You could also try to for example apply a glow to the sticks or use a visible light as a stick. Experiment on your own...

There are two ways to animate the result of Ballnstick Pro. Either you create a Ballnstick-object as normal and place it inside the original so that it follows that object. This type of animation only works if you're only animating position or rotation.

If you for example are morphing or scaling your objects or you just want the convenience of animating all Ballnstick-objects automatically you can use the animation version of Ballnstick Pro (available in the Time-line).

The only drawback is the long redraw speed for complex scenes but that shouldn't be a problem during rendering (a drop in the ocean).

• Create a scene with some simple objects morphing, moving and rotating: (if you have morphing objects you must also create a "Globalize 1.2" track, sequence and key on them, above the morph track)

• Choose Select-All to group the whole scene.
• Go to the time-line and create a "Ballnstick Pro 1.2" track, sequence and key. Use the same settings as for the first grid example. Also make sure that "Force recreation" is "0" and "Activated" is "1". (see the explanation on the other page under "Animation")
• A "Ballnstick Result"-object is created and when you move the time-manager the result is updated.
• Apply a black texture to the grid and you're done. Now the animation is ready to render:

• If it's an extruded or lofted object (for example text) and you are getting triangulation at the ends you create an object without any end-closing and apply Ballnstick to that object instead. Then you can hide the object without closing and create a new one in place with closed ends.
• You can also remove the triangulation manually. Work on a copy and just select the triangulation edges and delete them. It doesn't matter that the object won't have any faces cause Ballnstick doesn't care. Then apply Ballnstick to the untriangulated object and replace it with the original.
• For text it is also best to use a font without rounded edges. If you have a rounded font you will have many edges at the rounded parts. You can either remove them manually or edit the spline interpolation settings for the rounded character so that fewer edges are generated when extruding.

Ballnstick Pro 1.2 ©1998, Mikael Sterner