Thunderbolt! - RealWorld forums

I was just curious if RWIE is capable of creating a complex shape such as a thunderbolt out of one tool. My two most recent attempts at such a feat were :

a) Rectangular Surface -
Didn't work because the shape curves around corners instead of following them exactly.
b) Many Triangles -
Alot of precision involved and shading issues if anything was even slightly misplaced. And if you found out that something was indeed misplaced, you would have to go back and fix that one, then move every other triangle to stay in sync with the modification! :<

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Or if I'm persuing a lost cause, let me know.

One last thing, can the program "flip" a copy of an image? (As in a horizontal flip). If I do succeed in making a thunderbolt I'll want two of them that are mirror images of each other.

OK, I assume you want a Z-like shape but with more angles. The simplest way would be to use the rectangular surface, but:
1) switch degree in at least one direction to "1"
2) add knots to the rectangular surface - adding knots also add control points and will allow you to add as many angles as you wish.

There is a bit of information about NURBS in the Articles section. Let me know if you are having problems setting the degree or inserting knots.

I guess there is a flip operation in the "Icon Editor" layout. It can be also copied to the ordinary "Raster Image Editor" layout, but that would require a bit of playing with the configuration of the app.

BTW you can also create a copy of the 3D shape and then flip the 3D model before it is rendered to image.