sPatch is no longer at its original site. Spatch users Group -button above- provides a link to download it -and HamaPatch too :-)

sPatch brief review .
This is NOT a tutorial

These are your views. From left to right, Front, Lateral, Top, Perspective, Zoom tool and OpenGl preview. After you "split" this main window, each view will have a similar set. You can set the view you prefer on each one of them.

Your handy tools


Of course you have more at the menu, but these are more visible for now.
They are in groups, with different colors.
Yellow.
Translate. Be sure to click on the buttons, I know it sounds dumb, bur it something to keep in mind. A point will change its color to alert you that it has been selected. Be careful, it will move along with the mouse. That's pretty funny the first time, not when you have built a model. Points are moved individually and will be weld (two at a time) through right clicking. TRANSLATE also moves groups of points.

Pink
Point Tools. From left to right (top):
Scale, Rotate and Noise
(bottom)
Add point (also welds), Select -more than one- and smooth.
Blue
Modeling Tools.
Lathe (top)It works pretty much like "Revolve" commands in many programs.
Clone and Extrude (bottom)
Duplicate and duplicate while connecting selected points.
Grey
Spline modifiers
Delete Edge (top) and Peak and Round (bottom) tools.
Green
They are pretty obvious: Zoom, rotate and Pan. They work on complete views.
X,Y, Z
Constraint Tools, On and Off, will constraint width, height and depth.

Patches are built when you create 3 or 4 points connected in a loop. Points by themselves will not be doing anything.

All points weld and intervened from a lateral view

sPatch also has a grid, to which you can snap the object. This odd nail was built from a cylynder, extruding only the "top" points. Each "extrude" was modified, in its size and position.
A box will be added -using other layer-in the render (below).

Left, exported to POV, keeping sPatch's layer settings (pigment and finish)
Right, exported to Bryce and texturized. Layers will be kept only through a plugin. (See Sample in Misc. section.

Still in development, Hamapatch is very similar to sPatch, with some enhanced features

sPatch/Hamapatch simple Tips

These little details are common sense. In my case, learned after many errors (That's the reason they're here) :-).
While Hamapatch is -in my view- an application that came from sPatch, it is true that it has a lot of improvements.

-Rendering an object in POV You can export an object in POV format. Your "myObject.spt" (or "myObject.hmp") will be saved as "myObject.pov". In this stage, it is good to see it rendered, just to take a look at it. Then, you have to make some modifications:

- 1) Save your object in sPatch or Hamapatch. Keep your models!.
- 2) In POV, open your file. Render it and save it as it is first (just in case you lose it, ...it happens)
- 3) Save As .inc file (myObject.inc). Once you do this, delete all the global_settings, lights and camera.
- 4) If you don't want to delete the former, comment them. Otherwise, you will have an unwanted light somewhere. This is easy to recognize with only one object, and pretty hard when you have a bunch and really don't know "Where that light is coming from?"
- 5) Apply "union {}" to the whole model (if it has more than one layer) and name it. If you don't, no matter how well you saw it, your object parts will disperse everywhere when placed in the scene. Besides, if you "unionize" them, your object will appear in your scene at<0,0,0>, which is a really good start.
- 6) Remember to call you object file using #include "myObject.inc" and then call your object with object{ myObject}

-Rendering an object in Bryce4

- You can use your object in Bryce as "dxf", or having it exported as dxf. It is possible to keep the different layers in a dxf in Bryce.
There is a plugin you can download (see button above and follow the instructions) which will keep your layers separated. In Bryce, you can smooth them and apply materials and textures.

-Apply Textures to an object in POV

- Textures really make a difference.

   

In Spatch, all your layers appear in one color (green is the default). When exported however, every layer will have a different color, which you can change in the .inc file. The same goes for Hamapatch, although every layer can be assigned a different color under Hamapatch (and some other goodies, too). Those colors will be kept (see left image above).

-It is good to just comment pigment{} and finish {} in the *.inc file.
-If you want to save time, keep only the pigment and be sure of assign different colors to each layer. It pays in complex images while you adjust/make transformations.

Textures (or pigment, finish or normal, or just two, or them all) can be assigned by layer (when different, of course); or to the whole object inside the *.inc file. If your object has only one texture, it can be assigned as mentioned or in the scene (when you "call" your object, object {myObject texture {myTexture}}as long as you #declare your texture first.

The image to the right, has the same texture apllied to each and every layer (instead the whole dress :-). The reason: It is an irregular texture and I did not want the same appearance. Texture interact heavily with lights and specially, colored lights.