Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The Modding Workshop => Topic started by: Wet Orange Ostrich Toilet on January 26, 2017, 12:28:43 pm
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So, during my downtime (when I have no idea what to do next for my campaign. Also called procrastinating.) I've been cooking up a great deal of ship designs that I really wanted to have in FRED (also in SFM so I can make animations with them).
Here's the problem. I spent several hours with the tutorial here on Blender. It made it seem so easy to use Blender. Oh boy, how wrong I was...
I had a good idea for a basic ship. Blender however, didn't seem to be pleased with the idea of cooperation (that, or I'm just stupid.) and ended up making quite... horribly deformed objects. Gave me ideas for new ships but... you get the idea. Blender doesn't like me.
So, I proceeded to search for a different, easier program. I found one (Wings3D). I immediately grasped its controls and am doing pretty good progress.
What I'm asking here is, can I use Wings3D to make models more or less the same way you would if I were to use Blender?
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The only thing a modelling program needs is the ability to export models to the Collada format, which PCS2 can read. I know that modellers have used a variety of programs to make models for FSO, but I shall leave the specifics to them to explain (not a modeller myself)
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The only thing a modelling program needs is the ability to export models to the Collada format, which PCS2 can read. I know that modellers have used a variety of programs to make models for FSO, but I shall leave the specifics to them to explain (not a modeller myself)
Just checked. It can indeed export to Collada.
Thanks for responding so quickly by the way.
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Wings has problems with smoothing groups and probably other stuff. If you don't like modelling in Blender, sure - you can go ahead with Wings with modelling or mapping but Blender is really better for conversion and smoothing. If I remember correctly, collada in Wings used to have problems with smoothing during export stage. I don't know if they fixed that.
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Beat me to the punch. Smoothing, smoothgroups, whatever the app calls it is a pretty important thing for any models with curved surfaces. If the app has bad support for that concept, it will likely require at least fine tuning in an app that has better support. Max produces good results if you can get a copy of it.
That said, what are Wings' issues with smoothing groups? Their home page shows a dragon that looks effectively smoothed to me, is it just an issue of keeping that data in a collada export or something?
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I use Wings 3D for doing the main work and then export it to Blender for smoothing, etc. From Blender on for whatever else I need to do. Wings 3D is fast and gets the most done for me. However, it does have it's limitations such as rounded edges, etc. I assume the creators of Wings 3D will address sometime in the future, who knows.