Hard Light Productions Forums

Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The Modding Workshop => Topic started by: Boomer on June 16, 2005, 04:03:00 pm

Title: Has anyone else had this problem?
Post by: Boomer on June 16, 2005, 04:03:00 pm: I'm in the middle of trying to modify the original Ursa. I'm trying to put a second battery of side guns on the left side.

I converted from POF to COB....

Tried the changes in Truespace, didn't work, not the problem.

I then changed from COB to DXF.

When I open the DXF in Blender it was completely Butchered! You couldn't get anything done with it if you tried!!

Any suggestions?:hopping: :hopping: :hopping:
Title: Has anyone else had this problem?
Post by: Lone Knight on June 16, 2005, 07:44:52 pm: Wait...What do you mean butchered? What was wrong with it?
Title: Has anyone else had this problem?
Post by: Bobboau on June 16, 2005, 07:53:43 pm: ummm... don't convert to DFX.
despite the obvius, it's a horable format, you'll lose all texture data
Title: Has anyone else had this problem?
Post by: Boomer on June 19, 2005, 07:57:50 pm: Quote
Wait...What do you mean butchered? What was wrong with it?

There were about five layers of vertices, and no one specific layer contained all the faces. Faces even mixed between layers.

Bobboau: What Format should I use then?:confused:
Title: Has anyone else had this problem?
Post by: Roanoke on June 20, 2005, 03:56:14 pm: I would imagine .3ds or .obj Don't know if blender can read these though
Title: Has anyone else had this problem?
Post by: TrashMan on June 20, 2005, 05:42:27 pm: REally? I converted several pof's to cob's and worked with them..

except the fast that all lights seem to move towards the centre of hte object (nothing major, onyl anoying) I never noticed anything wrong...
Title: Has anyone else had this problem?
Post by: Nuke on June 21, 2005, 02:53:42 am: i just use scn for everything
Title: Has anyone else had this problem?
Post by: Boomer on June 21, 2005, 01:06:19 pm: I found a way to take care of the duplicate vertices, but is still requires a lot of work filling in the blank spaces left behind, and I still lose the textures of course.

Ohh, the drawbacks of Blender.....

(I'll still swear by it though):D
Title: Has anyone else had this problem?
Post by: Vasudan Admiral on June 22, 2005, 12:58:11 am: This 'ere be the button ye wants:
(http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y184/VA--Twisted_Infinities/Misc/RemoveDoubles.jpg)

Get the edit pannel out (F9), enter edit mode (tab), select all verts in the model (a), remove doubles. (leave the limit at 0.001 in this case, or choose it based on the situation.)
Title: Has anyone else had this problem?
Post by: Grimloq on June 22, 2005, 11:23:01 pm: .dfx is not a format you want to use...

Are you using PCS to convert? If you're not, that's the first thing you want to remedy. The second thing would be using not .dfx.

I save everything in either .scn files or individual ships in .cob files, depending on the situation.

Oh, and if you're just copying and moving parts of the ship, 'Separate selected faces' is your friend. ^_^
Title: Has anyone else had this problem?
Post by: Vasudan Admiral on June 23, 2005, 01:21:04 am: In converting between blender and TS, dxf's probably are about the best option. It's only the TS-blender direction that causes each face to separate into separate faces, and that's a 1 step fix. ;)
Title: Has anyone else had this problem?
Post by: Boomer on June 23, 2005, 09:20:36 pm: Not to mention that Truespace can only export .dxf and .3ds file formats....

Besides .COB and .SCN of course.

BTW, Thanks VA, now things have become much.... easier....:devil:
Title: Has anyone else had this problem?
Post by: Vasudan Admiral on June 24, 2005, 03:40:11 am: You're very welcome. :)
As you discover more of blenders many obscure and incredibly useful functions, you'll find the modeling possibilities grow enormous. :D

Couple of things i wish i'd found earlier that you may or may not find useful:
1) When you move the selected object or verticie, you can constrain it to move along one axis only by pressing that axis' associated letter. So say you want to move something straight up, you'd tap the z key while moving it.

2) In conjunction with moving, rotating and scaling, you also have the snapper. If you hold ctrl while performing one of those operations, it will snap the process by constant values. Eg, if you want to rotate something by 90°, press r and hold control. Blender will rotate it according to your mouse position, snapping it to every 5°. When moving it will move it by 1.0 of global space.

3) If you press m with verts selected, you have the option of mirroring them along any axis - which is pretty cool.

4) In conjunction with mirroring, you can create linked duplicates. When outside edit mode, by pressing alt+d, you create a copy of the selected object. By pressing ctrl+m, you can mirror it along any axis. Do this with two halves of a ship and you can begin mirror-modeling - awesome time saver. :)
You may need to turn off "Double sided faces", which should be somewhere to the left of the "Rem Doubles" button to prevent the duplicated half staying pitch black the whole time.

5) If you do turn off double sided faces, chances are you'll find many of your faces turn black. To solve this, select all verts in the model, press space bar and navigate through edit>normals>recalculate outside.

6) To subdivide a selected edge or face, select all verts that make it up, and press the "Subdivide" button directly above remove doubles. Saves a lot of trouble.

That's all i can think of ATM, so hope at least some of it helps. :)
Title: Has anyone else had this problem?
Post by: Boomer on June 24, 2005, 12:09:18 pm: Pardon me, I've got to copy paste your last post to Notepad.:D