Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The Modding Workshop => Topic started by: Nehemiah on August 01, 2010, 12:36:54 pm
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I have always loved the work produced by all of the modding community in coming out with truly spectacular user-made models. That being said, as a fun thing to do on the side, I wanted to get into making models/maps/textures myself. What programs are out there to do this, and how much do they cost? Are there any that are decent, have widespread use, and are free?
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Blender's free.
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Blender's free.
Do you have a link where I can download it?
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Nevermind, I see a whole list of 3d editors on the tutorial.
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Okay, so another question. Which model editor do you use mostly, and why do you like it?
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3DSMax, because it's powerful, but expensive.
Blender is fine, once you get used to it, most people here use it. It's free. That's where you should start.
Wings 3D is the most basic one. Quick to learn.
Sketchup, well can't say anything about it.
Truespace...don't. Just don't. Unless your pain treshold is rather high. :P
Max and Blender can export to .DAE ( with export plugins ), that's another pro for those two.
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that's good, another modder :yes:
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on blender watch out, I downloaded the 2.5 beta and there is a number of changes that mean many of the 2.49 tutorials don't apply directly as a small number of short cuts have changed and features have moved/removed/replaced.
other than that I swear by it
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(http://i79.photobucket.com/albums/j126/rhettro1/Blender2.png)
While I have a long history with 3D graphics, I've only recently started working with Blender. For a free app, it is incredibly powerful. Even though version 2.5 is still in alpha, the interface redesign brings it closer to 3DSMAX in usability. So as a starting point I would say go get Blender and find some box modeling tutorials on the net to get you started. Otherwise, my favorite app for modeling is Rhinoceros, which can model any kind of surface you can imagine. It is a NURBS modeler so the resultant model must be converted to polygons before Freespace can use them, which can be a bit of a challenge, but accurate models can be created rather quickly with it.
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Blender. It's completely free, has all the features you'll need (unlike Wings3D), converts easily to FS formats (unlike Sketchup), and the interface is real good. Well, it may be intimidating at first, but it was really built by modellers, for modellers.
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Yeah, old blender user (2.49 ones) will find using blender 2.5 quite annoying, basically because they changed most of the shortcuts and even the most basic operations such as Alt+Shift to move around is no longer supported (or it was changed), that made me go right away to the old one.
On a positive note:
I've noticed 2.5 renders even faster than 4.9 versions, I tried rendering a really heavy earth skybox and the difference between the two versions was noticeable, not FASTER FASTER, but faster.
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I downloaded Blender 2.6, and it's quite complicated. I don't have a clue where to begin with it. Is there any way to just draw and connect some polygons on a grid with it using (x, y, z) coordinates? I mean, you have to be able to make a simple block model of what you're making before you play around with maps or textures or anything, right?
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There are blender experts here that can offer you more help than I, but one thing that kind of tripped me up the first time I tried blender was that to select objects, you have to click them with the right mouse button. You can change this in preferences, but once I figured that out I could actually try some of the tools. This is a good free document on using Blender 2.4 http://tinyurl.com/s6o3c (http://tinyurl.com/s6o3c) . Also, there are many good tutorials over at www.blendercookie.com (http://www.blendercookie.com) .
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I'd say, start with 2.49. It's still good current stable, and all the tutorials will apply and work in it.
2.5 should only be used by folks familiar already with blender or 3D scene modeling.
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Blender. It's completely free, has all the features you'll need (unlike Wings3D)
And just what are those features? :P
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Blender. It's completely free, has all the features you'll need (unlike Wings3D)
And just what are those features? :P
DAE export?
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Blender. It's completely free, has all the features you'll need (unlike Wings3D)
And just what are those features? :P
Model hierarchy?
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I downloaded Blender 2.6, and it's quite complicated. I don't have a clue where to begin with it. Is there any way to just draw and connect some polygons on a grid with it using (x, y, z) coordinates? I mean, you have to be able to make a simple block model of what you're making before you play around with maps or textures or anything, right?
I learned by watching some guy's vids on youtube and not giving up :)
It took me 1 failed model to understand the basic operations in blender, and 1 more to learn the proper techniques to make models FOR fs.
I'm still learning a lot of stuff, but I gotta say... it's good I came around with Blender.
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Blender. It's completely free, has all the features you'll need (unlike Wings3D)
And just what are those features? :P
Cumbersome interface.
Actually it does have Boolean ops, and texture-space ambient occlusion. And rendering. But that's about it.
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Blender. It's completely free, has all the features you'll need (unlike Wings3D)
And just what are those features? :P
Model hierarchy?
Actually, I'm not sure but I believe it does have this.
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If you are more comfortable modeling in Wings then do it. You can export Wings models as OBJ files into Blender and port to DAE from there.
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I strongly suggest using Blender. The learning curve is steep, but it is free, extremely powerful, updates regularly, incredibly versatile (it also does animation, rendering, UV mapping, and post-production), and exports flawlessly to FreeSpace via Collada (thanks to Spicious.)
One of these days I should do a live Blender tutorial webcast on IRC...
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god, how can anyone actually praise blender's UI, it's actively hostile.
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If you're used to the hunt & click horrors of TS then yeah it probably seems that way. ;)
You learn the keyboard shortcuts pretty quick, and once you know even the basics of them, you barely touch the buttons. The scary button-mania interface isn't the true interface really. Besides - the new version has redesigned the interface to cater for people who couldn't previously get past the scary look.
Nehemiah: If you want to stay with learning 2.5 that will be best in the long run, and there's what looks like a pretty good introduction video series here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BwptkZCWwU
However, because 2.5 is so new, there's relatively little in the way of beginner documentation compared with what's available for the older 2.49. If you're finding 2.5 too hard to learn for that reason it might be an idea to try 2.49 until you're comfortable with the basics. Stuff like this: http://www.blender.org/education-help/tutorials/tutorial-folder/blender-user-interface-tutorial/ is great for 2.49, but no longer fully valid with 2.5.
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god, how can anyone actually praise blender's UI, it's actively hostile.
I grew up with MS DOS so grew up with many applications and games with no mouse support period even loading a mouse driver would not bring up a cursor on screen so apps like word perfect were all shortcut driven and even today I still prefer to use a 1-3 button shortcut to a mouse and hunting through menus and sub menus to find an option.
with a couple of days genuine effort you learn most of the shortcuts you use regularly and how they change depending on what mode you have it in.
edit:
just think of it like using the com menu in FS
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I've noted this in several other threads before, but I'm a huge fan of AC3D. As a whole, it's probably not as potent as Blender; unlike Blender, however, it is almost instantly useable yet not limiting (unlike instantly useable yet highly limiting programs like SketchUp - the basic version is free, by the way). However, like every CAD/modeling program, the best way to determine if you like it or want to use it is to try a demo:
http://www.inivis.com/
Another one I'd suggest (despite not yet trying it for myself) is Silo. The program seems to be biased towards organic modeling and character art, but that shouldn't necessarily be a turn-off if you're not into those things. Watching a few videos on the site should give you a picture of what the program is capable of:
http://nevercenter.com/silo/about/
Now, keep in mind that both of these are NOT free programs - however, I'd say that if you can spend some money, these will be well worth the cost. I bought AC3D (I'm currently running 6.4.3) for $75 USD back in the day, and I couldn't be happier with the program.
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Silo is pretty nice. Sort of a Wings 3D on steroids.
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i'm not really sure why i ventured in here. but as long as i am, does anyone use Solidworks? CAN it even be used for model making? It makes 3d objects, and I assume that's all models are.
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Models for Freespace (and virtually all video games) are constructed from polygon meshes, so as long as you can export as some sort of polygon mesh, and eventually get your model to a state which PCS2 can read, you should be fine.
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i'm not really sure why i ventured in here. but as long as i am, does anyone use Solidworks? CAN it even be used for model making? It makes 3d objects, and I assume that's all models are.
That's CAD software, and CAD models are very different from rendering models. Like qazwsx said, if you can export to a polygon mesh, you should ultimately be able to get it into FS; but you'll need to work a lot on it in an actual polygon-modelling program like Blender or Max. The mesh will need to be heavily cleaned up, textures are probably not great, hierarchy needs to be set up, etcetera.
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i'm not really sure why i ventured in here. but as long as i am, does anyone use Solidworks? CAN it even be used for model making? It makes 3d objects, and I assume that's all models are.
It's been a while, but I have used Solidworks. Its purpose is more for creating models of machines and parts for real world construction, so it goes above and beyond the needs of Freespace.
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i'm not really sure why i ventured in here. but as long as i am, does anyone use Solidworks? CAN it even be used for model making? It makes 3d objects, and I assume that's all models are.
First of all, I just want to note that I hate and loath SolidWorks. Next, yes, with the proper conversion techniques and clean-up procedure, there's no reason why you can't produce a model in SW and port it to FS - the question is, do you have the patence to do so?
I will note that I've seen SolidWorks models ported to X-Plane, so there shouldn't be too much of a hurdle to overcome if you do decide to do something with that program.