[Knight Templar]

Blender?

[Setekh]

I love the corvette. Seriously though, release some of them.

[mikhael]

Originally posted by Knight Templar
Blender?

Paint brushes don't make art, artists do.

[Knight Templar]

Originally posted by mikhael


Paint brushes don't make art, artists do.

Yes, but Blacksmiths don't usually use twigs to sharpen their swords.

[mikhael]

You underestimate the power of Blender. Behind an interface that looks like ass, lies a set of tools that rival the power of Lightwave and 3dsMax. It just takes skill.

[Knight Templar]

Apparently..

[adwight]

I'll have to agree, the interface on Blender does look like 'ass'.  I gave up the moment I opened the program.

[Raven2001]

Ahwww! Stop that!! My chiks (sp?) are getting red!!!

[KARMA]

but aren't there problems creating models to be used in game? I thought that meshes built with blender tends to be unstable

[mikhael]

Sometimes, Karma, but a lot can be done to clean them up before conversion.

[Vasudan Admiral]

i've never encountered such instability before, and i've gotten about 20 + blender originating models (some quite complex) fully working in-game.
the interface may be pretty bad, but i'd say it easily surpasses TS in geometry editing power, and (once you know what does what) speed & ease of use. it also has most of the functions of the more powerful tools, only they're hard to get to, but there's a mirror modeling thing, a mirror along x or y axis function, a smooth or fractural subdivide which can be used on an edge as well, a remove doubles tool - i am yet to find a counterpart of this in TS - that functions like a welding tool, but can bea applyed to the whole model to remove verts that are less than a given distance apart.
i only wish it had an undo (but it's fairly easy to save and then revert, or right-click cancels the action if it looks bad.) and import and export functions that could import and export textured models other 3d apps could actually understand (vrml won't keep textures in TS and dxf doesn't support them anyway.

anyways, those are some very nice models there Raven

[KARMA]

that functions like a welding tool, but can bea applyed to the whole model to remove verts that are less than a given distance apart

does it work even when verts are not connected? this is something that TS is really missing, about the mirror thing, you already have this in TS6

[aldo_14]

Kazan *****es a lot about blender, but I never had any problems coverting with PCs when I used it.........

[mikhael]

Originally posted by aldo_14
Kazan *****es a lot about blender^weverything

[Vasudan Admiral]

Originally posted by KARMA

does it work even when verts are not connected? this is something that TS is really missing, about the mirror thing, you already have this in TS6

yep. even if the whole model is made up of individual separate faces it can weld them into a coherent mesh with one click.
about the mirror thing in TS, yeah i know it has one, i was just pointing out that blender also has one (although it's not in any menus anywhere oddly enough).

BTW, in TS, how do you tell it to mirror an object along a specific axis? in blender you just press either x or y to mirror in that direction relative to the camera's position while in size mode. i haven't really used it much yet, but the TS one doesn't really seem to work like that. something about selecting a face it is to make the mirrored object along IIRC.

err, and sorry bout the thread hijack Raven

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Vasudan Admiral
BTW, in TS, how do you tell it to mirror an object along a specific axis? in blender you just press either x or y to mirror in that direction relative to the camera's position while in size mode. i haven't really used it much yet, but the TS one doesn't really seem to work like that. something about selecting a face it is to make the mirrored object along IIRC.

IIRC selecting a face and then clicking mirror mirrors from that face. Could be wrong. I tend to use the mirror modeller instead.

[KARMA]

Originally posted by Vasudan Admiral
yep. even if the whole model is made up of individual separate faces it can weld them into a coherent mesh with one click.

uhh this is something I'd really like to have in TS!
When I have some doubts if I have a double vert or not -pretty often- I always select this vert and move it. If I have two non connected verts I have to manually connect the two verts, bring the moved vert back to its position, weld them.
Checking and fixing double verts mean at least 10-20% of the whole modelling time, so a tool like this would be a dream.
And am I wrong or you may use it to generate lods too?

BTW, in TS, how do you tell it to mirror an object along a specific axis? in blender you just press either x or y to mirror in that direction relative to the camera's position while in size mode. i haven't really used it much yet, but the TS one doesn't really seem to work like that. something about selecting a face it is to make the mirrored object along IIRC.
[/B]

well the mirroring in TS is done surprisingly well.
You can setup it to automatically create a new object after mirroring, to create a backup, to just enter into mirror modelling.
Mirror modelling means that the modifications you do on one half will be automatically reflected to the other half, being always able to create a temporary mirrored object or to finally unify the two halfs.
To mirror a model you just select the face that will be used as mirroring plane and press the mirroring button, and once in mirrored mode you can change the reference face whenever you want. You also can select the minimum distance for a vert to be considered part of the mirroring plane, pretty useful since your face may be not perfectly planar and your model may be dense of details

[Vasudan Admiral]

IIRC selecting a face and then clicking mirror mirrors from that face. Could be wrong. I tend to use the mirror modeller instead.

yeah, i thought that's how it's done. only used it once on a large shivan corvette, which turned out by far the best model i've made thus far, so i think i will be using it again.

Checking and fixing double verts mean at least 10-20% of the whole modelling time, so a tool like this would be a dream. And am I wrong or you may use it to generate lods too?

it can be used for making lods, but i generally do that in TS - grab a small edge or even entire face and weld together. in that context of use it's the same in both proggys, cept in blender you would then have to re-add the textures, meaning it isn't really worth it

uhh this is something I'd really like to have in TS!

well, there is a _sort_ of way to do it i found when desperately trying to solidify a high poly lucifer a number of months ago. what i did was save the object to .3ds format (i think) then re-import it into TS. obviously it's a bit of a hack, but it worked in this occasion, where 'chunks' of faces were making up the model. so if i welded any verts to each other, the constituting faces would dissapear, sorta messing up the whole uv mapped mesh.....

Mirror modelling means that the modifications you do on one half will be automatically reflected to the other half, being always able to create a temporary mirrored object or to finally unify the two halfs.

well, not quite automaticly-you have to click the little update mirror button thing, but yeah, it's really useful for symetrical models. i imagine it could make some really interesting things happen if done right-see the underside of the hatshepsut.

[KARMA]

iirc you don't need to update, I remember when I used it that when moving a vert in one half, the symmetric vert got moved in real time.
btw, I'll have to try the 3ds thing, I never thought about using the different formats specs for this purposes. Btw are you sure that your problem was solved not by just the autotriangulization of 3ds?

[karajorma]

I'm using TS6 and that auto updates the mirror modeller quite nicely (although occasionally it will forget and require a click).