Blender 3d Modeling Tutorials

[DaddyHoggy]

See how you get on with this thread, it explains and confuses with equal measure: http://oolite.aegidian.org/bb/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=8022

[mandoman]

I figured it out. Somehow I switched the paint brush to smear, instead of draw. Now, how I did this is completely beyond my ken. I really do think I'm losing it. Anyway, that little problem is solved.

[mandoman]

Okay, I read what you posted, and I think I see what you did, but where at the top of the file does the "s 1" go? Here is what the top of one of my ship .obj files looks like:

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# Blender v2.63 (sub 0) OBJ File: 'sunbird.blend'
# www.blender.org
mtllib sunbird.mtl
o Cube

After "0 Cube", the next line starts in on the vertices,

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v -8.028822 0.194362 59.183601
v -15.469898 0.194357 49.815033
v -21.437605 0.194358 41.150093
v -23.577204 0.978853 37.898300
v -25.156343 0.817757 -34.045563
v -22.647799 0.186449 -38.625793
v -16.713655 0.152116 -69.308647

etc., etc.....

Do I slip the "s 1" in above the "0 Cube" line, or the "mtllib sunbird.mtl", or what? That is really all I didn't get a handle on. If just putting "s 1" at the top of the .obj file turns out the look of the ship you show in that thread, I definitely want to use it.

[Griff]

If you like, upload the .obj file that you put through the script, i'd like to have a look at it to see if i can spot what's happening with that problem polygon, i might be able to see something using wings3d that blender hides.
I think you've already workded it out, but from looking at the blender keyboard reference guide the keyboard shortcut for triangulating your mesh is

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Edit Mode - Mesh
"CTRL-T. Make Triangles. All selected faces are converted to triangles."

[mandoman]

Actually, I rebuilt that fin section, and now the model is all right. I don't know, but I think that when I applied the modifier "Edge Crease", to try eliminating the jagged edge effect, somehow it was messing with the normals. I have another ship on which I creased several of the edges, and it turned out fine, with no flipped normals. There are still some edges on the present ship that are creased, but they don't seem to be having a problem. The creasing doesn't completely eliminate the jagged edge effect, though.

[mandoman]

I'm still troubled about the triangulation effects on this ship. I smoothed, and beveled the ship, and tried adding the "s 1" in the .obj file before I converted it with Obj2DatTex.py, but the surface still looks overly faceted. I tried adjusting the faces in such a way that they would be conform better to the shape of the ship, but I must not be doing it right, because I can't see that it's made any difference at all. I'll take a few screen shots to show what I mean.

[Griff]

have you remembered to set

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smooth = yes;

in the ships shipdata.plist?

[mandoman]

have you remembered to set

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smooth = yes;

in the ships shipdata.plist?

No, I haven't been doing that on my last several ships. Ahruman said it only causes the texture to look worse, especially when facing the sun. I don't know, I am just going by what he told Daddy Hoggy.

[Staer9]

Time for a new tutorial methinks:

Ambient Occlusion Baking

After playing around with some AAA game engines I noticed that they have something that Oolite does not have (well, actually they have many things Oolite does not have, mainly because Oolite does not need it). A thing called "Ambient Occlusion", in real life you will notice it only as shadows under cars for example:



however often it's far more subtle...

this is a very easy effect to do in blender:

1) first make your lovely spaceship:



2) UV unwrap it and create a blank texture for it of your desired size (for this step it is better to choose double the size you want then scale it down in you image editing software of choice)



3) in the properties tab choose the render sub-tab and pan all the way to the right you will find a sub-sub-tab named "bake" (it might not be expanded, if not just click the arrow to expand it),
set bake mode to ambient occlusion (important: you must not have any lamps in your setup or this will not work, if you don't know what lamps are don't worry, you probably don't have any),
then simply click "bake"
your blank image should change into something like the image below, if it doesn't you've missed something.



then simply view it in texture paint mode, you should have some lovely subtle shadows:



then in your image editing software of choice, just place this in the layer above your diffuse map and set blend mode to "multiply"

Done!

[Shipbuilder]

@Staer9 - The ship in your latest tutorial looks interesting.

Do you intend to release it as a oxp at some stage ?

[mandoman]

I concur with Shipbuilder, that is one cool ship. Did you make the Cobra? That model is awesome.

[Staer9]

I knocked the ship up in about 5 minutes to use simply as a demonstration,
obviously seeing as you like it I can have a go at tidying it up a bit then releasing it.

I've mostly been working on conceptual vehicle design for my portfolio at the moment so it was nice to make a ship again,
seeing as it's quite a little ship (or at least I think it should be) I though about calling it the Scarab (unless of course someone has already made a ship called the scarab, but I haven't seen it)

[mandoman]

Heck yes, go for it. I haven't seen a ship named the Scarab. It's a good name.

[mandoman]

This is a weird one, folks. I was smoothing out a couple areas on a ship I'm working on, and noticed this squiggly line. Does anyone have a clue as to what this is? It has NO vertex points. It's just a wavy line that was in between two parts of the ship.

[Staer9]

to me it looks like an extra object, try going in object mode, selecting it, and deleting it.
sometimes artifacts like this are left after some separation and smoothing of areas (which sounds like what you did).