Oolite Bulletins

You know, I read about that Star Trek animated series that had Kzin appear in an episode, but I've never actually seen that series. It's weird, because I love Star Trek, and have seen every episode, and every movie at least once. I downloaded the newest version of Blender. I can see the concept, but I don't always recognize the meanings of the words. Such as the orientation terminology. What exactly are they referring to with terms like "Global, Normal, View, Local" and especially "Gimbal"? Also, when I try to design the basic ship body, what is the scale of the average Oolite ship, like the Cobra Mark III, or Asp Mark II, or even the Adder? I'm still reading the function of different tools in the software, and it's a little confusing.

mandoman wrote:

what is the scale of the average Oolite ship, like the Cobra Mark III, or Asp Mark II, or even the Adder?

Take a look at the Ship Size Chart.

mandoman wrote:

Also, when I try to design the basic ship body, what is the scale of the average Oolite ship, like the Cobra Mark III, or Asp Mark II, or even the Adder?

Or look at the actual source of the information, the DAT files in Oolite's "Models" folder. They're simple text files containing the coordinates of the vertices of each model.

Commander McLane wrote:

mandoman wrote:

Also, when I try to design the basic ship body, what is the scale of the average Oolite ship, like the Cobra Mark III, or Asp Mark II, or even the Adder?

Or look at the actual source of the information, the DAT files in Oolite's "Models" folder. They're simple text files containing the coordinates of the vertices of each model.

Or even easier check the dimensions on the Wiki

some things you should know about blender:

whatever size you try and make it, it will always be the wrong size.

in object mode scaling it has no effect on the size, just it's appearence in your window,

in edit mode scaling makes it bigger or smaller.

what you should do is make it look right in your opinion, then export as obj, convert to dat, veiw it in game and then use datscale.py to make it the size you want.

I am quite experienced with blender so if you have other questions please post them or PM me

Man, you guys really come through with the info. Thanks. I'm looking through the DAT files of several ships, and am starting to get the idea. Smivs, thanks for the link to that ship size chart. That in itself helps immensely. Star9, I will probably take you up on that offer if I get stuck. This aught to be interesting.