Oolite Bulletins

Although this post has had a few more hits since it was up, nobody has since commented on what I have said about the tutorial in relation to the more recent versions of Wings3D.

The tutorial tells you to perform a step which will give new ship creators a headache when their DAT file does not contain proper texture coordinates extracted from the OBJ file.

Other people could at least test this to confirm that the versions of Wings for Windows and Mac also have the same issue: that being the necessity of tessellating only during export, not manually, as the tutorial tells you.

Or does this not create a problem for other people?

Don't use Wings - I had to learn how to use AC3D for work - AC3D creates it's own set of issues...

Poro wrote:

Or does this not create a problem for other people?

I didn't have that problem with my version of wing3d (0.9something - not by my computer atm). I'll install the current version of wings3d & see what happens to my exports...

I've had no probs whatsoever, and I always tesselate my models just before UV mapping (this way I can check out how the model deforms because of tesselating and can turn offending edges to better orientation).

Win XP

Wings3D 1.2 and 1.3.0.1

I occasionally have this problem when i've made models, Griff stumbled upon a solution that works for me, first export the model as 3ds, then start a new blank model, import the 3ds and eport that as obj.

Run obj2dattex.py and it should now contain the texture information.

one tip that might also help:
*Make sure the texture is set to 'make internal' in the outliner window. I've seem to have had troubles with that in the past.

seems all modellers have quirks. i build in Hexagon, but when i export into Milkshape there's times when it'll get stuff wrong : the last couple models, i've had to bin hours of wrk on stuff cos it linked up groups of vertices in the wrong order, giving a different shape to part of the ship. i find myself bouncing between the two, each does something better/easier than the other. it's a pain, but it's one of the "features" of OXPing!

Hum, I had no idea modellers could be such a minefield

I think I was perhaps a bit hasty in suggesting the tutorial be altered. I've since found another thing that throws Wings: If you choose to delete faces only from the UV map, and not from the model, then it will mess up the texture data as well. I'm assuming that's because the number of faces and the number of UV representations no longer match.

So when it comes to unwanted internal faces I have to get them off the model, or just allow them to be mapped, gather them together in the same space on the texture, and black them out.

@ADCK: Are you sure you don't mean "Make External"? That's the setting that works for me.

Good tutorials for various modellers (and other sorts of OXP making) would be very welcome. Fortunately, with documentation now living on Elite Wiki, it’s easy for anyone to write such a tutorial and link it into the Oolite-related navigation pages. Go on, what are you waiting for?

(Porting the old tutorial to the wiki would probably be a good start.)

Ahruman wrote:

Good tutorials for various modellers (and other sorts of OXP making) would be very welcome. Fortunately, with documentation now living on Elite Wiki, it’s easy for anyone to write such a tutorial and link it into the Oolite-related navigation pages. Go on, what are you waiting for?

(Porting the old tutorial to the wiki would probably be a good start.)

I could probably do one for AC3D, as I've done one for my students. I make a promise of intent if not actual delivery.