nemyax on 12/9/2014 at 21:49
Cue easily-offended people whining about the UI and telling unnecessary stories of how they wasted fruitless hours fumbling about in the program instead of taking ten minutes to RTFM.
Renzatic on 13/9/2014 at 01:25
Am I opening up old wounds here? Has there been, like, violence done over this?
Though to add some fuel to the fire, anyone who gripes about Blender's UI after having spent 10+ years with Dromed is missing the forest for the trees. Blender's rough around the edges in a few ways, but hell, Dromed's an even worse offender. It's slow, clunky, and all around terrible when compared against anything that's come out in the last 8 years. Yet here you all are making beautiful things with it because you spent a little time getting used to it. Same thing would happen with Blender, which is a helluva lot more capable and versitle than Anim8tor, and not nearly as clunky as Wings.
If the density of info present in the UI scares you, just remember, you can safely ignore 90% of it for Thief modelling. All you need to concern yourself with are the texturing tabs on the right side, and you won't even have to delve deeply into that.
Yandros on 13/9/2014 at 01:52
No old wounds, I was just being silly and also praising your work on the lamp, which is impressive. I haven't tried Blender but may take a shot at it this weekend, since I've never really been comfortable in Anm8or. Many moons ago I did CSG modeling using Moray, which was a GUI front end for POV-Ray, and got pretty decent at it.
Renzatic on 13/9/2014 at 02:29
I was talking about what Nemyax said. He seems kinda bitter about something... :P
But yeah, I'll fire up a few quick tutorials for you if you're interested. Originally, my intentions were to get into more specific objects, with the tutorial above acting as a generic primer for all the most commonly used tools. No one showed any interest in it, so I let it slip by the wayside. But now that I'm stuck with nothing to do for the next 2-3 days, I'm willing to give it another go, see if it garners enough attention to try it again.
nemyax on 13/9/2014 at 04:13
Quote Posted by Renzatic
Am I opening up old wounds here? Has there been, like, violence done over this?
No, it's just a pattern that seems to occur every time someone mentions Blender =) For some reason people expect a 3D suite to be as easy to operate as their fridge.
Quote Posted by Renzatic
I'll fire up a few quick tutorials for you if you're interested.
Shameless plug: would you like to mention the (
http://sourceforge.net/p/blenderbitsbobs/wiki/Dark%20Engine%20model%20importer-exporter/)
.bin import-export in passing in one of the tutorials?
gamophyte on 14/9/2014 at 00:24
Thank you for this :thumb::thumb:
Edit: I really want to learn it because of uv mapping. I've tried and get lost in the UI. Video tuts that I've seen just breeze over UI and I get lost.
Renzatic on 14/9/2014 at 06:18
I probably won't get into exporting at all, but since it will come up at some point...
PEOPLE! USE THIS THING!
Quote Posted by gamophyte
I really want to learn it because of uv mapping. I've tried and get lost in the UI. Video tuts that I've seen just breeze over UI and I get lost.
(
http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Blender:_UVs_%26_U_Part_1) I wrote this a few years back for TDM. Adding materials is one of the most pointlessly complicated things in Blender, and I go to great pains explaining exactly how to do it. Fortunately, Dark is an old engine, so you'll only ever be assigning one texture per model.
UVing itself is actually surprisingly good. It's got a few convoluted nits in there when it comes to selecting stuff, but it's pretty straightforward. I'll cover it in my later half of the tutorial I'm banging together.
nemyax on 14/9/2014 at 06:28
Quote Posted by Renzatic
Dark is an old engine, so you'll only ever be assigning one texture per model
Dark Engine models can have different textures on different faces. And assigning is easy enough in Blender.
Renzatic on 14/9/2014 at 06:39
You can have multiple UVs on a single object in Dark? I always thought it was one texture one model (also I suddenly had deja vu...I think I've had this conversation before).
As for adding materials, it's one of those "easy enough once you're used to it, hell when you're not" affairs. Once you do it a couple three times, you get the process. Do it a dozen times or more, and you don't even have to think about it. But it's definitely not what I'd call immediately apparent or intuitive, and I hope the Blender team is considering it for the big streamlining process they're going through.
nemyax on 14/9/2014 at 07:19
Quote Posted by Renzatic
You can have multiple UVs on a single object in Dark?
If you mean the same face corner can have different UV coordinates for different textures, then no. A model has a single UV layout, but UVs have nothing to do with textures; you can assign and reassign textures on a per-face basis, and the UVs will diligently apply them to your model.
