qolelis on 14/9/2014 at 14:23
@Renzatic:
Thanks for writing this introduction! I somehow missed it at the time (or was too busy with other things), but now I finally got the motivation to get started with Blender. So far, together with your introduction, getting acquainted with it has actually been a pleasant experience. My favourite thing is that it allows me to set exact values for rotation etc... (just like good old DromEd ;) ), although I haven't yet seen what the UV tool is like in that respect, but I'm hoping it will allow me to set exact values for everything (just like DromEd does), because sometimes I just need to do very simple things like rotating a texture exactly 90 degrees and be done with it (whenever possible, I've even come to use DromEd's own UV tool and then export the terrain and convert it in Anim8or, but that kind of seems backwards, even if it gets the job done, so I'm hoping Blender will change that).
By the way, Blender v2.71 seems to have switched entirely to the scroll wheel as the default for navigating (together with Alt, Shift and/or Ctrl), but that seems to be fully customizable. Also, the quad view box thing resetting when switching seems to be fixed.
Please, do write more of these, if you find the time. :thumb:
Edit:
Was there ever any PDFs posted?
Renzatic on 14/9/2014 at 17:36
Nemyax: Ah, gotcha. Dunno why I got confused on that.
Qolelis: Yeah, I forgot to add that I set it to "emulate 3-button mouse" under file/user preferences/input (also click continuous grab while you're there). I use Modo quite a bit, and the shift/ctrl/alt LMB setup is exactly how it works there, so it feels easier to segue between the two. It's all to taste, and it won't come up much at all in the tutorials, so use whichever you like.
On another note, I'm gonna have a tut up later today. I have plans to do a more complicated object, but with you all seeming to want more on UVing, and the sudden realization that it'd be a helluva lot better to start relatively simple and work up, I'm gonna start it off with some bog standard gravestones.
...and I'm gonna paint the texture in Blender directly, no futzing around with PS/Gimp for anything but color tweaking.
Plus, no PDFs yet.
Renzatic on 14/9/2014 at 19:21
Alright, this is a basic primer to UVing. It's not really a tutorial. Not yet. But it's a basic explanation thereof, and something to goof around with while I bang a proper tutorial together.
I've said this before many 'a times, but I can't stress enough that UVing is actually pretty easy. Especially now that every modern editor all but automates the more tedious parts of it. Yeah, it seems weird and goofy and all but esoteric when you first look at it, but once you wrap your head around what it's all doing, and how its done, it's about as straightforward a process as can be.
This is a preview of the grave I'm going to be tutorializing. It took me, maybe, 15 minutes at most to whip up, mold wear and tear, and UV. It's not at all complicated, but it does a good job of showing how UVs work.
When you open up the model in Blender, you're going to see a good amount of red edges all over it. Those are marked seams, which is what you use to tell Blender where to "tear" your model so it'll all lay out flat in UV space. That's the one thing you need to keep in mind that it's doing. It's ripping and flattening your model so you can draw on it in 2D. Just think of it like papercraft, and you've got it. "Where do I cut my little object so I can take it apart, and flatten it out". To give you a picture example before the model, this is how I cut my gravestone...
(
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3018396/BlenderUV1.png) Here.
And how it turned out when textured with a UV checker
(
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3018396/BlenderUV2.png) Here.
FYI, the UV checker is there to show distortion and relative resolution across the entire model, not to try to align it as a continuous checkerboard. That'd be nearly impossible to do. Rather, you're looking to see which squares are distorted (I've got a tiny bit of distortion along the edges of the base, but it could be fixed with another seam or two there), and which squares are larger and smaller across the map. Every square on the model is even with each other, which means every surface takes up the approriate amount of space relative to its size on the texture. Blender does an excellent job of keeping everything proportional when it unwraps, so that latter part isn't something you have to worry about too often.
Though keep in mind this very obvious fact: large parts of the texture people will be looking right at more often than not need more texture space, IE more resolution. Little things like crevaces or small throwaway details no one will pay attention to? Cram 'em whereever. As long as they're large enough to show some detail without looking weird, you're good.
If you ever find yourself in a situation where you want to scale your UV islands out of proportions, just keep this very simple fact of life in mind.
Now for the model itself, which you can grab...
(
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3018396/Gravestones.zip) Here.
What I suggest you all do is mark seams and clear seams while waiting for the tutorial. You do this by selecting an edge you want to mark, hitting Ctrl-E to bring up your edges menu, then selecting mark or clear seams. Once you've done that, go to the UV editing space by hitting the little squares in the drop down menu next to the "help" option on the toolbar, and selecting "UV Editing" (also, hit T to get rid of the toolshelf in your perspective window, since you won't need them there). Once you've done that, select your entire model by hitting the "A" key, then hit "U", and select "Unwrap". Depending on how you mark your seams, you'll see your islands move about, change shape, and sometimes distort weirdly if you didn't tell it to cut in a way where it could easily flatten the model.
Keep in mind that removing an edge seam doesn't mess up your UV maps. They only come into play during the actual process of unwrapping.
Goof around, and get a feel for it. I'll be back later with more indepth instructions.
qolelis on 14/9/2014 at 23:20
Quote:
It’s just that Blender is a little oversensitive with its mouse movements.
You probably know already, but pressing Shift at the same time makes for much smaller changes when moving the mouse (Ctrl gives something in between).
Quote Posted by qolelis
I haven't yet seen what the UV tool is like in that respect, but I'm hoping it will allow me to set exact values for everything
Just to answer my own question: Yes! I played around with it (and the provided gravestone) for a while and am much pleased. :)
R Soul on 15/9/2014 at 01:28
Blender doesn't show
texture transparency by default, but it's easy to enable it. From the menu at the top of the 3D view, change Blender Render to Blender Game. The Materials will have some different properties (so it only works when one or more materials are on the object). Go down to the Game Settings section. From the Alpha Blend menu select Alpha Sort or Alpha Blend.
You can switch back to Blender Render at the top and the transparency will remain. I wish I knew why you had to switch modes to get the transparency option.
Another thing that confuses me is
the way textures are shown. The quickest way is to go to Edit mode, select some faces, then in the UV window, load a texture. The texture will then be shown on the object. However we can also add a Material, give it a texture, and assign it to the same faces, and Blender will still show the UV assigned texture.
And if you export as .3ds (which (
http://sourceforge.net/projects/darkexporter/) Dark Exporter does as the first step), only the Material counts.
If you set the material first, the object will appear untextured until you go to the UV window and select an image (which can be different to the Material's texture :weird:)
There's an addon called Material Utils which helps with this UV (aka texture face) and Material oddity. It might come with Blender and simply require activation, or you might have to (
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.6/Py/Scripts/3D_interaction/Materials_Utils) download it separately .
In the 3D view, press Q and it's menu pops up. If you first added a texture in the UV window, you can select Texface to Material, or select Material to Texface if you assigned materials first.
I've been using Blender for a long time now, and
I love it (despite some of the odd little things, see above). For me the breakthrough came in v2.5 when the new interface was introduced. I used the videos (
http://cgcookie.com/blender/cgc-courses/blender-basics-introduction-for-beginners/) here to show me the basics.
nemyax on 15/9/2014 at 02:48
Quote Posted by R Soul
Blender doesn't show
texture transparency by default
It does if you set viewport shading to
GLSL.
R Soul on 15/9/2014 at 14:39
That setting has no effect for me. I've tried it with different material/texture settings but to no avail.
Renzatic on 15/9/2014 at 21:33
Part 1.
After much waiting on your part, and much futzing around with random stuff on my part, it's finally time for part 1 of the gravestones tutorial! Why such a morbid subject matter? Because they're fairly simple to do, cover the basics of modelling pretty well, and are rather thematically fitting with Thief. Everyone needs gravestones for their FMs, so why not teach you all how to make them in Blender?
We'll start off with the most basic of basics, modelling and UVing an unadorned, rounded top gravestone. I should add that I'll be basing this tutorial off the latest version of Blender, which as of writing is 2.71.
Before I get into modelling proper, I should probably spend some time explaining the UI to you all, since that seems to be one of the big sticking points against Blender around here. It is a little crowded, and can be scary to the uninitiated, but that's true of any of these big 3D editors. Even the most elegant and well designed of the bunch (personal opinion: Modo) can be daunting the first time through.
See, everything has its place, and every specific action has a specific location. For Thief modelling, you won't have to touch the vast majority of the interface, just a select few areas that directly pertain to making and texturing your models.
(
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3018396/Blender_Tut/Blender_UI_1.png) I've numbered the major UI elements here
And they are...
1. Tool Shelf. Where all your most commonly used commands are located. This changes depending on what mode you're in. Edit mode gives you different commands than object mode or texture painting mode. Now that they've been sorted and tabbed into categories, it's considerably easier to find what you're looking for.
2. Operations Window. Any settings related to whatever tool you're using will pop up here.
3. Task Modes. If you want to organize your scene, edit your models, paint, or sculpt, you select the appropriate mode here.
Keep in mind that the TAB will always take you in and out of edit mode, no matter which mode you're in. If you're painting, and want to do some editing, hit TAB.
4. Viewport Shading. You can select bounding box, wireframe, soild shaded, textured, or even have the viewport act as a renderer here.
5. Pivot Points. Explaining these is a slight bit beyond the scope of this tutorial, but they're something you'll find yourself using quite a bit later.
6. Manipulator Handles. Switch between the move, rotate, and scale handles, or even turn them off entirely. If you're big on hotkeys (and I suggest you get big on them if you're not) CTRL+SPACE shows and hides the manipulator, and CTRL+ALT+G brings up the move handle, CTRL+ALT+S the scale handle, and CTRL+ALT+R the rotate handle.
...yeah, these should be easier, but Blender has always been more about freeform scaling and translating, a'la Lightwave. They're they're if you need them.
7. Your layers. You can build different objects on different layers for easier organization. You probably won't be using this too much, but like the manip handles, it's there if you need it.
8. Proportional Editing, and Grid Snapping. Proportional Editing is the little blue circle, and is something you'll find yourself using quite a bit, as I demonstrated awhile back in my previous tutorial.
Grid snaps? I'm sure all your experience is screaming that everything should align to a grid, and you'll want to hit this first thing.
Don't. Break yourself of that habit.
When it comes to 3D modellers, the grid is more of a visual guide than a size standard that has to be adhered to for everything to come out right. I had trouble adjusting to that at first, but these days, it's a rare, rare thing when I feel the need to turn it on. Most of the time, I turn the grid off entirely once I get my proportions down.
9. Objects Menu. This shows you ever object in your scene, from your basic shapes, to your lights, to all other kinds of stuff for easy selection. It's more for navigating between multiple objects in complex scenes than building single objects. You'll be ignoring it more often than not.
10. Properties Toolbar. Where everything, from rendering to particle effects, to modifiers, to texturing is added, changed and tweaked. The vast majority of this can be ignored. For Thief, most of your time will be spent in the three tabs I circled, and occasionally in the render tab on the far left if you plan on baking out ambient occlusion.
But for the sake of completeness, I'll explain what each tab contains.
Quote:
A. Render (little camera icon) - Here, you'll set everything from the size of your rendered image, to applying post processing effects, rendering out animated scenes, and all other kinds of stuff you'll never once have to concern yourself with (unless you get into modelling hardcore). The only thing you'll need to pay attention to is the “Bake” dropdown, and that's either for ambient occlusion, or baking out your final diffuse if you paint your model using a few different layers and materials.
B. Scene (little pictures icon) – Yet another way to organizing complex scenes. You've got access to a larger layers tab here, along with a few other things that aren't needed unless you plan on getting heavily into rendering.
C. More Scene (three fuzzy spheres icon) – Even more specific tweaks for your rendered scenes. You can look through it all for educational purposes, but there's nothing here you'll ever use for Thief modelling.
D. World (blue sphere icon) – Where you set the atmospherics for your rendered scene. From the color of the zenith of your horizon, to the lighting effects, and global ambient occlusion. You won't have to mess with this, unless...yeah.
E. Object Manipulation (cube icon) – Now this might be something you want to play with. It's not 100% necessary, since you can do everything here from elsewhere, but if you like having everything in your scene labeled, or want to transform and rotate from hard numbers rather than using the freeform tools or manipulators, this is where you'll do it. Worth looking into.
F. Constraints (chain links icon) – This is all about setting parimeters for complex animations and rendered transformations.
G. Modifiers (wrench icon) – This you might find yourself occasionally using, though they're geared more towards higher poly modelling. The best way to explain what modifiers do is to say they're like layer effects for geometry. They let you deform your model, add subsurface divisions, simulate cloth, all kinds of cool stuff. There's even an edge bevel in there. It adds to your model without making permenant changes to the underlying geometry unless applied, so they can be toggled on and off, or deleted if you don't like the change. Since you all will be dealing mostly with models under 1000 quads, you probably won't have much use for them, but you might get something out of experimenting with them.
H. Vertex Groups (silver triangle mesh icon) – For managing morph maps, multple UVs, and other things that involve changes or stages in geometry. The only thing you'll likely play with here are the UV maps setting, since you can use multiple Uvs to create different effects when painting, them bake the final results from all the UVs down to a single texture applied to a single UV map usable in Thief.
I. Materials (silver sphere icon) – Yeah, you'll be using this, though mostly only to apply a single material for your texture, unless you plan on baking and painting. You control everything from base color, to specularity, to glossiness, to reflectivity, to transparency, to subsurface scattering (how light is diffused through semi-opaque material FYI). All kinds of complex stuff there to play with if you want to, though the vast majority of your time will be spent hitting the plus sign, then hopping over to...
J. Images (red and white checkerboard icon) – This is where you apply the bitmap materials to the material you have selected in the materials tab. And like the materials tab, you have a ton of options to choose from to control how an image interacts with a surface. Though you'll only be worrying about setting a color texture, and telling it to use a UV projection.
K. Particle Effects (sparkle icon) – Pretty self explanatory. Only applies to rendering, though you could make some cool animations for Thief using it to render out to multiple bitmaps, like dust motes and whatnot.
L. Physic Effects (blue and white sphere icon) – Like particle effects, but dealing more with volumes. You can set fluid reactions here, smoke, cloth effects, etc. etc. Though like the particle effects, there are a couple here that could be useful, like if you want to render out a billowing smoke cloud effect to a bunch of textures for use ingame.
M. Light effects [only displays when a light is selected] (fuzzy yellow square icon) – Where you set the type, strength, and color of a light entity. Mostly, you'll be setting your scene light to a hemi for use when you're texturing your model in GLSL shading, though you could use it to see how your object will look in different lighting situations.
Whew!
11. Screen Layout. Pretty much what it sounds like. Blender allows you to tweak the UI to whatever you think best fits your needs. This is where you select, save, or delete preset layouts. The only two you'll likely use the most are the Default and UV Mapping presets.
And that's an explanation of the default Blender UI. As you can (hopefully) see, it's overly complicated because it tends to be very specific, grouping like with like, so you don't have to spend more time searching than you have to. There's more, of course. Like the nodal editor for making and defining procedural textures, or animating, or...well...a bunch of other stuff you'll never touch. But this covers what you see the moment you first fire it up, and really all you'll need unless you start delving deeper. Hopefully, I helped remove some of the mystery surrounding it.
Now that that's done, let's get onto modelling!
Renzatic on 17/9/2014 at 01:19
Part 2.
Like I said, we're going to start with something incredibly basic, and work our way up from there. A rounded gravestone with a couple of frills added for flavor will work, I think.
Okay, you've opened up Blender, and you've got your cube right in front of you. Let's go ahead and activate the scale tool, and scale on X and Y to whip it into shape...
...BUT WAIT! You're in Object Mode! That means the changes you just made aren't actually applied, even though it looks and acts like they are. This is one of Blender's stranger quirks. Any of the basic changes you make to your geometry while in Object Mode isn't “officially” applied until you hit CTRL+A and run down the list. This doesn't cause a problem while you're editing, but when you go to unwrap your UVs, or export your model, those changes won't be present in the resulting output. When things aren't acting the way they should, it's always a good thing to go into Object Mode, hit CTRL+A, and apply your location, rotation, and scales.
Or better yet, not make any changes at all while in Object Mode. The only reason why I brought it up is because someone at some point will probably do this (I know I have), and when things get guffy, they'll at least know why.
So okay, you've opened up Blender, and you've got your cube right in front of you. Let's goa head and hit TAB to enter edit mode, hit A to select your entire mesh (or drop all selected if anything's highlighted)...
Activate your scale tool with S, and hit X to constrain your scale to the X axis...
Inline Image:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3018396/Blender_Tut/Grave_Tut_1.jpgLeft Click to complete the operation. Then hit S again, hit Y to constrain to Y axis...
Inline Image:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3018396/Blender_Tut/Grave_Tut_2.jpgThen hit CTRL+TAB to bring up your elements menu, select FACE, grab the top, and hit G to activate the move tool, and Z to constrain it to the Z axis, and stretch it up until it's an appropriately gravey shape.
Inline Image:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3018396/Blender_Tut/Grave_Tut_3.jpgAlternately, you could use your manipulator handles, which makes this job a little quicker. It's best to learn how to use both methods, since sometimes one method will work better than the other in certain situations.
Now that we've got our gravey shape, let's work on our arch. I'm going to show you two ways to do this. The quicker, easier method using edge bevels, and a more controlled, specific method.
Add an edge loop down the center of your grave running top to bottom by hitting CTRL+R, and selecting an edge you want to cut across...
Inline Image:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3018396/Blender_Tut/Grave_Tut_4.jpgRemember, the edge loop tool runs in two stages, the purple line stage marks the direction you want the loop to flow. Clicking once to commit that stage then turns the loop white, and allows you position it. Since we want it in the dead center, hitting CTRL+R and LMB clicking twice will put it right where you want, but if you accidentally move the mouse while in the positioning stage, just hitting ESC or RMB clicking will set it back to center.
PROTIP: ESC and/or RMB clicking are your Don't-Wanna-Do-Dat buttons. Left-clicking commits a tools action, and right-clicking reverts any changes you've made while the tool is still active.
Now that you've made your center cut, hit CTRL+TAB to bring up your elements menu, and select EDGE. Select the new edge you've made on the center of your top face.
Inline Image:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3018396/Blender_Tut/Grave_Tut_5.jpgNow hit G+Z to move your edge up or down, or use your move manipulator handles to bring your gravestone up to a point.
Inline Image:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3018396/Blender_Tut/Grave_Tut_6.jpgWhile still in EDGE selection mode, hold down ALT and RMB on your new edge to select the entire loop.
Inline Image:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3018396/Blender_Tut/Grave_Tut_7.jpgAnd hit CTRL+B to activate your BEVEL tool. Drag it out, and you'll send up with...well...not a smooth curve. Like so...
Inline Image:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3018396/Blender_Tut/Grave_Tut_8.jpgThat's because you have the EDGE BEVEL TOOL set to only one segment. You can change that by going down to the Operations Window at the bottom left, and changing it to, say 3 segments to give it a smoother arch.
Inline Image:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3018396/Blender_Tut/Grave_Tut_9.jpgThe more segments you add, the smoother the resulting arch. For the sake of this tutorial, we're gonna keep things fairly low poly, and stick with just 3.
There you go. Arched gravestone.
The alternate methods is to do all this manually with edge loops and the move tool. Once you've got your center cut aligned and the edge positioned, add two more center cuts to the left and right of it.
Inline Image:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3018396/Blender_Tut/Grave_Tut_10.jpgHit A to drop any selection you have. Now select the two edges along the top face, and drag them both up to make an arch.
Inline Image:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3018396/Blender_Tut/Grave_Tut_11.jpg...let's go a couple steps farther, and really smooth this thing out. Add some more loop slices between your previous cuts, like so...
Inline Image:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3018396/Blender_Tut/Grave_Tut_12.jpgRenzatic on 17/9/2014 at 01:35
Now, select two edges along the top that are on opposing ends of each other from the center, and drag them up. Try to make the arch look smooth.
Inline Image:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3018396/Blender_Tut/Grave_Tut_13.jpgInline Image:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3018396/Blender_Tut/Grave_Tut_14.jpgInline Image:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3018396/Blender_Tut/Grave_Tut_15.jpgKinda looks a little goofy there on the far corners, what with the curve being a little too steep there. Let's fix that right fast.
You can either grab all your cuts, save those outermost edges, and drag it all down...
Inline Image:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3018396/Blender_Tut/Grave_Tut_16.jpg...which still looks a little weird, but better. The whole thing is a little too steep. Let's fix that. Grab all your edges, including those two outermost ones, active the scale tool with S, and constrain it to Z. Drag it up or down, and watch as it either makes the arch more steep, or more shallow and normalized.
Inline Image:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3018396/Blender_Tut/Grave_Tut_17.jpg Now that looks more like it. Think we're gonna roll with that.
Hit A to drop your selections, hit CTRL+TAB to enter FACE selection, and select all the faces along the front and back of your newly rounded gravestone.
Inline Image:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3018396/Blender_Tut/Grave_Tut_18.jpgNow we're gonna run the INSET tool to widen it a bit, and give it a beveled edge. Hit I to activate it, and drag so you've only got a small ring highlighted. I find the INSET tool works best from the Operations Window, so I tend to try and zero it all out, and make my changes from there.
Inline Image:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3018396/Blender_Tut/Grave_Tut_19.jpgNow all we'll be doing here is playing with the thickness slider, for reasons I'll explain below. Slide it out until you've got about yay thickness added.
Inline Image:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3018396/Blender_Tut/Grave_Tut_20.jpgHit A to drop your selection, hit CTRL+TAB to bring up your elements menu, and select EDGES. Now grab the top edges of your new segments, like so...
Inline Image:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3018396/Blender_Tut/Grave_Tut_21.jpgThen hit G+Z (or manipulator tool it) and drag your lip down slightly until it makes a smooth curve...
Inline Image:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3018396/Blender_Tut/Grave_Tut_22.jpgNow hit CTRL+TAB, select to FACES, and grab your outermost left and right faces on your model, like so...
Inline Image:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3018396/Blender_Tut/Grave_Tut_23.jpgAnd scale them out on Y by hitting S+Y...
Inline Image:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3018396/Blender_Tut/Grave_Tut_24.jpg