Yakoob on 14/4/2011 at 16:13
So knowing we got some talented 3D modellers and 2D artists here (coughrocketmancough) I figured TTLG is a place as good as any for some modelling rant blended* with an inquiry!
So in any case, I've been working on a little 3D game project of my for the past few months, and as those projects tend to go, you end up needing some 3D models sooner or later.
INTERMISSION QUESTION 1# Anyone know of some good websites to get FREE (and hopefully license-free as well) 3D models? I've already found a great resource for textures ((
http://www.cgtextures.com/)) but not so much for models.
So far, I have been using (
http://www.delgine.com/index.php?filename=product_deled) Deled for my modelling needs. It's really simple (which is great for a newbie like me), and with some clever texture-naming and object-tags I was able to hack in some neat extra features that get interpreted by my code (such as portals or hitboxes/hitspheres).
But lately, it's overall simplicity has grown to be a bit limiting. Simply, creating detailed models that do not look blocky with the above is rather challenging, and the occasional bugs or even outright broken features dont help. Not to mention that the program has no support for any smart UV unwrapping besides cube and cylinder, and manually aligning hundreds of polys on a UV sheet is not my idea of a spending a Friday evening.
INTERMISSION QUESTION 2# Does anybody know of some good (free) UV mapping tools? It's ok if they are external to modelling (I like what Blender does with the seams-based unwrapping).
So, as any typical geek who thinks he can accomplish more than he actually can, I set out to finally give (
http://www.blender.org/) Blender a go. I mean, one of my former co-workers used it (in combination with other tools) to produce published-game models, so its gotta be good, right?
I basically stayed up for the past 24hrs having blender open, reading several documents, and watching like 10 different, 40 minute long tutorial videos. I finally wrapped my mind around the UI and controls and, holy fuck, some of it is downright abhorrent.
Blender ranting: ENGAGENo, I dont mean the 3D modelling, that is amazing with amazing tools. I dont even mean the UI or sometimes seemingly random shortuct keys, those can be gotten used to. But the material system... oh god.
Ok, I want to edit a material. BUT OH WAIT. I cant. Not until I assign it to an object. Can I preview all my materials I have created? Nope! The only way to look at the material is to actually assign it to an object. Similarly, the only way to view a texture is by assigning it to a material. This makes it a real bitch to assess what kind of resources I have.
What is also annoying is the disorganization of some of the material related UI. 200 buttons and switches scattered semi-randomly around. Everyone claims it's for efficiency, but how efficient is it having to navigate between 5 different screen and panels JUST to set a single texture on a cube? Also, why is the texture paint "draw" menu hidden somewhere in the object panels, rather than material panels?
Also, adding multiple-materials per object (on a face-basis) is so convoluted. There is no way to show which faces have which material assign to them. You literally have to click on every single face and you get a little "< 1 of 3 >" bar where you can switch the material with the arrows. Fuck my life.
And why the fuck cant I preview my textures in the preview window even in the "Textured" mode??? Yes, they do show if I go into UV unwrapping mode... but then that is a preview of the UV image. Meaning - objects in the editor show different textures than what they actually have assigned to them! Why do I need to keep re-rendering just to see what texture a cube has on it and how it's aligned???
INTERMISSION QUESTION 3$ Are there any other simple and free modelers I should consider? Blender is amazing for modeling, but I find it a complete pain to actually texturize your models if you have more than one texture. I might just stick to modelling in blender (even uv unwrapping) and then some other tool to make and apply textures.
Also, why is there no way to snap to grid? You can snap to other objects... which is useless when you are modelling a single object. Also I encountered a few bugs, where uploading images to the UV preview tool wont work, or the objects in my preview will suddenly turn bright-white no matter what I do or change (but still render properly). Annoying as hell.
Blender ranting: DISENGAGEOk, well, I think I got all my frustration out of the system. Hopefully, a few of our more seasoned modellers can point out a few things I am doing plainly wrong that resulted in my frustration (u b dum), or offer some viable alternatives.
ボナスクェスチョン #4: While we're talking about 3D modelling and texturing resources, any good site for free sound effects as well? I've been using Newgrounds for music in the past, and there's plenty of "Flash SFX" databanks, but most of the latter are horridly low-quality shit.
(note: If everything goes according to plan, in the far distant future, I would probably look for external help with modelling and art in general. But I'd rather get some proof-of-concept or at least basic gameplay down (that doesn't look like shit) before I start convincing others to
sell their souls lend their talent to me.)
* see what I did there?
Bakerman on 15/4/2011 at 00:33
Out of curiosity, are you using 2.5?
RE snapping to grid - do you mean while editing in 3D view? If you hold Ctrl you snap to whatever grid lines are visible at your zoom level.
(
http://www.freesound.org) is decent for sounds. Tends to be pretty hit-or-miss whether you find something entirely appropriate, but there's a good proportion of good-quality stuff. IMO.
Amen to the material system being pretty convoluted... I've never fiddled with it much, since my needs are pretty simple (one or two UV textures on a single object, cool).
Renzatic on 15/4/2011 at 02:47
Quote Posted by Yakoob
INTERMISSION QUESTION 2# Does anybody know of some good (free) UV mapping tools? It's ok if they are external to modelling (I like what Blender does with the seams-based unwrapping
Hate to tell you this, but Blender already has some fairly decent UV tools. Even if you pay for some expensive ultra awesome UV unwrap package, it won't be that much better than what you're already using. You're just gonna have to accept the fact that UVing sucks. Everyone thinks UVing sucks, so you're not alone here. It's the least fun thing to do when you're modeling. If you want good UVs, you only have one option: to do it the tedious way.
...well, that's not totally true. There is Ptex, which Blender does support, and (I believe) is readily usable in all game engines (...I believe). With it, you basically press a button, and it UVs the entire model. The downside is that it only works if you intend on painting on your textures, rather than laying them out in Photoshop.
Yakoob on 15/4/2011 at 13:55
Quote Posted by Bakerman
Out of curiosity, are you using 2.5?
2.49, which was the newest non-beta. Should I switch to the betas of 2.5?
Quote:
RE snapping to grid - do you mean while editing in 3D view? If you hold Ctrl you snap to whatever grid lines are visible at your zoom level.
Which... doesnt do anything. It only snaps me to other objects. Unless there's some super hidden button somehwere under 4 layers of panels I forgot to click.
Quote:
Hate to tell you this, but Blender already has some fairly decent UV tools. Even if you pay for some expensive ultra awesome UV unwrap package, it won't be that much better than what you're already using. You're just gonna have to accept the fact that UVing sucks. Everyone thinks UVing sucks, so you're not alone here. It's the least fun thing to do when you're modeling. If you want good UVs, you only have one option: to do it the tedious way.
That's pretty much what I was figuring from all the google-fu. Also sorry for being a bit confusing - the UV mapping in blender isnt that bad, and I do like the seams-based unwrapping, but applying and making materials is.
Yakoob on 15/4/2011 at 17:20
I am beyond convinced the snapping is utterly broken. Now it only snaps me when I DONT select the snapping mode! Which, of course, means I cant change any of the snapping options.
Also, it's not 'snapping,' it's 'incremental movement.' If my vertices arent centered at a grid point and I move them, they will move by the amount equal to grid size, but not actually snap to the grid points. Meaning, you can never have perfectly aligned verts because the default plane/box/whatever tends to place it slightly off center. Peachy!
EDIT: awesome, mid editing a model snapping broke even more. I can snap some verts to grid, while others snap only to other verts. this is really fucking annoying.
EDIT2: also "add vertex" apparently means "add 3 random vertices scattered all around"
Renzatic on 15/4/2011 at 17:56
Quote Posted by Yakoob
Also, it's not 'snapping,' it's 'incremental movement.' If my vertices arent centered at a grid point and I move them, they will move by the amount equal to grid size, but not actually snap to the grid points. Meaning, you can never have perfectly aligned verts because the default plane/box/whatever tends to place it slightly off center. Peachy!
Yup. Grid snapping is a flat out bald faced LIE. Every single 3D program I've used does that, and it's really damn annoying dumb stupid.
If you want to snap it to the grid, this is what you'll have to do. Somewhere deep inside of Blender, you'll probably find an option named something like "align to 0". Inside of that, you'll most likely have three choices to align whatever you've selected (usually a row of verts) to X,Y, Z, or a combination thereof.
Take the verts you want to align to the grid, hit align to 0 on the appropriate axis, and let it snap into place. It'll be way off where it needs to go, but hey, it's now on the grid. Move it back into position, and count your blessings.
edit:
Quote:
also "add vertex" apparently means "add 3 random vertices scattered all around"
Eh, that kinda sucks. But on a good note, I've only found a handful of limited reasons to add a single vertex onto something. If you want to add in more detail, it's better to use your cut tool, or make a loop slice.
sk2k on 15/4/2011 at 18:46
@Yakoob: Not having some sort of material library/browser in Blender is one of the things that really sucks.
Btw. you should post your thoughts in the forum (News/Diskussion section) at Blender Artists.
Yakoob on 15/4/2011 at 19:58
sk2k - I tried but the website was down. It seems to be back up. I also just upgraded to 2.57 and we'll see how it goes.
Quote:
Eh, that kinda sucks. But on a good note, I've only found a handful of limited reasons to add a single vertex onto something. If you want to add in more detail, it's better to use your cut tool, or make a loop slice.
Problem with those is that they create way more verts than I want. Here's a picture of what I was trying to do and what ended up happening:
Inline Image:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v474/Koobazaur/onelittlevertexthatwasnt.jpgRenzatic on 15/4/2011 at 20:34
Question is, why is your cut tool making that extra cut? Is it set to cut all adjacent coplanar surfaces into tris or something? Cuz otherwise it doesn't make any sense why Blender would make that extra edge show up.
All you should do is use the cut (I actually wouldn't do it this way in my usual workflow, and I'll explain why below) and carve it out like this...
Inline Image:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3018396/cut.jpg...then extrude the new quad up top to make the arm bit.
The reason why I wouldn't normally do that is because tris and ngons can be really hard to work with when you're adding detail. A good 90% of the time, I use loop cuts to add extra geometry. Loop cuts only work on quads, and only make more quads. They keep your topology clean, and subdivide better than any other shape. It might seem like they're adding in too many extra verts, but they're much, much easier to mold into shape and deal with when you're working out your details.
Adding in extra detail, specially on a complicated shape, is alot more difficult to do than welding and subtracting extra verts and faces on a finished model. Worry about making your shape first, then fret over the extra polygons.
Yakoob on 15/4/2011 at 21:05
I donno about the extra line there, thats just what it did with stock settings.
Also, how do you do the cut you just showed me? Is that a loop cut?
And thanks for the feedback, I guess Ill work on shape first and then remove extras on my next model. So far I had a bit of a problem figuring out how to remove extra verts and edges (either nothing would happen, or it would not remove them the way I wanted, fucking up my geometry) without having to delete a bunch of shit and then re-connect everything from gaping holes.
