Blender for Beginners

[Fidcal]

Yes, that is one way but it should be possible to make one in Blender. But hard to see how it's done except by importing an existing one. Same with shadow meshes.

 

I import a darkmod key as I recall seeing the cm in the model selector. Import into any empty mesh. Try to centre so I can view it from 3 sides. Keep losing it completely. where has gone. twice this is so bad I give up and start again.

 

Note: any tips for navigating? I have navigated to the darkmod models folders so many times in the tedious navigator. Is there any way to set a work directory? Or for Blender to remember which folder you keep going to? the blender folder is the last place on earth you'd expect to import an lwo from.

 

Note: Cannot import ase and lwo is not satisfactory to actually modify the lwo, eg, resize. This quickly cancels its usefulness to mappers by about 90%. I was led to believe this was a plus but I'm now thinking only Lightwave is of any use for this.

 

So now I have the key in view in object view. Selected. I think I see probably the pink is the cm and the white is the main model.

 

Go into edit mode:

 

Cannot select anything now. Cannot select a face, vertex, edge, nothing.

 

 

There does not seem to be a single thing you can do in this program no matter how trivial without getting blocked and spending the day researching it. It seems miraculous that anyone has perservered enough to produce anything useful.

[Fidcal]

Just reading through another katsbits tutorial which confirms what I eventually felt myself:

 

"NOTE : The grid currently only displays correctly in Orthagonal views (top, front and side views), the 3D viewport displays the grid settings incorrectly so it appears that you may be working on the wrong grid settings when in fact you are not."

 

Wish he'd put that at the top of his chair tutorial which tells you to set 3D view. No wonder I found grid snapping and grid alignment so frustrating. Arcturus' tutorial uses ortho view which works much better. You can still rotate to view it in 3D so long as you hit the keys to snap it back to top or side views as needed.

[Arcturus]

The fastest way of selecting multiple faces is to drag a selection ('b') over them but that's not possible if you have some other faces inside you don't want to select.

I just want to say that it's not true what I wrote. If you have two not connected shapes you can select vertex/edge/face of one of them and go to 'select -> linked vertices'. It will select only that one shape.

[Fidcal]

I see; that makes sense.

 

At the moment I'm trying to make a flat plane model to test vertex blending. I subdivided it into 4; painted it white then sprayed one side black to get a gradiant. I gave it the compass texture so I could unwrap it and see what went where then changed that to the archery ground texture half grass/half stone. I exported it with the vertex paint option but somehow it's not working. I see a dark texture. It might just be the texture scale is all wrong. I'll look at it again tomorrow. I think I need to scale the uv map.

[CorwinWeber]

I know it's been a while since there was any activity on this thread, but I'm gonna go ahead and suggest that this thread be made sticky.... lots of good stuff here for any of us who are masochistic enough to try to get a handle on Blender. (Hey, I've done systems administration and tech support for over a decade.... I must be SOME kind of masochist....)

[Fidcal]

Yeah but I think all stickies should perhaps all be in their own child forum or they get to clutter up the main forum. Anyway, good luck with this. Drove me crazy for a while but I'm OK now and completely also not confused at even when not thinking about still when absolutely clear on and not a bit.

[CorwinWeber]

Yeah but I think all stickies should perhaps all be in their own child forum or they get to clutter up the main forum. Anyway, good luck with this. Drove me crazy for a while but I'm OK now and completely also not confused at even when not thinking about still when absolutely clear on and not a bit.

 

I'm actually looking at other programs. I despise Blender with a passion that rivals that fires of Hell. (Which, since I'm looking at doing models for Doom 3, is actually kind of appropriate.) Stuff should NOT BE THIS COMPLICATED. Nothing makes sense. I can create a model, can't select the whole model after I'm done.... stuff like that.

 

I've tried both 2.49 and 2.5.... and while 2.5 seems to be an improvement in some ways.... it's horrifically bad in others. Come on.... this program doesn't even have File > Edit > View etc.....

[aidakeeley]

Thanks for the warning. Maddening software there is enough of...

 

Let us know what alternatives there are and how they serve?

[stumpy]

spent 10 hours yesterday trying to get four simple models out of blender, got 3, the fourth just refused to work even though it was only 2 shapes, could select one shape and u/v unwrap it, the second shape became unseletable after the first one got textured. then managed to get both shapes textured then the ase exporter wouldn't export the second shape said it didn't exist.

 

if there's a ase exporter for povray I'lled do it in that, as that a lot easier to use compared with blender.

Edited June 13, 2010 by stumpy

[Fidcal]

In fairness I think the problem is that A. Modelling is complex so there is a lot to learn, most especially with texturing, B. Blender doesn't use conventions common to all Windows programs which most of us are used to so very little is intuitive, C. It is not written with exporting to a game like Doom3 as a main priority so most information comes from a different direction. D. There is no ideal, comprehensive tutorial so you spend 10 or 100 times longer to learn which is frustrating and time-wasting. This is actually the main, perhaps the only problem because with really good guidance it probably could be mastered in a reasonable time.

[CorwinWeber]

In fairness I think the problem is that A. Modelling is complex so there is a lot to learn, most especially with texturing, B. Blender doesn't use conventions common to all Windows programs which most of us are used to so very little is intuitive, C. It is not written with exporting to a game like Doom3 as a main priority so most information comes from a different direction. D. There is no ideal, comprehensive tutorial so you spend 10 or 100 times longer to learn which is frustrating and time-wasting. This is actually the main, perhaps the only problem because with really good guidance it probably could be mastered in a reasonable time.

 

Modeling is complex, but it's not THAT complex.... Blender doesn't use conventions common to all programs, regardless of OS. It also doesn't use conventions common to all graphics programs outside of one particular branch of 3d modeling. For those of us like myself that cut our teeth on AutoCad.... it's frustrating as hell.

 

The problem is that you find yourself asking over and over again 'why are you doing that?' and the explanation (when you can find it) invariably triggers the second question: 'why the hell would I even WANT to do that?!?!?!?!?!'

 

It's not written for exporting to games, no... it's written for making cheesy CGI movies that nobody else will watch but look great when you're stoned.

 

Sorry, I'm letting my frustration bleed through.

[rich_is_bored]

At it's heart all modeling applications are the same. It's all vertices and polygons. The tools might have different names and they may be accessed in different ways but they all do the same things.

 

I started modeling with Lightwave back in 2004. At first I struggled with it. It took 2 years and a couple hundred dollars in training materials before I knew enough to feel comfortable.

 

I would have stuck with Lightwave if it weren't cost prohibitive. But I'm just a hobbyist and with Blender the upgrades are free and frequent. At the time the UI was nasty but they've done a great deal of work improving it over the last few years.

 

At any rate, if you expect to install Blender and suddenly know modeling inside and out you're mistaken. You have to practice regularly and it helps if you drop some money on training materials although there are some decent free sources.

 

I'd love to have some insight as to what is giving you all trouble. But I don't think it's possible for a novice to put it to words without omitting essential information. Would it be too much trouble to ask you guys to record narrated video captures of the things you're trying and failing to do in Blender so that people can better help you?

 

Ultimately it's not that Blender sucks. It's just that you don't know how to use it.

[Fidcal]

Thanks rich. That does confirm what I said. You took TWO years to learn modelling and say our problem is we don't know how to use Blender so that confirms my A and D while B and C are a given.

 

This thread is a virtual daily blog of my difficulties over about 15 days of intensive effort which produced only one plain chair - and that from a tutorial from Arcturus in these forums. I knew it would take a lot of learning and I persisted with mind-numbing determination and motiviation but it was too much unnecessary frustration for me by the end and I decided finishing and releasing my FM was more important. So I think that dismisses your "if you expect to install Blender and suddenly know modeling inside and out you're mistaken." I am certain that with really solid good information I could have made that chair in less than a day. So Dark Mod lost two weeks of my input for no good reason except lack of the right information. [EDIT actually not completely true because of illness I couldn't work on my main machine anyway so installed Blender on my old PC]

 

Nevertheless, I should be delighted to try again if you are willing to provide guidance but I can't in the near future as I have so many other Dark Mod tasks to do at present including work on my next FM over the next few months. Unless players would like me to shelve that for now?

[CorwinWeber]

At it's heart all modeling applications are the same. It's all vertices and polygons. The tools might have different names and they may be accessed in different ways but they all do the same things.

 

I started modeling with Lightwave back in 2004. At first I struggled with it. It took 2 years and a couple hundred dollars in training materials before I knew enough to feel comfortable.

 

I would have stuck with Lightwave if it weren't cost prohibitive. But I'm just a hobbyist and with Blender the upgrades are free and frequent. At the time the UI was nasty but they've done a great deal of work improving it over the last few years.

 

At any rate, if you expect to install Blender and suddenly know modeling inside and out you're mistaken. You have to practice regularly and it helps if you drop some money on training materials although there are some decent free sources.

 

I'd love to have some insight as to what is giving you all trouble. But I don't think it's possible for a novice to put it to words without omitting essential information. Would it be too much trouble to ask you guys to record narrated video captures of the things you're trying and failing to do in Blender so that people can better help you?

 

Ultimately it's not that Blender sucks. It's just that you don't know how to use it.

 

It shouldn't take me two years to learn how to make a basic girder. That's nonsense. I've used everything from Photoshop to AutoCad. And yes, I picked up the basics of using the Doom level editors in an afternoon. Wasn't tough. More complicated and impressive stuff? I'm still working on that.... but I'm getting it bit by bit. With Blender, we're talking about taking weeks to figure out how to make the modeling equivalent of two box rooms and a hallway. I'm not even in character modeling yet. Nothing bizarre, nothing terribly complex. What complexity there is is largely due to having a large number of items in a given model.... but while there are a lot of them, they're regular. Replication is your friend.

 

What's giving me problems? I can express some of it at least:

 

The 'objects' you create don't act like objects created in other software packages (such as CAD) or like objects in the real world. Your 'object' is just the little primitive shape created by the editor, even after extrusion when you would EXPECT that now that you've extruded a cylinder, your object is now the large, extruded cylinder. There is also no way (apparently) to select all of said extruded cylinder.

 

The interface is counterintuitive. Clicking and dragging doesn't move or deform an object unless you use some obscure, poorly documented (and unintuitive) key combination.... and even then it rarely moves or deforms it in the way you want it to. My first attempts at extrusion, for example, extruded wedges out of a cylinder. Every.... other.... wedge. Why on EARTH I would even want to do this in the first place still escapes me.... let alone why it's the default behavior.

 

The controls are wonky. I've used worse.... try driving in HalfLife2, for example.... but still, they're pretty bad. Panning around your item basically works, but it's irregular and clumsy.

 

There seems to be a heavy emphasis on animation at the expense of usable tools (and the documentation of said tools) for creating static models. I quite frankly don't give a damn about camera angles and lighting. I want to make an object. That's all. I don't WANT hippos in pink tutus dancing around it.

 

Minor nitpick: It's ugly as hell. You have grey, mauve, and grey. Occasional swaths of pink and puke green. For artists, the designers don't impress me here at all.

 

No program should ever omit 'File,' 'Edit,' 'View' and the like. My method of exiting the program should only consist of 'killall -9' when the program has crashed, not because I can't find 'File > Quit.'

 

The workspace and objects are too arbitrarily small, and the workspace can't be changed. Get working on anything of a usable size, and you're off the grid. You also can't manually enter in the dimensions of an object. (No, I don't want to drag it out to the right size.... especially when the right size is several dozen times the size of my available window. I know how big I want it, let me type the number in.)

 

Too.... much.... crap. There's so much going on on the screen that the viewports end up being too small to be usable. Frankly, outside of small detail work, I can't SEE what I'm doing.

 

The documentation. Oh, the documentation. I've written software documentation. Professionally, even. I'd like a long, heartfelt talk with the authors of this documentation. Preferably involving some Thorazine, jumper cables and a baseball bat. Failing that.... forcing them into a basic technical writing class (at gunpoint if necessary) would be a start. It skips steps, avoids mentioning issues that I later find out are common problems and skips ahead to what the author thinks is interesting when what you're looking for either doesn't get mentioned at all, or only gets mentioned in passing with no useful details.

 

There's a reason software interfaces are the way they are. That reason is that THEY WORK. Messing with this is something that should only be done for a very VERY good reason, and I'm not seeing that reason aside from art students either not knowing anything at all about software design, or deciding that they just wanted to do things differently for the sake of doing things differently.

 

Bottom line: To do even the most basic things I have to dig through a half dozen websites to find a vague description of how to do what I want, then I have to jump through five flaming hoops just to make a thrice-damned support structure that I could make in ten minutes in a more well designed program. (I know this, because I've done it. Checked out AC3D this afternoon, and I'll probably be buying it after the trial runs out. The girder that was giving me fits? Ten damn minutes and I cranked it out.)

[rich_is_bored]

It shouldn't take me two years to learn how to make a basic girder.

 

It took me two years to get comfortable. I modeled a coffee cup my first day.

 

The 'objects' you create don't act like objects created in other software packages (such as CAD) or like objects in the real world.

 

Blender isn't CAD. Nor is Lightwave, 3DSMAX, Maya, or any other modeling package. In CAD, you describe shapes mathematically using curves and boolean operations. While similar operations are available in modeling packages you work primarily with polygons and when you do use curves and the like you eventually convert those shapes into polygons.

 

The interface is counterintuitive. Clicking and dragging doesn't move or deform an object unless you use some obscure, poorly documented (and unintuitive) key combination....

 

By default Blender uses right click but that along with all the keyboard shortcuts can now be changed. You can even use input presets that more closely match the controls of other modeling applications if you so choose.

 

My first attempts at extrusion, for example, extruded wedges out of a cylinder. Every.... other.... wedge. Why on EARTH I would even want to do this in the first place still escapes me.... let alone why it's the default behavior.

 

I can think of a few practical uses for that like maybe a gear. Did you know Modo also has a "select every other" operation? I'd love to see how you invoke it by mistake though. Be sure to narrate your video and tell me what you're doing and what you expect to happen.

 

There seems to be a heavy emphasis on animation at the expense of usable tools (and the documentation of said tools) for creating static models.

 

Animation is a completely separate mode called "Pose Mode". No tools are compromised. Mistakenly entering "Pose Mode" and not being able to model is understandable.

 

No program should ever omit 'File,' 'Edit,' 'View' and the like.

 

I can take a screen shot and draw a circle around the file menu if you'd like but it's in the top left corner as it would be in any other application. There is no edit menu. I'm not sure what you'd expect to find there. There is a View menu as well but it's attached to each viewport allowing you to toggle things on and off on a per-view basis.

 

The workspace and objects are too arbitrarily small, and the workspace can't be changed.

 

No. The workspace can be changed quite drastically. I'd find a video to demonstrate but I'm pressed for time.

 

The documentation. Oh, the documentation.

 

I agree with this point.

 

Checked out AC3D this afternoon, and I'll probably be buying it after the trial runs out. The girder that was giving me fits? Ten damn minutes and I cranked it out.)

 

Glad you found something that works for you. Sorry to you had such a horrible experience.

[Fidcal]

I expect I could make a coffee cup on my first day also given a good tutorial. Problem is, you can't tell if you've downloaded a good tutorial until you used it. I spent a long time searching and downloading every tutorial that was anywhere near relevant. There are a lot but most are on specific topics. I'm also hampered in that I dislike video tutorials so that rules out a big proportion. I like a simple text and graphic page I can keep glancing at and re-reading. (mind you, I've now got GOM player which is nearer to being a decent video player as any I've seen out of a poor lot including VLC.)

 

Anyway CorwinWeber's post emphasises the immense frustration and aggravation and time-wasting many experience with Blender. I didn't even want to face it again at one point. But although it might seem to be mostly down to the failings of Blender I think it is mostly down to a lack of good info. I eventually managed to drastically reconfigure the layout so even I was happy with it. It's both good but also very confusing that it saves that config with each blender file you save though.

[SneaksieDave]

 

To be fair, Blender can definitely be odd. I watched (and read) a number of online tutorials to get the gist of what I needed to make a couple of things for the mod. I'm not at all familiar with the new interface yet but I'm really hoping it's a step forward (looks like it) because yes, conventions exist for a reason, and yes, Blender is (was?) odd, as mentioned.

 

Remember it's ultimately made by the community, so if something sucks, it's our own fault and job to fix it (like TDM).

 

workspace can't be changed

Actually it can be changed in a lot of ways -- predefined layouts, changing hotkeys, rearranging panels. Look for some tutorials on this; flexibility is one of the things I'm sure it has.

 

Also on that note, I've never known Blender to simply "stop working" at doing something basic. There was a statement above where a model "couldn't be selected" anymore or such, but I would wager he was in the wrong mode, and editing a different separated off portion of the model. You must go back (tab) to object mode and select the object you want to work with before going to edit mode. Like a hierarchy of pieces.

 

this program doesn't even have File > Edit > View etc.....

While I feel your pain about non-conventionality, sure it does.

 

 

 

That said, since this is a beginner question thread, I have one! Something that's always bugged me is the navigation. I want a basic mode where I can scroll/move about (not zoom) in a forward/backward manner WITHOUT that scaling stuff that happens when you zoom. IOW, in DR, to navigate around the map, I drag or scroll and simply "drive" through the map. In Blender, with mousewheel nav, I am always ultimately zooming in. Mousewheel looking in a direction, and I'm always zooming to a point in space. I don't want to zoom into a point. I want to drive through my scene like in DR, no ultimate destination zoom in. How?

[Arcturus]

Nevertheless, I should be delighted to try again if you are willing to provide guidance but I can't in the near future as I have so many other Dark Mod tasks to do at present including work on my next FM over the next few months. Unless players would like me to shelve that for now?

FM can benefit from using a 3d application. Here's a portal I've made in Blender some time ago:

In Blender, with mousewheel nav, I am always ultimately zooming in. Mousewheel looking in a direction, and I'm always zooming to a point in space. I don't want to zoom into a point. I want to drive through my scene like in DR, no ultimate destination zoom in. How?

 

 

There's: view -> view navigation -> camera fly mode (shift + f) . Using mouse scroll you can fly through the scene.

[aidakeeley]

That's a purty portal.

[SneaksieDave]

Hrm, fly mode is too cumbersome for what I'm trying to do, but thanks. Really just want a DR-style global movement mode, instead of the default relative zooming mode.

 

And wow!

[stumpy]

i found it a lot easier to use if you split the screen and turn and select what your working on in one screen (turn as in move the camera around the object), and drag and resize stuff in the other screen.

[Melan]

FM can benefit from using a 3d application. Here's a portal I've made in Blender some time ago:

 

That shows the advantages of static meshes which is always championed by Thief3 editors (although I suspect they are making a virtue out of neccessity), and is a major thing in modern level design. The question is, how much time and effort does it take to get familiar with another editing interface, and how much to get comfortable enough with it to make something like that from scratch (+ source textures). There is a threshold beyond which someone with limited time has to say, "okay, this looks good but I just can't commit to it". So, I am curious: how much did it take, Arcturus?

[Arcturus]

Indeed it took few weeks but the hardest thing was to make the texture for the archs and upper part of portal and doors (I already made rest of textures earlier). Modeling itself doesn't take longer than building geometry in Radiant. In Blender you can do geometry that's physically impossible to make in Radiant and you have full control on it. And even very simple model will have adventage of smoothing which is not available with brushes. Disadvantage is that it's not world spawn.

 

Of course making big mission with amount of detail as on the screenshot would be very time consuming for one person (that's why I'll probably never finish it). But a group of people could do it.

[OrbWeaver]

Hrm, fly mode is too cumbersome for what I'm trying to do, but thanks. Really just want a DR-style global movement mode, instead of the default relative zooming mode.

 

I know what you mean, and have often wondered if there is a good way to do this. I get the impression though that this is simply not the way you are supposed to work with a 3D app rather than a level editor, and instead I tend to isolate the part of the model I want to look at by hiding objects or vertices, moving stuff to separate layers, using the solo edit mode ( Keypad / ), or using the section view ( Alt-B ) to cut away the part I want to work on.

[rich_is_bored]

You can center the view on whatever is selected by pressing "." on the numpad.