Blender for Beginners

[greebo]

In my copy I have to switch to "Edit Mode" to get access to that option.

 

- Select an object

- Hit TAB to switch to Edit Mode

- Hit F9 (this switches the tool pane in the lower half of the screen to the "Editing" section)

- In the "Mesh Tools More" section, there is the button "Edge Length" near the top right corner.

[Fidcal]

Ah, thanks. Strangely a cross section of the chair legs shows 0.200 x 0.195 and yet following the tutorial I set them all to 0.6 x 0.6 as I recall so even scaled down I don't see where that error crept in. In View properties, what have you got for spacing, lines, and subdivisions?

 

Which .ase export script do you recommend? I see a lot at http://wiki.beyondunreal.com/Legacy:Blender#Export_Plugins

[greebo]

I've been using this one, downloaded from doom3world.

 

ase_export.txt (Rename that file to .py and place it in your .blender/scripts folder, and restart Blender)

 

I've never paid much attention to my grid settings, but I think I set it the spacing to 8 or 10, nothing else.

[Fidcal]

Thanks - though I'm puzzled how you keep track of the correct size for use in Dark Mod?

 

Another curious thing in this tutorial:

 

"As the legs have been marked with seams we can "hide" those by selecting them and pressing the "H" key."

 

There are 32 seams! Why would I want to individually select them all to hide them? I can barely see them as it is with the dull greys and subdued colours of this program. Maybe he means to select the whole leg but there is vertex, edge, and face select modes so I don't see how to select a whole leg.

[greebo]

Thanks - though I'm puzzled how you keep track of the correct size for use in Dark Mod?

Mostly I designed my model and then resized it after I was ready for export. DarkRadiant provides a "reload models" command, so it's easy to see the changes.

 

"As the legs have been marked with seams we can "hide" those by selecting them and pressing the "H" key."

 

There are 32 seams! Why would I want to individually select them all to hide them? I can barely see them as it is with the dull greys and subdued colours of this program. Maybe he means to select the whole leg but there is vertex, edge, and face select modes so I don't see how to select a whole leg.

I think the comment is meaning to hide the legs, not the seams.

 

In Edit Mode, there is a neat feature to select connected stuff: point your mouse cursor over a vertex and hit "L". The vertex plus all connected vertices are highlighted.

 

Alternatively, you can select one single vertex and then hit Ctrl-Plus (The + on the numpad) to "widen" the selection to neighbouring elements. You can repeat pressing Ctrl-Plus until the entire leg is selected.

[Fidcal]

Now I've seamed the whole chair that L key selects everything so H hides the whole chair. I guess if I'd done it as I went along it would have worked to hide the parts already seamed. The Ctrl+ works but maybe I've got my seams wrong as I can't get it isolate the leg without part of the seat! I'll have to practice that another time.

 

Also the 'unwrap method' doesn't show from the "UV Calculation" panel so maybe he's using an earlier version. I'll have to leave the default angle unwrap for now unless there is another route...

 

press "F9" to show the EDIT buttons window and click on the "UV Calculation" panel to reveal the "Unwrap Method" drop down, click the double headed arrow and select "Conformal".

[Fidcal]

Note to self: Ctrl+R" to rotate whilst snapped to the grid in the uv map area is wrong - he means R for rotate mode then move mouse to rotate or Ctrl+mouse to rotate whilst snapping to grid.

 

I'll leave the rest of the unwrap features for now because I am not confident I have the seams right anyway.

 

Tada! My first model in Dark Radiant. It doesn't recognize the texture path and the scale is wrong but not bad for three days work.

[rich_is_bored]

The huge grid size is normal. The units of measure in Blender and Radiant are both arbitrary and as such scaling things so that they translate well from one to the other is necessary. As you can see the discrepancy between applications can be quite drastic.

 

Also when you change the grid, objects will not scale with it. It's not a big deal though. Since you're dealing with a simple 1:10 ratio all you need to do is select your object, press s, and type 10 to scale it up 10 times in size.

 

If you're a real stickler for getting the scale just right you can export an appropriately sized brush from radiant as an OBJ, import that into blender and scale your model to match. This sort of thing is handy when you're trying to match things up to level geometry or you need a player sized box for reference.

 

And according to the blender wiki, edge length rendering can be turned on with F9.

 

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/Uses/Architecture#Display_edge_length

[Fidcal]

Thanks, I'll check the scale thing.

 

Can't get DR to recognize the texture. This is just a 512 x 512 .tga test image named woodtest.tga.

In the .ase I have change the bitmap to...

 

*BITMAP "models/darkmod/props/textures/fidcal/woodtest"

Also tried...

*BITMAP "//base/fidcal/woodtest"

 

Blender's material name is just...

 

*MATERIAL_NAME "wood"

 

Is that the problem? There is no material definition? I thought I could do a simple test with just an image for now.

[Springheel]

Which .ase export script do you recommend?

 

Are there no .lwo exporters for blender? It would make my life a lot easier if we could keep all of our models in .lwo format. There are still .ase models in the "need fixing" thread that I can't do anything about.

[greebo]

In the .ase I have change the bitmap to...

 

*BITMAP "models/darkmod/props/textures/fidcal/ woodtest"

Also tried...

*BITMAP "//base/fidcal/woodtest"

 

Blender's material name is just...

 

*MATERIAL_NAME "wood"

 

Is that the problem? There is no material definition? I thought I could do a simple test with just an image for now.

Models refer to shader names just like brushes, not paths to texture files. You need to create a material shader for it. There is a basic article on that on the wiki in the Modeling section.

 

Are there no .lwo exporters for blender? It would make my life a lot easier if we could keep all of our models in .lwo format. There are still .ase models in the "need fixing" thread that I can't do anything about.

There are LWO exporters, I seem to recall that I exported an LWO before. But one needs to be careful to set up the correct image paths, such that the exporter writes the shader paths correctly.

[Serpentine]

This is the basic layout of an ASE - might be overly simplistic and has a high chance of not helping you at all

The model is a tree with 2 textured objects, so two sets of geometry with different materials. The mesh has been folded out (If you are using Notepad++, use something like the doom3 material language, its similar enough and will allow you to fold sections... makes life a lot easier)

 

*3DSMAX_ASCIIEXPORT	200
*MATERIAL_LIST {
       *MATERIAL_COUNT 2
*MATERIAL 0 {
	*MATERIAL_NAME "Material_1"
	*MATERIAL_CLASS "Standard"
	*MAP_DIFFUSE {
		*MAP_CLASS "Bitmap"
		*BITMAP "//base/models/nature/tree_01/tree_01_leaves"
		*UVW_U_OFFSET 0.0
		*UVW_V_OFFSET 0.0
		*UVW_U_TILING 1.0
		*UVW_V_TILING 1.0
		}
	}
*MATERIAL 1 {
	*MATERIAL_NAME "Material_2"
	*MATERIAL_CLASS "Standard"
	*MAP_DIFFUSE {
		*MAP_CLASS "Bitmap"
		*BITMAP "//base/models/nature/tree_01/tree_01"
		*UVW_U_OFFSET 0.0
		*UVW_V_OFFSET 0.0
		*UVW_U_TILING 1.0
		}
	}
}
*GEOMOBJECT {
   *NODE_NAME "3D_Object__None.0"
   *NODE_TM{...}
   *MESH{...}
   *MATERIAL_REF 0
}
*GEOMOBJECT {
   *NODE_NAME "3D_Object__None"
   *NODE_TM{...}
   *MESH{...}
   *MATERIAL_REF 1
}

 

For a chair its most likely you would just have a single material then reference it after the mesh to the corresponding one at the top.

[Fidcal]

If an .ase will only work with a complete separate material definition and not a direct reference to an image then what is the purpose of the bitmap in the .ase file?

 

If the bitmap def in the .ase file uses "//base..." etc then surely Blender will not recognize it?

 

Are we saying Blender and Doom3 are always incompatible and to move an .ase file from one to the other and back again always demands editing of the .ase file in a tex editor? In Blender it directly references an image and in Doom3 it uses a material shader? That is, I need to edit it to get it to work in Doom3 then if say it needs adjusting I have to re-edit it back so Blender can use it? Or indeed, keep two copies of all .ase files, one for Blender and one for Doom3? Plus separate copies of the texture image, one for Blender and one for Doom3's material shader def?

 

I'm struggling to understand this. Let's say there is a problem with a model in Dark Mod and it needs modifying, say the origin needs moving. This is what it appears you have to do:

 

Convert the dds to a temporary tga and move it over to the Blender folder

Re-edit the .ase file in a text editor to include a reference to that new path and name.

Edit the .ase in Blender

Export it out again.

Re-edit it back again in a plain text editor to point to the dds.

 

You can't just point Blender at any existing Dark Mod model, import, adjust, export, job done?

 

I might take a look at Lightwave after all.

[greebo]

If an .ase will only work with a complete separate material definition and not a direct reference to an image then what is the purpose of the bitmap in the .ase file?

Yes. No direct image file reference, only shader names. The //base/ prefix is some sort of legacy, from what I've understood, but it's needed.

 

If the bitmap def in the .ase file uses "//base..." etc then surely Blender will not recognize it?

Exactly, Blender won't recognise it. When I'm doing modeling, I'm regularly using the JPG editor images for UV mapping, which are usually enough. There is a little tool from Constantine (one of our beta mappers) which is doing some automagic when exporting ASE files to a specific folder. It monitors that folder and adjusts any new ASE files in there with regard to the texture path (cuts off file extensions, adds //base/ etc.)

 

You can't just point Blender at any existing Dark Mod model, import, adjust, export, job done?

No, there are a few steps, although if you developed some routine you don't mind them very much. There's also a good reason for keeping the .blend files around, in case you need to re-export.

 

I might take a look at Lightwave after all.

Lightwave indeed has some handy advantages, but it has the huge drawback that it's expensive (several hundred EUR). Still, you need to point the LWO to shader names, just like the ASE ones. And Lightwave seems to have troubles importing ASE, from what I've gathered.

[Springheel]

You can't just point Blender at any existing Dark Mod model, import, adjust, export, job done?

 

That's what I never understood either, back when I was trying to fix those doors.

[greebo]

You can import the model just fine (scale is preserved), but the additional steps when re-exporting to ASE are still necessary. With Lightwave you just hit save and call it done, but Blender>ASE requires those additional steps.

[Fidcal]

@greebo: Thanks. Let's see if I've got it:

 

• 
   
  
• We decide to make a new chair model.
  
• We search the internet and find a suitable reference photo.
  
• We create or obtain a new texture in tga format and put it somewhere in Blender's folders.
  
• We also put a copy in the appropriate darkmod folder or make a dds.
  
• We create a material shader def for that in darkmod/materials
  
• We create the model in Blender
  
• In Blender we assign it Blender's local tga path image copy
  
• In Blender we give it the material def name we made (which Blender regards as just a label.)
  
• We save as a .blend file
  
• When we export as .ase the automagic program:
  
• Reads the material def name from the .ase file
  
• Searches and finds it in darkmod
  
• Extracts the diffusemap path/name from the material def
  
• Copies it into the bitmap field in the .ase file.
  
• If we wish to re-edit we use the .blend file.
  

 

It is not clear why Doom even needs the separate bitmap path as well as the shader def which already contains the path.

[greebo]

• In Blender we assign it Blender's local tga path image copy

You can refer to the editor image as it is already there in the darkmod repository.

 

• When we export as .ase the automagic program:
• Reads the material def name from the .ase file
• Searches and finds it in darkmod
• Extracts the diffusemap path/name from the material def

The program is not that sophisticated, it just truncates the file extension and adds the //base/ prefix, from what I've read in the code. It doesn't perform a lookup in the D3 material files, this takes much more logic - DarkRadiant could do that, but this small tool is working simple.

 

It is not clear why Doom even needs the separate bitmap path as well as the shader def which already contains the path.

D3 only needs the shader path which is read from the *BITMAP line, nothing else. Needless to say, the shader path is not always the same as the texture path, so there's no redundancy here.

[Fidcal]

Ah I see the .ase 'material' field is not where the material shader def goes.

 

And the material def name must match the editor image name prefix for automagic to work I guess. And this must mean Blender can load jpgs.

[Fidcal]

OK, Day 4 and a little progress. I managed to get the texture to work using the checkerboard as a test ref; the editor image for use in Blender and the material def name prefixed with //base/ in the .ase file. This shows my wrapping is wrong and I might also look for a better test texture. I want something like vertical arrows pointing up so I can see direction and alignment. Also crudely resized and overshot. I am definitely going to need some size reference. Also learnt that you need to resave the blend file before exporting. d'oh! Also puzzled why this tutorial tells you to divide the original cube in four as those divisions don't ever seem to be needed; the legs and back form entirely from the 4 edge slices he describes later.

 

[demagogue]

Now I remember why I was glad to have access to Lightwave.

I might do an equivalent of this thread for LW sometime.

(Well, I was posting about it when I made my lute a while ago.)

[Fidcal]

I guess the same principles would apply to all model programs but do you think Lightwave is easier to use or the tutorials better?

 

Meanwhile...

 

Looking again to adjust the seams and unwrap again. Stuck again. Can't get unwrap to do anything. He says to press F6 to get a map input panel but there is no such panel. It must presumably have been there before when I came this way but some other mode or button must have affected it which he doesn't say. If anyone knows then let me know. Otherwise I think this effort is a dead loss anyway so I need to start the tutorial from the beginning again.

[demagogue]

No, I don't think LW is inherently easier or better or easier to learn (I just peeked at Blender, though, so...).

I just was responding to a few comments that LW lets you get things into TDM more directly. Not even that big a deal really.

 

Anyway, from what I've read once you get familiar with the interface for one, that's most of the battle and you should stick to that.

[Fidcal]

Again I'm struggling with the units. I've restarted and determined to make the chair the correct height from the start. I see no point in guessing then keep changing it until is correct. AI sit down at a precise height so the chair height must be exact. Looking at a Dark Mod chair model I see it is 24 doom units high. So I make a 24 x 24 x 24 brush and export it as an obj and import it into Blender. It shows as 24 x 24 x 24.

 

Changing the grid size has no effect on that.

Scale simply resizes the block but the units remain the same.

 

Why then is it called 'scale'? and not 'resize'? 'Scale' implies a standard to be scaled from, eg, 1:3. So, is it then that Blender units are fixed and they are the exact same size as Doom3? Is this a game standard? Then why does the tutorial tell you how to make a chair that is about 4 inches high? The default cube in Blender is only 2 x 2 x 2 which is not much of a default size as very few models will be of that order of magnitude.

[Fidcal]

Starting with the default in Blender I see:

 

Spacing 1.00

Lines 100

Divisions 10

 

What is confusing is that it turns out that Divisions means the big grid and spacing means the divisions (small grid.)

 

Lines means how many small grid lines you can see. The maximum is is an amazingly small area of only 100 x 100 units. Since these appear to be doom units then clearly I have some misunderstanding of these units as how can you work with such a tiny grid area?