Blender for Beginners

[Fidcal]

This is still wrong. As I read further he specifically tells you tell to switch to edit mode. That explains why I was in edit mode. He then tells you to input the image but you can't because there is no input where he says. If you switch to object mode then you can enter it how he describes. But when you then switch back to object mode that is lost and the image is removed (which is absurd on its own!)

 

Then I find a menu entry to open an image in the conventional Windows way. This works and probably what I did first time around. Must have. I don't recall the image being totally covered by an opaque pink uv map though. Why not transparent? You can't see what the uv map is covering. I'm sure I could before.

[Fidcal]

Next paragraph 'open texture buttons' and click uv button on map input panel. Wrong. Search in vain for that. You need to open the materials buttons'.

[Fidcal]

Next problem; how do I move the origin? Google. I find:

 

"Move the origin to the 3D cursor (F9-> Mesh-> "Center Cursor")." By 'F9' he means edit buttons. But it doesn't work. I click roughly where I want the origin and click 'Center Cursor'. The origin jumps somewhere half way towards it but off-side. Repeat from different views. Same. Which makes sense. Why would 'center cursor' move to the 3D cursor which might be anywhere. But it doesn't make sense otherwise as it appears to move a meaningless place. I think what it is doing is taking the distance from itself to the cursor, dividing by two. It then adds three random numbers, doubles itself and then adds the number you first thought of less zero for good luck. Completely obvious and intuitive really.

[Fidcal]

OK, that was the easy part now for unwrapping. I'm using the compass image as a test image so I can see how it is aligning.

 

In the first image below I have only set seams for the back panel so far. You can see the seams in blue. I visualize the wrapping as like wallpaper pasted on the chair. With the back panel it starts at the base on the front face of the back panel, goes up and over the top and down the back. Two wing flaps at the sides cover the side edges. Disregard the rest of the chair for now. I'm also not bothering about scale and tiling at this point. Hard enough to understand how seams work for now.

 

The texture correctly flows up and over but note that in the construction of the chair that there were various loop cuts made. I can see the texture is treating those separately as if there were seams at every cut. So how do I make it flow over the entire back panel as one piece?

 

[Fidcal]

I think I need a different selection mode so I am re-doing this section again.

 

I cannot find the back face culling button. The tutorial gives:

 

"To the right of the menu area under the work zone are a couple of button groups, look at the group of four buttons that have 'dots', a 'line', a 'triangle' and a 'box'; click the button with the 'box' on it and watch what happens to the mesh object, the back faces should disappear - we've enabled something called "back face culling" (or "occlusion" as Blender calls it)."

 

That box button is not there and I have tried different modes: edit, object, wireframe, etc to try to make it appear but in vain. I have seen and used it before so it is a feature of this version but how do I make it show?

[Fidcal]

To set the seams for the back panel, the tutorial gives:

 

"use Ctrl+TAB to toggle into 'face select' mode to make selecting faces easier to do, remember to use Shift+RMB to individually select faces"

 

But it doesn't say what to select. If I select all the faces of the back panel then how will it know where the seams go?

 

If instead I use 'edge select' then I get the problem I had before that the cut sections are also regarded as seams.

 

He gives an alternative 'border select' but why? Are both methods supposed to work? And what do I select? Edges? I am in face selection mode. I'll give it a go.

[Fidcal]

No, border select just selects each cut section of the back panel. Then if I set seams and unwrap it just textures each face of each section separately.

[Fidcal]

Trying to find an alternate tutorial on unwrapping. At http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:Manual/Textures/UV/Unwrapping_a_Mesh it says:

 

"Enable View->Draw Faces so that selected faces are pink in the UV/Image Editor which makes them easier to see." but there is no such option on the view menu either in the uv editor section or the 3d view.

 

"A to select all uv faces" OK

 

"Create a test grid by clicking Image->New. In the popup click UV Test Grid and click OK." This is a checkerboard but seems useless as a test since it is uniform everywhere. There are some very tiny coloured crosses in the squares but these are invisible in any sensible 3D view. But now I cannot get rid of it and restore my compass image. I see them both listed in the IM window but if I select compass it just flips back to the checkerboard. I can find no way out of it so have to abort and restart yet again.

[Fidcal]

google: blender tutorial unwrap beginner

 

result: HowTo:Unwrap in Blender - VsWiki - sounds good.

 

"I'll assume you've done other UV-unwrapping tutorials by now" - why?

"If you haven't, should do so before proceeding." - uh oh!

"The problem with LSCM is it puts all the islands in a row, totally random order, at random angles..." wtf is he talking about?

"The secret is to use LSCM as a post-optimizer, but to do the initial unwrapping using more comprehensible functions, such a Cylinder, Sphere and From Window." wtf?

"For this tutorial, I will use Dual Joe's WCU Hornet model" - who is Dual Joe?

[Fidcal]

It occurs to me that maybe it is not possible to get texture to flow seamlessly across a cut so I'm searching for what does not exist. So what would happen instead if I made the chair from 6 separate cubes: 4 legs, a seat, and a back as we would in Dark Radiant from brushes? It might then unwrap correctly without bothering with seams. I'll try that.

[Fidcal]

Now it is not snapping to grid in ortho view. That is, it snaps - but not to the grid. It seems every step I take is beset with new obstacles. In all serious I think I have to consider calling it a day. I have made a huge effort but after 10 days I have made no progress in even the simplest of the basics. Most of the time is spent searching for information and not finding it. Suddenly I sit back and think 'is it worth it?' Slow progress is one thing but I have made none at all. I have to admit to being bitterly disappointed and frustrated but the truth is I just don't 'get it'. I'll leave it alone for a few days but really the way I feel now I don't think I'll bother with it again.

[Tels]

google: blender tutorial unwrap beginner

 

result: HowTo:Unwrap in Blender - VsWiki - sounds good.

 

"I'll assume you've done other UV-unwrapping tutorials by now" - why?

"If you haven't, should do so before proceeding." - uh oh!

"The problem with LSCM is it puts all the islands in a row, totally random order, at random angles..." wtf is he talking about?

"The secret is to use LSCM as a post-optimizer, but to do the initial unwrapping using more comprehensible functions, such a Cylinder, Sphere and From Window." wtf?

"For this tutorial, I will use Dual Joe's WCU Hornet model" - who is Dual Joe?

 

Sorry four laughing. but that exactly describes my experiences in a lot of IT related stuff WTF is Dual Joe?

[Arcturus]

I decided to share what I've learnt about Blender and made this small tutorial:

 

http://www.fileshost.com/download.php?id=F02584AD1

 

It's a PDF file, 5,81 MB zipped. It describes how to make a (very simple) object (chair) and import it to Dark Mod.

 

 

[stumpy]

I seem to be able to select the faces, you just press 'a', but when I go to select the seams, it turns faces off, so I get all the seams selected go to select the faces and the seams get turned off, then you seem to get a seam that when you select it, its selects a seam on the other side of the object thats not in line with the cursor or anything else. It just basically feels like if there was an easy way to do it and a hard way to do it then the team who wrote blender picked the most difficult and non logic way to do things.

[Fidcal]

Had a break from Blender for a few days as I got sick of it and was totally burnt out. Reluctant to start again actually but thought I'd try Arcturus' tutorial which seems more like my idea of making the chair from separate cubes instead of using cuts (though still don't know how to flow texture over cuts.)

 

I'll see if I can figure out the seams when I get to that bit. It sounds like the problem I had before.

 

One early thing I note is that when I switch to edit mode then the directional cursor is lost to be replaced by a red dot. So I can't actually RMB the red arrow side because there are no arrows in edit mode. Yet I see them in the picture in the tutorial. Same version: 2.49b so go figure. I have to go back to object mode to see the which way up the cube is then, making sure not to rotate anything, go back to edit mode to actually edit the red side.

 

[Fidcal]

Oh well. I made the four legs. When I made a new cube for the seat I noticed it had the 3 arrow origin in edit mode. I switched object mode. They were still there. I switched back to edit mode ... and they disappeared.

 

OK, now I have lost the selection of the new cube and can't figure out how to select it on its own. I know it is big and I know the legs are probably hidden inside it. Pressing A twice I'm sure is just selecting everything. Try different mouse clicks in combination with various keys. I do one drag and somehow the origin is moved. That was something I was trying to do before but couldn't. Now it's happened when I didn't want it to. And I don't know what I did.

 

I just cannot select this new cube. Then I scroll out and I notice there is another cube way off in the distance. wtf? Where did that come from?

 

Maybe that's always been there and my lack of a 3 arrow origin is because it was halfway between a double selection.

 

I'll take a break. Already fed up with this. Then I'll search the internet to find how to select something in Blender. That should be fun.

[Serpentine]

In object mode you right click an object to select it (my understanding of blender is this much : open model, select things you dont want, delete, export to something else)

 

What a cryptic beast.

[Fidcal]

That's what I thought but I think my model is corrupt. I think the other cube is part of it. I need to look at it again. Possibly start again.

[Arcturus]

Oh well. I made the four legs. When I made a new cube for the seat I noticed it had the 3 arrow origin in edit mode. I switched object mode. They were still there. I switched back to edit mode ... and they disappeared.

 

OK, now I have lost the selection of the new cube and can't figure out how to select it on its own. I know it is big and I know the legs are probably hidden inside it. Pressing A twice I'm sure is just selecting everything. Try different mouse clicks in combination with various keys. I do one drag and somehow the origin is moved. That was something I was trying to do before but couldn't. Now it's happened when I didn't want it to. And I don't know what I did.

 

I just cannot select this new cube. Then I scroll out and I notice there is another cube way off in the distance. wtf? Where did that come from?

 

Maybe that's always been there and my lack of a 3 arrow origin is because it was halfway between a double selection.

 

Arrows are there only when you select something. By default in center of a selection, so if you had some distant geometry and selected all, arrows could have been outside of view. Newly added cube is automatically selected. If you've lost selection however and part of your geometry is within that cube, the fastest way probably would be to select all 6 faces one by one in face select mode (RMB with shift).

 

Edit. Unless you added second cube in object mode. In that case you would have 2 separate models and you can edit only one model at a time. You can join models by selecting them all in object mode and pressing ctrl+j.

[LordZ]

Fidcal, I would recommend you to download latest alpha blender, it's a bit unstable but MUCH more user/beginner friendly than 2.49

http://www.graphicall.org/builds/ just find one that suits you ( correct operating system )

2.5 alpha is really different from current official stable release 2.49, so you might fnid it a bit confusing.

Here is tutorials for 2.5.

http://www.blenderco.../all/tutorials/

 

One little thing, I'm not entirely sure if 2.5 can export to ase or to lwo without any problems.. So far I do all my modelling in 2.5, save it, append/import it to 2.49 and export to doom3... Never really tried to export with 2.5 but that is just my workflow

 

 

Which tutorial you were following when you tried to learn how to Unwrap? I would like to have look at it and tell you if it's uptodate for 2.49.

[rich_is_bored]

There are no ASE, LWO, or MD5 import/export plugins for v2.5 yet. It's a shame too because 2.5 is a HUGE improvement.

 

As it happens I'm having a go at writing an ASE import/export plugin. If I have any luck I'll post a link.

 

Also, that "arrow origin thingy" is called the 3D transform manipulator or widget and there are buttons to toggle it on and off ...

 

http://www.blender.org/development/release-logs/blender-237a/3d-transform-manipulators/

[Fidcal]

Thanks for all info. I'll certainly be looking at 2.5 later but for now I suspect it may be even more confusing especially when most tutorials will differ from it. I believe that anyone who is reasonably skilled with 2.49 will make the transition to 2.5 fairly easily because they already understand the basic concepts which I don't.

 

The tutorial i've been following to make the chair is:

 

http://www.katsbits.com/htm/tutorials/blender-basics-modeling-mesh-editing.htm

 

If you can find a way to get the unwrap texture to work to flow over those cuts I'd be interested to hear how. Maybe I'll understand seams better when I reach that part in Arcturus' tutorial. But I get blocked at every stage and I can't motivate myself to spend so much time on it now as I did initially. Two weeks and I cannot even make a trivial model chair. I could write a tutorial so a 10-year old with no prior experience could make such a chair in Dark Radiant correctly textured, in 5 or 10 minutes.

[Fidcal]

So if I understand Arcturus correctly, if I make the 4 legs then create a new cube for the seat, if I deselect that cube then there is no way to reselect it except to select each one of its six faces separately? Or if I want to exclusively select the 4 legs then I must separately select 24 faces? Or maybe select all then deselect the 6 faces of the cube I guess. Surely there must be a better way to select components. A layer for every leg? Or maybe some other way to group elements? It might not be too important in this situation but surely with more complex models? What if I make separate objects of them? Is that possible? Would it still export as one model?

 

My main concern is I don't want to find out in 5 years time that there is a quick way to select a 'component'. Or is there no such thing as a component? Each cube, each leg, the sum of everything is just a collection of surfaces that only form 'legs' and 'seats' as a concept. That the right side of a leg has no more relevance to that leg than to the top of the back of the chair - they are both just surfaces at a certain place in the overall object.

 

So starting with nothing, if I create a cube all I am doing is creating 6 surfaces that are arranged as a cube. If I create a second cube then I am just adding 6 more surfaces to the same object? Can I move those surfaces separately or are they 'bonded' to each cube?

[stumpy]

i followed Arcturus' tutorial and ended up with something that looked like a chair in darkmod, but its inside out.

Edited March 11, 2010 by stumpy

[Arcturus]

There are layers. I rarely use them but sure you can put each leg on separate layer for example. You can also group vertexes.

 

Yes, you can export multiple objects as one ASE file. That's how I create ASE with couple of different materials. Such model will have couple of layers inside, each for one object you exported. For every layer you can assign different material.

he 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. If you have many faces you can switch to selection 'brush' (press 'b' two times) and 'paint' the selection.

 

EDIT: It's not true actually. 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.