Blender for Beginners

[Arcturus]

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

 

You ended up with inverted normals perhaps?

[Fidcal]

Got as far as a seat on top of 4 legs. But I noticed the origin is off to one side. I still can't find any way to move the origin so I decide to see if I can move the stool over the origin. Select all in edit mode and grab red arrow and move right. So far so good. Turn and move with green arrow. OK. Now I try the blue arrow. Uh oh! This time the whole thing moves up, origin as well. What is more, I now see a red dot at the point where I wanted the origin to go, but separate from the arrow pointy thing.

 

[Fidcal]

Wait a minute - I get it. In object mode the pointy thing moves down to that red dot. That must be the origin of the whole object but in edit mode the pointy thing is centred between all surface selections so it goes in the middle of the chair.

 

But is that the normal way to move the origin? To move all the surfaces relative to it? Then if necessary, move the whole thing only in object mode (though I'm not sure the grid 'world' position matters to us when we just export.

[Fidcal]

Made the back of the chair now ready to extrude but it will not angle how you describe.

 

In the views below are at an angle so it is easier to see what is happening but it is the same in side view. These are the only angles I can get - it jump from one to the other at about 45 degree steps. Ironically, the one I want, tilted back, is the only one it skips! It moves smoothly up and down. Or I can hold Ctrl to move up and down in steps. But with or without Ctrl it steps big time if I want to tilt it.

 

[Arcturus]

If you want the origin to be placed in the middle of object press "Center new" in object mode.

 

 

I'm guessing you keep pressed middle button after extruding? Press it only once to move the selection freely. Or you can after extruding press RMB. This will 'ungrab' the selected face which will move back to original position. Then you can press 'g' to grab it and move freely.

 

 

[Fidcal]

Ah yes, I was holding MMB down while dragging.

 

The origin I want to move to centre bottom generally. Other examples: doors need to be on the hinge edge typically bottom centre. Other rotators such as the rotary control need to be centred at the point of rotation of the wheel.

 

I'm going to assume one has to move all the surfaces together around the static origin.

[Fidcal]

Yes that fixed it thanks. I've got up to loading in the texture OK. I think I'll leave it there for the night and brace myself for wrapping tomorrow.

[Fidcal]

Up to the point where I shift + s cursor but accidentally select Selection Cursor instead of Cursor Grid. My chair disappears. I try Selection grid and Selection Center but cannot get my chair back.

 

Undo a few times and I get it back but I'd like to know what happened. Why did my chair disappear?

[Crispy]

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.

Tell me about it! There is hope, though: Apparently Blender 2.5's UI is very customisable, so all its weird uses of mouse clicks and stuff can be changed (e.g. you can use left-click to select, FINALLY). I found a thread where someone was customising it to work similarly to Maya's interface, which I'm much more used to, and is much more intuitive IMO. The level of customisation available sounded very promising. I'm really hoping it ends up similar enough in 2.6* that I'll be able to jump in and immediately be far more productive than with 2.4.

 

(Blenderheads will argue that Blender is more efficient once you learn it, and I'm sure that is true - I just have no interest in spending the time learning it, since it would ultimately be less efficient for me. I don't spend enough time doing 3D stuff for the upfront investment to be worthwhile. I just want to tinker, why is it so hard. )

 

*Blender 2.6 is the upcoming stable release of 2.5, due mid-2010. The odd version numbers are for development, while the even version numbers are for production, I guess.

[Fidcal]

No bitmap line in my ase export no matter what export options I select (incidentally one of them is different to what is in the tutorial.) There was a bitmap line in the ase produced by my earlier tutorial and the only difference I recall was I set materials and textures elsewhere.

[rich_is_bored]

Actually you can swap the mouse buttons in 2.4x too. But the settings are tucked away in a user preferences panel that's hidden away so well you'd never know it was there unless someone tipped you off. For those curious, it's hidden above the main menu. You access it by dragging the menu border down.

[stumpy]

that export panel is missleading, the panel with the big ok button on it, if an option is selected the button is dark, if its not selected then its light. the complete opposite of if its selected then it gets hi-lighted.

[Fidcal]

Yes that is a problem with single colour selection - which is the highlight and which not. I had to search around for a similar button where I knew the outcome - in this case the edge lengths in the editing section I can see the lengths show/not show when I click it.

 

I'm wondering if it is a different export script. If so, I think I'll switch to the one Arcturus gives if it means I don't have to faff around adding material names and textures elsewhere.

[stumpy]

its the goofosASE_2.4x_270107.zip that has the correct script, in win xp it goes in the

 

documents and settings/<username>/Application Data/Blender Foundation/Blender/.blender/scripts/

 

folder

[Fidcal]

How I hate pdf. Add to a long list I click on a link and nothing seems to happen. Click again. Nothing. Oh well pdf probably doesn't allow links. Copy and paste (which is not obvious how to do) then I find two copies of Internet Explorer opened in the background. What's wrong with the default browser? In fact I am actually using a pdf plug in in Opera to read it.

 

I cannot identify the export script I used nor the original download. Maybe I downloaded it directly into the scripts folder. I don't think it is goofos. I'll try that one next.

[Fidcal]

http://www.katsbits.com/htm/error_direct-downloads-not-allowed.htm

[Fidcal]

What idiots. Click on their own download link at katsbits and it gives an error page saying navigate to download. You navigate and finish up back at the first page where you click the link and - you guessed it - back to the error page. Good job I'm not stupid or I would be there all day. Don't people bother testing anything anymore.

[Fidcal]

I'm in XP on this machine but I can't find any blender folder in docs & settings. The only scripts folder is in the blender app folder.

 

But why won't this conflict with the earlier script (which I am not certain which it is? because all scripts are dated the same for some reason.) But I know I downloaded a script for this before.

[Fidcal]

The only download I could find via google was this one...

 

http://wagner-usa.net/udk/goofosASE-2.44v0.6.10b_9sept07.zip

 

So I don't know if it will do the biz or not

[Fidcal]

No different. Closed Blender. Moved out a file called 3ds_export.py even though it is dated the same as all the other scripts and put in the goofos file. But in Blender the export options are just the same as before - different to Arcturus' tutorial and the export still has not bitmap in it.

[stumpy]

script file

 

the file goes in the blender script directory either in program files or document and settings, dont know why mines different, might be because I manually update windows and sometimes add the extra updates you dont usually get via automatic updates.

Edited March 12, 2010 by stumpy

[Arcturus]

Up to the point where I shift + s cursor but accidentally select Selection Cursor instead of Cursor Grid. My chair disappears. I try Selection grid and Selection Center but cannot get my chair back.

 

Undo a few times and I get it back but I'd like to know what happened. Why did my chair disappear?

 

'Selection cursor' moves what you've selected to crosshair.

http://wiki.blender....ence/Menus/Snap

 

How I hate pdf. Add to a long list I click on a link and nothing seems to happen. Click again. Nothing. Oh well pdf probably doesn't allow links. Copy and paste (which is not obvious how to do) then I find two copies of Internet Explorer opened in the background. What's wrong with the default browser? In fact I am actually using a pdf plug in in Opera to read it.

 

I cannot identify the export script I used nor the original download. Maybe I downloaded it directly into the scripts folder. I don't think it is goofos. I'll try that one next.

 

Acrobat reader recogizes links.

 

What idiots. Click on their own download link at katsbits and it gives an error page saying navigate to download. You navigate and finish up back at the first page where you click the link and - you guessed it - back to the error page. Good job I'm not stupid or I would be there all day. Don't people bother testing anything anymore.

 

I had this problem under Opera too. In IE and Firefox clicking left mouse button opens save window.

 

I'm in XP on this machine but I can't find any blender folder in docs & settings. The only scripts folder is in the blender app folder.

 

But why won't this conflict with the earlier script (which I am not certain which it is? because all scripts are dated the same for some reason.) But I know I downloaded a script for this before.

 

I remember putting it into application folder. I don't think it will conflict. You propbably will have two scripts on the list.

[Fidcal]

That was the wrong one I moved out. I found another file: ase_export.py in scripts which I don't know how I couldn't see it before I went through that folder over and over in date order. Anyway, no difference. I moved it out, put the goofos one in but it's the same.

 

If anyone has the working goofos script and can upload it somewhere I'd be grateful.

[greebo]

Didn't I upload a working script for you a few pages ago?

[Fidcal]

Ah yes that's where I got the original from: ase_export - but it's not working with this tutorial and I think the reason is that one needs to enter a material name and texture separately rather than just in the uv editor. If this is the case then since we don't use that for darkmod then it's better to use the script that doesn't need it.

 

In the katsbits tutorial I had to create a material name, a texture name, navigate and find a texture and none of that is used for our purposes - then I still had to enter the same texture in the uv editor.