[Nukester10]

Tea Monster, on 02 July 2012 - 01:23 AM, said:

The best way I find to do this is to download the .zip file from Blender.org.

1. Download .zip version of Blender 2.62 for your operating system from"here"
2. Unpack somewhere convenient. My Documents will do or leave in the Downloads folder.
3. Drop the script into the blender-2.62-release-(Your OS version here)\2.62\scripts\addons folder.
4. Go to File-Load Factory Settings.
5. Go to File-Save User Settings. (4 & 5 will clear out any settings for the new stuff in 2.63 that may cause you problems)

Pretty much it was a green light for Steps 1-5

What was interesting in Step 4 though was that when I was looking at the Victorian Table Mod and then I clicked the Tab,"Go to File-Load Factory Settings".Just as soon as I clicked on it,the Gui Immediately changed to the "Generic Cube Mod" that where all so familiar with when you first initially start using the Blender program for the first time.

Tea Monster, on 02 July 2012 - 01:23 AM, said:

Step 5. Go to File-Save User Settings (4 & 5 will clear out any settings for the new stuff in 2.63 that may cause you problems)

What kind of new stuff are you talking about in Blender 2.63 that may cause problems?

Tea Monster, on 02 July 2012 - 01:23 AM, said:

6. Go to File-User Preferences and enable the exporter

I checked off,"Import-Export MD3:( +shaders) is that what you're referring to?

Bty,what's the "+shaders" setting for? lighting? And would this attribute be invisible
after export like for example when bones are deleted out of a mesh after export?

Tea Monster, on 02 July 2012 - 01:23 AM, said:

7. Make sure you have defined each object with a customer property called 'md3shader' and set text box there to say 'model/s.jpg' - if you don't do this, the UV map won't be exported.

(also enable 'loop tools' if it isn't, this will make your modelling life a lot easier though it has nothing to do with the exporter.)

What are they talking about,"loop tools"!?

And as far as defining each object with "md3shader" where would you define it at? Line 2 in the next Gui for example?

Would it be written like this, Victorian_Table.md3shader.md3 <<<<<<< Something like this and on the second line as well?



Is there any need of ever dealing with this next Gui in either setup or later on? What is it for then if you don't
need to setup any,"Environment Variables" before starting,that's if this is true?



Also,the tag you mentioned written in this way,"models/s.jpg" rings a bell with me.
It reminds me of when you input info in NPherno's.Except in this case.....it sounds like what you're basically saying is that with this version of Blender you have to do it BEFORE it is even exported out of Blender 2.62 rather then later on like with Blender 2.49b?

[Nukester10]

To whom ever may know the answer to this,if you're using Blender.
Notice in the left panel in the pic above just left of the cursor where
I'm working down the leg.I'm trying to determine the best way in order
to insert a few torus shaped meshes which would hopefully,ultimately
resemble the circular shapes you see in the middle of the leg.

I know there are a few different ways of doing this but I'd like to end up
choosing the quickest and most efficient way.By efficient meaning less
verts the better.One way could get quite complicated and messy meaning
adding a few torus meshes and lining them up and attempting to not only
connect each together but more complexly,after,attempting to connect
all to the rest of the mesh nearby.That sounds like it would not only be a real
headache but also not a very clean way of working.

The second way,from what I understand would be to fill in the entire area then
pop a hole in the middle of the leg where you'd want the torses to end up.
I don't exactly remember what the procedure for this is called but I can
check it out on youtube again.This second way I think I'm going to go
with but I'd thought I'd like to get a second opinion on how to go
about doing this from another modder.

[Tea Monster]

Oh, I edited my original post with some extra info on exporting.

You can use booleans, which means get a cylinder and intersect it with where you want the circle to be. Then use the Boolean modifier to make a version that has an intersection (might not be intersection, try each one) of the two. Remember to apply your modifier. Then you delete the bits ot the cylinder that don't intersect the leg and you have your circle in the leg. After that, you'd need to follow the same proceedure for spindle and extrude, shrink and move, extrude shrink and move.

Option B is to get a circle you need of the right size and use the Shrinkwrap modifier to snap it to the side of the leg. Apply the modifier and delete the faces where the cirlcle is and then fill in the gaps around the circle.

[Nukester10]

Ok,I'm gonna demonstrate how I went about this but first as a sidenote I'd like to get your take on what's briefly going on here,I was just wondering why in this pic under "Editmode" you can see ALL of the "wireframe" throughout the Tableleg,



But in the next pic below under "Object Mode" you only see a few bits of the "wireframe"?



Boolean Modifier:

Here is a pic of "tableleg1" in "Object Mode" after the Modifier was applied,





Now as you can see in the pic immediately above in "Editmode" of "tableleg1" there
are a lot of triangles in there surrounding the newly placed hole in the tableleg and
I heard somewhere that's not such a good thing when going to export a mesh.
More or less one may have "errors" trying to export a mesh with these triangle shapes
within them.Have you ever heard of anything like this before? Do you think it's a big deal
or don't worry about it to much?

If you think I should try to clean up this triangle mess,how and which way would be
the best way to go about it? I'm just guessing you'd go into "Facemode" and start
removing the triangles so many at a time and then highlight the verts you're working
with,3 verts for example and then execute both the "Merge" then "Remove Doubles"
commands.The only thing that kinda sucks about that is I'm concerned about
knocking the overall shape that the cylinder mesh imprinted out of whack,so
even though I'd obviously be highlighting the verts on both sides of the hole,
I'd still be moving two verts at a time,one on each side of the hole,freehand.
But I guess I could resize another cylinder and use it as a background
template to move the verts by,I still wish I didn't have to go through
this lengthy process of moving all these verts around again just to get
the appearance of a halfway decent cylinder cutout in the mesh,but
I may just have to do this unless you know of a much
simpler process?

[Tea Monster]

Triangles are fine for games. Your mesh will get converted to triangles to go into the game.

With what you are doing, don't worry about having triangles. If you start playing around with it, you could knock the circle out of alignment. My advice? It's working, you don't need to quad it, it's good.

There are two reasons you are supposed to stick to quads. 1: It's easier to edit generally if you have quads. Inserting and deleting loops works on quadded meshes while it won't on triangulated meshes. 2: Subdivision Surface modifier (which doesn't work for games) won't work well on triangulated meshes. It gives surface artifacts.

[Nukester10]

Basically what I'm trying to construct here,is if you look at the pics in the above posts
you'll notice on the leg I've been working on has some ring shapes "designs" near the
center of the leg.Based on the shape of it's design I've decided in order to create this
realistically in Mod Form,it's going to take about 2 Torus Primitives and perhaps
a half of a Sphere Primitive in order to create the centerpoint of the design.

What needs to be accomplished first,slicing both Torus in half first then of course
Resizing,Reshaping and Joining all three mesh objects together Via Vertices in
order to create one Mesh Object consisting of 2 rings and most likely a half
sphere for the center of the finished object as just previously mentioned.

Finally,Duplicating and placing both the original and dup on opposite sides
of the newly formed hole in the leg and once again,attaching,"Joining" both rings on the
opposite sides of the hole by vertice as well.

Sounds easy enough but here's the problem,



If you'll notice,I've already sized and labeled the two separate mesh objects as,
"tablelegring1" and "tablelegring2"And they both are on separate Layers
as well along with everything else in the scene for easier editing.

Ok,so we're in Object Mode,I rightclick on "tablelegring1".........it becomes highlighted
with the color yellow.

Next while "tablelegring1" is still highlighted,I rightclick on "tablelegring2" (Shift + Rightclick)........it becomes highlighted with the color red,

Huh!? why red!? what is this all about!?

Beyond that the most important,how come when they're both highlighted and I go into Editmode
Blender will only allow me to Edit one at a time?

I need to "Edit Both At The Same Time" so I can,"Merge" and "Join" by Vertice.

The question is,"How do you get both meshes into Editmode "At The Same Time",so that they can be joined together by vertice?

[Tea Monster]

When you created the toruses, you created several different objects. Select both and then 'Cntrl'+'J' to join them to one mesh. repeat as required or shift-click on each one you want to have as one mesh and then 'Cntrl'+'J'. Hint: The last object you select will be the one they all 'merge' to.

Rather than use primitives, do the same thing with extrude and scale and move (you can use the arrow widget to get it to move in one direction). Highlight the ring that you have on the side of the leg, then extrude, scale and move, extrude scale and move.

[Mark]

What Teamonster said. Or does Blender have a lathe tool? Maybe that would create that part easily in one piece.

[Tea Monster]

There is, it's called the 'spin' tool:



But for what he's doing, by the time you set it up, the extrude method would be done.

[Mark]

Why do most things in Blender seem to be so much more complex then other programs ?

Its a popular powerful program but such a steep learning curve.

[Nukester10]

The Ctrl + J command did the trick Thanks!

A found a few other noteworthy commands to remember would be,

Adding a single Vertice (Ctrl + LMB) for creating the centerpoint of a circle for example.

Selecting an entire section of Vertices (Alt + RMB) instead of selecting each Vertice one at a time.
For me I'm righthanded so an easy way to remember this would be "Thumbing It" left thumb pressing
left Alt button then clicking RMB.

Selecting multiple rows of Vertices or Faces (Alt + Ctrl + Shift + RMB) and selecting these keys in this order too.
Another easy way to remember this would be,"Playing The Piano" being you're pressing so many keys at a time.

I know these catch phrases may sound kinda funny and they are but with so many keyboard commands in Blender trying to come up with a method of trying to remember all of these commands without having to look at a chart every single time,I figured might not be such a bad idea.

Btw, if you can think of any other easy to remember Keyboard Catch Phrases post them in this thread and
maybe if we get enough of them we can sticky them into the Tutorials Section



Speaking of selecting each Vertice one at a time.Notice how I have two rows of Vertices selected.
Normally what I'd do would be to Select 2 Vertices at a time and "Merge" them and then move on to the next two Vertices and continue on down the row.Doing it in this method though is Obviously A Very Time Consuming Process.

And from the pic above as well you can tell it looks like I'm about to do a "Merge".

The only problem is that if I where to attempt to do this using any of the options available in that particular gui,
the mesh would come out screwed up looking,without a doubt.

I don't know if there is but I was just wondering whether or not there is a method of connecting at least two rows of verts that would have them come out in the same manner as if you where sitting there doing the lenghthy process of right-clicking on two verts,then Merging then going on to the next two verts and so on and so on? Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

[Tea Monster]

Marked - I have no idea. They love doing things like that, and using 'emptys' to mark where certain things are. It drives me bananas some times. Much as I love the app, I'm the first to admit that it suffers from 'Open Source Syndrome' sometimes. The reasons that I do love it is that, apart from being free, it's very powerful and once you learn the command keys, it's very fast to model.

Nukester10 - Remember Loop tools? Google "Blender Loop tools" Look at the section that is named 'Bridge'. 2.63 with the new mesh system will do that for you, but the exporter isn't tested yet. Drek just gave it to me and I haven't had a chance to test it yet.

[Nukester10]

Tea Monster, on 12 August 2012 - 12:16 AM, said:

Nukester10 - Remember Loop tools? Google "Blender Loop tools" Look at the section that is named 'Bridge'. 2.63 with the new mesh system will do that for you, but the exporter isn't tested yet. Drek just gave it to me and I haven't had a chance to test it yet.

Ok,this Bridge Tool is just Amazing! Now I understand what you meant when you said earlier about how good the Looping Tools where.What an Excellent Time Saver.I don't know if this is the video you where talking about but here's the one that I looked at and WOW! it's just amazing at all the different construction tools you have under Looping Tools.It wasn't until I watched the section on "Bridge" that I was able to find the location of the button within Blender's gui.

Click Here For Loop Tools Video

The Amazing thing about this vid is that it covers Most All Of The Effect Buttons NOT just the "Bridge" button only!



The pic above just simply shows where I'm at at this Time on my table mod.You can see that not only is the circle design in the leg finished but I also placed this design on both sides of the same leg as well.All I have left to do besides adding a wheel to the bottom of the leg is probably running a couple of "Subdivision" lines down the outside edge of the leg to be extruded later on to give the outside edge or seam of the leg a more round shape to it.

TeaMonster I wanted to ask you a question about what happens when you first create a mesh?

On the left side of the screen near the bottom will be this Operator box that opens up just as soon as you grab a Mesh Primitive.

If you where grabbing a Torus for example you would have Settings info in a box that looks like this,

"Major Radius" Minor Radius" "Major Segments" "Minor Segments" < And There Settings Of Course

I noticed though just as soon as you go to do anything else,this box disappears permanently.
My question being,is there another way to view and change this info once you move on,or you
can only adjust your settings at the beginning and that's it? Because I looked all over for these
settings later on and couldn't find them anywhere?

[Tea Monster]

AFAIK, you get one shot at that when it's first created. If you don't do it then, you have to create a new one and adjust that.

[Nukester10]

In relation to this pic,I'm wondering if anyone might know what's going on here because I sure don't...............



"tableleg1""tableleg2" and "tableleg3" are on layer 2

The centerpost of the table which I made earlier on is on layer1

But that's not the problem,the problem is if for example you're in Object Mode you highlight all 3 legs of the table,
then go into Editmode, you can see the verts and everything appear normal but once you go into Object Mode
and you highlight the centerpost and that's despite whether or not you highlighted the tablelegs.Once you go into
Editmode not only can you not edit the centerpost it just simply goes POOF! and disappears!? You can see for
yourself in the pics above and below.It shouldn't be doing this...... but it is.Maybe somebody else might know what's going on here because I sure don't know?

[Spiker]

Try pressing Alt+H

[Nukester10]

Does anyone know of a keyboard command to get all three of these tablelegs to move towards the centerpost
at the same time so I can connect the verts?

If not I suppose that I'd have to create Groups from and that sort of thing.

[Tea Monster]

Not at the same time.

Is it one object?

If it's one object, then go into edit mode. select one vertice and then 'Cntrl' + 'L' to select every physically connected vertice. This shouldn't select the other two legs. Double check you have all the leg. Then 'G' and drag to the centre.
Repeat for the other legs.

You can 'float' them connected to the centre post.

Place the leg with the inside face just inside the surface of the centre post. Nobody will know it isn't really connected and it will save you a shed load of time and messy geometry.

If you insist on having it physically joined, you can try the boolean modifier. If you decide to use booleans, I would suggest though to split up the legs into three different objects and join them to the centre post one at a time. With doing three objects joining to one object at one time, I find that Blender will easily get confuseled.

[Nukester10]

Tea Monster, on 25 August 2012 - 04:12 AM, said:

Place the leg with the inside face just inside the surface of the centre post. Nobody will know it isn't really connected and it will save you a shed load of time and messy geometry.

Yeah,I decided to go with your first option,





In the pic immediately above,you can see where I'm basically just manually lining up the verts along the edge
as you described to do in your last post.




Now that you mention it,I did this earlier on when creating the tablelegwheel for the first leg
before Duplicating.You can tell by looking at the second screen in the pic above that the
axle isn't connected by any vertices at all.



Here's basically where I tightened things up from viewing by Grabbing both sides as shown
in the pic immediately above and Scaling down.



And as it shows in the pic Immediately above,this is the size of the wheel and wheel bracket
I decided to go with.

Getting back to lining up vertices again.Here in the next pick I wanted to try to get the centerpost
and tableleg at approximately the same height,



And here in this next pic I found the perfect angle for doing just that,





In the pic immediately above you can see where I finally Duplicated 2 more tablelegs.Yet
in these last 2 legs I'd like to Edit the wheels in both legs (turn the wheels in different directions
according to the original pic so as the mod would look more realistic).You can even see in the
Topview where I went to the trouble of placing each leg on X,Y, and Z Coordinates.
How this happened I was trying not to change the height factor on the two Dupes when
I was moving them around and this was the best location I could get at the moment.

Which leads us to my next question if anyone can answer it,

How would I pivot,"Tableleg2" and "Tableleg3" off of the "Centerpost" or even the Center Of The Grid
if need be? If we where Map Editing in Unreal Tournament 2007 I would know,lol! But being it's Blender,
the Command for this is still unknown to me at the moment?

[Tea Monster]

Go into top view. Place the cursor on the centre of the table's centrepost.

Select Pivot - 3D Cursor and then 'R' to rotate.


Oh, you may also want to google 'mirror modifier' for those table legs.

[Nukester10]

Tea Monster, on 25 August 2012 - 11:29 PM, said:

Oh, you may also want to google 'mirror modifier' for those table legs.

Are you saying you could split the first "Tableleg" down the middle vertically,
delete one side.Then Apply the "Mirror Modifier" Option and immediately after
doing so you would instantly notice a new mirrored side to the leg that wasn't
there before? Without even having to start the leg from scratch in order to accomplish
this task?

Basically in a nutshell,

How would I be able to use the,"Mirror Modifier" at this point
now that the leg has already been created!?

[Tea Monster]

You could do it 4 ways so you only need one table leg.

Honestly, Googling will get you a nice you tube or vimeo tut that will show you far better than I can explain it.

[Nukester10]

Through trial and error I was eventually able to get this," Mirror Modifier" lined up.whew! what a mess that was!



It was like somebody playing,Cat's Cradle with a piece of string when I started flipping the mod end over end
trying to get the,"Mirror Modifier" to just simply line up.And at first....it wouldn't!

The Coordinates where initially set to X but it wasn't until I started changing the Coordinates to Y and Z
all while flipping,spinning and rotating this mod around until I eventually got the Mod and Mirror Modifier
both lined up so that I could connect both sides together properly.

TeaMonster,at first I thought perhaps it was one of two things,

The first idea I had was remember the Boolean Modifier I applied earlier to the leg in order to create the
circular design(s) in the center of the leg? I was wondering if this was somehow interfering with the Mirror
Modifier being applied properly.

The second idea I had on this error occurring was that maybe this leg was too complex of a shape in order
to perform a Mirror Modifier at this stage and that perhaps I should have prepared for this in an earlier stage
of constructing this mod.

Like I originally said,I just decided to play around with it a bit and finally got the problem corrected.
I just thought that if this was a simple cube mod you wouldn't usually have to go about all of this
rotating nonsense within the 3 Coordinates,it would just automatically Mirror the Cube for you
without all of the hassle.

Here below are a couple of different pics I've provided to show where I'm at at the moment,





You mentioned in an earlier post of yours about just lining up the 3 legs just inside the centerpost
for which I did.Not only did I not connect the 3 legs to the centerpost I also did not connect the
3 tablelegwheels to each of their corresponding legs.

One other thing I did was the same thing I claimed in an earlier post of mine about lining the top
of the centerpost with the 3 legs.Once again,this is the current mod,the 2nd and 3rd leg of the
table where deleted after I decided to take your advice and attempt a Mirror Modifier upon
the first leg.Obviously from there I Duplicated and the pic you see Immediately above is the
current project so far.

TeaMonster I've been wanting to ask you about what this means in the lower left hand corner of
the screen in Blender,

(0) tablebottom

My question is,what is this for next to the title of the mod >>> (0)

I've noticed if you set Blender to Factory Settings and you get the cube primitive
it will read like this,

(1) cube

Just wondering and Bty,

Thanks,for all of your help and contributions to this thread and site you've made up till now!
It's certainly appreciated!

[Tea Monster]

Glad to help. It's looking good at the moment.

The number in brackets tells you the frame number (look on the timeline).

[Nukester10]

Ok, now that TheTabletop is finished,basically the entire Mod is finished and ready to be UV Mapped,



Only one question though,

How do you go about Marking The Seams on a Mod that's this complexly shaped?
We're not talking about a simple cube shape here.
Specifically The Centerpost,The Tabletop and The Wheels which are all round shaped objects?

Does anyone have any suggestions?

TeaMonster what do you think? How should I go about Marking The Seams on this Mod?

[Nukester10]

I was thinking of UV Mapping this mod in this particular order,

the 3 "tablelegwheels" first,which would include the wheel brackets and then,

the 3 "tablelegs"

and finally,

the "tabletop"

The only thing I'm wondering is though,is that does this all have to be UV Mapped at the
same exact time or can you UV Map each section of the table one at a time and adjust
and move the UV Map around where you want it in the UV Map Window?

Let's say, I UV Mapped just the "tablelegwheels" first and all you see to your right
in the UV Map Window is just the "tablelegwheels" mapped.

Ok,then you do a save.A save of what? just the "tablelegwheels" alone.

Then next,you repeat the same thing for the "tablelegs" and you do a save.

Then finally,you repeat the same thing for the "tabletop" and you do a save.

Now what do you have?

You have just saved 3 separate UV Maps.One Map file for the wheels.
One for the legs.And one for the tabletop.

Now I don't know if you can do this or not but having all three UV Maps in
separate files you decide to open a new UV Map Window and drop each
separate part of the mod onto a new UV Map and place it where you want it,
then do a save.

Can you do it in this way? Who knows?

But it sure might make things a heck of a lot easier though as far keeping your
UV Map looking straight and in order.

[Nukester10]

TeaMonster,

Recently,I attempted to UV Map this table after marking the seams throughout the entire mod and got this message in the
upper right hand corner of the screen,you know the same tab that gives you a message every time you remove doubles.

Anyhow,the message said something about not being able to UV Map the mod because of this "1.0 Scale" matter that
I recall you briefly mentioning in an earlier post.

Could you explain more about that and describe how you go about resizing the mod to this "1.0 Scale"?
The only tabs I could see you being able to readjust where the,"X,Y, and Z" Coordinates and when
I changed them all that did was to move the mod around on the grid but not "Resize" the mod?

[Tea Monster]

You can use several different UV maps on the 'mod'. Each object will be treated as a separate mesh within the MD3 and can use individual UV maps for each object.

Personally, I think that is overkill and you you should use one map for an object like this. Just my opinion.

Id run seams along the edges of the table legs so that each 'face' of the table leg was it's own 'island'. Once you do that, you can Cntrl-L and select each island in turn. You can then rotate the view so that face is towards you and then when you unwrap it, choose 'Project from View'. That way you can divide it up with a bit of sanity.

Under 'Transform' make your adjustments under the 'scale' section, not the 'location' one.

Not sure what error you are having there. What error did it come up with exactly, where was it and what were you doing when it occurred?

[Nukester10]

Tea Monster, on 11 September 2012 - 04:11 PM, said:

Not sure what error you are having there. What error did it come up with exactly, where was it and what were you doing when it occurred?

You can see for yourself in the pic above by looking in the upper right corner.

This is the message I'm getting after Marking The Seams,going into Facemode,Selecting ALL then Selecting "Unwrap" after pressing the "T-Key" or aka,ToolsTab.

The message reads as this,

"Object Scale Is Not 1.0,Unwrap Will Operate On A Non-Scaled Version Of The Mesh".

.......And That's It.

I don't get it,if it's saying in the message,unwrap will operate on a non-scaled version of the mesh.......then why isn't the mod showing up on the uv map then!?

Basically, I'd like to get the Object in 1.0 Scale if possible but also understand as well,what the other Blender message means that reads,"unwrap will operate on a non-scaled version of the mesh".

This probably doesn't mean anything but as a sidenote I did notice that the shape of the UV Map in
2.62 is rectangular but in 2.49 it was square.In this Blender message,it keeps stating for you to
change the dimensions of the mod but it almost sounds like you should be changing the dimensions
of the UV Map.I don't know,just sayin.

[Tea Monster]

I've not seen that myself, but there is a thread here that describes the problem:

http://blenderartist...t-scale-not-1.0

First off though, try going to the 3D viewport header, select Object > Apply> Scale & Rotation

Check that out and if still no joy then let us know.