[Kyanos]

I was curious if anyone out there can help me with a math problem.
Simply:
1 PgUp in mapster = ? in Blender

I know this is much more complicated, the answer would vary on scale and such.
If anyone has any clue (even a rough idea) it will save me whats looking like hours of trial and error.

[Hendricks266]

It depends on the xsize and ysize of the sprite as well as the scale of the model definition. I don't know if a concrete number actually exists.

[Kyanos]

Hendricks266, on 27 July 2011 - 03:53 PM, said:

It depends on the xsize and ysize of the sprite as well as the scale of the model definition. I don't know if a concrete number actually exists.

My plan is to make a few different "yard stick" models of various sizes. Define multiple scales to each. Measure their sizes in mapster terms and see if I can come up with anything.
Tomorrow this one doesn't sound like much fun.
Speaking of fun here's a challenge. I have some ideas on very technical stackable staircase models, (I'm a carpenter by trade) a spiraling open riser staircase with railing, made of 90 degree sections that get pieced together, being the most complex. (fully climbable with mutiple rotations once setup and clipped)

[Kyanos]

I have a few more questions on this topic, more to do with animation. I am working on a HUD model with blender.
I found it easier making my model as a few separate objects. When animating should I do all my frames as I still have my model divided into separate objects, then join them together for the MD3 export? Blender flips some of the faces when I join the objects which is very annoying. Will I need to join everything frame by frame? Knowing these things in advance will save me more trial and error. I always seem to chose error a lot
If anyone has any other pointers or a link to a good tutorial on MD3 animation please let me know.

[Hendricks266]

You don't have to merge them in Blender. NPherno's MD3 compiler can merge MD3s as separate surfaces, as long as they have an equal number of frames.

[Kyanos]

Thanks, I have seen some models coded with two surfaces and had no clue how that was done. You had posted about Npherno earlier, I use it just to check that my MD3 export works before coding it into Duke. When I exported before joining everything Npherno only showed one object. Obviously there is much more to Npherno than I thought.

[Kyanos]

I use Plagmans md3 exporter for blender 2.49. It includes shaders during export. Is this the shading that I make in blender with light? And if so how do I apply this to my md3 in Eduke?

[Nukester10]

@Tea Monster

As you can see I've been working on trying to recreate this Victorian Table in Blender.
For the Tabletop,first I deleted the cube,added a cylinder and resized it.Then,as for the
Centerpost I added a Sphere and then started adding and duplicating various sized cylinders.

Now here's the problem,

Next I was going to add another prefab object,most likely the cube for the bottom of the
Centerpost,but when I press "Space" "Add Mesh" "Cube" Nothing shows up!?

It works normally If I start out with a "New" Model but not with the one I'm working on.

So I don't know whether it's a glitch or maybe they'res to many vertices on one layer and I
should have used multiple layers,I don't know maybe you could help answer this?

One other thing I was wondering was notice how there is a round pink dot above the tabletop
when clicked on but when you click on the centerpost look where the dot is,I tried to delete
the dot but for some reason or other I think it's part of the Centerpost,could you explain
what this dot is and how I can get it back to where it's supposed to be?

Thanks

[Tea Monster]

Drek - you can have separate 'objects' in Blender and as long as they are highlighted together (Shift-Right Click in Object Mode), the MD3 should export them as one MD3. You don't have to actually join them to one object. Then, when you import into NPherno, it will prompt you how many of the objects within the MD3 you want to bring in. Select them all and it should import them into NPherno.

Nukerster10 - Make sure you are not in Edit mode, de-select everything then try to add it again.

To centre the objects centre point, go to the 'Panels' window and click on the square with the dots on the corners. Under 'Mesh' there are three beige buttons marked with 'Center' The first one will move the centre-point to the middle of the object.

It looks like you have too many polys there for a game model. Adding primitives can work, especially if you are new to modelling, but the best way to do that stuff is to make sure you are in Object mode, de-select everything else and then go to Add-Circle. A box will pop up with the number of vertices to add to the new circle. For a game model, you'll want to choose something like 8 or 12. Once you have your circle, switch to 'Edit' mode and use extrude ('E' Key) to create a new loop. If you drag with the middle mouse button held down, it will draw the new loop down in a straight vertical line. If you want a 'thick' bit, after you've drawn your circle down, use scale ('S' key) to make it bigger.

If that is too much, then add a cylinder (again, choose the right number of faces). Get it to the right length, then switch to edit mode and if you hit Control-R, and hold your mouse near the mesh, it will show you a pink line on the side. Left-click to create a new edge-loop on the mesh. Moving the mouse will slide the edge loop up and down the cylinder. Another Left-click will 'fix' it to place. By adding edge loops and scaling them, you can easily create the bumps and indents of the table leg very quickly. Also, at the end of the day, it's all one mesh with a continuous skin. Using the other method, you'll have all those 'wasted' faces inside the spheres and cubes that you won't ever see, but your PC will know is there ;-) .

[Kyanos]

Thanks Tea Monster! I've been trying to do some trees lately and can make nice trunks and branches with curves (made into meshes.) Do you have any good tips on how to draw low poly leaves?

[Nukester10]

Tea Monster, on 18 October 2011 - 11:43 PM, said:

To centre the objects centre point, go to the 'Panels' window and click on the square with the dots on the corners. Under 'Mesh' there are three beige buttons marked with 'Center' The first one will move the centre-point to the middle of the object.

Yes,Blender Did Allow Me To Center The Centerpost As You Can Tell From The Pic.
I Also Decided To Center The Tabletop As Well, To See What Would Happen.When I Did This
I Noticed That The Tabletop And Centerpost Both Situated Themselves Pretty Close To The
Center Of The Grid.

Quote

Tea Monster
Make sure you are not in Edit mode, de-select everything then try to add it again.

Nope, It Ain't Happening,I Attempted This In Object Mode Just As You Described And
Unfortunately Blender Still Will Not Allow Me To Add Another Prefab.

Quote

Tea Monster
It looks like you have too many polys there for a game model.

Are You Saying Pretty Much I Need To Delete The Number Of Vertices Or By Polys Do You
Mean,Delete The Number Of Faces?

I Don't Know What's Going On But I'm Guessing It Has Something To Do With The Number Of
Vertices I've Used In Creating The Centerpost.You Know Though,I'm Just Guessing There Are
At The Most Maybe Between 1800-3000 Verts For Just In The Centerpost Alone And To Me That
Shouldn't Be Anywhere Near The Amount Of Verts Blender Should Be Able To Handle.
I Would Have Figured Blender Could Have Handled At Least 25,000 To 30,000 Verts At
One Sitting With A Breeze.

Maybe You Could Explain More About That If You Could?

I'm Probably Going To Experiment With The "Edge Loop Control-R" You Mentioned On The
Centerpost.I Tried This Before When I Built That Chair A While Back And It Was Not Easy,So
I Pretty Much Gave Up On It But I Did Obviously End Up Finishing The Chairmod Though.

If I Had That Much Trouble Trying To Minimize Verts With Just A Simple Chair,Can You Imagine
How Hard It's Going To Be To Try This On This Uniquely Shaped Centerpost? LOL!



Btw,I Wanted To Make Sure The Whole Centerpost Was Connected,Not Just Each New Piece
Rubbing Against Each Other,So In The Next Pic I'm Just Showing You How I Managed To Connect
Each Part Of The Centerpost As I Moved Along,I'm Guessing It Doesn't Matter How You Connect It
As Long As It's Connected?I Don't Know,Tell Me What You Think?

[Tea Monster]

Drek - NP, the best way of doing low poly leaves is with alphas. Create a plane that encompasses a swath of leaves, then uv map leaves onto the surface, and have the section around the leaves transparent. The best way to do this is to create the leaf texture in Photoshop/GIMP and create the leaves on one layer and have an empty layer below. This is what I'm aiming at (not my tree btw).



At this site, you can find an example tree to see what I'm talking about. http://www.unifycomm...p?title=Unitree

One thing to look out for: There used to be a transparency bug with Polymost where, if you stacked a number of different alpha planes in line with each other, you got problems. I don't know if it's still a problem or if it got fixed, It might not even be an issue with Polymer at all.


Nukester10 - If you want to model it that way, then go ahead, I was thinking it was a game model, in which case, once you had a few tables and chairs in your scene, the game engine would start to chug. Not sure what is causing your problem there with creating new objects. Are you getting the box that pops up asking you how many rings, verts, etc you want in the form? Just wondering as I tried adding something and if you click off that box, it assumes you don't want it and it won't add it. Maybe you are double clicking and making that box dissuader just when it pops up. Or the window may be going to the back and you can't see it. Are you using Windows? One other thing to check, do you still have the default cube at the centre of your scene? Sometimes, I've added a sphere and its been added to the same point as the cube and you can't see it as the cube covers it. Try moving one of your forms to one side and see if you can see it (or switch to wire view). The other thing is to check the outliner and make sure they are not on another level.

[Kyanos]

Thanks for this ^ Tea Monster.
I have noticed some issues in polymer still when using partial shaded or colored transparency on surfaces that overlap other parts of the same model. It makes parts of the model that are behind the transparent skin disappear. Using pure %100 transparency seems to be ok. I will do a more detailed report on the exact glitches I have come across after some more testing (and in the proper thread.) For now I will say that I have noticed that partial transparency in a model will make TROR semitransparent water disappear. It's almost like semi-transparency gets added onto other semitransparent surfaces.

[Nukester10]

Tea Monster, on 20 October 2011 - 02:05 AM, said:

"By adding edge loops and scaling them, you can easily create the bumps and indents of the table
leg very quickly. Also, at the end of the day, it's all one mesh with a continuous skin. Using the
other method, you'll have all those 'wasted' faces inside the spheres and cubes that you won't
ever see, but your PC will know is there ;-) . "

Yes,Veeeery Quickly! I Scrapped The Centerpost Mod In The Pic I Showed You Up Top And Started This
New One.Thanks For The, "Ctrl-R" Suggestion Tea Monster!
I Was Just Simply Amazed At How Fast I Was Able To Construct The Centerpost Using This Method
You Described! I Believe I Accomplished The Main Construct This Way In Under An Unbelievable
40 Minutes! Compared To How I Was Doing It Before,"Connecting One Prefab To The Next"
It Was Like Night And Day!This Centerpost Is Just, ONE ENTIRE PIECE Bty,There Are No Other Prefabs
Of Any Kind Attached To This Mod Whatsoever And I'm Hoping To Finish The Whole Mod Using This Same
Process.





The Only Thing I'm A Bit Concerned With Though And As You Might Have Guessed By The Detail, That I
Decided To Go With A 32 Vert Cylinder, Then Worked From There, Over The 8 or 12 Vert That You
Mentioned Me Possibly Using Earlier,I Liked The Higher Detail.Anyhow,I'm Probably Going To Take A
Shot At Attempting To Minimize The Amount Of Verts On This Mod By Trying To Learn How To Use
The Edge-Slide Tool Later On Down The Road If It Becomes Necessary,I May Not Have To But I'm Sure
You Would Agree,That The More You Learn About Using Blender The Better Off You'll End Up Being.

In Relation To This Though, I Noticed That The (1317_Stripper Mod) In Editmode Contains,I Believe I'm Reading This
Correctly In The Top Right Hand Corner Of The Blender Mainscreen That's,

(Key)Ve:0-962 Ve: / Ed:0-2243 / Fa: "unable to view this info....... that is if there is any to begin with"


Someone Else Told Me That The First Part, The " Ve:" Stands For How Many Vertices Are Contained
In The Mod.The Zero Next To The 962 Will Change Depending On How Many Vertices You Have
Activated By Pressing The "A" Key On And Off Or Using The "B" Key For Border Selection As Well
For Example.

The Second Part,"Ed:0-2243" I Don't Have A Clue What This Means,Maybe You Could Explain This If
You Would?

And Finally The Third Section,"Fa:" Well First Of All I Can't Read The Rest And Even If I Could I Wouldn't
Know What It Meant Anyhow,Could You Explain What This Means As Well As How I Could View This Better?

Now In Comparison, The Stats So Far For This Mod I'm Working On Contain,


(Key)Ve:0-2752 Ve: / Ed:0-5501 / Fa: <------------------Once Again I Can't Read This,But EDIT: I Believe I Finally
Figured Out What All This All Means And If I'm Wrong Let
Me Know!

Ve: = Vertices
Ed: = Edge
Fa: = Face

Right?

Now Like I Said Earlier,Is There Another Way To Find Out What The "Fa:" Count Is, Being That It Is Currently Not Viewable Because,It's Tucked Away In The Top Right Corner Of The Screen? I Don't Know How Important It Is, Just Asking.

Now At This Point I'd Like To Ask You,Do You Think I'm Going To Have To Use The Edge-Slide Tool Eventually Or
Maybe Not?




Now For The Main Reason I'm Replying It's Because I Seem To Have A Problem Using The "Mirror" Modifier.

Here's A Pic I Got Off Of Photobucket That I'm Using For Reference.Notice That There Are Three Legs.
I Guess My Question Would Be,How Would You Go About Mirroring Not One Other Leg But "Two"
At The Same Time?I Haven't Ever Seen A Tutorial Like This Anywhere,So Maybe You Might Know How To
Do This?




In Final,I'm Having A Problem Mirroring The Precise Location I Want.
Could You Explain In Detail The Proper Procedure For Doing This?

Thanks Again

[Kyanos]

In response to your mirroring question. I would solve it as follows.

Assuming both leg and centerpost are seperate objects. If not duplicate both than delete each one from each other until you have two objects, one center post and one leg.
1) In object mode from top ortho-view set the leg origin to the exact center of the center post.
2) Still in obj mode and top ortho-view duplicate the first leg and rotate 120 degrees (assuming equal thirds being the location you want for each leg)
3) Now duplicate the second leg and rotate it 120 degrees.
4) Rejoin any objects you wish to share skins and such.

I hope this helps you out.

[Hendricks266]

Nukester10, on 25 October 2011 - 10:55 PM, said:

Yay, You Have Modeled A Very Nice Looking Dildo!

[Tea Monster]

If you hit that triangle between the 'i' and 'file' on the top line, it will collapse the file menus so you can see the object and file counts.

Ve: =Vertices (dots)
Fa: = Faces (polygons)
Ed: = Edges (lines between dots (vertices)).
Ob: = Objects in scene. First number is the total number of 'things' in your blend file, this includes cameras and lights. The second number after the dash is how many of them you have selected.

Once you get proficient with that method, you'll be able to do that in TWO minutes.

I keep saying this, but all this info is available here. It's a great place to learn about Blender. Another one is here. All this stuff that you are asking about is there. I could tell you, but they do a much better job of explaining things than I do.

[Kyanos]

Thanks for the links Tea Monster. Kats Bits is full of great material. I have a md3 export script from them that is almost working for Blender 2.6

The UV co-ordinates are lost and only draws the bottom left pixel of the skin.
Hopefully a working exporter comes, Blender 2.6 has new shape keyed animation that looks great.

[Tea Monster]

Glad you found that usefull! It,s a bit of a goldmine that place.

Have you tried out the one we discussed earlier (I think the guys name was xembie or something.

If its the same one, you have to set up the special proprty section with that md3 line. There is a description of how to set it up on his website. I'm pretty sure there is a link earlier in the thread. I'd drop you a link but I'm on my smartphone as we've just moved and I don't get 'real' interwebz till friday

[Tea Monster]

The site is here. Make sure you put in the custom property named “md3shader”. I exported the pistol and all the UV coords came over fine. It was working with 2.57 and I think 2.58 but I've not tested it with 2.60.

[Kyanos]

Tea Monster, on 13 November 2011 - 12:15 AM, said:

The site is here. Make sure you put in the custom property named “md3shader”. I exported the pistol and all the UV coords came over fine. It was working with 2.57 and I think 2.58 but I've not tested it with 2.60.

Check Katsbits tools page or our tuts & resources thread. I made one for 2.6

[Tea Monster]

Cool one!

[Kyanos]

I'm having some trouble exporting my shape key animation (no UV texcoords.) Can anyone tell me if mesh shape keys has worked for them in the past on older blender versions, or are all md3 animations done using bones, or simple object manipulation?

[Tea Monster]

I'm not sure about shape keys. I know that bones are supported in 249 and 25x. Mesh position is supported in 25X. You could move objects around if you parented them to an empty in 249.

Oh, and in answer to an older question, one Blender unit equals one metre.
9

[Kyanos]

Thanks for an answer it seems I may be into new grounds here. I got the mesh animation exported properly, I can then import to 2.49 and unwrap it afterwards. Kinda ass backwards but I've heard of crazier work flows when exporting models.

And to add to the Blender unit equation.
1 blender unit = 1 metre
MD3_XYZ_SCALE = 64.0

Therefore 1 blender unit = 1/64 of a metre MD3 scale. or about 3/5 of an inch. Yes, I said three fifths.

[Tea Monster]

The scale thing is great. The only problem being that I gave up on trying to maintain scale between game objects in different Blend files as I never thought someone would actually code this :-) one good thing is that it would stop the bizzare effect I've seen a few times where you write you're defs and when you open the game up, you think there is a problem with the model, that is, until you notice that it is a tiny little dot on the floor!

Why are you messing with 249?

[Kyanos]

Tea Monster, on 19 November 2011 - 08:21 AM, said:

Why are you messing with 249?

For the working md3 importer, just to take a look.

It's not necessary, I had thought my UV textures were getting misplaced when I did a shape key animated test export. Turns out I didn't save the blend file when I defined the 'md3shader' custom property and did my first test export. Then I animated it and exported without 'md3shader' defined and way over thought my possible errors, I spent a few more hours staring at that script.

So the final answer to this bit is... Yes blender will export shape key animations nicely to md3. Very nicely indeed. (Evil laughter echos through the room, Mwa ha ha)

[Tea Monster]

That's a pretty powerfull feature. I've not checked, but can't you bake physics sims into vertex anims? That would require a full-on 'sharks with lasers' moment.

[Kyanos]

Tea Monster, on 19 November 2011 - 01:42 PM, said:

That's a pretty powerfull feature. I've not checked, but can't you bake physics sims into vertex anims? That would require a full-on 'sharks with lasers' moment.

 cloth.zip (187.22K)
Number of downloads: 319Check this in npherno!!!
Sharks with lasers it is!

[Mark]

That model animation is kick-ass. I also saw some you-tube videos today showing face motion capture and animation for blender.