Talk:Modeling props with Blender

Information in this post: [1] to be incorporated later. --Rof 13:49, 2 Feb 2006 (PST)

Alternative SMD exporter

At the time of writing the given exporter link was dead. This alternative SMD Exporter posted by Dragonlord works fine. You will have to give your materials the same name as your .tga files (without the extension).

We should have the links in one place where they are updated - it makes no sense to go through several articles, changing the exporters... and it's not useful to have the same stuff in several articles. This place would be Blender, as it is the starting point if someone wants to work with it. --Vaarscha 06:36, 25 Apr 2006 (PDT)

Re-categorise

Only a small fraction of this great tutorial is specific to Blender. There are only a few lines describing how to Export an SMD from Blender. Once you've got an SMD (& TGA), the rest of the tutorial is a collection of really handy QC recipes which apply equally to compiling any SMD file (whether created by Blender, XSI, 3DS, etc) through StudioMDL. So I'm suggesting that this article be split, basically move the QC stuff out into a more general Model-compiling article, rather than being buried in the Blender-tutorials category. Possibly rename this article something like "Exporting SMD from Blender"? Does that make sense? --Beeswax 06:31, 22 Apr 2008 (PDT)

I think this is an excellent idea, though I would probably change the name to "Blender: Exporting SMD Files" and have equivalent names for each tool: eg. "XSI: Exporting SMD Files", etc. Giving the articles prefixes like this helps to organize all of the related tutorials together by tool when searching and in category lists. Ideally, each tool would have its own page with links to its home site, plugins, beginner tutorials, and VDC-specific tutorials, and all of the tools would be collected together under the "Tools" category with links to the main page of each. (The Tools category page, as it currently stands, seems curiously counter-intuitive to me. It would make more sense to me to have the main Tools page list all tools, with subcategories listing sub-groups of the complete list, but that's a comment for a different talk page....) The complete process of creating a model, material, etc., should have a single 'Overview' tutorial which breaks off into tool-specific pages as required before returning to the main tutorial. That's just the way it seems to me. Yithian 07:57, 24 Apr 2008 (PDT)

I've been thinking about how we might best include tooltip-links for the various modelling Apps. I'm interested in pinning down specific tasks in the model creation workflow. Each item in the table would be a wiki page in its own right.

The left-hand column Task articles would be the main tutorial, each including a "conceptual overview", "filepath orientation" and "design guidelines". Screenshots from XSI/3DS/HLMV/etc may be used to illustrate, say, an anatomical concept, but should (preferably) not be used to make a point that is specific to that App's interface. Each "Task" should carry a list of links to App-specific "Tooltips" which explain "how to achieve this specific task via this App's interface". In order to avoid verbosity and repetition, the Tooltip articles should be really concise - pretty much a list of which buttons to press in what order (with screenshots to help you find the buttons!). --Beeswax 07:05, 26 Apr 2008 (PDT)

Todo: If you can think of any key/generic modelling task that is not listed/covered please point it out.

Todo: The article names are negotiable, but this is my preferred "format". (IMO the task is the user-key, the App is just a means to an end.) Article titles need to be precise and concise - suggestions welcome.

Model Geometry Task Guidelines	Blender Tooltips	XSI Tooltips	3DS Tooltips	QC Tooltips
Create reference mesh	Hi-poly Mesh creation in Blender	Hi-poly Mesh creation in XSI	Hi-poly Mesh creation in 3DS	$model $body
Create reference UV map	UV mapping in Blender	UV mapping in XSI	UV mapping in 3DS	(included in reference.smd)
Create collision mesh	Lo-poly Mesh creation in Blender	Lo-poly Mesh creation in XSI	Lo-poly Mesh creation in 3DS	$collisionmodel
Create LOD mesh	Lo-poly Mesh creation in Blender	Lo-poly Mesh creation in XSI	Lo-poly Mesh creation in 3DS	$lod, $shadowlod
Create custom gibset	Custom Gibset creation in Blender	Custom Gibset creation in XSI	Custom Gibset creation in 3DS	$collisiontext
Create skeleton	Skeleton creation in Blender	Skeleton creation in XSI	Skeleton creation in 3DS	$collisionjoints
Create skeletal ragdoll	Skeletal Ragdoll creation in Blender	Skeletal Ragdoll creation in XSI	Skeletal Ragdoll creation in 3DS	$collisionjoints
Create skeletal animation	Skeletal Animation creation in Blender	Skeletal Animation creation in XSI	Skeletal Animation creation in 3DS	$sequence, $animation ?
Export SMD	SMD export in Blender	SMD export in XSI	SMD export in 3DS	(n/a)

Model Skin Task Guidelines	Photoshop Tooltips	GIMP Tooltips	VMT Tooltips
Create color map	Colormap creation in Photoshop	Colormap creation in GIMP	(RGB) $basetexture
Create normal map	Normalmap creation in Photoshop	Normalmap creation in GIMP	(RGB) $bumpmap
Create specular map	Specularmap creation in Photoshop	Specularmap creation in GIMP	(Greyscale) $envmapmask
Create luminosity map	Luminositymap creation in Photoshop	Luminositymap creation in GIMP	(Greyscale) $selfillum
Create opacity map	Opacitymap creation in Photoshop	Opacitymap creation in GIMP	(Greyscale) $translucent
Create LOD skins	Mipmap creation in Photoshop	Mipmap creation in GIMP	(QC: $lod)
Export VTF	VTF export in Photoshop	VTF export in GIMP

--Beeswax 11:03, 25 Apr 2008 (PDT)

The table is brilliant! Not only are there conveniently placed links to everything, but you have a built-in workflow. With a high-level workflow page covering each general topic ('Creating 3D Models', 'Creating Skins for 3D Models') explaining the workflow in general terms, with links to each of these stages and a link to this chart you have a sizeable chunk of the modding process organized and a handy reference for people who are still learning how it all fits together. I say: Do it! I've already started cleaning up the tool categories, so as long as people remember to add new pages to them properly you won't need to structure the titles of the pages the way I mentioned previously. The task is definitely more central than the tool, I was just getting a little frustrated with the general clutter. Yithian 05:24, 26 Apr 2008 (PDT)

Yay! I'm glad you like it and thanks for the encouragement :-) --Beeswax 06:11, 26 Apr 2008 (PDT)

One thing that's been bugging me though : as you say, each table does imply a workflow checklist in its own right. But, they only cover the workflow in the SMD editor and the VTF editor respectively. The overall modelling workflow would need to include a lot more QC/StudioMDL and VMT tasks ... and every time I try to think about those I get confounded by all the different optional model features, etc. In short, I don't want to give the impression of being comprehensive without actually being comprehensive! --Beeswax 06:11, 26 Apr 2008 (PDT)

Complex collisions

I know this is an old article but it's the only one I could find where there was a mention of non-convex collisions made in Blender. I was having a hard time doing collisions but eventually found out that you actually don't need multiple objects in Blender to create non-convex collisions. Only thing needed is that vertices are in different vertex groups and that they are not connected (in edit mode). Lth (talk) 15:37, 11 February 2016 (UTC)