My learning thread!

[mwgrafx]

I’m pretty new to Blender but I have been watching it with interest. With the cool stuff happening I decided to take the plunge and get to know it real well. I ran into a few snags and have had come up with a few questions on what thing are. Hopefully this thread will answer my question but more important that it might inspire others to learn Blender also.

I’m writing this thread as a WIP of a level I’ve wanted to do for some time. I have already begun on a few assets. I know what GLSL is but what is the difference between Texture Face and MultiTexture?

If you look at the images below, if I leave shadeless off I get a bleached out picture like the one below. If click it on, I get a good render. I thought shadeless has to do with shadows? Also does Blender 2.5 handle shadows yet?

If you look at the image below I have a TON of questions. First I want to tile the wall, if you look at the UV’s you can see how I did this. Is there a better way to accomplish this? What if I want to do GLSL Texture Splatting in Real Time?

Second, When I render this scene I get no textures showing. I uv mapped them and assigned uv’s in the texture feild. Am I doing something wrong? Sorry for the many questions but I’m trying to wrap my brain on completeing the level. I will keep posting my work as I move along with it. Thanks in advance!

[The_Dawisch]

I love the “hand painted” kind of look on that texture for the prop. What was your workflow for that? Did you just paint it in Gimp or what? It looks good so far

[JESUSFRK14 (craig snedeker)]

Looks fantastic (the prop)

[mwgrafx]

@The Dawisch - Yes it is handpainted. I used ArtRage for the painting. It feels so natural to me. I used Blender’s 3D paint tool to touchup.

@ JESUSFRK14 - Thanks! The level is going to be to that caliber. I want to get started on the room and add props as I go along. Just not quite sure the uv mapping method I’m using is the best method.

Also I tried to append props to no avail. Any ideas?

Edit: Here another prop i started, completely Blender’s 3D paint tool.

[rolo_gl]

Here in my thread I go around explaining some GLSL stuff, like stencils.
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=186901

The difference between Texture Face and Multitexture mode have something to do with the use of blender materials. Chronologically, Texture Face is the oldest graphic mode, folleowed by Multitexture (where you can’t do stuff like in GLSL but when using material you get a bit of control over specularity and basic texture blending) and finally GLSL.

I’m not very sure why it does look bleached out on your file, I don’t have issues :S
Shadeless mean that the character surface won’t be affected neither by light sources nor shadows over it, if it doesn’t have a texture it will have a flat color (the material color) if it has a texture it will show the texture as in a imaging program (ex: GIMP).

Yes, Blender support real time shadow but only with SPOT lamps, but not too many of them at the same time because it uses lots of resources, they have also issues with the size of thing, not too big nor small or it glitches around.

You get a black box on the room because the renderer forces all faces to be 2-sided, if the light is inside the room, the exterior will be dark.

Yeah you UV map things just like you did, nothing wrong about that.

[mwgrafx]

In keeping true as to learning Blender, why is it when I hit control S or control W it creates multiple files? See the attachment.

@ Cloud_GL - Thank you for the explanations!

[mokazon]

Hi, your modeling and texture painting skills are very good!

About your last question, blend1, and blend2 files are just back-up files of your older saves. So in case you accidentally save something over, just go to your blend1, or blend2 file. I believe you can turn this feature off, or even add multiple back-ups as far as like blend9, blend10, etc.

[mwgrafx]

@ mokazon thanks for the info!
Here is a screen grab of the textures at work. Still real basic, I know about the tile not lining up on the walls. I just wanted to get a feel for it. I’m going to flesh more of it out later on.

[rolo_gl]

The textures look good, if you aren’t using GLSL then I recommend you using a bit of vertex painting, to add some variation to the flat surfaces.

[mwgrafx]

Good call!

[mwgrafx]

I want to build a waltkthrough of the level to protype. I am using it to make sure that things are to scale. I created a simple box and followed this tutorial click me. I followed it and nothing happens when I press Play. I am using Blender2.52.5. Am I doing something wrong?

[rolo_gl]

That build is one from graphicall or the official alpha 2? Some builds have some parts of blender disabled, also I don’t know how complete is the functionality of the GE on 2.50.

[mwgrafx]

It is a build from Graphicall.org. I thought the game engine has been somewhat implemented because I looked at this Tutorial. Maybe I’m using an outdated build? Thanks for all the help Cloud_GL.

[mokazon]

mwgrafx: you probably are using like a SoC version or something that doesn’t include BlenderPlayer. go to graphical.org and under ‘Latest Blender Builds’, change ‘All Os’s’ to your operating system, and change ‘All Types’ to ‘BF - Blender Foundation’ then just hit view, and select the one on the top and it should work fine.

[mwgrafx]

Thanks Mokazan. I figured out what I was doing wrong. Can anyone point me in the direction of setting up a 3rd person camera setup? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[mokazon]

mwgrafx: a simple ready to use one is the ‘camera’ actuator. just select the object you want it to point to, set the hight, minimum distance and maximum, hook it up with an always sensor, and an ‘and’ controller and you should be set.

oh btw, I sent you a PM

[The_Dawisch]

The textures look good, if you aren’t using GLSL then I recommend you using a bit of vertex painting, to add some variation to the flat surfaces.

Vertex painting also works fine in GLSL. You just have to do a simple node setup.

[mwgrafx]

Thanks for the info mokazon. I got to work just some wrinkles to iron out.
Thanks for the tip Dawisch.

[mwgrafx]

Finally got some time to work on this project. This is going to be one of the characters in the level. I’m not much of an animator so there is going to be a steep learning curve after I get this guy textured.

[mokazon]

looks awesome cant wait to see it textured