Hi - I will admit right off the bat that I am very new to 3D modeling - but not to graphic design. Anyway - I am trying to render a couple of basic models I created but whenever I render them I get uncontrollable views (as in the camera’s I create don’t control the render view) and the textures, don’t show up at all. The “infinite” distances or “backgrounds” always show up as a nice blue color - more like the blue screen of death if you ask me - and the mesh objects show up with a harsh gray scale look. How do you make it render with texture and lighting, and how do you control the render view port? I am using version 2.42a - downloaded yesterday. Any help greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Also - I figured I’d link to a couple of screen shots - The first image is what it looks like while modeling - seems to render just fine - the second image is the render display window (also the same in render preview and when saving a still image).
try them again - I’ve already checked them - I admit for about 45 seconds after I posted they were incorrect - I had forgotten they were in the sub folder.
Ok, for one you can change the color of the background with texture or image or color blends, just go to shading (F5) and world buttons is going to appear on the right side (it looks like a tiny earth).
Now this is where I know little, because I am new to blender as well
Before you render you should recalc normals (ctrl - n) - in edit mode (when you can see verts). And if some areas are black for no reason enable see normals in edit mode so that you can which way they are pointed.
What you rendered doesn’t look like a render (looks like an open gl render), make sure you have a 1) Camera and it points to the object ( zero to see the view of camera), 2) Some kind of light source, 3) Putting textures on a material can be a pain the ass a lot of times, especially if you are new to blender. Select an object the go to F5 and click add new, then mess around with the settings, if you need texture go to the texture place (same line as shading button). Also you can have different textures to different parts of an object by assigning textures to the verts (look for a tutorial), and one more thing is that there is a python called blander library I recommend you download it and use it. There you can manage all of your textures and use them at any time. You can also pull out textures, lights, objects out of other blender files by using File- Append .
Yeh, he is right. I went through a huge number of tutorials before I began to work on my first model. (The only thing is that I made it by 97% extraction, but it is a very complex model (for me), you can see it here
and I used arms and legs from the makehuman software to speed up the process , I am sure they don’t mind)
@gat - Thanks - Probably the most helpful thing you mentioned was that it appears to be an OpenGL render - that will “hopefully” point me in the right direction. Also - I did get some things to render before I read your reply - but I had to use the method(s) you described to add textures. When I asked the question I had only tried using UV maps - which are extremely useful - and fairly easy to add to just about anything (as long as it is a mesh face). Do you happen to know how to get UV mapped textures to render? Also - how do you turn MipMapping on/off?
@Roger - Thanks you too - I actually have already read through most of that article - I found it myself. I’ve taught myself everything I know about computers - mostly using the internet as my resource. I’m a web designer and web applications programmer mainly - but I have done quite a bit of other stuff as well - some small games in 2D and a dabble in 3D a couple years ago. I know its a somewhat daunting task to most people to learn a new program but I pride myself in picking up (at least the basics) in new programs pretty fast. As for my questions being broad - I don’t really have the experience to know just how broad my questions are - I try to be as specific and detailed as possible without going off track. I guess the more detailed version of my question is now posted above in the @gat section. If you have the answers to those it would be greatly appreciated - if not - I will continue my valiant quest. btw - I’m learning to model in 3D because I want to use it in a web design project I have acquired - but of course - I have to be able to render my models if I am going to use them in the 2D world of web design. Thanks again.
(Note - this is supposed to be a separate reply - not an edit.)
@gat - That’s a really good model - do you have any suggested tutorials that are fairly detailed - even if they are not “beginner” tutorials I can usually work my way through them. I have found that sometimes a well written tutorial for an intermediate level person is often much easier to complete than a poorly written tutorial for beginners - usually because intermediates and beginners write most of the beginner tutorials.
I actually typed this post last night, but I lost it so I went to sleep.
All I can recommend is to only do the tutorials you know you going to use. Like forget about particle and liquid tutorials for now, until you learn the modeling techniques and rendering skills.
One thing anyone new should do is visit blendernation.com every single day. it has collection of very good tutorials and news about blender.
Also, there is a blender magazine and issue 8 just came out, which is ll about modeling a car. The other issues cover just about everything else, you should at list check them out.
I did my model in 3 ways. One I began with a sphere and extracted and moved sufaces to make the head and the shoulder things, 2) I extracted verts to make a kind of wire frame and from there I extracted sides (e), subdevided and merged verts (w). 3) I took the arms and legs from the makehuman software 3D person. I also used subsurface scattering faking python, but you shouldn’t think about it just yet, but its not hard to do.
There is a tone more, but I am not going to start talking about it all. Good luck
Thanks - I did find blendernation quite useful. I will make sure I check back regularly to see what they have. However - the one thing I have questions about is the one thing that I can’t find a single tutorial on - everywhere I look it says that tutorials for Rendering haven’t been created yet. Here is my one and only question at this point - the rest I can muddle through because I don’t need fantastic models as of yet. My question is how to get Blender 3D version 2.42 (or the new 2.43 RC2 - which I also tried yesterday) to render textures that have been UV mapped to a mesh surface. The alternative to this is to tell me how to make a regular material map to the object/mesh using an actual UV map that I created. I think I have gotten close - but I just can’t quite figure out the right settings on my own. If you have any thoughts on this I’d love to hear them.
THANK YOU! That little side note they make is ALL that I have been searching for. I honestly don’t know why I didn’t stumble across it myself after all the searching and browsing I did. But no matter now - I can finally render my beautifully mapped textures. (Really I’m not bad for a noob). But I probably could have spent another week searching for that if you hadn’t shown it to me. Thanks again - and thanks to you too gat because your information did point me in the direction of some other information and ideas. Happy modeling!
You seem to be progressing at light speed…can we use that AI machine that Dr. McCoy used to stitch Spock’s brain back into his body to make available for other people to download! You go big guy…you got any more (specfic) questions not covered in the wiki, ask 'em right here!
