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Home ? Importing Assets ? Learning blender

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22/10/2012 14:31:31

JamieMuvizu staff
Jamie
(Account inactive)
Posts: 609 		There's been a bit of chatter on the forums recently about blender and how to use it, so here is a series of tutorials and pointers that will let you create a model, collision, an UV or ID texture and Ambient Occlusion (AO) map to import into Muvizu. Hope this helps.


Step 1


The first step is to learn blender UI and the basics of modelling. To do this I followed tutorials 1 - 8 from http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL006307E237BB7FF6&feature=plcp


























Step 2


Next up is to generate UV and AO maps for your model. One important point here is the naming of your files, so that Muvizu knows how to import it. If you don't name your files this way, then it won't work on import to Muvizu.


id_my_texture.png


ao_my_texture.png


Unwrap


What I found was that its best to use the "Smart unwrap" option in blender. Then select the part of your model you want and seperate out that part on the uv map. The reason is that as good as "Smart unwrap" is, the resulting UV map layout is all jumbled up and in order to have any idea of what part of the map relates to what part of the model you need to go through the model and re-arrage the sections to make sense once you get in to photoshop / paint / gimp.


Shortcut keys for uv editing in blender -


a - select all / deselect current
b - box select
s - scale
r - rotate
g - grab / move
shift - right click - add or remove a vertice from the selection











Step 3


Finally add collision and export your model. Also I'd keep it as simple as possible, use basic cubes and only where you actually need it to be. E.g. where you want the object to sit on the ground in Muvizu and where you really really need a character to stand.


Note: Collision must be in CAPTIALS e.g. UCX_ob_my_model to go with ob_my_model object.


Export script for blender is at http://code.google.com/p/ase-export-vmc/




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Direct, don't animate!
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22/10/2012 16:10:24

MrDrWho13Muvizu mogulExperimental user
MrDrWho13
Posts: 2220 		WOW, cheers Jamie, that's a lot of info!
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22/10/2012 16:10:35

WozToonsExperimental user
WozToons
Posts: 494 		Thanks for the pointers Jamie, will try and get into it again when I get some time to spare. It's nice to have some pointers on what is necessary and what's not. Saves a lot of time and fiddling.

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22/10/2012 16:48:31

urbanlamb
urbanlamb
(Account inactive)
Posts: 1786 		truly its not that hard I think people get all worried because of all the buttons. I was going to create a couple of tutorials as well on using things other then sketchup starting with one on making terrain. Its on par with 3dsmax only rearranged and the newer versions of blender are not crashtastic. Original blender was crashtastic but its much improved since it first went open source.

If your going to spend time learning something in my opinion blender is a better choice but that is just me. You can still use stuff off of google 3D but usually when you start using blender you will realize just how messed up a lot of the google models are lol
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22/10/2012 19:45:55

ziggy72Muvizu mogulExperimental user
ziggy72
Posts: 1988 		Hmm... just before I start filling my brain with yet another 3D program (!!) I would like to ask one question, Jamie - can Blender do boolean operations? And I mean proper ones, where you can remove one shape's overlapping area from another shape (unlike the 'sorta' boolean in Sketchup) and do it simply. If it can, I'm in!
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22/10/2012 20:18:34

urbanlamb
urbanlamb
(Account inactive)
Posts: 1786 		I am not jamie but yes it can do whatever sketchup can do but more efficiently. I dont know how hard it is to do in sketchup so I can't say its easier but to me blender is easier period so in my biased opinion yes its likely waay easier

I dont want to add to much but this is the site that I used and well at times still use for learning blender.

http://cgcookie.com/blender/

Its pretty thorough and I took some tutotials on boolean operations on this site about well a year ago .. the 10 dollar fee for all the tutorials is well worth it!
edited by urbanlamb on 22/10/2012
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22/10/2012 21:24:18

JamieMuvizu staff
Jamie
(Account inactive)
Posts: 609 		Indeed it can Ziggy!

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.4/Manual/Modifiers/Generate/Booleans

Or here is a tutorial I found on youtube (its actually tutorial #26 from the playlist posted above) -



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Direct, don't animate!
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22/10/2012 21:42:36

ziggy72Muvizu mogulExperimental user
ziggy72
Posts: 1988 		Awesome, thank you both. I know the professionals insist on using splines for everything but I can't help thinking of the world in terms of blocks and the shapes they make through interaction - I have a lego brain, obviously
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22/10/2012 21:51:00

JamieMuvizu staff
Jamie
(Account inactive)
Posts: 609 		You might want to give minecraft a go lol - theres an ase exporter for that as well!

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Direct, don't animate!
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