Cem, Julius: I don't think at all this is a either-or question. I was in need of clarification, since it sounded like people are talking about at least 2 different things here. Modular detail items would be of course of use, though I dont understand the need to unwrap them; if you bake their normals onto a blank, lowpoly bodypart, only this would need to be unwrapped? Or am I getting something wrong here (again)?
While at unwrapping, how should that be organised? The mech will be a single object, with a single unwrap in the end, am I right? so the unwraps of the parts shouldnt overlap. We will hopefully have prebaked textures too, but I imagine it a pain, to scale and move around islands in blender before exporting, to get a proper uv layout, and then do the same scaling and moving in gimp/PS with the ready textures to make them fit again. I added a random layout suggestion, it might work, until someone actually uses it and proves it is not good, following surts color scheme in the image above.
I made a pair of legs, to get things a bit started. They are very simple, consider the modelling more as a placeholder or a blueprint. I focused my work here on the rig, and so it is neither unwrapped nor textured (I assume these legs wont get in a game as they are).
I made a few assumptions here, that are of course debatable, but I need to stumble over such things to be aware of them: 1.Scale: I just assume a roughly 10x human-size, so the legs are 9m tall now (including the hip part). 2.Bone Naming: I tried to get not too special here, and keep a common style.
About animations: I think using one or even a few master rigs that fit to all variants, is just not possible. Just look at surts image here http://img.uninhabitant.com/doodles.png and focus only on the legs. We have trisected, bisected, knee forward, knee backward, for the feet it is similar rich of variations. Then add different type of joints (spindle to rotate only on 1 axis, ball joint that rotates on 3 axis) and a master rig would get so complicated, that it is no fun to use anymore. Also, a mech with real feet would move his legs different than one with tracks instead of feet, and both would influence the countermovements of the torso and shoulders in a different way. I don't see a way to get this all together. It might be a better idea, to see what variations become most popular (like in, to what rig parts the most model variations get done), and then create animations especially for these combos.
So, feel free to create some legs fitting to this rig (lengths of legparts, distance from left leg to right leg and things like this dont play a role, also the angles of rotation constraints can be adapted). If you want to finetune the rig to your legmodels yourself, feel free to ask questions. If you come up with a different leg design, it would need a different rig, this way we can evaluate what kinds of type are usable. We need a middle path between universality and variation here, I think.
And one more edit: How to organise the files? Attaching to this thread is in long term not the way to go, I think.
So what you suggest is creating a collection of decorative Science Fiction Items, that would not only apply to a mech, but also could be found at the walls of a base, or at any vehicle in general.
The other idea that is discussed in this thread is creating modular mech parts.
The shipyard leans more toward the second one, since it is actually ship parts. The difference is, that a ship is more or less a static object, just floating around, with maybe single parts animated, but moving as a whole - what does not appear to a mech, who is actually walking.
A collection of decorative items is still a good idea, it would be basically an advanced, manual version of the discombobulator addon.
I hope I summed that up correctly, since the definition of the target should be clear first of all.
I am wondering how rigs and animations could be included.
One way could be to create a "one fits all"-rig, that contains all possible bones, and just needs to be re-scaled and -shaped a little, to make it fit to the actual dimensions. Pro: Only one rig to create animations for, nicely interchangeable. Con: Too bone-heavy, bad for most engines, too much overhead in general. Originally I wanted to create such a rig and post it here, but I got many potential problems in mind while doing so. Now I tend to the alternative idea:
Alternative: Create a partial rig for each part, weight it. Create animations just for particular combinations of rigs. Pro: Easier to maintain, efficient number of bones. Con: Animations need to be done multiple times.
It might be debatable, if this should be within scope of this workshop or not, but to keep it as game-ready as possible, it should be tried at least, imo. Most people with experience in a 3D app know how to model, since this is what everyone does first. But while walking down the production road, unwrapping, texturing, rigging, animating, the number of users get smaller and smaller. A workshop that only focuses on being a help with modelling, is not a big help at all, if watching the big picture that is labelled "I need a mech for my game".
Anyhow, maybe someone has a even better idea with more pro and less con?
Some general conventions about the UV layout could be useful too, like (just an example) lower third for torso, middle third for legs, 2/3 of upper third for arms, 1/3 or upper third for head.
And now I forgot the weapons, I am not going to rewrite it, a graphical suggestion would be better anyway.
F12, the render button in properties window. Also, if you save, make sure you pick in saving options a format that supports alpha channel (PNG e.g.), and also that you save the alpha channel with it, by switching from RGB to RGBA.
There is a group of three buttons in the uv/image editor.. a white/different colours checkerboard, a square divided in a black and a white triangle, and in middle of those, a mixture between both.
These tell how to display the image, first is without alpha (it assumes some background then), second is colour with alpha, third is alpha only.
Now, for me, renders happen on a transparent background, I am not sure if I changed some setting - but please try these buttons first to see if your render is already on a transparent background, and you are just not seeing it.
Look on layer 2, shift-click it to make it visible together with layer 1, then select the armature - if you now change the actions on left side, you will see the knight doing the correct playback. Maybe you need to adjust the start/end values in timeline window.
For the textures, there is a "pack as PNG" option in one of the menues of the UV/Image editor. But you can also make a folder, and put the .blend together with the texture inside it. Blender will find it that way too, even if you move the folder as a whole around (just if you decide to put the textures in a /tex subfolder for example, you need to tell again, ofc).
First you need to open an UV/Image Editor. If you have a window that you dont need, like the timeline on bottom, or the animation windows on left side (in case you load the UI with the model), just look in the bottom left corner of the window (usually left from the menues). Click that icon and pick UV/Image Editor from the appearing list. If you dont have any spare window (dont sacrifice the 3D view, you will need it), then you should split the 3D view, by rightclicking the border between 3D view and the properties window on right side, choose "split area" and the upcoming line while you move the mouse, will show where the split happens. For more information on windows and UI, see http://cgcookie.com/blender/2010/08/31/blender-interface-and-navigation/
As next, select the Knight in 3D View with RMB and press Tab to bring it in Edit mode. then press A one or two times, until everything is selected.
Then take a look at the UV/Image Editor. The bottom line has 4 menues (if you see just 2, you dont have the knight in edit mode), followed by an landscape image icon, a button that either has a filename or "new image" as textlabel and 3 buttons F + X.
Click the landscape image icon to bring up a list of used images in that file. You see here that the blend file wants a knight.png, while the texture from OGA is labelled knight_2.png.
Now all you have to do is go into the image menu (still in UV/Image Editor), pick "load image" and choose the downloaded knight_2.png. It is important that you do that while the knight is in edit mode and all verts are selected, because then Blender assigns image with object and you can see it displayed in 3D view.
Cem, Julius: I don't think at all this is a either-or question. I was in need of clarification, since it sounded like people are talking about at least 2 different things here. Modular detail items would be of course of use, though I dont understand the need to unwrap them; if you bake their normals onto a blank, lowpoly bodypart, only this would need to be unwrapped? Or am I getting something wrong here (again)?
While at unwrapping, how should that be organised? The mech will be a single object, with a single unwrap in the end, am I right? so the unwraps of the parts shouldnt overlap. We will hopefully have prebaked textures too, but I imagine it a pain, to scale and move around islands in blender before exporting, to get a proper uv layout, and then do the same scaling and moving in gimp/PS with the ready textures to make them fit again. I added a random layout suggestion, it might work, until someone actually uses it and proves it is not good, following surts color scheme in the image above.
I made a pair of legs, to get things a bit started. They are very simple, consider the modelling more as a placeholder or a blueprint. I focused my work here on the rig, and so it is neither unwrapped nor textured (I assume these legs wont get in a game as they are).
I made a few assumptions here, that are of course debatable, but I need to stumble over such things to be aware of them:
1.Scale: I just assume a roughly 10x human-size, so the legs are 9m tall now (including the hip part).
2.Bone Naming: I tried to get not too special here, and keep a common style.
About animations: I think using one or even a few master rigs that fit to all variants, is just not possible. Just look at surts image here http://img.uninhabitant.com/doodles.png and focus only on the legs. We have trisected, bisected, knee forward, knee backward, for the feet it is similar rich of variations. Then add different type of joints (spindle to rotate only on 1 axis, ball joint that rotates on 3 axis) and a master rig would get so complicated, that it is no fun to use anymore. Also, a mech with real feet would move his legs different than one with tracks instead of feet, and both would influence the countermovements of the torso and shoulders in a different way. I don't see a way to get this all together. It might be a better idea, to see what variations become most popular (like in, to what rig parts the most model variations get done), and then create animations especially for these combos.
So, feel free to create some legs fitting to this rig (lengths of legparts, distance from left leg to right leg and things like this dont play a role, also the angles of rotation constraints can be adapted). If you want to finetune the rig to your legmodels yourself, feel free to ask questions. If you come up with a different leg design, it would need a different rig, this way we can evaluate what kinds of type are usable. We need a middle path between universality and variation here, I think.
And one more edit: How to organise the files? Attaching to this thread is in long term not the way to go, I think.
So what you suggest is creating a collection of decorative Science Fiction Items, that would not only apply to a mech, but also could be found at the walls of a base, or at any vehicle in general.
The other idea that is discussed in this thread is creating modular mech parts.
The shipyard leans more toward the second one, since it is actually ship parts. The difference is, that a ship is more or less a static object, just floating around, with maybe single parts animated, but moving as a whole - what does not appear to a mech, who is actually walking.
A collection of decorative items is still a good idea, it would be basically an advanced, manual version of the discombobulator addon.
I hope I summed that up correctly, since the definition of the target should be clear first of all.
I am wondering how rigs and animations could be included.
One way could be to create a "one fits all"-rig, that contains all possible bones, and just needs to be re-scaled and -shaped a little, to make it fit to the actual dimensions. Pro: Only one rig to create animations for, nicely interchangeable. Con: Too bone-heavy, bad for most engines, too much overhead in general. Originally I wanted to create such a rig and post it here, but I got many potential problems in mind while doing so. Now I tend to the alternative idea:
Alternative: Create a partial rig for each part, weight it. Create animations just for particular combinations of rigs. Pro: Easier to maintain, efficient number of bones. Con: Animations need to be done multiple times.
It might be debatable, if this should be within scope of this workshop or not, but to keep it as game-ready as possible, it should be tried at least, imo. Most people with experience in a 3D app know how to model, since this is what everyone does first. But while walking down the production road, unwrapping, texturing, rigging, animating, the number of users get smaller and smaller. A workshop that only focuses on being a help with modelling, is not a big help at all, if watching the big picture that is labelled "I need a mech for my game".
Anyhow, maybe someone has a even better idea with more pro and less con?
Some general conventions about the UV layout could be useful too, like (just an example) lower third for torso, middle third for legs, 2/3 of upper third for arms, 1/3 or upper third for head.
And now I forgot the weapons, I am not going to rewrite it, a graphical suggestion would be better anyway.
WorldForge does similar for their models, so you can easily mix different models and textures to create a greater variation, see http://wiki.worldforge.org/wiki/Texture_Templates
You're welcome :)
F12, the render button in properties window. Also, if you save, make sure you pick in saving options a format that supports alpha channel (PNG e.g.), and also that you save the alpha channel with it, by switching from RGB to RGBA.
There is a group of three buttons in the uv/image editor.. a white/different colours checkerboard, a square divided in a black and a white triangle, and in middle of those, a mixture between both.
These tell how to display the image, first is without alpha (it assumes some background then), second is colour with alpha, third is alpha only.
Now, for me, renders happen on a transparent background, I am not sure if I changed some setting - but please try these buttons first to see if your render is already on a transparent background, and you are just not seeing it.
Look on layer 2, shift-click it to make it visible together with layer 1, then select the armature - if you now change the actions on left side, you will see the knight doing the correct playback. Maybe you need to adjust the start/end values in timeline window.
For the textures, there is a "pack as PNG" option in one of the menues of the UV/Image editor. But you can also make a folder, and put the .blend together with the texture inside it. Blender will find it that way too, even if you move the folder as a whole around (just if you decide to put the textures in a /tex subfolder for example, you need to tell again, ofc).
First you need to open an UV/Image Editor. If you have a window that you dont need, like the timeline on bottom, or the animation windows on left side (in case you load the UI with the model), just look in the bottom left corner of the window (usually left from the menues). Click that icon and pick UV/Image Editor from the appearing list. If you dont have any spare window (dont sacrifice the 3D view, you will need it), then you should split the 3D view, by rightclicking the border between 3D view and the properties window on right side, choose "split area" and the upcoming line while you move the mouse, will show where the split happens. For more information on windows and UI, see http://cgcookie.com/blender/2010/08/31/blender-interface-and-navigation/
As next, select the Knight in 3D View with RMB and press Tab to bring it in Edit mode. then press A one or two times, until everything is selected.
Then take a look at the UV/Image Editor. The bottom line has 4 menues (if you see just 2, you dont have the knight in edit mode), followed by an landscape image icon, a button that either has a filename or "new image" as textlabel and 3 buttons F + X.
Click the landscape image icon to bring up a list of used images in that file. You see here that the blend file wants a knight.png, while the texture from OGA is labelled knight_2.png.
Now all you have to do is go into the image menu (still in UV/Image Editor), pick "load image" and choose the downloaded knight_2.png. It is important that you do that while the knight is in edit mode and all verts are selected, because then Blender assigns image with object and you can see it displayed in 3D view.
Hi, I noticed the space version is very laggy, in comparison to the theme before. Also, it freezes the game canvas (not the browser) after some time.
WinXP, Opera Browser, fairly old P4 desktop PC
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