The insanely simple blender tutorial for Lugaru modders

The place to discuss all things Lugaru.

Do you want a YouTube video tutorial with voice over?

Yes
44
96%
No
2
4%
 
Total votes: 46

wormguy
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Post by wormguy » Sat May 31, 2008 9:39 pm

Good lord, this means we could actually have a chainsaw mod.

Wouldn't be able to saw, though, but still.

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Cmyszka
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Post by Cmyszka » Sat May 31, 2008 10:05 pm

Maybe we could at least fiddle with the sounds and make it sound like you're ripping their innards to shreds rather than slicing through them when you back stab them or slash 'em.

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Post by Nuky » Sun Jun 01, 2008 4:02 am

Java's giving me the main exception error thingie. =(

It's all in the same directory. No spaces, and thus no need for quotes. Need more java? D=

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rudel_ic
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Post by rudel_ic » Sun Jun 01, 2008 6:20 am

Nuky wrote:Java's giving me the main exception error thingie. =(

It's all in the same directory. No spaces, and thus no need for quotes. Need more java? D=
I need the exact exception text in order to help you.

Guessing: Did you type

java -cp . X2Solid LOLMYMODEL.x

when you were in the directory where X2Solid.class is in
- or did you let out the -cp . part?
- or did you type that in a different directory?
- and the path to your model was incorrect?

The -cp . part is necessary for people who don't have ./ in their PATH variable.

It is generally recommended to use the Drag-n-Drop-bat if you're a Windows user, because that implicates you're braindead and the only way you can get programs to work is with your mouse. Proven many times. Don't argue.
Makrond wrote:Odd... that works.

I have an interesting question: does the .x exporter triangulate meshes before export? Because if not that may be the problem...

EDIT: Huh... nope, that's not it...

I don't get it... it's made entirely of triangulated quads - even the point at the tip is a very small quad...

Awesome, found a free file hosting site...

Here is the .blend... maybe you can tell me where I went wrong...
The .x exporter in blender does not triangulate.

From your .blend file, I'd say the part where the blade goes into the handle is the problem, I can't fix that though.

It seems to me you modeled by subdividing and then extruding. Unfortunately, that leads to problems. Subdividing is not recommended, it only works in specific cases.

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Makrond
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Post by Makrond » Sun Jun 01, 2008 6:53 am

Nope, no subdividing. I extruded, then scaled, then extruded again...

I'll try it as a separate piece (joined mesh though).

EDIT: It crashed again...

EDIT2: Whoops, forgot to triangulate...

And it still crashed. I don't get it.

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rudel_ic
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Post by rudel_ic » Sun Jun 01, 2008 7:53 am

Can't really say what went wrong there.. There are subtleties to valid mesh structures I haven't found out yet, it seems.

I approximated your mesh with less cubes, but it still crashes. Could be that it's the blade, but at this point, I have no clue.

I made quite a few test meshes in the last week and they all worked unless I broke the rules.. Weird.

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Post by Nuky » Sun Jun 01, 2008 10:55 am

I did try the bat file, too. Same result. I guess it's just me lacking permissions on this **** school 'puter.

Code: Select all

C:\Programfiler\Lugaru\Data\Models>java -cp . X2Solid guard.x
Importing guard.x:
Parsing guard.x ...
Collecting and converting mesh data ...
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NullPointerException
        at Direct3DImport.importFile(X2Solid.java:37)
        at X2Solid.go(X2Solid.java:863)
        at X2Solid.main(X2Solid.java:853)

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rudel_ic
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Post by rudel_ic » Sun Jun 01, 2008 11:00 am

No Nuky, you forgot to UV-map your mesh. This is necessary though.

In blender, when you're in Object mode, select your mesh, press F, then A until all faces are lit, then press U, then choose 'Unwrap'.

It should work then.

Edit: More specific instructions.

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Post by Nuky » Sun Jun 01, 2008 11:17 am

But I did. o_o But confusing stuff happened, even if I followed your (well-written, eye-opening, un-scaring) tutorial (which made silly blender suddenly make so much more sense [and clever]).

I guess I'll have to try again.

Edit: By the way. I managed to do something silly. User view has some kind of perspective clipping going on. I accidentally dragged some kind of box across the viewport, and everything but what was inside that and along the camera's z axis disappeared. What is that?

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Post by rudel_ic » Sun Jun 01, 2008 11:35 am

About my tutorial: That's just the simplest and most reliable way of making stuff for Lugaru. A slightly more risky, but certainly more powerful way of doing things is extruding cube faces, as discussed previously.

You should also distinguish between modeling for Lugaru and modeling in general. Blender should be used in other ways than I described to get to good models.
For example, you should refer to the builtin procedural materials to get good renderings.
And it's not a good idea to join cubes all the time because you're wasting polygons and potentially introduce rendering anomalies.

I don't know about the clipping issue you described.
If you're talking about the camera perspective, the clipping parameters can be adjusted in the editing buttons view (F9) when the camera is selected.
If you're talking about whether or not you can see through objects, try pressing Z, Shift-Z, Alt-Z to go through different material representations.

What I also failed to mention is that shortkeys are context-sensitive, meaning that the mouse has to be in the appropriate window for it.
All shortkeys I was talking about refer to the 3D view.

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rudel_ic
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Post by rudel_ic » Sun Jun 01, 2008 11:50 am

Sorry, I DO know about the clipping issue you described.

What you apparently did is you inverted the normals of your cube. The result is the effect you just described; this is perfectly normal.

I take it you wanted to make a weapon?

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Post by Nuky » Sun Jun 01, 2008 3:39 pm

rudel_ic wrote:About my tutorial: That's just the simplest and most reliable way of making stuff for Lugaru. (...)
You should also distinguish between modeling for Lugaru and modeling in general. Blender should be used in other ways than I described to get to good models. (...)
Of course. I'm familiar-ish with 3d, but not blender.
Modes (context-sensitivity) I also know of; and despite them being useful, I do, in a Human-Computer Interface-ly way, despise the concept.
rudel_ic wrote: I don't know about the clipping issue you described.
If you're talking about the camera perspective, the clipping parameters can be adjusted in the editing buttons view (F9) when the camera is selected. (... etc)
I think it's a feature, not an issue. What I meant is that, of the whole, joined, object, I can only see a small part, kind of like a penetrating keyhole or something. What's outside the "selection" is invisible in that viewport.

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Post by Jendraz » Mon Jun 02, 2008 11:45 pm

Wow, this is really cool. I have nothing valuable to add, but I just had to express my admiration. I like the floating spheres especially.

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rudel_ic
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Post by rudel_ic » Thu Jun 26, 2008 11:28 pm

If you guys need an in-depth video tutorial with voice over, I could do that and youtube it. There has to be a certain demand for it though.

To estimate the demand for such a video, I added a poll to the topic. Please take part.

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Post by rudel_ic » Mon Jun 30, 2008 7:01 pm

Two people is not enough.

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