Using Blender
From Alcugs
Contents |
Introduction
You can go to http://www.blender.org for lots of tutorials and such. In particular "From Noob to Pro"http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro is an excellent introduction.
The following is *very* good advice:
- Don't rely on undo, save when you've done something correctly.
- Keep different versions of your .blend file.(e.g. Dustina, Dustinb,etc.), but always export to the same name (e.g. Dustin.age).
- Try to export your Age every once in a while, to make sure you haven't done something that will cause the export to fail.
- Keep a readme.txt file on which version of the snapshot you used on an Age. That way, if down the road a new snapshot doesn't work with it, you can at least go back to one that does.
- Don't use features of Blender that you haven't heard of other Age makers using, and expect it to work properly.
Tutorials on the Wiki
Dustin's First Tutorial (Really just how I made my first Age.)
Dustin's Second Tutorial (On making a landscape and casting light on it.)
Dustin's Third Tutorial (On cutting meshes into smaller meshes, and reducing the number of polygons.)
Dustin's Fourth Tutorial (On normals and 1-sided meshes.)
Dustin's Fifth Tutorial (On using Boolean operations to model solid objects.)
For a complete list of tutorials, see AgeCreationTutorialsList.
External Tutorials
From Noob to Pro: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro
Importing Things From Other Software
Cybermotion 3D-Designer: save as AutoCad, then open in Blender.
3D Studio Max: save the filea as a .3ds file, not a .max file. There is information here:http://67.22.114.230:8080/programming/blender/index.html#3DS and also here: http://blender3d.org/cms/Import___Export.5.0.html
Resources
This is a stair-making took from Sjaak-de-Draak. He suggests not using a stepheight of over 0.5, as avatars may not be able to walk up it. http://www.cobbs.ca/bbs/attachment.php?attachmentid=215
This allows you to create trees: http://www.geocities.com/blenderdungeon/lsystem/index.html
A much needed reference of all of Blender's keyboard shortcuts: Blender HotKey Reference *PDF Format*
This allows you to "bake" lighting onto your textures: http://www.alienhelpdesk.com/index.php?id=22
NOTE: if possible, don't use this script, but bake your own textures, by rendering the object from different sides, put those renders in one texture, and use that. This creates more efficient textures as well. Reason is that the script mentioned above, can and will create ugly artifacts, especially with mipmaps. That's because it renders every face individually. When baking it yourself isn't possible (like with comples scripts) then the script can definitely be a life-saver. Just make sure that your background color is closely related to the material color of the object you're baking, to minimize artifact distortion! --Trylon 00:05, 5 Dec 2005 (CET)
Important Things & Tips
If your object is large, part of your view may be "clipped". To change the clipping values: in a 3D-view window, go to view->viewProperties and set ClipStart and ClipEnd appropriately.(You probably want to increase ClipEnd). If you want to set the camera's clipping: select the camera, then in a buttons view-window select the "editing" button, then in the "camera" section put in the ClipStart and ClipEnd that you want.
And here is a tip for texturing and exporting: group objects that have the same texture! If you have to, you can seperate them after you are done doing everything, but it saves you a load of time, especially for the exporting. It only has to do one texture, rather than 12. -Tylinol
