Criticism/Tips For Newbie?

[HazelPine]

Hey guys! I've decided to try out my hand at modelling after seeing RoverDude  do a livestream. I started making a jet engine in blender, and I thought that here would be the best place to get some helpful criticism on the model so far.

The engine so far:

Thanks in advance!

[sumghai]

Looks good! Was that modelled off a 24-sided cylinder?

I recommend smoothing out the faces making up the curved engine surfaces by applying smooth shading (Ctrl-F > Shade Smooth).

After smoothing, you'll want to sharpen or crsip up some of the edges - you can either apply an Edge Split modifier (adjusting the angle to get the desired effect), or go into Edit Mode and mark certain edges as sharp (Mesh > Edges > Mark Sharp)

EDIT: Dun goofed. Thanks for the heads-up @InsaneDruid

 

[InsaneDruid]

Mark Sharp, that is.

EDIT: no edge split modifier needed, though. Under the object data tab, under normal, enable auto smooth and set the angle to 180° if you want to only sharpen edges marked as sharp, or your desired split angle.

Edited June 10, 2016 by InsaneDruid

[HazelPine]

19 hours ago, sumghai said:

Looks good! Was that modelled off a 24-sided cylinder?

It was actually!

I guess I'll finish the basic model first before I put on the smoothing, since the nozzle and the cowling are two different objects to make it easier to model the details. |The little slits on the side are kinda like the ones on the turbojet in ksp, and it's a little complicated to finish it up.

Progress so far:

[martinezfg11]

Good work. Looking forward to seeing the end product!

[HazelPine]

Ok, I may have a problem now..

I was texturing the engine, and everything was working just fine. The texture showed up nicely and all that good stuff. But now that I try to put the final version of the texture, this happens:

Spoiler

Do you guys know how to stop it from happening? AFAIK the texture file is fine, but whenever I try to render the model with the texture this happens.

[cxg2827]

could you post a picture of the texture file and the UV islands?

 

[HazelPine]

Here's the texture (I know it's an absolute mess to look at):

Spoiler

And here is the UV map:

Spoiler

 

[cxg2827]

not sure what program you are using, but there might be a chance you have duplicate faces that are not unwrapped and giving you that texturing issue? If you are using blender, while in edit mode, select all and remove doubles.

 

so is the error happening only when you try to render it? how does the engine look when imported into unity?

 

[HazelPine]

I haven't imported it yet, so I don't know. It only happens when I render it.

I'll see if removing doubles works.

[Wraith977]

Render it as in set the display method to rendered? Have you made the material and imported the textures (stupid question but still...)? Also are you doubling up duplicate textures on the UV map? Probably not this but also make sure all your faces are pointing the right direction.

Edited June 11, 2016 by Wraith977

[OrbitalBuzzsaw]

Looks good! Where's it going to be thrust curve, etc wise? I'd like to see a more powerful Wheesly for airliners and cargo planes, etc. Also, you should remove that concave-ness.

[HazelPine]

I'm using the render button on the sidebar, and I checked now, and I have a material and the texture is imported. 

@cxg2827,

19 minutes ago, cxg2827 said:

If you are using blender, while in edit mode, select all and remove doubles.

I just tried this, and results were...  mixed. While it certainly got rid of the weird black artifacts, it left two faces blacked out completely, and the texture is all over the place.

Spoiler

EDIT: Recalculating the normals fixed the black faces, but the texture is still weird. It looks like there isn't a proper UV map for it, even thought it worked before while I tested the texture.

11 minutes ago, OrbitalBuzzsaw said:

Looks good! Where's it going to be thrust curve, etc wise? I'd like to see a more powerful Wheesly for airliners and cargo planes, etc. Also, you should remove that concave-ness.

My idea is that it will be a medium altitude wheesly, with a little bit more power and speed capabilities. I imagine it doing ~400 m/s at about 2km at its best.

Edited June 11, 2016 by Pine

[cxg2827]

if you upload your texture and blend file i can take a peek.

 

[cxg2827]

ok, so looks like if you removed doubles, it for some reason corrupted the UV mapping and rotated the quads by 90 degrees., yet the UV map still looked correct.

your model had duplicate faces and many duplicate edges (be careful if you ever hit [ctrl+d])

I manually selected the faces and split them into their own object and cleaned it up for you, I'll PM you in a few minutes:

[HazelPine]

Oh wow, thanks! Now I guess I'll start to make the ambient occlusion to make it just that bit better (and better looking).

[cxg2827]

Also another tip. The nozzle of the engine had a cylinder face that takes up a fair amount of your texture (you had it white). Because that is hidden inside the engine body you can just delete it (I already removed it for you). So now your have more free space on your texture map. Just something for future reference.

[HazelPine]

Just baked the Ambient Occlusion map, stuck it in the texture, and it's ready to be imported into Unity!

Not sure why it doesn't look smooth from the render cam, but I don't think it affects anything. (If it does, tell me please.)

Now to download the latest PartTools Kit and open up/update/download Unity, depending on whatever version of both I have on my PC.

[HazelPine]

Or not. None of the tutorials for exporting a part from unity seem to work with the new part tools. This one goes all fine until I have to make the collision mesh, and then the mesh appears sideways and Unity doesn't let me make it a convex mesh. And also After that nothing on the tutorial fits with what I have... Help?

[Wraith977]

If you send me the files (.blend, .fbx and textures) I can take a look

[Kurld]

Looks like you still haven't set it to render smooth instead of flat.

Spoiler

http://imgur.com/wNoFZZb

Just select your object and click "smooth" in the object tools panel.

Also, if you haven't seen it there's a great tutorial about cutting "holes" in round surfaces.

Edited June 12, 2016 by Kurld
clarity

[HazelPine]

Actually, I did set it to smooth, but it just ignored it while rendering. Either way, in Unity it was smooth nonetheless.

I'll have to make use of that tutorial in the future!

Edited June 12, 2016 by Pine