Model-making

[SpaceGreer]

Hi Everyone

What do people use to make models for parts?

I'm thinking about making something simple, seeing if I can mod. 

R

[Bej Kerman]

57 minutes ago, SpaceGreer said:

Hi Everyone

What do people use to make models for parts?

I'm thinking about making something simple, seeing if I can mod. 

R

Any 3D modelling program.

[SpaceGreer]

Blender?

[wasml]

Blender is a common one. You'll also need something for textures - Gimp is free. And of course Unity - Free to use if your making under some number of dollars - documented on the Unity web site. You'll need PartTools to package and export from Unity.

[Stone Blue]

@SpaceGreer take a look at BforArtists
Its a fork of Blender, that focuses on the UI/UX... its focused on a better mouse-click, icon & menu philosophy, rather than Blender's complicated UI and *its* focus on keymapping, instead.
A couple quotes from their homepage, that explain better, IMHO:

Quote

The target audience for Bforartists are hobbyists and indie developers. Blender tries to target professionals. That’s a completely different audience and development target.
 

Bforartists is a fork of the popluar open source 3d software Blender. The primary goal of the Bforartists fork is to deliver a better graphical UI and a better usability. This means a complete switch in the useage philosophy. Away from the hotkey and speed centered useage. Towards a user friendly and intuitive graphical UI.

Note that Bforartists is fully functional. Every feature that works in Blender should also work in Bforartists.

Generally, ANY plugin (or tutorial) for Blender 2.83 will work in BFA, since BFA *is* Blender, under-the-hood.
The best part, specifically for KSP modelling, is that Taniwha's Blender Import-Export Tool works in BFA, just as well as Blender. He is striving to have it be a 100% replacement for Unity and KSP PartTools in KSP part-making workflow.

I struggled with Blender for years because of its steep learning curve and  I have trouble remembering complicated keymaps (I also dont type well)

I switched to BFA, and things are MUCH easier/quicker for me to do.

They have a forum, but its pretty slow. But they have moar active Discord server and Facebook group.
Here's a Discord invite: https://discord.gg/EaYFRhE

Edited July 25, 2020 by Stone Blue

[RealKerbal3x]

@Beale's part modding tutorial is excellent for learning basic KSP model making, I would recommend you check it out - I decided to have a go at it this afternoon and it's easier than it looks (at least the actual model making part).

[SpaceGreer]

Thanks both! Really appreciate it!

[kerbiloid]

While I use Wings3d (thanks to the excellent @Beale's tutorial) Bforartists looks definitely more humanoid than the totally unhuman Blender.

Just tested, the io_object_mu plugin successfully installed and works.

[RandomKerbal]

On 7/27/2020 at 10:37 PM, kerbiloid said:

While I use Wings3d (thanks to the excellent @Beale's tutorial) Bforartists looks definitely more humanoid than the totally unhuman Blender.

Just tested, the io_object_mu plugin successfully installed and works.

Oh really? Looks like I am going to give up learning blender (which I am doing now).

[JadeOfMaar]

6 hours ago, RandomKerbal said:

Oh really? Looks like I am going to give up learning blender (which I am doing now).

Lol

Spoiler

Bforartists is Blender with a different skin.

 

[kerbiloid]

Blender's engine with different GUI.

If the GUI could be implemented just by reskin, it's a shame they (the Blender authors) didn't do it earlier.

Edited July 30, 2020 by kerbiloid

[JadeOfMaar]

I've heard on a few occasions that Blender's layout, as-is, comes out of an engineering and technical efficiency perspective, which precisely isn't good for artists as they need things to have a "natural" feel and to be in the right place for them. Artists don't need to know keyboard shortcut chains and don't need these shortcuts to be available for everything. They need to have the most relevant tools, and in just enough context menus, and a proper arrangement of menus, to feel at home. I'm pretty sure Blender is the way it is because of just how much it can do, so the technical efficiency perspective works well for it and the user base that can handle it.

[Stone Blue]

Yeah... Blender has a different philosophy, targeting a whole different segment, than hobbyist/artist users. Since Blender 2.80 development, they have switched direction a little, and are going toward a moar "industry" standard... Targeting large studios, and movie/film CGI... So moar like Maya/Cinema4D, etc...

They are also big on speed and workflow, which generally means heavily keymap-oriented... Hobbyists/artists, I imagine, are generally NOT under time/speed constraints, and generally dont want to know the technical aspects... They just want an easy way to get the results they want, and just want a program to work simply, and not have to "muscle-memory" complicated keymapping and steep learning curves, just to do something that *should* be simple to do... Hence, a menu/icon/mouse-click based UI.
Which is *exactly* what BforArtists is, but Blender under the hood.

Again, BFA does have a keymapping preset of Blender. So anything you know/learn in Blender, as far as keymapping/mouse-clicking should generally carry over pretty seamlessly. That also means, that generally, any Blender tutorials will also apply to BFA.
IMHO, I just think BFA's UI does make the Blender learning curve *quite* a bit less steep... tho, there *is* still quite a lot to learn.

Edited August 1, 2020 by Stone Blue