Planing on a new Blender Tutorial.

[Technical Ben]

Hi, to update the old video I did, I'm considering making a new Blender tutorial to help people start the basics of part modelling. What would people like or need the most? I've put up a simple example as a start. I'm thinking of doing one or two more with simple GUI commands, then a small tutorial of making a fuel tank I have started on the tutorial on making a fuel tank. Once the route from Blender to Unity to KSP is covered, then more complex things can be done, such as animations etc.

The video is here:

Introduction Part 1 Blender Basics.

Introduction Part 2 Moving and Editing.

Video on Modelling for KSP:

Part 1, Making a fuel tank:

Part 2, Simplifying the model:

From here I'll try and do a start to finish modelling of a fuel tank. Will see what sized chunks it's best to split the videos into.

Part 3, UV mapping and simple texturing:

Thanks all!

Edited May 13, 2013 by Technical Ben

[BossSquirrelz]

Looking forward to it.

[Technical Ben]

Just posting to note the update and new video. Thanks.

[Darren9]

Thanks for taking the time to do this. Being totally new to Blender/anything 3D I can now create pretty much exactly the shapes I wanted to.

[Xellith]

If you know anything about unity then you might want to make a custom part that has animations from start to finish. Tutorials covering animations are either limited in what they actually show you or arnt detailed enough. (okay you got me. Im actually just very very dumb and cant follow any tutorial I have found on youtube or google >.>)

[Technical Ben]

Animation is much more in depth, so I will have to show (and learn) the exports and imports for static models first. Engines will be second (as they have 1 point of gimbling) and landing gears will be second, with probably rover wheels third. I might add a general animation in there somewhere for things like ladders I guess.

New video up. Making a UV map will be next.

[thoosequa]

What blender version are you using there?

[Technical Ben]

I think it's the latest. 2.66a

[The Betpet]

I think it's the latest. 2.66a

Yep, 2.7 is a release candidate but not out yet.

[ummwut]

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS there's a new video!!!

[Cdr_Zeta]

Howdi,

I now have some of the various programs to model things, and animate...it seems to be actually more involved than I want to get into; complex; talk about learning curve...but KSP is one of the few programs I can do this in...indeed thanks for making the videos...

My problem is which way to go and why...

Some videos seem to have figured out a good seemless workflow; I also intend to make video shorts...kind of adds to the mix.

My 2 big things are to make buildings that Kerbals can work in, and make the Kerbals themselves actually working in the buildings; this is actually beyond me cause I cant code the AI stuff even though I can program some C+; I just dont have the time and am not fluent.

I also dont want to 'really' learn how to do much of this; but hey; the option is there and I am scratching the surfaces here.

For animation I am using Poser; also for animating Kerbals and maybe buildings/parts ? I didnt know Blender does animation.

Poser sems to fit my bill; I only need simple animations and can seem to setup key frames etc; that and adding voice/sounds to the animations; more learning curve but hey right !!!?

I will check out the vids - in fact I may even go live stream (see my stream posts!) on it from scratch and see what transpires !!! If I can learn Blender anyone can right !! If I dont do so well thats just me; I am fairly technical so that does help.

I also have 3ds max, unity 4, blender, lightwave, aurora 3d...

I also may just make the building parts then just add them as parts for the game; lots of work.

Wish me luck !

Cdr Zeta

Edited May 7, 2013 by Cdr_Zeta
addendum

[Cdr_Zeta]

Howdi,

Tonite I will live stream working on these tutorials for the first time !

http://www.twitch.tv/cdr_zeta

Cant garrantee anything and I mite get bored cause it is too hard (for me); it takes a long time for things to sink in for me but I will give it a try tonite !

Cdr Zeta

[Devo]

Howdi,

I now have some of the various programs to model things, and animate...it seems to be actually more involved than I want to get into; complex; talk about learning curve...but KSP is one of the few programs I can do this in...indeed thanks for making the videos...

My problem is which way to go and why...

Some videos seem to have figured out a good seemless workflow; I also intend to make video shorts...kind of adds to the mix.

My 2 big things are to make buildings that Kerbals can work in, and make the Kerbals themselves actually working in the buildings; this is actually beyond me cause I cant code the AI stuff even though I can program some C+; I just dont have the time and am not fluent.

I also dont want to 'really' learn how to do much of this; but hey; the option is there and I am scratching the surfaces here.

For animation I am using Poser; also for animating Kerbals and maybe buildings/parts ? I didnt know Blender does animation.

Poser sems to fit my bill; I only need simple animations and can seem to setup key frames etc; that and adding voice/sounds to the animations; more learning curve but hey right !!!?

I will check out the vids - in fact I may even go live stream (see my stream posts!) on it from scratch and see what transpires !!! If I can learn Blender anyone can right !! If I dont do so well thats just me; I am fairly technical so that does help.

I also have 3ds max, unity 4, blender, lightwave, aurora 3d...

I also may just make the building parts then just add them as parts for the game; lots of work.

Wish me luck !

Cdr Zeta

Well, I wish you luck, but Poser will be your undoing.

Poser is not a good idea, the poly count is too high unless you actually create the model yourself, and to setup custom rigs for poser can take some time (but is much easier than blender rigging)

Do I know much about Poser? yes. I have been an avid fan of it since 1995, so that would make it 18 years I have been using and enjoying Poser since v1.0 - so when I say I know of it's pro's and con's, trust me.

There is just a few things off the top of my head that I can think of why I never used poser to animate for KSP..

1. No FBX output for animations, so it needs to be done with complicated obj files

Exporting Collada or .DAE?

Yes, Poser and Daz Studio have plugins for exporting to .DAE and they both work, but the poser exporter is very buggy, I would not rely on it.

Personally? if I were you I would have 3DSMax, Poser, Daz Studio and Unity 4 as your base programs.

2. Too high Poly. The average poser model is 250,000 polygons.

3. No rigging support for Unity. Poser was designed to Render and run in it's own IDE, and bring others things into it, not the other way around.

So you can't export something from Poser to Kerbal, there is a few processes you would need to take to do that, each one requiring

a third party 3d modelling software as a work-inbetween Poser and Unity.

4. Daz3d and poser are pretty much the same thing, Poser just has a better interface. Daz was a poser user that got so good, he ended up creating his own

version, which to this day I absolutely hate. It's a terrible program to use. Good thing it's free.

** Note DAZ Studio now has more Export features than Poser, so you might find this could also be a go, but as I said, interface sucks.

5. Buildings, and other structures are ok in poser, just more work at baking textures, as they need to be. Poser considers all meshes to be double sided too.

6. Everything you do in poser is based on an animation that is rendered and post processed, you are not doing any of that in KSP, the model needs to be in its raw format.

7. Kinetics for Poser are extremely complicated (as in alot more of them) compared to Blender kinetics. You can cut it down yes, but the animation suffers.

8. Poser Pro comes with a plugin for Max which imports PZ3 scenes, including animations - but within Max it appears as a keyframed mesh, not a rigged biped.

9. It can work if you do all your editing in Poser and refresh Max to update the mesh, . You can bake the meshes into Max so you can edit them, but doing so breaks the link to the PZ3 file.

10. If you want to transfer the Poser character into Max so your rigging goes across, then the most common solution is to export/import through a Collada file, but once in Max it’s not as easy to go back again.

Edited May 8, 2013 by Devo

[Technical Ben]

Lol, thanks for the thread hijack.

New video up covering some simple UV texture mapping tools.

I guess the next video will be setting up the model in Unity.

[KhaosCorp]

Thank you SOOOO much for these vids!!!

I am very new to 3d modeling and Blender (actually just downloaded it friday). Trying to learn has been a real aggrivation since most tutorial info I find is very outdated. More so when it comes to how this all applys to KSP.

Watching your videos has taught me 200% more than just fiddling with the program for nearly 3 days did.

I would love to see a vid about getting proper colliders into the model. I did find a tutorial for this, but it was as pertains to KSP 0.18, and it was not very detailed(im still unsure if the collider need to be a child of the main mesh or not...).

Awesome that you take the time to do these, really helps clueless noobs like me!

Subbed and +rep, hope to see more vids =)

[ummwut]

Hey Ben! Looking forward to more videos! I'd like to see more stuff in Blender like animations and maybe a collide mesh (although I understand you could add one in Unity too). Just walk through it slow and make it simple. Thank you for showing how it's done!

[astropapi1]

Guys, do you know how can I move the view around without a mmb? I don't have a mouse ATM, and that's holding me from learning.

[Nazari1382]

Guys, do you know how can I move the view around without a mmb? I don't have a mouse ATM, and that's holding me from learning.

user preferences > input> 3d view

[skykooler]

You can also move the view with the 2, 4, 6 and 8 numpad keys (most laptops that don't have a numpad have keys that you can press with Fn to get them)

[Dispatcher]

Thank you for these!

[Paul Kingtiger]

I bumped into your vids on youtube and they really helped my get started with blender. A week later I have a simple part with a texture map and normal map.

I'm struggling to get it through unity and into the game though. There is plenty of information on here, but nothing following a complete start to finish with a part.

It would be really helpful to have a series of videos covering the following for a simple part like a fuel tank.

Creating the mesh

Creating the texture map

Creating the normal map

Configuring unity

Importing the part into unity and adding texture and normal

Exporting to KSP

Configuring the part.cfg file

[QuantumX]

/agree with Paul Kingtiger

for me a complete guide start to having a working part in game would be the idea. i'm completely new to this and want to learn but a start to finish guide for a single example part would be awesome.

[ri00t]

/agree with Paul Kingtiger and QuantumX

With this guide I create a parts and textures with Gimp and Blender (never used before), with Cybutek I get something about c# environment, but for last two days I cant still put together this pieces, becouse of Unity. Just need one very simple full guide. Many parts of guides is expanded enough to understand and use own creativity.

[Dispatcher]

Unity can actually generate normal maps from your texture image. As for an all in one, start to finish guide; that would be nice. It was a pain learning how to eventually get these (points to sig line) made and into the game.

[TicTacToe!]

Don't know if this counts as a necro-post, and apologies it it does, but I'll add a +1 to the requests of a start-to-finish walk through for a really simple part. If not the OP, anyone, would be a real great help, and myself as well as many other members would appreciate it.