MODO | 3DS MAX | MAYA | Lightwave | Blender

[Guest Space Cowboy]

I am ready to dive into asset development and would like your first hand opinions on the various 3D programs!

[electronicfox]

Blender: Powerful but overwhelming to the uninitiated.

Lightwave: Last time I used it, it was lacking a LOT of basic features.

Maya: My weapon of choice. Buggy as hell but great for game work.

3DS: I never could get around the UI of this one.

MODO: Looks good, havent dived in yet.

[Guest Space Cowboy]

MODO seems to be the big question mark.

[electronicfox]

Modo is pretty new, but as far as I can tell there isnt nearly as much documentation for it as Maya, Blender or 3DSmax.

[Redhotita1]

Maya: My weapon of choice. Buggy as hell but great for game work.

3DS: I never could get around the UI of this one.

I can say the same, but in my case, it's Maya which I can't understand.

In my opinion 3ds it's better for modeling. I'm using it since 2009, tried two or three time to use Maya, but I can't get used to it.

From my point of view, Maya looks more a software for movies, animations and so on, while 3ds Max more for gaming modeling. I perfectly understand the UI on 3ds, looks easier than Maya one, but you can say the same for it... You should try both of them, find the one you look more confident, and then experience it. I think that's the only advise i can give.

[Guest Space Cowboy]

Cool thxz

[raidernick]

It really matters what program you start on to what is going to be "better". If you hand someone blender who has been using MAYA for years they are going to have a difficult time trying to use it and vice versa. I started out on blender and I also have 3ds MAX and tried several times to start using it but the UI is killing me and preventing me from actually progressing.

[Guest Space Cowboy]

You have made an assumption that everyone is using something "now". Anyway, I would rate them or hope to have them rated in terms of productivity, within the context of developing Kerbal assets. I have not heard a lot of people liking 3DS MAX either.

[PB666]

blender, its worth learning, and we have pretty good ksp support now through links to this forum.

twas not the case 6 mos ago.

I should add that it was recently polled as the favorite here. Many folks import the basic mesh into blender for texturing so if you have a simple mesh 3D program use it, then impoft the mesh into blender.

Edited May 31, 2015 by PB666

[Camacha]

Blender is pretty good, and, more importantly, free. That does not only mean you get to work with the software legally, it also means that there is plenty of free tutorials out there. That is not quite the case with Maya, for instance.

[Guest Space Cowboy]

Excellent points.

[CobaltWolf]

I've been using Modo for classwork this past quarter. I'm completely sold on it for modeling work. Coming from Maya (and previously Blender, years ago) I find the modeling toolbox for Modo to be much better, especially when you have to get nitty gritty and just start creating the geometry vertex by vertex. I have not used it much for hard edge modelling though; I've been using it for an organic modelling class.

[Guest Space Cowboy]

The MODO website says they have listened to all the user requests. Sounds intriguing.

[NecroBones]

Yep, Blender fan here too. The fact that it's free is really awesome. The learning curve is a little steep, but once you start to get the hang of it, you can see why they did things the way they did. The workflow is pretty quick once you get used to the keyboard shortcuts.

[sumghai]

I highly recommend Blender for making part models for KSP.

While it's true that Blender has a non-trivial learning curve (exacerbated by it not-so-intuitive UI), it is free, very powerful and constantly updated.

Additionally, Unity Editor 4.2.2 supports Blender prefabs, which allows you to directly import Blender models into Unity without requiring an intermediary .FBX file; furthermore, if you update and save your Blender model, the corresponding model in Unity gets updated automatically.

[PB666]

.... furthermore, if you update and save your Blender model, the corresponding model in Unity gets updated automatically.

Meh, sometimes. I was working with a blender model that did not have a valid texture in Unity. I tried refreshing the *.blend several times in Unity. Finally, i had to rebuild my assets from 0.23 PTs and reload the blender and texture. If there is something major wrong in the blend file (e.g. edit-mode save, texture or mesh modifyers not applied as selected) you can't rely on Unity rescuing your patches it will become confused and give up. Best to del the Unity project in its directory a start a new project.

[Guest Space Cowboy]

Gonna try Blender

[sumghai]

Meh, sometimes. I was working with a blender model that did not have a valid texture in Unity. I tried refreshing the *.blend several times in Unity. Finally, i had to rebuild my assets from 0.23 PTs and reload the blender and texture. If there is something major wrong in the blend file (e.g. edit-mode save, texture or mesh modifyers not applied as selected) you can't rely on Unity rescuing your patches it will become confused and give up. Best to del the Unity project in its directory a start a new project.

I've never encountered that problem.

What version of Blender and Unity are you using? I'm on 2.70a and 4.2.2.

[nli2work]

If you only do KSP modding, Blender is best bet since you can get much more support from the community here. If you do more than just KSP, Max or Maya are much more common. Both have full function free student licenses that doesn't require a student ID or email.

As far as Unity supporting Blend files natively, that's a little bit of a trojan horse, Unity just runs Blender's FBX exporter in the background. If you don't have Blender's FBX plugin installed correctly, you won't be able to drag/drop Blend files into Unity. I recommend getting familiar with the plugin settings as it is an important step of the asset pipeline.

[sumghai]

As far as Unity supporting Blend files natively, that's a little bit of a trojan horse, Unity just runs Blender's FBX exporter in the background. If you don't have Blender's FBX plugin installed correctly, you won't be able to drag/drop Blend files into Unity. I recommend getting familiar with the plugin settings as it is an important step of the asset pipeline.

Hmm, that sounds strange. I never had to dabble with any plugins such as what you described, as the Blender prefab always automatically worked for me right out of the box.

[Dispatcher]

Blender good.

[OrbitusII]

Since Blender is free and has a plugin to import KSP .mu files, I recommend it wholeheartedly. The big issue with it is the learning curve, which is comparable to KSP. However, if you can overcome that learning curve and start doing things it's really powerful. I've used it casually for over two years and it's a phenomenal piece of software.

[Guest Space Cowboy]

Sounds good. I started using it. I found a MAYA theme online, and have also selected the MAYA controls template. This has reduced my anxiety a bit. I have so many things I want to do, but I need to just plug away at the tutorials.

[PB666]

Sounds good. I started using it. I found a MAYA theme online, and have also selected the MAYA controls template. This has reduced my anxiety a bit. I have so many things I want to do, but I need to just plug away at the tutorials.

The most time consuming problem that I found with blender is not specifically a blender problem, its setting up the properties of the 3D Mesh to make it useful in KSPs incarnation of Unity. Reading the tutorials is a must, you don't want to try to figure this stuff out through trial and error.

Crudist workflow from blender to unity is

Designing with the KSP surface attach and collisions in mind.

1. Is the mesh going to have concavities or not. If so do you need 2 or more collision meshes

2. Is the mesh going to have more than 255 convex trigs. If so, you need to start thinking about a collision mesh you might want to save the low complexity mesh as a different file along the way, then continue with the mesh building

3. Are you going to have emmisives or action parts? will you have to parse these out along the way?

Create Mesh

Mark Seams where painting would be the simplist. (e.g. black surfaces surrounding by its seam, other colored areas marked by seams, Picture insets defined by seams).

backface culling and flip anti-normals.

Create Material

Add Texture

UV unwrap.

Rearrange the unwrap

Save the unwrap schematic

Paint the saved schematic

Load the painted schematic

shade again (texture) and check for reversed normals, repair.

Revert to object mode, object should not have defect.

Save the blend.

[Optional]

Open alternative meshes

Refine alternative meshes

Save the blends.

Get all the Voodoo fetishes (either that or 2 versions of the Part Tools - 0.20 and 0.23) you can find, get them ready because you are heading to the KSP alternative Unity-verse.

[Jovzin]

Blender: Powerful but overwhelming to the uninitiated.

Lightwave: Last time I used it, it was lacking a LOT of basic features.

Maya: My weapon of choice. Buggy as hell but great for game work.

3DS: I never could get around the UI of this one.

MODO: Looks good, havent dived in yet.

Same like electronicfox posted.

For me Maya is the choice. Has some bugs but still is great.

Lightwave never used it so can not compare.

Blender: I am lost in this UI

3DS: Same as Blender the UI is killing me. Tried it in the past but I was not able to get the touch of the UI.

Modo: Have not tried it yet.

Old school: Caligari Truespace 6.6 I used it when I was younger. Nice program but no more supported from the devs.