So I started learning blender yesterday and have a few questions

[wildkittyv1]

Hey guys,

I had downloaded Blender a while ago and hadn't been able to find a decent starter's tutorial on how things work and just got overwhelmed, then put it away for a bit. I looked again last night and finally found someone who actually explains stuff on youtube, and decided to take another crack at it. Here's her channel since I've looked through a few tutorials of hers and I feel she does a great job of putting things into perspective for beginners, and not just going through steps so you can't intuitively deduce what you're exactly doing when you do it and how to apply the new knowledge like so many other "guides": http://www.youtube.com/user/vscorpianc?feature=g-user-u

Anyway, onto my questions. I'm not worried about collision meshes, adding nodes, and textures yet. I've done a bunch of .cfg editing and know how nodes work, I figure collision meshes will be easier if I know modeling since they're basic geometric shapes, and I've enough past experience with photoshop to do the texturing part.

First, some images:

That's the first part I did, decided to go with an engine since it's more than a basic cylinder. How is that for size? I took a default cylinder, which I'm assuming is 1x1m (and the scale in blender is proportional to KSP to my understanding) and just edited it from there. So from the top of the "plate" to the bottom of the engine bell is 1 in height and 1 in diameter. Secondly, how am I for face/vertex count? I looked at the stickied guide and it said for 1m parts to use 24 faces, so I used that and worked off of it. I know there's much more complex parts in terms of geometry that don't seem to lag particularly, so I think I'm good.

Now, some technical questions. Do you guys smooth surfaces in the program or use a rough model like I have? Add more faces and vertices to make it smoother or is something like that fine? How can I attach the small fuel line looking part that's separate in the first two images? In the third image, I selected all the points and moved it so both edges on it were touching the main part and then just went to object mode to take the snapshot. When I get to rendering, is Blender going to keep them together like that? I saw in a tutorial for an older version where you would attach the objects like so and use ctrl+j to join them, but that doesn't work in the newest version.

I guess that's it for now. I'm just looking for a bit of help on a few things. I understand most of the commands and want to get some models down before I move on to giving them collision meshes and the like since I figure it'll be much easier. What do ya think?

Cheers and thanks in advance

Edit: Alright, I've done a bit more playing around and watched some vids on youtube and figured out how UV Mapping pretty much works. I'll try to upload images of some questions regarding seams later or in another post or something since some of the layouts were stretched and I was having issues. Regardless, is there a way to make the UV export higher res? It came out extremely low res and some of the areas were basically just a jumble of pixels where I'd like them to be more defined.

And I also realized that the size was being measured from the radius and that I was basically building 2m parts to start with, so that's sorted and understood now.

Also, where do you guys get your textures for the rockets from? The tanks seem easy enough to do, but I've seen some really good stuff for the engines and it just seems unlikely that everyone would be good at modeling and textures. I know some guys have teams who work on stuff, but I still feel like there's some repository where I can get some CC textures or fair use ones or something I could alter to get me started.

Thanks again.

Edited August 26, 2012 by wildkittyv1

[Liarean]

Now since I myself never use blender ain't have to much information on the program itself.

First off I instantly noticed something about your viewport.

It seems you're in orthographic view and if there's one thing that was learned to me from the beginning that was not to use orthographic view becuase it does some strange things.

Stick to perspective and you won't encounter certain problems.

Second the standard for cylindric parts in KSP is 18 sides if I remember correctly.

You can change that in the quantity you want but remember:

More poly's = Slower performance

For example with 18 sides you will be fine mostly. At least it always look fine with my parts and for attaching the fuel lines that I don't know since in every program it's different.

In 3ds max a "attach" command is used.

As for the uv map. I don't know if this is the same with blender but in 3ds max I can set how big the resolution is of the uv map when exporting it.

Also note that a bigger resolution causes the performance to be slower then a lower resolution. Same as the polygon thing.

Stick to these sizes for the textures:

> 128 (not sure)

> 256

> 512

> 1024

As for the answer to: "where do you guys get your textures for the rockets from?"

It's rather simple. They make them themselves or a teammate makes them.

It is possible to use photo's and such but that doesn't fit the game and still requires a large amount of editing to make it fit nice on the model.

Some people make them from scratch but there are also people like me that use photos as a reference or base.

And there isn't a repository or something like that because every texture has a unique fit on a model. A texture from an uv map from another model doesn't fit correctly without editing on a different model because of the difference in the uv map.

And indeed some people work in teams and have someone to make textures for them but it can also be done alone.

I work alone so I can practice on the most things in a single project.

I do my own models, textures, scripts and uv mapping is just part of the modelling.

Hope it helps a bit and sorry for my english since its not my native language.

Just ask me if you have a question with modelling or texturing. I can help 90% of the time ;D

[orson]

For some help with textures , this site is a good source http://www.cgtextures.com/

[wildkittyv1]

Thanks for the reply, and your English is fine.

I've been messing around this morning/afternoon and managed to work out some stuff. I'm going to leave the simple engines I have now at 24 faces since there's not a lot of other geometry going on in comparison to some models I've seen, so they should be fine. I'll start making them smaller when I get into adding more surfaces and such to keep the poly count down. The reason I went with ortho view is because the tutorials I watched all seemed to suggest it over perspective, so I've been using it. Haven't noticed any "weird" stuff going on, could you elaborate a bit so I know what to watch out for?

Went and downloaded GIMP and am working on re-familiarizing myself with image editing software, and remembering how much simple geometry, brushes and layering can actually pull off. I was just asking that because so many of the textures looked similar, but I guess once you get something decent down for each type of surface, it just becomes a matter of copy/pasting, rescaling and some minor tweaking.

Anyway, I do have one more question and I'm hoping you can answer it. Again, this is UV map related.

In these images you can see that I have some sections of the UV map shown, they are various sections of the cylindrical shapes from the model in the 2nd image. I see that in the texture files for pretty much every part, the different areas of the texture map are all flattened into some form of a square or rectangle. I know that I can move the edges and vertices around on the UV map to flatten the parts out, but is there a way to more easily flatten out an entire island (as it's called in Blender - all connected faces of one area) rather than having to move and rotate each edge by hand? What about the really oddly shaped part in the upper-right hand corner? Those are the "fuel line" looking bits just below the top plate in the model.

Anyway, that's it for now and thanks again for your help. I'm picking this up pretty quick so I'm hoping in a few days I'll be able to have some engines and decouplers to test before moving onto more complicated parts.

[LaydeeDem]

In these images you can see that I have some sections of the UV map shown, they are various sections of the cylindrical shapes from the model in the 2nd image. I see that in the texture files for pretty much every part, the different areas of the texture map are all flattened into some form of a square or rectangle. I know that I can move the edges and vertices around on the UV map to flatten the parts out, but is there a way to more easily flatten out an entire island (as it's called in Blender - all connected faces of one area) rather than having to move and rotate each edge by hand? What about the really oddly shaped part in the upper-right hand corner? Those are the "fuel line" looking bits just below the top plate in the model.

Anyway, that's it for now and thanks again for your help. I'm picking this up pretty quick so I'm hoping in a few days I'll be able to have some engines and decouplers to test before moving onto more complicated parts.

You should unwrap using "Cylinder Projection" and then set it to "Align to Object". Hope I can help!

[wildkittyv1]

You should unwrap using "Cylinder Projection" and then set it to "Align to Object". Hope I can help!

Alright, I've tried the cylinder projection with a basic cylindrical tank with some vertices and such and that definitely makes it look odd, which I'm assuming is remedied by the Align to Object option.

However, I can't find this Align to Object option. Which list is it in? I've only been using Blender for about 10 hours now, so I still don't know where all the menus and options are or what they do. I've looked under the UVs list in the bottom menu bar and see some align options, but no Align to Object and none project the UV flat.

Thanks again, I'm messing around with some textures in the meantime.

Edit: Alright, I found the align to object option, but it doesn't seem to acknowledge my seams on a simple cylinder. Am I supposed to unwrap each of the cylinders individually using this method or something?

Edited August 26, 2012 by wildkittyv1

[LaydeeDem]

Alright, I've tried the cylinder projection with a basic cylindrical tank with some vertices and such and that definitely makes it look odd, which I'm assuming is remedied by the Align to Object option.

However, I can't find this Align to Object option. Which list is it in? I've only been using Blender for about 10 hours now, so I still don't know where all the menus and options are or what they do. I've looked under th8e UVs list in the bottom menu bar and see some align options, but no Align to Object and none project the UV flat.

Thanks again, I'm messing around with some textures in the meantime.

Edit: Alright, I found the align to object option, but it doesn't seem to acknowledge my seams on a simple cylinder. Am I supposed to unwrap each of the cylinders individually using this method or something?

Yes. You unwrap each cylinder individually.

[wildkittyv1]

Yes. You unwrap each cylinder individually.

Oh man, thank you so much for that tip. It took me a bit of finagling around in blender to sort everything out, but it's so awesome being able to put the different faces where I want in the uv map and having them flattened out and all that jazz. Thank you so much again. Got some preliminary textures on my first engine model.

And here's how I had the uv map sorted, thanks to you guys. Now I just need to decide if this is the style I want to go for. The textures are just preliminary, but should I continue with the rusty look? I'm not going for a military look with the green, or a rusty Rusky (haha?) look either, though I do plan to model some parts after some of the stuff from the Russian programs since I think they look pretty interesting.

And I want to thank orson for that website referral. Great place and tons of textures to play around with. I haven't played with photoshop or gimp in a few years, so this is a nice little project to refamiliarize myself with the software and there's almost too many textures there to choose from. It's tough to find an easy to navigate site with a good selection with so many out there.

[LaydeeDem]

Looking good! Might I suggest changing the green to white/gray instead?

[orson]

And I want to thank orson for that website referral. Great place and tons of textures to play around with. I haven't played with photoshop or gimp in a few years, so this is a nice little project to refamiliarize myself with the software and there's almost too many textures there to choose from. It's tough to find an easy to navigate site with a good selection with so many out there.

Your welcome .. great looking results on your engine , ofc you can get higher res images by becoming a paid member but the free subscription gives access to some at least , and tbh the samples are good enough for most cases when making gaming textures , even if its just to use them as reference ....if you use GIMP or PS this site is also a good source for custom brushes and stuff http://www.deviantart.com/

[MrPwner]

To make it smooth:

Select the object and in the left menu under shading click smooth.

It won't look right, yet.

In the right menu click the wrench icon (with object still selected) and click add modifier. Find Edge Split under Generate. Play with the edge angles if you want and then click apply.

If there are edges you don't want smoothed, make them sharp edges. It's in the same menu as making edges seams.

[wildkittyv1]

Nutt: The reason I went with this color is because so many parts packs out there use grey/white (especially KW Rocketry and lots of people use that) and I wanted to do something a little bit different. Nothing's set in stone since I'm still trying to figure out exactly what I want to do, but if you had a reference image or something you'd like to see emulated then I'll consider going with it. I just don't want my parts to look like everyone else's, I plan on doing a bit of work over the next week or so to throw something together. I was also considering a dark/gunmetal grey color for a base coat and a lighter grey or white for the accents, but that'll be easier to do so I went with this to get reacquainted with layering/texturing. I'm all ears, though!

orson: Yeah, most of the smallest sizes for the textures it seems are 1024x1024 so free works just fine for me.

I'm having issues making my own brushes with GIMP, some kind of permissions error that shouldn't be happening, but whatever, I've got a workaround for the couple of brushes I was trying to make. I've never really looked at dA for brushes, so I'll take a gander in a bit.

Thanks again