• 3D

  • Godot and modeling softwares.

Godot can animate 2D skeletons and unfortunately I don't see his counterpart on 3D.

The bones are represented in the editor. Why not allows the users to manipulate them like the 2D rigs ? Do you think it would be a relevant feature request ?

I think to use Blender for skeletal animation only. Meanwhile I'm trying to reproduce a famous 3D model, who doesn't need bones, to test Wings 3D.

Wings 3D is far from perfect but this very light UI helps me to stay focused on the model instead of focusing on the software.

@Gokudomatic

I agree, the implication there is that learning multiple tools at once as a beginner far outweighs the befits. Its easy to let a couple years go by basking in the glory of technology and meanwhile not produce much of any portfolio level content. Personally I quite like 3DCoat, ZBrush I love and hate. Such great tools, odd UX design, no Linux runtime, random crashes... but the tools... wonderful magic sauce.

@keltwookie

Your doing better than I did. Be glad your not joining in prior to 2.5x, I'm sure the Blender community lost many potential users for not having Python bundled (disregarding the various other issues of the time). You couldn’t even start the program before giving up, literally, it wouldn’t start at all. People have it so easy now to be able to go online and in a couple minutes have dozens of ready to use production level tools all FOSS and with extensive free training available.

Good job with the car, your half way to Lightning McQueen :)

Haven't tried animating bones in Godot before. Godot is still pretty early in life and it is missing quite a few tools when it comes to assembling sets, doing terrain, and other more asset building type stuff. For the time being its best at least for the 3D to build and arrange everything before import but hopefully that will change. Especially with 3x Godot will have some pretty compelling reasons a dev may want to choose it over the myriad of other engines available.

16 days later

I try to create a texture But these attempts have not given the result I expect.

I tried to make a map that respects the surfaces scales.

If I might suggest: open the object in Blender, and use the auto unwrap in Blender instead. It produces pretty good results, and for simple objects like yours it easily keeps the relative scale. Also, it allows you to create uv map islands that make much better use of the available texture space - you are wasting a lot of space, which is unnecessary.

Blender's UV unwrapping tools are great and easy to use (if you are accustomed to Blender's overall navigation and selection tools, of course).

I understand you are concerned about keeping a light GUI that does not distract while modeling - it is easy to set up a full-screen viewport with merely the essentials for modeling, and a nice pie menu. The modeling tools in Blender are top-notch - and for hard surface modeling the hard ops add-on is unbeatable. https://gumroad.com/l/hardops#

All full-scope 3d applications are quite intimidating to learn - but I really think it is preferable to learn to work in one, rather than many small tools that are lacking in some way or other. Alternatively, "Sensei Format" is an add-on that simplifies the GUI considerably.

I will test Blender auto unwrap thanks for the advice.

I'm watching some Blender tutorials to learn UV mapping and it makes me think of something

What is amazing with Wings 3D is that I could find the UV map tool without asking for help on forums and without documentation ! The UI have a real logic and almost all features can be found simply by following this logic. It's a shame that this software has no more contributors to add and improve features.

Be careful when comparing Wings to Blender (or Maya, Max, Cinema4d) - the breadth and scope of functionality/features of the latter is on a vastly different scale. You would probably have a similar experience in other 3d suites. Wings is very, very limited in scope compared to Blender, Maya, Max, Modo, C4d, Lightwave, etc.

Which means Wings can put everything right at hand, while trying to find UV unwrapping in other 3d software (with far more features) may be much harder, and requires guidance.

It's like comparing a swiss knife with a CNC router. The swiss knife is easy to use and it has all its features at hand, but you can do only so much with it. With a CNC router, you can do much more, but more features brings more complexity. If you add as much features in Wings 3D as in Blender, you'll have a monster of complexity too.

If you want the truth, I tested a "warez" version of Cinema 4D for a bunch of days, and the learning steep of this fully featured software, is a lot easier than Blender.

As some people said in another topic, Blender have a very old basis. A forum member shows us some screenshots from nineties, at this time Blender has another name and it was a proprietary software, and the main parts of the U.I is recognizable, even the black cursor. The U.I evolution only consists to add features without redesigning the whole interface. In consequence the most used commands and informations are not easier to access than the most advanced features. I understand it is less easy to fully redesign such a project on an open source software with so many contributors. And to make things more difficult, the U.I is probably hardcoded, without modern programming patterns, because the codebase is very old. Godot avoids this for the moment because Reduz is obviously the leader, he worked on this from the beginning so it has the capability to rewrite everything.

I understand that Blender, is by far, the best open source modelling software and I will use it little by little ! But I think criticism is useful to make the things better for newbies. No ones knows the absolute truth and devellopers must listen and looking for ideas wherever they are.

4 days later

I just made UV maps attempts on Blender.

Unwrapped like a box.

A new try With more cuts.

It needs some little manual adjustements on the front door windows but the Blender algorythm seems to be very relevant.

If I export the blender project in .obj now, the UV map will be included in the file right ? Will the .png file be properly mapped by Godot if I drop it into "diffuse" property ?

The stretch view option shows the little adjustements to do.

I doesn't found better images from the original game in order to create the texture.

I plan to recreate these stickers. When I'll find time I would study Inkscape to see if he can vectorize these images.

17 days later

Hello, I'm drawing a texture on Inkscape but the stickers doesn't fit the mesh as expected in Godot.

On Blender according to the "stretch" helper the UV map isn't so bad in my opinion. What do you think ?

I'm so stupid. I forget to import the mesh with the updated UV map...

The result is still ugly but it works almost as expected.

I wonder how to remove this kind of "Gouraud Shading" to obtain a flat shadowing on the mesh. My model is low poly and I want to show it !

@NeoD said: I wonder how to remove this kind of "Gouraud Shading" to obtain a flat shadowing on the mesh. My model is low poly and I want to show it !

Go on "Face mode" Select all faces In left tab shading/UV checks "Faces" and select "Flat"

That's it.

17 days later

@MagicLord said:

Thanks. It works fine on Godot 2.1. On a Godot 3.0 build that does nothing but the import process is different. Maybe I made something wrong.

a month later

This application, it's a crap, I do not recommend installing sensei in blender, it's very Intrusive modifies your interface, if you do not know how to return to your original interface you can damage your blender.

I recommend you use a basic model like a cube or a cylinder of few faces 10 15 0 20, and you practice with each of the UV mapping that has integrated blender, it took me 20 days to understand how each unwrap form works , Is not complicated also allows you to accommodate the islands in the way you want, it is only a question of you practice and do not despair, so you learn in blender you will have to pause your project and dedicate a little time to whatever you want...

@NeoD said: This test is to increase the scale of the islands that will cause you problems with the uv map resolution, whether you increase or decrease the scale of the islands that are not blue