3D modelling

[Prpl_Mage]

So right, the title might say it all. I'm getting interested in getting into some 3D modelling, not as a huge project of global scale with fully animated shark-riding lizardmen with burning poles. That would probably take ages.

Right, so I've done some textures in the past, nothing big, nothing huge, mostly just edits or the like of existing textures for a model. Mostly in Warcraft 3 to be honest.
But I never figured out how to remove and/or add parts to the models. For example I thought that it would be easy to simply make the colour of the shield section transparent to make the shield go away. But that didn't work, the model underneath got some shaded white mass that shows up. I suppose that's because it's all solid and stuff.
Got this viewer called Noessis but it can't handle the warcraft 3 blp files. I suppose that's the format for the game and not an actual model filetype. It can load all kinds of models otherwise which is neat and all. And I kinda want to move away from making warcraft 3 stuff, they are kinda pologony and stuff. Just need to start small, figure out how to remove stuff of one type of model and see it works could be useful when I want to remove stuff on another model. And adding stuff, I assume that's as hard as making a new thing... But I'll probably get there eventually.


So anyone here knows much about 3D modelling? Just need some hints on what programs could be useful, and if possible, how to add / remove stuff in a model.

[DragonBlaze]

I have a bunch of experience with 3D modeling. Sometimes you can remove parts of a model by setting the texture to transparent, but as you noticed, this does not always work. The actual game/viewer needs to be configured with the alphaBlend property in order for transparent colors to show up. This property is part of the game/viewer settings, and usually is configured to disable the alphaBlend property for all sets of models that aren't meant to have transparent colors because calculating the alpha values in these cases would cause an extra unneeded strain on the graphics card.

I use Maya right now for most of my modeling, but I've used Lightwave in the past, both are great editors. Maya has a lot of plugins and thus can support a wide variety of formats, plus it has some great features.

If you want to remove parts in a model, the best way to do it would be to open the model in an editor, and actually remove the polygons that make up the part. Applying a transparent color may work, depending on the situation, but the graphics card will still "draw" the vertices that make up the part, and then do color calculations on that part, the part won't show up because it will use the color from the underlaying part. This isn't an efficient method, so I wouldn't recommend it.

[Prpl_Mage]

What you just said made more sense than I thought it would do.
So, what I need to do is to get myself an editor, such as maya, and figure out how to actually edit the polygons of a model to make it into what I want to be. Relying on transparency through colour is not efficient.

I suppose I will learn a lot once I get a program like that, but is the whole texture-calculating part smooth when it comes to creating your own models? Or does it take an awful lot of work and skills to achieve?

[Moosetroop11]

I used to use 3DSmax, though that was a while ago. I posted something here:

http://www.charas-project.net/forum/index.php?topic=27146.0

Razor's pretty profficient, so he might give you some chumly advice.

[DragonBlaze]

I suppose I will learn a lot once I get a program like that, but is the whole texture-calculating part smooth when it comes to creating your own models? Or does it take an awful lot of work and skills to achieve?

Well it requires a lot of practice, but I believe anyone can do it. Texture Calculating (aka UV Mapping), is probably the thing I hate most about 3D modeling. There are a lot of tricks to make it easier, and there are actually quite a few video tutorials on the web (for Maya and 3DSmax at least) that do a great job showing you how to do stuff like this.

[fruckert]

I'm sure you've heard about Blender.
It's definitely as difficult as it sounds; I'd give it a vertical learning curve.

Anyways, I personally prefer sculpting programs to modelling programs.
A really good one is Sculptris, as well as it's big...brother uncle thing, Zbrush.
The program was originally developed by a guy pretty famous in the indie game scene for his tools, DrPetter, who you might know for Musagi or SFXR.
It's very fast, extremely intuitive, and just all around awesome. Takes a little while to get used sculpting, though, but once you get a hold of it you can do a LOT.

That's just for making models, though, if you want to animate you'll have to look elsewhere.
Also, as I recall Sculptris's file export capabilities leave a lot to be desired.

[Razor]

Yeah, I might know a thing or two.

At the very least I know how to go from Maya to Source.

[Prpl_Mage]

Okay, gonna grab a program after classes today.
So far I've heard 3Dmax, Maya, Blender and Sculptris. Anyone got any angst towards one of them or something I should know about? I will probably just grab the one that looks neater otherwise. Or are they more efficient in a certain area?

[Razor]

Blender is free, but has a reputation of "if you use Blender, people who don't will laugh at you".
Maya and Autodesk are similiar but different, being from the same company. To buy a license will cost you, more so if you're not an American. If you're not going to use it to make money, it doesn't really matter.
Sculptris is more for digital sculpting than modelling. Blender is comparable to Maya, Sculptris is comparable to ZBrush.

[Momeka]

Maya is the industry standard so it might be good to know if you want to start a career as it. I don't know much about modelling though.

[Prpl_Mage]

As expected, this is pretty hard.

I got Maya for free thanks to being a student and everything, awfully nice way to do it. I wasn't planning on using it for profit anyway.

Managed to fix the model I wanted to fix by removing the shield, but I can't find a way to save the file that will keep the texture impact. Or appear at all.
So I gotta find some tutorial on the whole texture thingy. I imported an obj file, fixed it and exported it as a dae file. Couldn't find obj as a choice.

So progress is being made, also followed a tutorial to make a helmet. Just, no textures on that helmet and some of the stuff in the tutorial was a bit to old because the software developed so much.

Anyone knows if I should stick to maya or if any of the other programs got a better way at handling this thing?

[fruckert]

If you have Maya for free then keep it.
Like is said above, it's the industry standard.

But, then again, so is a lot of Adobe software, and I don't really like them that much...

[Prpl_Mage]

Realized that my last post was a bit dodgy.

So right, when importing a obj file I receive only the actual model, not the textures. When opening a file with for example noesis the viewer loads the model and the texture which makes everything look good and I'm a happy person.
I did my changes on this model and then exported it as a dae file. But when opening it with noesis again, only the models shows up. I suppose that's because of what I did in Maya.

So far I haven't found any tutorials on how to add textures like these to a model, it's mostly "how to add maya 3d textures to objects".

The search goes on!

[DragonBlaze]

As far as I know, textures cannot be added to .obj files. And .obj file is essentially a text document with a list of vertex positions, normals (angle of which light is reflected off the object) and texture coordinates for how a texture file is supposed to be applied to the object. The actual image isn't stored in the obj file.

With maya you have to add the texture to the project file which links the texture in.

When I created a game using .obj files, I had to manually specify which texture belonged to which model.

[Moosetroop11]

I've never liked .obj files. Occasionally I had to use them for importing them into certain engines, though... They seem pretty universally compatable.