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TIGSource ForumsDeveloperArt (Moderator: JWK5)How to "3D",,,?
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beestings
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« on: November 09, 2014, 12:08:31 PM »

I tried out Unity and Blender once without much success, but I want to get back into it. I am definitely trying to make something very art based, but I want to make sure it's still usable and effective if I imported it, eventually, into a game (which I don't know how to do.. but I don't want to spend a lot of time on a scene and realize it won't work in a game). So I just wanted to ask a couple of questions on how to get started.

Like I said, I have used Unity and blender a little bit, but could you guys give some advice on how I should get started with making potential scenes/items/characters for a game? Should I care a lot about how many faces/polygons are in a scene/object? Should I make a scene all in one blender project, or make a house and then tree and whatever else and import them one by one into the unity game scene? Are there any really great tutorials you've found with lighting and more of the atmosphere aspects of 3d modeling? Should I add lights and special rendering in Blender, or in unity if I want to make it a game (rather than just art)? Is unity he best option for importing stuff from blender, or what? I'm not really too attached to any program, I only use unity and blender because I heard they were the best (besides 3Dsmax or whatever), but I really don't know if importing from blender to unity is the best way or what would be better.

Here's the project I worked on last in Blender (my first and only project actually), after importing it into unity I had issues with the texture and rigging and animating the whole character proved really unappetizing after I'd spent days and hours upon hours working on just figuring out the basics of Blender.




Ultimately I'd love to achieve scenes like this:


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SolarLune
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« Reply #1 on: November 10, 2014, 07:54:24 AM »

Like I said, I have used Unity and blender a little bit, but could you guys give some advice on how I should get started with making potential scenes/items/characters for a game? Should I care a lot about how many faces/polygons are in a scene/object? Should I make a scene all in one blender project, or make a house and then tree and whatever else and import them one by one into the unity game scene? Are there any really great tutorials you've found with lighting and more of the atmosphere aspects of 3d modeling? Should I add lights and special rendering in Blender, or in unity if I want to make it a game (rather than just art)? Is unity he best option for importing stuff from blender, or what? I'm not really too attached to any program, I only use unity and blender because I heard they were the best (besides 3Dsmax or whatever), but I really don't know if importing from blender to unity is the best way or what would be better.

That's a lot of questions!

I have no knowledge of how Unity works, but I can offer some general advice.

To get started, just model stuff. You'll get better at art as you go along. You can focus on low-poly if you want, or high-poly. The principles should still apply to both (Good texturing, good positions of vertices, good animation, etc).

I'd imagine you should make different props different objects in Blender at least so that you can separate them in Unity (i.e. place a house once, and a tree 50 times).

I don't know if special lighting / material effects other than the default in Blender will transfer to Unity, but you could check their blend file importer out (if they have a direct blend file importer still?) and see.

Unity and Blender are good (I use Blender only for my game development), but I wouldn't just use something because you hear it's the best. Try out different engines and see what you like; it might be you're far more productive with a certain engine that's supposedly "worse". Godot comes to mind as a good engine. I'm currently primarily use the Blender Game Engine, myself.
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EvilDingo
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« Reply #2 on: November 11, 2014, 05:00:24 AM »

Model each and every individual thing separately. The only thing that will transfer from Blender to Unity intact is the geometry, UVs, and animations. You can import the .blend file right into Unity without having to export it first, which is a nice time saver.

That said, once in Unity it will likely have some wonky-named material and no textures. Import the textures separately and throw them on the wonky-named material, or create a new material.

For performance reasons, you generally want to have as few materials as possible. So don't color your objects with materials only (a lot of low-poly art use this as a style choice.) If you want that effect, you're better off just auto-unwrapping it and painting on a single colored texture. It will have better performance than 5 colored materials.

I'm the other way around - I'm a Unity pro but very new to Blender and 3D modeling. Basically out of necessity.
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SolarLune
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« Reply #3 on: November 11, 2014, 07:16:58 AM »

If you're going to unwrap your model and apply a single color, it might be a good idea to use a texture of a palette of colors. You can shrink the faces to fit the color you want on it, and that way you don't have to make a million different textures. That's how I do it, anyway.
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beestings
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« Reply #4 on: November 13, 2014, 09:06:46 AM »

I'm the other way around - I'm a Unity pro but very new to Blender and 3D modeling. Basically out of necessity.

would you recommend using unity? I'm not much of a programmer either but I'm definitely willing to learn. I plan on going to college for computer science (mainly just programming) but I'm not sure yet if that's what I want to major in. Did you use any tutorials or books or anything to help you get the hang of unity?

Unity and Blender are good (I use Blender only for my game development), but I wouldn't just use something because you hear it's the best. Try out different engines and see what you like; it might be you're far more productive with a certain engine that's supposedly "worse". Godot comes to mind as a good engine. I'm currently primarily use the Blender Game Engine, myself.

I didn't even know that existed! How is it, the blender game engine that is. What sorts of resources did you use to learn how to use that aspect of it? Do you think it's worth using unity to have to transfer all that stuff in and out of Blender?

Thanks for your input!
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Richard Kain
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« Reply #5 on: November 13, 2014, 09:53:59 AM »

I didn't even know that existed! How is it, the blender game engine that is. What sorts of resources did you use to learn how to use that aspect of it? Do you think it's worth using unity to have to transfer all that stuff in and out of Blender?

Godot is decent. It's open-source, has a very small footprint, and has solid cross-platform support. (including Android and iOS) One of the big advantages of Godot is the fact that its editor also works on all platforms. It's currently one of the better solutions for Linux developers, as Unity's editing environment has still not been ported over to Linux.

I haven't used it extensively myself because one of the 3D model import features I use hasn't been adapted to it yet. (blendshapes, or at least, blendshapes exported from Blender)

The Blender Game Engine uses Python for its scripting, and can have logic "blocks" that are edited visually through the GUI. If you know what you're doing, it's decently robust. But it's a little limited in which platforms it runs on. It hasn't exactly been made a priority in the past few years, so not as much development has gone into it. (compared to most of Blender's other features)

I personally use Unity, and Blender for the modeling/animation. But I had a lot of experience with Blender before hand, and already knew C#. So transitioning over to Unity was just a matter of practice for me.
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SolarLune
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« Reply #6 on: November 13, 2014, 10:38:06 AM »

@beestings - I haven't used Unity, so I can't say from experience, but yeah, I think it would be worth using Unity (or any other engine, for that matter). Importing and exporting 3D content's something you'll have to deal with for almost every engine (except for the BGE, of course). Lots of people use Unity and love it, so it clearly's a solid engine.

As for the BGE, it's a pretty good engine. It does have some bugs and doesn't run on as many platforms as it could (I think integrated graphics cards can be troublesome), but overall, it's not a bad engine. It lacks some features that more heavy engines like Unity or UDK have, but then again, Unity Free also lacks features that Unity Pro has that are present in the BGE. So, it's an interchange.

I can't even say what exactly I used to learn the BGE - I just picked it up by using it and learning it over some time. I have some tutorials on my blog (that are rather old now) that could be used to learn. I also have a couple (the 2D sprites ones) on my

.
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EvilDingo
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« Reply #7 on: November 13, 2014, 04:02:17 PM »

would you recommend using unity? I'm not much of a programmer either but I'm definitely willing to learn. I plan on going to college for computer science (mainly just programming) but I'm not sure yet if that's what I want to major in. Did you use any tutorials or books or anything to help you get the hang of unity?

Yes, absolutely. Unity's major strengths are ease of use and its many-many platform exports. I can write a game targeting Android, and port it to iOS in a single day or less. Or Blackberry. Or Windows Phone. Or Mac or Windows Desktop, or the Web - etc. It really is remarkable.

I've used Unity for a few years now and it's the reason why I work for myself now.

As for programming, don't fool yourself into thinking you need a college education to become a brilliant programmer. I rose to be a senior developer managing other programmers and completing million dollar projects without a day in college. When I decided to go to a state university for programming, I found they were well behind the curve. The internet is more than sufficient to learn what you need to know and you'll be learning current technologies.

As for learning Unity, just do it. Open it up. Create a cube or something and see if you can move it around. You'll get the fundamentals really quick.

If you decide to go with Unity, make sure you use C#. It's just a better fitting language. Plus there is a lot of demand for C# programmers, so you can put that on a future resume if you're looking for that kind of career.

Cheers!
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beestings
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« Reply #8 on: November 23, 2014, 05:20:41 AM »

instead of creating a whole new topic I figured I'd just continue my questions on here. I redid my character that I posted a picture of initially, I just started from scratch again, mainly to re-get the hang of shortcuts and the manuverings of blender etc. Anyways I found that my UV map is pretty messed up... I'm not sure how to fix it entirely but I'm going to start by removing the shoes,jacket, and hat mesh. I just sort of extended them and connected them back to the original body but they aren't separate meshes, I don't know if that's even a thing that could mess it up, but I think that's the biggest problem thus far...


By the way, since I knew the UV map was messed up I only put color on it to better see where and what the issues were. The colors are more of a test, not a finished product in the least.

Also can I smooth and subdivide only certain parts of my character? I like the boxy look of the shoes and legs and arms but I would really like his face to just be smooth. Thanks in advance!




*****EDIT******
So I went in and took a closer look at the UV map after fixing somethings and I noticed that this was happening a lot.. I already deleted double vertices (i thought maybe that'd fix it since it looks like there's two sets of vertices for some of the uv map, or at least thats what I attributed to the separated faces) but none were found.
« Last Edit: November 23, 2014, 06:52:34 AM by beestings » Logged
beestings
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« Reply #9 on: November 23, 2014, 08:27:58 AM »

update. I just moved the uv squares to fix it, not sure if theres a better way or not. Also, anyone know how I can make the hat and the bottom of the jacket their own mesh? So I can click and edit them separately?

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Whiteclaws
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« Reply #10 on: November 23, 2014, 09:32:38 AM »

Google is your friend
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Dr.Electro
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« Reply #11 on: November 24, 2014, 01:50:32 AM »

As a complete autodidact in Blender and Unity i would advise you to:

  • learn modeling with Blender by doing video tutorials: blendercookie.com
  • learn how to effectively model, UV, texturing by looking into this thread on polycount http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=41232
  • when you modeled (and textured) your first lowpoly (which you nearly did i would say) then learn rigging and skinning
  • create your first idle and runcycle animations
  • bring your chara to life in Unity (as said before google is your friend)
  • .. continue doing cool stuff Smiley

One thing i noticed about your texture unwrap: For lowpoly its best to unwrap as you would like to draw.
Its usually better to just unwrap with "Project from View" (your charas hat for example) and draw the hat onto the UV like you would draw a hat from above.
Because of several reasons: The unwrapping process is much simpler, drawing is a lot easier (just draw your chara from front, and back for example.), you dont have to worry about texture stretching - when its very lowpoly: you usually wouldnt bake a normal map - and most important: You find a lot of references (just google up an image of a safari hat - bang you have your texture (to draw on) Wink

my 2 cents.
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beestings
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« Reply #12 on: November 29, 2014, 08:11:42 AM »




just an update on what I've been working on. I'm super dissatisfied with the color scheme and what not  Concerned I would also love to add more detail to the texture itself but my tablet is not currently working so I'm stuck using just my mouse.. I'm definitely going for a more lighthearted cartoony feel
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EvilDingo
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« Reply #13 on: December 03, 2014, 06:27:16 AM »

It doesn't look bad at all. Don't fuss over the colors until you see it with in-game lighting. You could chuck some shadows on that and a nice skybox or something and it would look great and completely different to Blender's renderer.
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« Reply #14 on: December 04, 2014, 01:52:23 PM »

Hey there.
Not sure what you mean by cartoony. If something along the lines of WoW/Torchlight chunky painterly stuff, you might want to check this video:

as well as other ones by this guy.

These two tutorials on 3dmotive might interest you:
http://3dmotive.com/series/hand-painted-texturing.html - modeling & texturing a sword and board, done by a Blizzard artist.
http://3dmotive.com/series/hand-painted-enviro-texturing/170/1460 - modeling & texturing a building

And if you don't feel like spending $40 here's a Blender-specific ripoff of the Tyson Murphy tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCA4zhLwjFkVB1l7conRLw2w.

Also there's this text + pictures tut about modular buildings: http://ojenvironmentartistblog.blogspot.com/2012/04/blizzard-styled-texture-painting.html

Two amazing ebooks here: http://artbypapercut.com/
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beestings
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« Reply #15 on: December 04, 2014, 05:30:44 PM »

It doesn't look bad at all. Don't fuss over the colors until you see it with in-game lighting. You could chuck some shadows on that and a nice skybox or something and it would look great and completely different to Blender's renderer.

thanks, I think you are right, I know it'll look much better with the right lighting and whatnot! I appreciate it!

Hey there.
Not sure what you mean by cartoony. If something along the lines of WoW/Torchlight chunky painterly stuff, you might want to check this video:

as well as other ones by this guy.

These two tutorials on 3dmotive might interest you:
http://3dmotive.com/series/hand-painted-texturing.html - modeling & texturing a sword and board, done by a Blizzard artist.
http://3dmotive.com/series/hand-painted-enviro-texturing/170/1460 - modeling & texturing a building

And if you don't feel like spending $40 here's a Blender-specific ripoff of the Tyson Murphy tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCA4zhLwjFkVB1l7conRLw2w.

Also there's this text + pictures tut about modular buildings: http://ojenvironmentartistblog.blogspot.com/2012/04/blizzard-styled-texture-painting.html

Two amazing ebooks here: http://artbypapercut.com/


These books are AMAZING, I would honestly recommend them to any one, thanks so much for them! I'll honestly probably end up reading each cover to cover!!
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beestings
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« Reply #16 on: December 21, 2014, 10:07:50 AM »

I've tried looking up an answer to the issue I'm currently having but really haven't found any answers.I don't know how to get my uv mapped textures to show up in Unity. There is no Save UV Face Layout in my UV imaging section (and the option in preferences is checked for uv import/export already if that matters). It's super frustrating  Sad


(The wood planks are suppose to be  roof, the wood post is what holds it up)

Here's some of my progress though, comments welcome! These are all pieces for a hide out in a cave! Also if anything knows any good transparency tutorials thatd be awesome too (I'd like to make the blanket on that rock make shift bed tattered and being able to make some parts of the same texture seethrough would really get that effect).
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biomechanic
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« Reply #17 on: December 25, 2014, 11:58:10 AM »

The model is exported from Blender with UVs, but in Unity you have to manually assign your texture to a material and it to the model.

Here's a transparency how-to for blender: http://www.katsbits.com/tutorials/blender/scene-view-alpha-transparency.php
In Unity you just have to set the shader on the material to Transparent/Diffuse.

The planks and the rocks are looking really good. You might want to give smooth shading a try, especially for the rocks - in object mode select a rock, open the tool shelf (T) and there you have the shading section with smooth/flat. The first option will make it so that the lighting between neighbouring faces will change more gradually. And if you want to put in a hard edge somewhere, for example to separate the sides and caps of the logs, here's a few methods for that: http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/734/how-to-smooth-shade-an-object-while-retaining-hard-edges
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« Reply #18 on: December 30, 2014, 02:51:12 PM »

- Unity automaticly looks up if the texture name (you used in blender) is present in a folder named Material (located in same directory like your imported fbx).
- Don't worry about smooth shading: Unity smooth shades everything by default. You have to explicitly use edge split on sharp edges (flat shading).
- And if you handpaint textures, its important to highlight edges.

Another 2 ehm.. 3 cents. Smiley
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gimymblert
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« Reply #19 on: January 03, 2015, 06:06:28 PM »





here s a good tut
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