Hahahaha, Hi, i go by Ages i guess. I'm really stuck mentally on a few things, and though people say you should learn by trial and error, im going to flat out bypass that because by trial for 5 hours on something is hopeless. clueless and just a waste of time. and it never gets solved.

My questions pertain to Blender 3d and some other Art topics, such as textured models, and generally how to go about all of it.

I am already an average or less than such artist, and i have some perspective to what its like to create a character, but the thing is there are so many different winding roads that cannot and will not let me through to my next step in even approaching models for games.

Bear with me( and use ENGLISH please, no whacko Mega rocket science nerd speak, okay? )
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QUESTIONS: (if you respond just adress the number of the question)( ALL tips pointers, tutorials welcome)


1: How do i assure that i keep my three dimensional blender model Clean, and precise, Ive used mirrors a few times, but i end up with some weird inner model glitches that dont work very well. In the end if i screw something up royally like overlapping faces and or dots and lines( Dots and lines... You know, veretex crap, all that.) how can you tell if they are over lapped(which obviously, if your going to texture, you need a clean model) And when they are overlapped, how do you fix them.

2: Im rather impressed with lower resolution textures found on something like the twilight princess Link model, 3d and texture wise, What is the definitive or ideal way of making game textures, i have cs4 Photoshop, but the 3d painting tool is terrible ( probably just my pc) And i know there are programs like zbrush, but that is pricey, is it not? (tips pointers, tutorials welcome)

3: I would like to know how to cut a hole, or fill in a pre-existing hole, or extrude inwards of the model to add depth and what not... How might i do that?

4: i had this horrible problem at one point in time where the center marker disappeared entirely and i couldn't retrieve my models because they were somewhere in the infinite void of blender. i fixed it once... but i dont really remember how... Help. lol.

5: Before getting into the 3d blender animation department, i'd love to know anything that can be offered, how cameras work, how on earth do you get proper lighting?( i cant even do it in a normal render. of a crappy ball or something) and in the animation process is here a floor or a setting for where the model cannot pass through the threshold or whatever?

6: Very puzzling this one is, I see games and alot of things use custom clothing and weapons that change. Are these like Second-life's attatchment system? over the last year or so this has been driving me a little nuts every time i think about it, which isnt to often BUT STILL.... hooowww do they do it. Armors, clothing, weapons, and how can they be properly atributed to a model in blender. ( attatching objects to a model, as if not truly part of it but it follows a certain point-joint or whatever)

7: any info i might be able to have regarding safety( things like overlapping faces and the like, really sneaky junk) of the model for media aspects such as Animation, games, etc. I would hate myself if i made some great model, but theres some awful thing that i totally overlooked, because i didnt know what it looked like. Kind of a vague question i know, but please throw some random "WARNING, DONT DO THAT"'s out there if you please.

8: How is CGI in general made into an animated or live action film, theres motion blurs and depth of field and all manner of colors and textures. Any ideas on how it all comes together. weird effects i'd love to make like black smoke or blood, Lights, glows. etc. how would you per say make a streetlight, and have it with a realistic lighting. Textures, i know that games can make them have fake shadows passing by and the like. i dont know if thats able to be done in Blender though.

9: hair and fur, I don't want all my characters to have big clean junky cartoon hair( and even if they all did, they need more depth with some extra work), and at the same time not have to model every last strand of complicated hairs, What if i want to make a Bear, and he needs bear hair. Ive seen games like Soul Calibur 4 use something that looks like a alpha texture on an object, but to make it flex, and low poly.

10: Can i render or create some kind of (ink in water ) black smoke, if so, and how. and if i wanted to take a picture of it how would i keep said smoke from going where i dont want it to.

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I'm fairly new to blender, but i hope to create sculptures and art that could easilly be used later in games or animations, which is why i want to get all the info i can soak up. as i love the prospect of making cartoon characters, and suits of scifi armor, and really anything i want, and being able to use and apply it into any form, Adding bones so i can use this highly detailed model and apply it to a Sculpture involving several other rigged characters.

Hahahaha, Hi, i go by Ages i guess. I'm really stuck mentally on a few things, and though people say you should learn by trial and error, im going to flat out bypass that because by trial for 5 hours on something is hopeless. clueless and just a waste of time. and it never gets solved.

Well,you have just too many questions (wall of text), and some of the answers would fill up an article.

I fear you need to learn some basic things by yourself first and ask real issues one at a time. Blender got a good wiki page which will help you a lot, try to get your answers there first and practise, practise, practise.. Come back when you are really stuck at one issue and throw in some screenshots and less text.

You may well know some / all of this already, and I'm really not an expert on this stuff, so there may well be a better way than anything I suggest.

1. I'm not entirely sure what you mean here, so these suggestions may be somewhat eclectic: Use a reference image (even a sketch). Use the numpad to change the view between top, left, and front, and make sure things line up correctly on each axis (e.g. use top view to line up on x and z axes, then side view for the y axis). Get familiar with the selection to grid / selection to cursor tools (shift-s menu). Get familiar with the ctrl key locking to increments and ctrl+shift to sub-increments. Find the snap to edge / face / vertex options in the snap elements menu and figure out how they work (I can't remember off-hand, but I think they were somewhat unintuitive).

3. You can also use the boolean modifier to chop holes in objects, but note that that can get quite messy. Blender 2.49 had a "cookie cutter" script, but I don't think that's in 2.5 yet (and I can't remember if it worked on 3d shapes, or just flat 2d shapes). A better way is to do something like what's described here (note that this uses subdivision surface modelling, which is a whole new area in itself).

4. Blender 2.5 has shift+C which handily centres the view on the selected object. There's also the number keys 1 through 9, which change the current layer. It's quite easy to press one by accident and have everything disappear.

The Blender Artists Forum might be a better place to ask questions like these.

Hahahaha, Hi, i go by Ages i guess. I'm really stuck mentally on a few things, and though people say you should learn by trial and error, im going to flat out bypass that because by trial for 5 hours on something is hopeless. clueless and just a waste of time. and it never gets solved.

My questions pertain to Blender 3d and some other Art topics, such as textured models, and generally how to go about all of it.

I am already an average or less than such artist, and i have some perspective to what its like to create a character, but the thing is there are so many different winding roads that cannot and will not let me through to my next step in even approaching models for games.

Bear with me( and use ENGLISH please, no whacko Mega rocket science nerd speak, okay? )
___________________________________________________________________________

If you're referring to the terminology when you talk about whacko Mega rocket science nerd speak, it would behoove you to learn a little bit of it. You can't expect people to completely dumb down their responses just so you can avoid having to learn something new; nor can you expect people to not be slightly offended by such a statement. Knowing the terminology of a given field is necessary for full understanding, and passing it off as whacko nerd speak just makes you look like a tool.

QUESTIONS: (if you respond just adress the number of the question)( ALL tips pointers, tutorials welcome)


1: How do i assure that i keep my three dimensional blender model Clean, and precise, Ive used mirrors a few times, but i end up with some weird inner model glitches that dont work very well. In the end if i screw something up royally like overlapping faces and or dots and lines( Dots and lines... You know, veretex crap, all that.) how can you tell if they are over lapped(which obviously, if your going to texture, you need a clean model) And when they are overlapped, how do you fix them.
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This depends entirely on the model. Sometimes, you'll need to grab the overlaps vertex-by-vertex and translate them away from one another manually to sort-out an overlap. Other times, you can weld vertices or use Remove Doubles to automatically merge vertices that lie within a given distance of one another.

2: Im rather impressed with lower resolution textures found on something like the twilight princess Link model, 3d and texture wise, What is the definitive or ideal way of making game textures, i have cs4 Photoshop, but the 3d painting tool is terrible ( probably just my pc) And i know there are programs like zbrush, but that is pricey, is it not? (tips pointers, tutorials welcome)

[/quote]

Blender has a texture paint mode that allows you to paint color and detail directly onto the model itself. You begin the process by creating a UV layer for the model, unwrapping the UVs to this layer, and in the UV Layout panel, creating a new image assigned to the UV layer. Then you can enter texture paint mode from the 3D view and use various brushes to paint color onto the model; the strokes will be projected onto the UV texture. You can also create multiple UV layers, and alter the UV mapping of one layer to suit a particular point of view or projection. Then you can assign another image to that second UV layer mapping, and use a clone brush to paint texture from that layer onto the "real" layer that you are painting. This is useful, for example, in making a head texture map out of an existing photograph. You project the UVs of the clone source layer to project the photograph directly onto the front of the head mesh, then apply the clone brush to those areas of the mesh where the face lies, and the texture from the photograph will be projected and transferred over to the texture you are painting. This is called projection painting if you need a search term.

Alternatively, you can pick up Sculptris, which is a free digital sculpting app, available for Windows and (now) Mac, that allows you to sculpt as if with clay, then paint directly on the model. Meshes can also be exported to import in Blender, where you can re-topo the mesh to reduce the detail and correct the topology for higher-quality animation. Blender can then be used to bake details (diffuse color, shading, ambient occlusion, normal map, etc...) from the high-resolution version to the low resolution version.

I wrote a journal entry with a basic overview of the process here.

Also, don't under-estimate the importance of a normal or bump map for your models. They can be baked from the high-detail geometry you sculpted from, and go a long way toward making the model look good in-game.

3: I would like to know how to cut a hole, or fill in a pre-existing hole, or extrude inwards of the model to add depth and what not... How might i do that?

[/quote]

You can delete faces with the x key to create a hole. You can select vertices and use the f key to create a face from them in order to fill in holes. Remember when creating faces that most game and graphics engines prefer either triangles or quads, so select the vertices 3 or 4 at a time in a sensible fashion.

5: Before getting into the 3d blender animation department, i'd love to know anything that can be offered, how cameras work, how on earth do you get proper lighting?( i cant even do it in a normal render. of a crappy ball or something) and in the animation process is here a floor or a setting for where the model cannot pass through the threshold or whatever?

[/quote]

Cameras point at something and take a picture. They work a lot like cameras in real life. As far as lighting, there are many different ways of setting up a lighting rig, and not all of them are optimal for any one given task. There is the three point lighting setup that uses a Main, a Fill, and a Back light, that is typically used for still-life type scenes where the focus a single subject. Some games prefer to have directional lighting using the Sun lamp type, others use point lights, etc... it's hard to say. One of the most important things you can do is use ambient occlusion. Blender can bake AO for a model into a texture map that helps add detail to the map without having to actually perform AO calculations in-game.

6: Very puzzling this one is, I see games and alot of things use custom clothing and weapons that change. Are these like Second-life's attatchment system? over the last year or so this has been driving me a little nuts every time i think about it, which isnt to often BUT STILL.... hooowww do they do it. Armors, clothing, weapons, and how can they be properly atributed to a model in blender. ( attatching objects to a model, as if not truly part of it but it follows a certain point-joint or whatever)

[/quote]

The exact process is dependent upon the engine you use, as far as assigning meshes to bones. The basic workflow is to create your base skeleton rig. You can then create models for the various components, and in those models create vertex groups that are named identically to the names of the bones in the skeleton, assigning the various appropriate vertices of the model to the proper vertex groups. Then you can parent the skeleton to the mesh, and when the skeleton is posed and transformed, the transformations will be mapped to any child meshes that are assigned to a given bone. Most scripts to export for a particular engine will export vertex grouping and bone assignments, so in-game you can load the skeleton as a component of an animated entity, then just attach meshes to the skeleton. Again, the exact details of how this is done vary from engine to engine.

7: any info i might be able to have regarding safety( things like overlapping faces and the like, really sneaky junk) of the model for media aspects such as Animation, games, etc. I would hate myself if i made some great model, but theres some awful thing that i totally overlooked, because i didnt know what it looked like. Kind of a vague question i know, but please throw some random "WARNING, DONT DO THAT"'s out there if you please.
[/quote]

Avoid overlapping faces. If they are very near to co-planar, they can trigger the occurrence of z-fighting artifacts that can look bad. Avoid degenerate faces as well. These are faces that have two or more vertices that lie too close together, degenerating the triangle to a line or a point. A Remove Doubles pass can help fix those.

8: How is CGI in general made into an animated or live action film, theres motion blurs and depth of field and all manner of colors and textures. Any ideas on how it all comes together. weird effects i'd love to make like black smoke or blood, Lights, glows. etc. how would you per say make a streetlight, and have it with a realistic lighting. Textures, i know that games can make them have fake shadows passing by and the like. i dont know if thats able to be done in Blender though.

9: hair and fur, I don't want all my characters to have big clean junky cartoon hair( and even if they all did, they need more depth with some extra work), and at the same time not have to model every last strand of complicated hairs, What if i want to make a Bear, and he needs bear hair. Ive seen games like Soul Calibur 4 use something that looks like a alpha texture on an object, but to make it flex, and low poly.

[/quote]

A guy could write an entire book trying to answer these questions.

Particle systems. They can be used to make grass, hair, fur, etc... They're useful for creating special-effects type stuff as well (fire, smoke, explosions, shooting stars, spell effects, and so forth). They're a complex beast that will require lots and lots and lots of experimentation.

10: Can i render or create some kind of (ink in water ) black smoke, if so, and how. and if i wanted to take a picture of it how would i keep said smoke from going where i dont want it to.

[/quote]

Blender does offer functionality for fluid simulation that might be a good place to try. Be warned that fluid simulation in any context is quite a complicated field, math intensive and processing-heavy, so doing it in real-time might not be practical.


Have fun, but remember becoming good at this is not going to happen overnight. You are going to have to practice a lot. No, seriously. A LOT.

Thanks for all the information its very helpful. i love the you tube videos of people useing the Effects and such. Esspecially the weird heavy smokes that look so darn real. its mind boggling.

Theres so many ideas i would love to express with the effects you can make in blender. though i see that it probably is incredibly hard, i might never get to the point where i make something decent, but maybe. Adding some of those effects into a live action clip would just be wonderful to do. Super powers and smoke action, hahaha.