2252 replies to this topic

[Iacov]

yeah...like the bigger ppcs, too
but i got used to the new look and now it's quite okay for me
i switched for the wider cockpit mainly because of the "gap" in the back of the current ingame model...and i hate asymmetry xD
the catapult_scale does not have any "flaws" like the ingame model

would love to start painting right away, but have yet to wait for some scenery stuff and minis i ordered from RPE

what i can recommend regarding 3d modeling - or blender in general - are the training dvds from the blender foundation
they are really well made - only downside is, that their download server is a bit slow :/

next thing i want to learn is how to do such awesome renders

[Heffay]

The Supplement to part 2 of the training video featuring how to use v1.32 of Mech Importer has been uploaded! As an added bonus, I did a quick run through on how to rig your mech at the end of the video.

Go forth and make mech porn, my minions!!

[Heffay]

For those of you who print through Shapeways, any tips or tutorials you want to share? Trying to help out a friend on another forum, and apparently it's a long, sordid process. I should look at doing this myself some day too.

[Cimarb]

This is the type of stuff I would love to have the time to do, but man the learning curve is steep... I used Poser for a while about ten years ago, and it's pretty similar, but it took me ten minutes to figure out how to rotate the wireframe mech, lol...

Thanks for the write up, Heffay! You may want to revise it a little to be more specific in some areas for us newbies, such as the "remove duplicates" wasn't using the default shortcut you listed and I had to go around clicking buttons until I found where the right options were to do it manually.

[Jrago]

Boring day at work so I thought I'd have some fun with my KTO-18. Mech is not yet final, just a test camera track and render.

[Heffay]

Cimarb, on 25 February 2014 - 07:58 AM, said:

This is the type of stuff I would love to have the time to do, but man the learning curve is steep... I used Poser for a while about ten years ago, and it's pretty similar, but it took me ten minutes to figure out how to rotate the wireframe mech, lol...

Thanks for the write up, Heffay! You may want to revise it a little to be more specific in some areas for us newbies, such as the "remove duplicates" wasn't using the default shortcut you listed and I had to go around clicking buttons until I found where the right options were to do it manually.

I should use the proper term "remove doubles", but the shortcut for it (ctrl-v in edit mode) should be accurate. Can you clarify what you mean?

[Cimarb]

Heffay, on 25 February 2014 - 08:41 AM, said:

I should use the proper term "remove doubles", but the shortcut for it (ctrl-v in edit mode) should be accurate. Can you clarify what you mean?

I may not have been in "edit mode", but ctrl+v just tried pasting whatever was on my clipboard, lol.

[Heffay]

Cimarb, on 25 February 2014 - 08:44 AM, said:

I may not have been in "edit mode", but ctrl+v just tried pasting whatever was on my clipboard, lol.

Your mouse needs to be in the right window too. It'll try to run the command in whatever window it is hovering over. Part of the joys of Blender.

[Iacov]

Heffay, on 25 February 2014 - 07:01 AM, said:

For those of you who print through Shapeways, any tips or tutorials you want to share? Trying to help out a friend on another forum, and apparently it's a long, sordid process. I should look at doing this myself some day too.

the first and most important thing to do:
follow your own tutorial in this thread xD
your script does the most important work: proper importing and removing the doubles

the tutorial that actually helped me learning starting to use blender is this one:
http://cgcookie.com/...and-navigation/
(didn't know how to rotate the camera etc before watching this tutorial)

what helped me the most was the blender for 3d training dvd from the blender foundation
http://www.blender3d...products_id=160

never ever forget to use netfabb basic
http://www.netfabb.com/

this program will help in the last steps to clean up the model and offers an easy scaling feature (want it to be 40mm? tick "keep proportions", enter mm, enter - done)

netfabb will also close gaps or deal with the infamous non-manifold edges
i do NOT recommend cleaning up the non-manifolds (solely) via netfabb - it will most likely cause problems and walls etc could be missing

also activate the 3d printing toolbox in blender - it helps a lot

making a model manifold and finding/fixing gaps should all be done by hand in blender
netfabb is perfect for that last quick fix and for scaling

Edited by Iacov, 25 February 2014 - 09:19 AM.

[Nakamura Takeshi]

Jrago, on 25 February 2014 - 08:36 AM, said:

Boring day at work so I thought I'd have some fun with my KTO-18. Mech is not yet final, just a test camera track and render.

"Just". Looks pretty good.

[Heffay]

ASSET IMPORTER 0.9

Released for testing

https://dl.dropboxus...et-importer.ps1

How to use:
1 - Copy to your path (this should be how you're doing mech-importer anyway)
2 - Update the script to reflect your preferred image file (default is .jpg, but if you use pngs with Noesis, be sure to edit script!)
3 - Go to the objects\environments directory, and find a subdir that has an obj and .mtl file.

objects\environments\frontend\mechlab_a\catwalk railings for example

4 - Run asset-importer.ps1. No arguments needed. (Note that if you ran it before and already have an import.txt file, delete it first! It just appends and will make a sloppy mess if you run it too many times.)
5 - Copy the text from import.txt into the python console.
6 - For each of the objects created, find the right material and assign it (My training video 2 of 3 supplement has a lot of great detail on how to do this).

...

8 - Profit?

Please note bugs you may find, or questions you may have. This can be used in a script to recursively run in each subdir in the environments dir (and probably some others; but you don't want to run in the mechs dir!), so you can get an import.txt for each subdirectory in there. It'll take a while to make .blend files for everything, but this takes out a lot of the chump work.

[Goose Igaly]

Heffay:

Currently receiving some errors.

>>> bpy.context.object.data.materials.clear()
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<blender_console>", line 1, in <module>
AttributeError: 'bpy_prop_collection' object has no attribute 'clear'

>>> ### Importing cda_right_torso_rear.obj.name
>>> bpy.ops.import_scene.obj(filepath="F:\\Blender Projects\\MechWarrior Online\\Objects\\mechs\\cicada\\body\\cda_right_torso_rear.obj",use_groups_as_vgroups=True,split_mode='OFF')

importing obj 'F:\\Blender Projects\\MechWarrior Online\\Objects\\mechs\\cicada\\body\\cda_right_torso_rear.obj'
parsing obj file...
0.0050 sec
loading materials and images...
Material not found MTL: b'F:\\Blender Projects\\MechWarrior Online\\Objects\\mechs\\cicada\\body\\unused.mtl'
0.0010 sec
building geometry...
verts:456 faces:152 materials: 2 smoothgroups:0 ...
finished importing: b'F:\\Blender Projects\\MechWarrior Online\\Objects\\mechs\\cicada\\body\\cda_right_torso_rear.obj' in 0.0100 sec.
{'FINISHED'}


And I'm getting what appears to be a second cicada jumbled at the feet of the first. It may be something that I'm doing wrong with your script and I'm not focused enough at the moment to find out what, or it could be an unforseen error. In case of the latter I wanted to give you some feedback.

If it is something on my end I'll look through it some more tomorrow. I do know that textures are not carrying into Blender. The previous script (the one you used in the part 2 supplemental) was also having texture issues. Again, could be on my end.

Greatly appreciate the work you have been putting into this. As I've said before, you've taken people who know nothing of blender and are making possible for us to work on our own art. Cookies if I could issue them, good sir.

[Heffay]

I've seen the jumbled mech before, but thought I fixed that bug. You using the latest version of the script? I just gave it a test run on the cicada with the 1.32 version (linked in the original post), and it worked out ok. You also need to be using Blender 2.69 (it's the latest/current version), since the material_clear function is new to that.

Then again, I've seen it on my asset importer over the last day too, so there may be some unique situations...

[Goose Igaly]

Ah, was not aware that a new blender was released, so my apologies on that. Also, I am using the newest version from your post just above mine. I'm out and about today, but will play with it some this afternoon.

Thanks again for all your work on this, Heffay.

[Heffay]

Goose Igaly, on 07 March 2014 - 09:38 AM, said:

Ah, was not aware that a new blender was released, so my apologies on that. Also, I am using the newest version from your post just above mine. I'm out and about today, but will play with it some this afternoon.

Thanks again for all your work on this, Heffay.

Ooh, that's my asset importer script. You need mech importer. The link on the original post should take you to the latest version of each.

[Goose Igaly]

DOH!

I didn't even read the title. Been opening the link and copy/pasting into notepad and saving as .ps1. Explains why it quit working from the mech directory and I had to place it in the body directory...and why the code was so much cleaner than what I thought was a previous version of the script.

I'm assuming that the clear error was what was causing textures to not load? I'll do some more work with it when I get home.

[Goose Igaly]

So switching to the correct importer script and updating blender has gotten the mechs to load in and most everything positioned correctly. Getting a Material not found error:

>>> bpy.ops.import_scene.obj(filepath="F:\\Blender Projects\\MechWarrior Online\\objects\\mechs\\spider\\body\\sdr_left_torso_ams.obj",use_groups_as_vgroups=True,split_mode='OFF')

importing obj 'F:\\Blender Projects\\MechWarrior Online\\objects\\mechs\\spider\\body\\sdr_left_torso_ams.obj'
parsing obj file...
0.0360 sec
loading materials and images...
Material not found MTL: b'F:\\Blender Projects\\MechWarrior Online\\objects\\mechs\\spider\\body\\unused.mtl'
0.0000 sec
building geometry...
verts:2808 faces:936 materials: 2 smoothgroups:0 ...
finished importing: b'F:\\Blender Projects\\MechWarrior Online\\objects\\mechs\\spider\\body\\sdr_left_torso_ams.obj' in 0.0530 sec.
{'FINISHED'}

Looking into possible causes. Just wanted to throw a quick update.

[Heffay]

Did it load up properly otherwise? You'll have to set the material to the spider_variant one for the AMS, as well as most of the weapons.

[Goose Igaly]

Otherwise it's loading up fine. Even get the blacked out sections in object mode. The problem seems to be that no textures are being imported.

[Heffay]

Hm... I see what you mean. I see spider_body there, which is the right material. But the little circle should be colored in with the uvmap, and it doesn't look like that's happening. Can you make a higher resolution version of that photo and upload that? Can't make out enough details on yours.