Blender is insanely confusing

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

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Coby Foden wrote:

I noticed that Autodesk just released

free

software which can make a 3D model from a bunch of photos.

 

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They didn't just release it, they're working on it for many years. First release was in 2009.

Anyway, as I said earlier and as someone replied and as you stated, it will certainly NOT produce SL ready models. On top of that you'll need a good amount of good photographs from all angles, so besides a lot of "post-123D Catch" work, it will take a good amount of "pre-123D Catch" efford too, not to mention you will have to have access to a physical model.

[Coby Foden]

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Kwakkelde Kwak wrote:

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Coby Foden wrote:

I noticed that Autodesk just released

free

software which can make a 3D model from a bunch of photos.

 

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They didn't just release it, they're working on it for many years. First release was in 2009.

Anyway, as I said earlier and as someone replied and as you stated, it will certainly NOT produce SL ready models. On top of that you'll need a good amount of good photographs from all angles, so besides a lot of "post-123D Catch" work, it will take a good amount of "pre-123D Catch" efford too, not to mention you will have to have access to a physical model.

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Yes, you're right, not released recently. I got an email from Autodesk for another free product (Sculpt+). As I was checking the Sculpt+ in their site I then noticed also the free 123D Catch program - in error I said it was "just released". :matte-motes-bashful:

I guess it will very time consuming to make 3D model from the photos. Autodesk states that one needs from 50 to 70 photos taken from various angles from the physical object. Only then the program has enough info of the object to be able to make decent job in creating the 3D model. Not a fast and easy way to make 3D model. Again, better to learn proper 3D modeller and work with it from start to end.

123D Catch might be handy if there is a need to make accurate 3D model from very complicated physical object and if one cannot afford a very expensive physical scanner.

[Elinah Iredell]

Interesting. Does the calcuations for land weight as it is called take into account  the affect of high resolution textures? And is that the reason why some people appear invisible longer or stay invisible when wearing mesh because they are " walking lag bombs" .?

[Elinah Iredell]

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Gaia Clary wrote:

Think like this: You can't play Bach within your first Piano lesson. Even if you know where the keys are and what they do, you still need to practice a lot before you hear music instead of tones.

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I understand but I was beginning to honestly feel it was a ridiculously hard learning curve for what will be very little gain.

[Elinah Iredell]

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Gaia Clary wrote:

Maybe this article clarifies the rumours:

http://www.blender.org/foundation/history/

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Blender is from the Dutch  thanks for the siste. I wnder how free software makes them any money ?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Elinah Iredell]

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Medhue Simoni wrote:

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Elinah Iredell wrote:

Thanks for your review of Blender. The fact that it can be free and better then the extremely expensive competition is impressive to me, but do they really need to make it so confusing? Even you an expert in your field found the interface difficult at first. Is there anything about Blender that can be improved in the future ?  Are there things you would like to see added or changed about it to make it even better?

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First, I'm not an expert. I'm just like everyone else here, learning. At best, I can say I make a living doing this, and I have almost touched every feature in Blender.

It's confusing because it does alot, and you need more time with it. In many ways, it's less confusing than SL. The added effort to get used to Blender's right and left click also make it worst. It really did frustrate me to no end, and then always moving the 3D cursor, which I didn't even know what it was for. After deciding that I would not fight Blender's right left click setup, and I embraced it, I started to see the genius of it all, and how the 3D cursor can become your best friend. Outside of clicking, the Blender UI is pretty logical, and totally customizable. The standard layouts for each task, like UV unwrapping, or Animation, are pretty good, but you can make them how you want them. I have my own layouts for both those, cause I tend to have to deal with textures alot, and a different layout makes it faster for me. That's the other big reason for much of the confusion, which is speed. Yeah, Blender could just have 1 way to rotate a bone, but that is likely not going to be the faster way for most. There are literally, 6 or more ways to rotate a bone, just off the top of my head, and the inherent Blender way, is easily the fastest. Even with modeling. You use those exact same shortcuts, like r+x-90, or s+z+0, in both animation, modeling, or any other task. That's when you really become a Blenderhead, when you learn all the shortcuts. I even connect my most used but obscure shortcuts on the extra buttons on my mouse.

You know, expecially in the case of LL, I usually have all kinds of gripes and advice on how to improve things, but I really don't, in the case of Blender. Maybe, applying textures could be easier, or less confusing, but other than that, I can't really say much. I also hear alot about what the Blender devs are working on, and it's all good with me. Every single version just seems to get better and better. I do wish that Blender had a direct, already set up, 2 kinect sensor tracking for animations, so I don't have to use other mocap systems, but my workflow right now is pretty easy. Some kind of inherent 3D sensor setup would me nice tho, and some simple face tracking system for mocap facial animations, which I'm playing around with now. It would be nice to have something easy tho, like you just capture your video camera and Blender just tracks the whole shape of your mouth and other features to apply to a character.

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I really just want to start with the basics if I could just do some simple things like unwrapping and merging simple shapes I would be happy. What is your opiion on what resolution the textures should be?

[Medhue Simoni]

I don't think it would be ridiculous to say that a good million people or more use Blender in some way or another. It is useful in literally dozens and dozens of areas and markets. Blender has a donation model, primarily. I know of a couple dozen viable businesses that run completely on a donation model. I've donated to the Blender Foundation, and many people I know would also donate. No, I don't donate thousands of dollars, but $50 here and here. They don't need you to pay them thousands. If only a fraction of their users each give them 20 bucks, then they are swimming in dough.

Personally, even before I used their software, I was rooting for them. I saw it as a great way to develop code. Other companies just take their same code, slap a new UI on it, and give it a different version. This is ridiculous. I have software where version 2, and version 11, are exactly the same, except for a more unusable UI in the more current version. Yeah, they actually went backward in development. I'll spare the company the embarrassment of naming them.

Even tho Blender is free, I have no problem at all donating on a regular basis, because I'm not getting scammed like all the other 3D software companies do. I should not be paying full price for the same fricken program with a tiny bit more code. That's ridiculous. Then, to get more people to upgrade, these companies purposely make their versions incompatible. Really, they shot themselves in the foot, and I won't feel bad for those companies when they collapse.

[Medhue Simoni]

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Elinah Iredell wrote:

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I really just want to start with the basics if I could just do some simple things like unwrapping and merging simple shapes I would be happy. What is your opiion on what resolution the textures should be?

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Texture resolution is somewhat straight forward. Depending on what you are making, and artist wants as much as they can get. That said, SL is unique in that every bit of content is downloaded, so the less data you can make something, the fast it will rez, and less stress you will put on rendering the item. If you are talking about texture with alot of detail, you need to use 1024, if the texture is a simple color with no shading, you don't even need to use a texture. Go as low as you can go, whenever possible, especially when you are not lossing visual quality. What you really want to learn, is how to take advantage of bump mapping and specular mapping, as those are really going to be the features that make your meshes look amazing and stand out.

 

I have a video on UV unwrapping in Blender.

[arton Rotaru]

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Elinah Iredell wrote:

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Gaia Clary wrote:

Think like this: You can't play Bach within your first Piano lesson. Even if you know where the keys are and what they do, you still need to practice a lot before you hear music instead of tones.

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I understand but I was beginning to honestly feel it was a ridiculously hard learning curve for what will be very little gain.

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It certainly is a hard learning curve to create good game ready content. Doesn't really matter which program(s) you are going to use. You will have to learn a lot, practice a lot, going through trail and error a lot etc. pp..

Willing to learn the basics first is pretty much the first requirement. Though, if you think you can't gain any satisfaction from learning, overcoming frustrating periods in the process, 3D content creation might be not your cup of tea then.

Even what you call simple things, like UV mapping isn't really easy. It takes some time to get good at it as well.

I also wouldn't wasting too much time thinking about how to cut corners and get away with the least effort and time spending in content creation. You will have to learn it all the hard way sooner or later anyway. The sooner you start learning the basics from the ground up, the sooner you will be good at it.

Just start simple. Build a very basic chair, or something like that. And don't just try to Kitbash models from the web.

Texture resolution depends a lot on the size of the object. Larger objects need larger textures to maintain a certain texel density than smaller ones, obviously. However, thinking more about texture resolution on a pixel per foot, or pixel per meter basis is a much better guide than just saying 1024, 512, 256 etc.

Because you can achieve the desired texel density with small textures even on large meshes as well, with seamless tiling.

And this way you can maintain a consistent look across all of your assets. Which makes them look even better.

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

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arton Rotaru wrote:

Because you can achieve the desired texel density with small textures even on large meshes as well, with

seamless tiling

.

And this way you can maintain a consistent look across all of your assets. Which makes them look even better.

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I just wanted to highlight this.

 

For example, my latest brick walls use 256x256 textures, with a normal map. Especially with a couple of local lights, this gives a very satisfactory effect. A benefit of this setup is that people with an older or slower computer can tune down the graphics level and will only have to download/render a single 256x256 texture. People with a better computer can have all the extra effects of the normal map and lighting.

The hard part is to find a balance between the texture not becoming too bland and the tiling effect not being too strong.

For me the trick to decide "how low I can go" is to start with a small texture, see how it looks, then if neccecary scale up a level. I'm still often surprised on how little is needed to make my objects look the way I want. I can't remember the last time i uploaded a 1024x1024.