AuthorTopic: First time in Blender  (Read 14826 times)

Offline DatMuffinMan

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First time in Blender

on: July 27, 2014, 02:27:49 pm
As the title implies, it's my first time working in 3D, and I was wondering how to make textures for this simple model -



I've got no idea where to start, so any advice at all is helpful. Thanks  :)

edit - gottem.



still looks like crap though, so again, any tips are great.
« Last Edit: July 28, 2014, 02:39:20 am by DatMuffinMan »

Offline questseeker

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Re: First time in Blender

Reply #1 on: July 28, 2014, 09:59:25 am
Why do you have the ring of edges in the middle? 6 edges, 6 vertices and 6 faces could be better spent on removing the black bars of void around wheels.

Offline PixelPiledriver

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Re: First time in Blender

Reply #2 on: July 28, 2014, 07:52:56 pm
Post the texture, UVs and mesh.
And knowing that it is, we seek what it is... ~ Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, Chapter 1

Offline DatMuffinMan

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Re: First time in Blender

Reply #3 on: July 28, 2014, 09:15:52 pm
Post the texture, UVs and mesh.

I just painted the textures over the exported uv map, so what exactly do you want me to post? The original export (btw, had trouble with getting it to be clear when I resized it - in blender - to a low res (128x)), or the painted file?

Also, how do you post a mesh here? Do you mean the .blend file?

Offline PixelPiledriver

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Re: First time in Blender

Reply #4 on: July 29, 2014, 12:02:54 am
Whatever you think will help others help you more.
Usually the more data the better.
If you provide your texture someone could edit it.
If you provide your UV's someone could give you unwrap and placement tips.
Personally I like to make everything square in the unwrap.
But it's just one way of doing it.
And knowing that it is, we seek what it is... ~ Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, Chapter 1

Offline Seiseki

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Re: First time in Blender

Reply #5 on: August 07, 2014, 03:15:45 pm
Interesting, I made my first 3D model in blender around the same time as you!
I was following a youtube tutorial and I made a car as well!

As questseeker points out there is a ring of edges that serve no purpose since it' lines up perfectly with the rest.

You should also try to make sure the pixels meet up. Since I'm also new to blender and working with pixel art in 3D, I'm not sure what the best approach is to angled surfaces.
Either pixels get distorted but line up perfectly, or pixels get "cut away" but with no distortion. I attempted the later in this example.

I find it best to use a pixel pattern to line up the pixels when doing the UV mapping.
Large Image Warning



As you can see the pixels get cut off at the edges.
I also try to keep a consistent scale, I was checking the transform global coordinates and making sure that anything that was 1.0 long was 10 pixels and making sure all edges were aligned to .1 .2 .3 .4 etc. This gets really hard if you work on a larger model, especially with different angles.

So anyone with experience working with 3D pixel art, is it better with distorted pixels or cut off pixels? I guess it's square vs angled UVs.
You can hide the edges by using the same colors at the transitions.
« Last Edit: August 08, 2014, 02:41:29 am by Seiseki »

Offline Theoden

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Re: First time in Blender

Reply #6 on: August 10, 2014, 10:09:03 pm
I don't use Blender so I can't tell you how to do it but you need to turn off texture filtering to have sharp edged pixels in the render.

Offline mmirror

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Re: First time in Blender

Reply #7 on: August 13, 2014, 02:44:36 am
Hi, everyone. I think I can help you with Blender (specifically with the seams you are referring to). I'm including some screenshots and I'll give a quick rundown of what is going on. Just keep in mind that with Blender, there is always some way of solving a problem. It's a very cool program. First here are the pictures. In order for you to see what I'm referring to, the pictures have to be seen at their full size, so you might have to click to zoom in.







If you look really closely, at the image with antialiasing OFF, you will notice small speckles along the edge, which if your pixels are more detailed would be a seam. If you look at the image with antialiasing ON, you will notice the speckles are gone. Actually with the antialiasing ON you still get a pixel resolution as long as you set the size to 1.500 and box. In the final image are the settings that the texture needs. The most important one is to set the image mapping to CLIP and mapping to UV. If you leave that out, there can be seams. Something else to consider is that if you don't work with pixel to size precision (for example I used a 100x100 pixel texture on plane that is 1x1 blender units, then you need to sometimes make sure that you snap the uv islands to the pixels when you are unwrapping. If not, then the setting I mentioned "CLIP" if instead is set to REPEAT, will in some way interpolate around edges. I think this is because if you use photographs for textures, you get less visible seams. So basically these settings adjust it for pixel art precision. Also as a side note, you should experiment with taking a square texture and having a 45 degree angle. You will notice, that these settings fix most problems you would have, and the antialiasing setting keeps things perfectly square in a step ladder form. Basically, the left over space is filled with black, but if you adjust your textures it fills in with whatever color is there.

Good luck with Blender and Pixel Art!

Offline Seiseki

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Re: First time in Blender

Reply #8 on: September 01, 2014, 02:43:12 am
I'm having issues with UV mapping, if I map a square to a trapezoid I get a weird distortion that looks like perspective distortion.
I can tell it's following the angle of the tris, but how can I solve it?

Offline surt

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Re: First time in Blender

Reply #9 on: September 01, 2014, 03:52:24 am
I can tell it's following the angle of the tris...
Yes, you are mapping tris to tris not quads to quads. The texture on each tri will match between UV/image editor and 3D view.

...but how can I solve it?
Map squares to squares and trapezoids to trapezoids.

It can be solved with true quad mapping, but that's not widely supported. You can do true quad rendering in shaders in game, but I'm not sure if it would be doable in Blender 3D view.

Offline Seiseki

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Re: First time in Blender

Reply #10 on: September 01, 2014, 04:38:01 am
But that won't allow me to have lines that follow the edges :/


The problem area here is the chest. The legs are problematic too.

Offline surt

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Re: First time in Blender

Reply #11 on: September 01, 2014, 05:52:19 am
If it's just asymmetry that you're worried about you can add some extra geometry so that the triangulated mesh is symmetrical.

Offline Seiseki

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Re: First time in Blender

Reply #12 on: September 01, 2014, 12:45:26 pm
If it's just asymmetry that you're worried about you can add some extra geometry so that the triangulated mesh is symmetrical.

I didn't think about that, thanks! :)

Offline DatMuffinMan

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Re: (First) time in Blender

Reply #13 on: October 26, 2014, 11:56:53 pm
well, it's been a while, and I've learned some more things. slowly starting to make more complicated shapes, studying kennethfejer's work for now.



is there a trick to get pixels to line up well on the uv map? I guess one way is to make sure the dimensions of each face are in whole-number ratios, but that gets to be a pain if I want to nudge an edge forward or something.
« Last Edit: October 26, 2014, 11:59:07 pm by DatMuffinMan »

Offline Seiseki

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Re: First time in Blender

Reply #14 on: November 11, 2014, 03:38:08 am
It looks like a mix of different resolutions.
Use a pixel grid pattern for the texture when doing UV work and it's easy to keep the pixel size consistent.