AuthorTopic: Kenneth Fejer Inspired 3D Pixel Ship  (Read 17383 times)

Offline ndchristie

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Re: Kenneth Fejer Inspired 3D Pixel Ship

Reply #20 on: March 06, 2007, 12:32:27 am
Wings handles textures, at least the version I downloaded off their website does.  I haven't tried using the tools for it extensively, but it definately has UV mapping.

but you still cannot render....already been said

Blender is great, but get ready for a steep learning curve (and trust me, i mean steep.....not as bad as it used to be, but still reallys hard).  worth a try if you have some time to spend on it though
A mistake is a mistake.
The same mistake twice is a bad habit.
The same mistake three or more times is a motif.

Offline Lawrence

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Re: Kenneth Fejer Inspired 3D Pixel Ship

Reply #21 on: March 06, 2007, 02:07:08 am
Whilst we're on the subject of 3D modelling programs, I recommend anim8or, I've used it for 6 years, and it's great!

Anyway, these are very nice, QuickSilva. :)

Offline Joseph

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Re: Kenneth Fejer Inspired 3D Pixel Ship

Reply #22 on: March 06, 2007, 03:37:48 am
I use wings 3D and i'm getting better at box modeling...but the problem that I mainly have is just the texturing.  can someone please post a tutorial on making a model through texturing it?

by the way adarias, love the new edit to your avatar.  new haircut I presume?

Offline Noiprox

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Re: Kenneth Fejer Inspired 3D Pixel Ship

Reply #23 on: March 06, 2007, 10:10:38 am
First of all, that is freaking awesome. :crazy:

Blender is very powerful and free and awesome. It can do texturing, animation and rendering plenty well enough for the purposes of this kind of art, I would say. In fact it has a built-in 3D game engine which allows you to make very cool little games with your models, a bit like a sort of 3D version of Adobe Flash. It does have a slight learning curve, but there is excellent documentation available, including a very nice printed book (albeit about a slightly older version of Blender, but it is very cheap) if you are so inclined. The community is also very helpful.

Wings3D is excellent at what it does, which is winged-edge modeling. It does not do texturing, animation or rendering very well at all. It has basic UV texturing functionality, which would perhaps be adequate for a simple model of a hundred polygons or so, but it's quite a pain even then compared to Blender (IMHO). I would suggest to use Wings3D as a modeller for its workflow and intuitive interface, and then to export your finished model to Blender, and to texture, animate and render it there.

Milkshape3D is commercial but quite nice. It still does not match the feature set of Blender by a long shot, but it has the advantage of supporting every game file format under the Sun. It has its roots in the early modding community of Quake2 when there was no inexpensive tool available for this purpose. Although it does support UV texturing and basic bones animation, it does so in a clumsy way and does not support rendering at all. I own a copy of the full version, mainly for converting between mesh file formats.

Anim8or is surprisingly powerful for how small it is and for having only a single developer, but it lacks character animation, UV texturing, advanced rendering, sophisticated modeling tools, etc. I found it less attractive an option than the others.

If there is a lot of interest, I could see if I can find the time to throw together a visual tutorial for using Blender to make, texture and animate a simple model like this. I am not much of an artist myself, though. If someone who is would like to collaborate with me on that, perhaps by supplying a model and texture, or granting me permission to use their work in a tutorial, or something, that would be a big help for me. Any takers?
« Last Edit: March 06, 2007, 10:17:46 am by Noiprox »

Offline Kennethfejer

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Re: Kenneth Fejer Inspired 3D Pixel Ship

Reply #24 on: March 06, 2007, 02:16:32 pm
looks really cool  :y:
but like you said, the texture could be much more compact, might even be able to fit it all into a 32x32 texture.
did you unwrap it all at once or piece by piece ?


btw gmax does supports textures and animation, just think of it as a boiled down version of 3dsmax, so they have taken out all the high level stuff, you don't need when doing lowpoly, such as rendering.

it doesn't really matter what program you use though, but for anyone who wants to get into 3d, i would suggest just to go with a free one to start off with.

« Last Edit: March 06, 2007, 02:18:31 pm by Kennethfejer »

Offline QuickSilva

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Re: Kenneth Fejer Inspired 3D Pixel Ship

Reply #25 on: March 06, 2007, 02:44:37 pm
Glad you liked it. My next attempt will include a much tighter packed texture now that I have got my head around how to do things. I actually unwrapped the model in one go and then pixlled the texture as I thought that by doing it like this would allow me to get the colouring\lighting right before I started on the details where as if you do it piece by piece you cannot really get a good look at how things will look early on. Each method has its good points and bad points I guess.

Can we look forward to future models from you?

Jason.
« Last Edit: March 06, 2007, 04:06:49 pm by QuickSilva »

Offline Kennethfejer

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Re: Kenneth Fejer Inspired 3D Pixel Ship

Reply #26 on: March 07, 2007, 11:59:34 am
Can we look forward to future models from you?

sure :) i posted a wip in the OT-Creativity Thread last week, plus i have some other models im working on.

looking forward to see your next model btw ;)

Offline Lawrence

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Re: Kenneth Fejer Inspired 3D Pixel Ship

Reply #27 on: March 07, 2007, 01:18:30 pm

Anim8or is surprisingly powerful for how small it is and for having only a single developer, but it lacks character animation, UV texturing, advanced rendering, sophisticated modeling tools, etc. I found it less attractive an option than the others.

Actually Anim8or does have all of those things, in fact they're pretty hard to miss. The only truth to your description would be the slight lack of advanced rendering, since it only has ray-tracing for soft shadows but I, and many others, have managed to get photo-realistic renders out of it. Two of it's core features are character animation and UV texturing, and it's modeling tools are quite far reaching.

Offline QuickSilva

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Re: Kenneth Fejer Inspired 3D Pixel Ship

Reply #28 on: March 07, 2007, 01:41:28 pm
sure :) i posted a wip in the OT-Creativity Thread last week, plus i have some other models im working on.

Cool, I love Kid Icarus. I really love your other mockup on your site too :) Looking forward to seeing this one finished. Sorry I missed it before.

Jason.

Offline Noiprox

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Re: Kenneth Fejer Inspired 3D Pixel Ship

Reply #29 on: March 09, 2007, 03:42:20 am

Anim8or is surprisingly powerful for how small it is and for having only a single developer, but it lacks character animation, UV texturing, advanced rendering, sophisticated modeling tools, etc. I found it less attractive an option than the others.

Actually Anim8or does have all of those things, in fact they're pretty hard to miss. The only truth to your description would be the slight lack of advanced rendering, since it only has ray-tracing for soft shadows but I, and many others, have managed to get photo-realistic renders out of it. Two of it's core features are character animation and UV texturing, and it's modeling tools are quite far reaching.

My bad! Rather than getting embroiled in an off-topic argument, I will just concede that I overlooked the character animation and UV texturing features of Anim8or. My statements about modeling and rendering were my opinion of what it has rather than assertions about particular features it may be lacking. It is a remarkable piece of free software, just perhaps not my cup of tea. I'm sure it could serve admirably for this purpose, provided one invests the effort in becoming an expert with it.