blender ase map

[SCDS_reyalP]

well, i will be removing the autoclip on most of everything to go with
regular clip brushes, but tell ya what… let me pack this test map together
right now, and i’ll post it somewhere so you can see what it ‘feels like’ but
there’s no difference in the feeling as if it were made in brushes…

Autoclip can create bad enough brushwork that it causes significant FPS problems, especially on older CPUs.

[kat]

@kat

i still cant get blender to unwrap proper like lith, or maybe im missing
something… my older blender ( before 2.43 ) had more options on unwrapping…
maybe im missing some scripts. i’ll have to check…

Not sure if you’re doing this but you need to start making use of ‘seams’ when using “unwrap”. But unwrap from viewport is also very useful as it’ll unwrap the UVWmaps based on exactly what you’re looking at.

[RayBan]

@kat

i do make use of seams when needed, but what im referring to is this,
blender will unwrap ( key e ) like this, and its sloppy/slanted… while
i can get an exact unwrap in another program such as lith…

blender unwrap

lith

in blender i have to work with the uv’s and drag them straight/pin/unwrap
and this takes a while when all i need is just a proper uv from the start
like i can get with lith. but maybe blender can do that and i just dont
know where to find that option…

what is this unwrap to viewport? i can’t find it anywhere in the uv screen
or in the hotkeys? i usually just hit key e to unwrap.

[kat]

Ah right… I see what you’re doing now. OK this is what you do.

In the 3D viewport press ‘F’ to toggle into face select mode (UVWmap mode). When there press ‘A’ to select all faces and then press ‘U’ - the UV Calculation popup appears. From there you can select “Project from View”, “unwrap” or any other the other UVWmap types.

For what you’re trying to do you need to go into orthagonal view (NumPad 1,3 or 7 - 5 toggles 3D/ortho) and select the faces you want to UVWmap. Press ‘U’ and select “Project from view”. Becuase you’re facing flat on you’ll get a straight UVWmap that requires little of no tweaking.

[RayBan]

Ah right… I see what you’re doing now. OK this is what you do.

In the 3D viewport press ‘F’ to toggle into face select mode (UVWmap mode). When there press ‘A’ to select all faces and then press ‘U’ - the UV Calculation popup appears. From there you can select “Project from View”, “unwrap” or any other the other UVWmap types.

For what you’re trying to do you need to go into orthagonal view (NumPad 1,3 or 7 - 5 toggles 3D/ortho) and select the faces you want to UVWmap. Press ‘U’ and select “Project from view”. Becuase you’re facing flat on you’ll get a straight UVWmap that requires little of no tweaking.

ahhh… excellent… works a charm, thanks kat.

always learning something new about blender, and i havent even scratched
the surface yet of all it can do.

EDIT: thinking about it now… doing a map with blender wouldnt take much
effort to port that map to doom3 or quake4…

[nUllSkillZ]

EDIT: thinking about it now… doing a map with blender wouldnt take much
effort to port that map to doom3 or quake4…

… or even ET:QW.

[RayBan]

this was the idea for the original map, a baserace with an auto-construction
system… but since the map has changed into this… it will still be bases on
an auto-construction system but more suited to the feel of the map.

basicly its just a ctf, you run to the other base and grab parts and bring
them to construction pads ( al la cptn triscuit ) and it will build your various
objectives… however im steering away from that to an altered gameplay
but i will show what i mean with this new sample map.

here is the link for it, blender_test2 ( link updated )
http://rapidshare.com/files/43717012/blender_test2.pk3.html

since i wont be using the animated crates or pads, if anyone wants to go
the route of doing an auto-construction map, let me know if you want them
and i will pack up all the models for it. although you can get most of them
from this test pk3.

im using radar parts here ( since i cant find the construction crates i made )
but start as an allied, grab the parts and bring
them to a pad to start an auto-construction to see what it does. icons
appear over a pad that can be constructed only where a player has the
parts.

[sodsm_live]

in regards to RayBan’s wrapping problem mentioned earlier:

i’ve been getting the same problem about the unwrapping being skewed sometimes. most notably it happens when i construct an object as opposed to editing an added object. for instance, if i construct a rectangular cube for a door and unwrap it, the uv will get skewed a bit and parts will be the incorrect size(unwrapping in orthogonal, using plain unwrap to get one large skin for entire object). if i add a cube, then resize it to the size of a door, it will unwrap just fine…?

at first i thought it was just that i constructed the door off the grid, but everything was snapped perfectly in line. even if i break apart the uv completely(seaming every edge) it still goes out of whack.

any ideas

[RayBan]

well, if its blender you using, make shure you follow kats insctructions a few
posts earlier in this thread. using the ‘u’ key in the 3d view window to get
more uv options. and make shure its in othagonal view ( kp5 to toggle )

[sodsm_live]

it is blender and i’m unwrapping it according to the instructions only i don’t want to project from view, i want to unwrap it completely - like unfolding a cardboard box, then cutting down one seam with a razor and laying it flat - that’s what the plain Unwrap function is supposed to do.

i do take back what i said earlier about being able to resize the default cube to the size of the door and making it unwrap properly. when i tested it i approximated the door’s size(which was about 5x smaller than the actual door). with the resized cube still relatively small, it unwrapped perfectly, all faces in the uv were straight and were the exact relative dimensions of what they should be. if i resize the cube to the actual door dimensions(quite a bit larger than the default cube), with all verts snapped to the grid, the unwrap goes horribly awry. by that i mean such things as the top face is almost twice as large as the bottom face(which they should be exactly the same size). and there are almost no perfectly horizontal or vertical lines in the unwrap whereas the mesh itself is a simple rectangular shaped cube(6 faces, straight up and down, no angles other than the 90degree angles it takes to form a cube).

could you do me a favor? if you could, build a simple door shaped object with dimensions relative to an actual door(say 78x30x2, nothing fancy) and see if you can unwrap it without it getting skewed. i just tried again and got a complete mess. if i make it more cube shaped it unwraps fine and dandy.

seems i might have to try out that lith program.

[kat]

‘Unwrap’ in Blender is the evolvement of LSCM unwrap introduced some years ago now (it was actually in place long before it became available in the ‘Pro’ packages iirc) which was introduced to unwrap organic objects, that’s why it won’t work, “unwrap” doesn’t work in any 3D app afaik becasue what you’re talking about there is still planar protection mapping; Blender has two types of that, “from view” and “box/cylinder/sphere” unwrap. Box actually approximates what UVWmapping does to brushwork by applying a UVW to faces on an individual basis.

If you use ‘unwrap’ you need to use and place seams on the mesh (or use 'splits), the others doen’t require them (they get ignored).

As for why UVWs tend to get screwed up… I think it might be sometihng to do with the meshes size in ‘object’ mode (before you do anything to it), you might need to ‘fix’ it (Ctrl+A) by using Apply Rotation/Size.

[RayBan]

@sodsm live

it would probably be easier if you post you blend file for the door so we can
see whats happening, than make one ourselves. post it somewhere and i’ll
have a look.

[sodsm_live]

@RayBan, if i were to make a blend file it would just be a copy of the default blend file that comes with blender - the cube. you have to experience it for yourself.

perfect unwrap with the cube

btw - it helps to split your main screen to about 66% 3D, 33% UV image editor

start up blender, you are presented with the cube in object mode and it is already selected
press tab to go to edit mode
with mouse in 3d window, press ctrl-e > mark seams(marks all edges as seams since the entire object is still selected)
with mouse in 3d window press tab, then press F to take you to UV face select mode
mouse still in 3d, press U > unwrap
in the UV image editor window you should have 6 perfectly shaped unwrapped squares layed out in a 3x2 matrix. this is a perfect unwrap.

trashed unwrap by resizing the cube

start with a fresh cube(ctrl-x > erase all)
press tab to go to edit mode
num pad 3 to go to side view
press a to deselect all
press b and drag a box around bottom 4 verts
hold ctrl and drag z axis handle down to make cube twice as tall as it is wide
num pad 1 to go to front view
press a to deselect all
press b and drag a box around the 4 verts of one side or the other(doesn’t matter)
press a to deselect the verts
press a again to select all
with mouse in 3d window, press ctrl-e > mark seams(marks all edges as seams since the entire object is still selected)
with mouse in 3d window press tab, then press F to take you to UV face select mode
mouse still in 3d, press U > unwrap
in the UV image editor window you should have something nasty that doesn’t make sense.

i just want to know why it works fine for the cube and not the rectangular cube. i did some playing around with the thickness of the aforementioned “door”. at 2 units the uv is messed up pretty bad. at 5 units you can see some slight skewing at one edge. at 6 units it’s fine. i figure it has something to do with the ratio of H:W of one face compared to another when unwrapping an entire object(even something as simple as a cube).

[sodsm_live]

haha!

under editing panel > UV calculation tab, unwrap method was on Angle Based and i need Conformal. all good now.

[kat]

haha!

under editing panel > UV calculation tab, unwrap method was on Angle Based and i need Conformal. all good now.

Interesting find, I didn’t know about that one. Angle based seems to give a much better distribution of faces on ‘organic’ shapes, angle based tends to squish the UVs up into much tighter areas making the mapping distort much more. Nice find.

Just goes to show, always finding something new in Blender.

[RayBan]

excellent, glad you got it all sorted out, and nice find.

[TNR360]

does someone have a mirror for pk3 crappy rapidshare deleted it due to inactivity

[RayBan]

is it for blender_test2.pk3? i have updated the link for that one…
and it would be nice if there was a site that offered hosting that was more or
less permanent

[TNR360]

send it to http://returntocastlewolfenstein.filefront.com/

also how was the entire map clipped?

[sodsm_live]

i think he mentioned previously that he was using autoclipping for now. on a small map it won’t hurt performance too much. i made a huge autoclipped cave and it doesn’t hurt the framerate hardly at all, as long as it’s vis blocked well enough from other mega-brush count areas of the map.