TUTORIAL: Making meshes and putting them into Celestia

All tutorials about Celestia go in here. For Celestia itself, add-ons, textures, scripting, etc.
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_M-Explorer_
Posts: 8
Joined: 19.11.2016
With us: 7 years 11 months

TUTORIAL: Making meshes and putting them into Celestia

Post #1by _M-Explorer_ » 21.11.2016, 17:59

Hello community, this is a tutorial on how to make meshes and how to put them into Celestia[DOT] Here are 2 programs with you can do it:
Windows 3D Builder (Windows 10 pre-installed program)
Clara.io (Online program)
Now I will make a + symbol with Clara.io[DOT] Type Clara.io in your browser, and you will see this page:
Tutorial_screenshot_1.png

First, you must login or register, I have already registered, and I will login, if you're not, click the SIGN UP text, and type the things like email address, and username, then click Continue, and you're registered[DOT] If you're registered, click the LOG IN text, and type your username, and password[DOT] After you logged in, you will see the models you created[DOT] To create a new model, click +New Scene, after clicking the button you will see something like this:
Tutorial_screenshot_2.png

Then click some from the icons you're seeing under Clara.io text, and the name of your model to add some blocks, you can add the same block multiple times[DOT]
After adding some blocks, you can move, resize, rotate, and do other things with your blocks, fI'm not describing this in this thread[DOT] Here is what I did:
Tutorial_screenshot_3.png

If you're done, click share Image, click the image of your model, after on the page you're seeing, click download, and select Wavefront OBJ[DOT] After you're downloaded, you should convert it to 3ds, and do these 2 things:
[1]Put your file into extras/modfoldername/models,
[2]Put this line into your object script:

Code: Select all

Mesh "meshname.3ds"

After doing these things, run/restart Celestia, find the object you was used the mesh you made to, and it will hopefully work

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John Van Vliet
Posts: 2944
Joined: 28.08.2002
With us: 22 years 2 months

Post #2by John Van Vliet » 22.11.2016, 21:21

take a look at the celestia source code
there is a tool called cmodview ( in celestia/src/tools/cmod/)
this takes in ascii cmods ( from the old animator or blender plug in ) or obj meshes that are uv mapped


normally one wants the texture UV mapped to the mesh
- warning -
converting a uv mapped obj file to 3ds will REMOVE the uv mapping

the FREE GPL program Blender dose this very well

output to a *.obj mesh and open in cmodview
edit it as needed and save as a binary cmod ( the default )


PS
!!!!!! WARNING !!!!!!!
when using the 1980's 3ds format a LOT of Microsoft tools default to the 1990's 8.3 naming ( even TODAY!!!!!! )
less than 8 letters for a name and 3 letters for the file extension and ALL CAPITAL!!!!!!
this gets hard coded into the 3ds and might NOT match the name of the texture in capitalization
----- BE WARNED !!!!!!

Topic author
_M-Explorer_
Posts: 8
Joined: 19.11.2016
With us: 7 years 11 months

Post #3by _M-Explorer_ » 23.11.2016, 06:07

I don't have this folder[DOT] Is it downloadable from somewhere?

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John Van Vliet
Posts: 2944
Joined: 28.08.2002
With us: 22 years 2 months

Post #4by John Van Vliet » 23.11.2016, 06:50

my copy that i am very slowly working on, with the fixed cmod code
https://github.com/JohnVV/Celestia-SPICE.linux


for windows ????
gave up on Microsoft back in 2005

Topic author
_M-Explorer_
Posts: 8
Joined: 19.11.2016
With us: 7 years 11 months

Post #5by _M-Explorer_ » 23.11.2016, 07:05

John Van Vliet, Yes, I don't have the src folder in my Celestia folder on Windows, if you has wanted to ask this[DOT]


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