Blender Question

[cartrite]

Hi All,

I was building a model of a globe with Blender and tried tried Toti's method found on the following link :
http://www.celestiaproject.net/forum/viewtopic ... c&start=15

It works well. But all the models I make with Blender do not work with Celestia. After making the model and converting it to 3ds, then converting it to CMOD, they seem to be missing texture coordinates ( texcoord0 f2 ). Is there a way to get models created by Blender to work with Celestia?

Bye the way, Blender has a version 2.40 for Windows out with much improved 3ds exporter/importer script. And a lot of other improvements.

cartrite

[Toti]

The 3ds exporter script doesn't save the texture coordinates. You can export in LightWave format and open it with another 3d tool (LW, Max, Maya, etc.) Then reexport to 3ds->cmod.

[selden]

Well that certainly makes Blender not very useful

The modelling programs you mention all are commercial ($$$) products. Do you think Anim8or could be used to add textures? At least it's a free 3D modelling program, although it's not as featureful as Blender.

[Toti]

Selden is right, just load the 3ds in Anim8or and reassign the texture coordinates (cylindrical), then save. This should do it.

[cartrite]

Thanks Seldon and Toti. Anim8tor can map the uv coorinates from a Wavefront .obj file exported from Blender. Haven't figured out the settings yet. Everything is distorted. There is a neat little UV mapper by Stephen Cox at the following site.

http://www.uvmapper.com

This has more options to map with but I haven't got it figured out yet either. This one chops a few columns off the right side.
Well thanks again. This is a step in the right direction. Now its Fun Time

cartrite

[cartrite]

Hi All,

Some pics of a 3D earth. I'm starting to get Blender figured out. The heights are too exagerated but the planets diamater is determined buy its highest point which pushes the atmosphere up and the clouds can be suspended in mid atmosphere which looks pretty cool. I'm wondering if this 64k triangles barrier for 3ds is breakable? I made some more detailed models of the earth but I can't export them to 3ds if the size i bigger then 65 thousand triangles.
Bummer. Well anyhow this is a 4k texture whih makes it blury but its a start.











cartrite

[selden]

I believe the limitation is 64K per object or mesh, depending on your definition of those terms. In other words, you might consider cutting your model of Earth into several separate pieces.

[cartrite]

You mean you can have different meshs of the same planet in the same model? I didn't think you do that. But I'm just starting. Last week I didn't think I could get a model to work that was made with Blender. That was the main reason I never really paid model building much mind. Thanks Seldon, I'll look into that. I think I remember seeing something about subdividing meshes.

cartrite

[selden]

Each object within a model is a separate mesh. What you need to do is cut a large object into several smaller ones.

In 3D modelling terms, "subdividing" is something different -- it's just the opposite from what you need to do. "Subdividing" is synonymous with "smoothing" -- dividing each facet into several smaller facets, resulting in 4x, 8x or more vertices.

[cartrite]

Sorry. Subdividing was the wrong term to use. I meant to say cut up the planet into smaller sections. Like you said.

I found out that my main problem with getting these models to work was that I never assigned UV coordinates. Under the UV face select in editing mode there is a panel in the bottom right that has a tab for UV calculation.
In there is where you assign the uv coords. With Anim8tor they are assigned
automaticly. So Not Knowing much better, I assumed Blender did that too.
There is still a lot to learn here.

cartrite