I've been playing around with some tutorials and am starting to make some progress learning how to model.
I've been using the metric setting and ratio of 1 for my drawings, and making a 4x4 building cover a 4x4 area in Blender. But I just imported the example Apiary into blender to see how thick the default timber beam width was etc, and the model is tiny! What starting settings should I be using, and how do I make sure my models are an appropriate size for Banished?
thanks!!
Chelle.
thats a question for blender people :)
I just had a look at
@Discrepancy 's tutorial again. I haven't gotten up to the bit where he (?he/she?) talks about scale. And there it is! Apparently after drawing we have to reduce our wonderful house way down to a tiny scale of 0.01! Wow.
But, to be clear, if I draw in Blender on the grid, then am okay with 1 square = 1 block in the game, and then I reduce it to 0.01? I have some vague memory of reading quite recently (maybe in
@Voeille 's wonderful fern conversation) about .6667 being 1 block in something???
No, there wasn't anything about the blocks in my thread, it's about ghosted plants so grid doesn't matter :) And yes you do need to import FBX with scale 0.01.
By drawing you mean making the model, right? Not drawing on the texture?
I scale everything to 0.01.
First I work in scale 1. There is where I save blender-file.
(one square in Blender = one tile in Banished)
Then I set Pivot Center to 3D Cursor (see picture)
Next press N and scroll down in new menu and set 3D Cursor location to 0/0/0
Press A once or twice to select all.
Press S and type 0.01 + Enter
Export as fbx. Now it is ready for game.
Earlier I did export/import with scale but this way is much simpler.
@Voeille yes, sorry, I meant making the model (not up to textures yet).
@kid1293 i'm trying to come from the other direction first, so I can see what size beams everyone is using, so that the thickness of my timber outline and frame is consistent. So I was trying to import the existing Apiary (or anything) so that I can essentially make my model's outline and timber post thickness the same. But opening the Apiary, and then increasing the size of it doesn't actually seem to be working.
If I start a new model, and I use the unit scale of 1, and I base my house on a 4 x 5 grid, what thickness should I make each timber frame so it looks right in game? And how wide on average is everyone making their doors?
thanks!! Sorry for basic questions, just trying to make something that matches the vanilla models....
@BlueFireChelle - My doors are usually 1.05-1.10 high and 0.7 wide.
Beams vary, but I have a habit of making them a little extra thick.
Something like 0.12-0.16. Frames around windows are usually 0.04-0.05.
Around the door a little more. One floor is usually 1.12 to 1.24 high. That vary too.
If you want an easy way to have control over your model - consider starting
with Sketchup. A very easy-to-use drawing program with many possibilities
to make models exact. https://www.sketchup.com/
Download trial version and after some time it will become Sketchup Make with
some advanced commands locked. Sketchup Make is totally free and does contain
all commands you need to make models. From there it is easy to export to Blender.
As you probably already know - 3D modelling can be as complicated and detailed
as you want. It will take time to find your own way. Be persistent! It will work!
I can also recommend you to start model making in Sketchup. It's a great tool to make things in a simple and intuitive way. I use it to create all my models as pure sketches and import them into Blender for the game connected steps. For all these further processing Blender is very powerful but for 3d design it's awkward to handle, in my opinion.
About size, I draw everything in real size counted in meters. I just have a better feeling for the right proportions in this way. Scaling it down to game tiles is a simple step in Blender later. The walls or outstanding beams of my log cabins are 20 cm thick. The beams of timber frame houses I'm working on are similar. Sometimes more, sometimes less but minimum 15 cm. Walls (if you have open doors and to have to model inside the house) should be also minimum 15 cm. There is a kind of rule connected with a shadow glitch we call "moire" because it looks like this on surfaces of thin objects. If it is more than 15 cm it doesn't occur.
So my first step would be to become familiar with the basic tools in Sketchup and to build a simple house. Like in this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2f3DlI31-M), which is another recommendation to check out his nice tutorials. :)
thanks to you both! I have been working on it today and ended up using 20cm thick beams. My doors so far are around 80cm so that should work. I'm stuck on the UV map of the roof though. One face is not showing and I can't figure out why!
I'll keep working my way through this house first. And if I continue to be stuck then I'll try Sketchup first. So far, I have all the beams done. I'm just trying to work on the overall external faces and detailed bits.
I found a free simple program called UV Mapper helpful with creating the maps. You need to export your model as OBJ, open in that program, make the map, and export as OBJ again. Then adjust it in blender or other 3D program you use. A nice thing about UV Mapper is that it lets you create non-default base maps, for example a planar map for a sphere or sphere map for a cube, which can be useful for some models.
While adjusting the map in a 3D program, it's good to texture the whole thing with a checker pattern, like this (feel free to use it):
(https://i.imgur.com/yd5JaTB.png)
Thanks to that you will easily see whether something is stretched or distorted. I learned that from a modelling tutorial for Sims 2, but is useful anywhere. If you're ever going to make plants or something for which alpha is very important, it's good to make a basic and poorly done texture very early, but with alpha similar to what you want for the end result. It makes modelling much easier, as alpha affects a lot. When your model is close to be done, make proper textures and further adjust the model according to them. For example, this (https://i.imgur.com/HRfWt7t.png) is the model for my hydrangea, and this (https://i.imgur.com/bMrB5rO.png) is how it looks in the game. There's no way I could get it right without texturing during the process.
thanks for the grid texture. I'll definitely use that. I figured out my main issue with the UV map. I was completely misunderstanding how to use the 'seam' function, and was putting seams on all the edges. I just googled a tutorial specifically on seams, and am now having more luck. I'm definitely planning to to a dummy-texture soon. It's sad, but the house I am currently making will probably not even be able to be used. I suspect I'll go through the whole process and try out how the textures work, and stick it in a game.... and then scrap it and try again. I'm making UV maps as I go, but should I be adding textures to each section now? (ie. I've got the beams, and the roof on now, should I texture those before working on the walls?) I'm not up to that part in the tutorial... I might skim ahead and see how far away adding textures is....
I am so close! But my UV wraps are a mess. I am going to push through with the current model because I really want to see what it looks like in-game despite the fact that I know there are issues. But I am stuck!
I have googled, but either my terminology is wrong, or I am just not understanding the on-line guides-
@Voeille or
@Tom Sawyer or
@kid1293 or any other Blender peeps-
At the moment, I somehow ended up with multiple little images in the UV map for the same mesh/item. So, for example, I have the mesh that I used for the wall panel, and I unwrapped it once and then duplicated that piece on the model... but I was doing something in the UV map and somehow ended up with it appearing on the overall map twice. I can't delete individual unwrapped things from the UV map and I don't want to have to select the little edges again because now the things are in the model (the wall would be okay, but I have another shape that's not easy to separate now).
How can I click on the UV map and delete just a couple of the unwrapped outlines?
Any help really appreciated (or even just the correct terminology so I can find an online video guide for it)
cheers!
@BlueFireChelle If you have multiple images in UV map means you have multiple versions of the model.
You may have duplicated something and as I can not see what is going on
it is hard to tell you what to do.
If you have two wall panels in model you WILL have two wall panel UV maps!
Usually they are just layered on top of each other when you duplicate in model.
If you move one UV map you suddenly see both. Is this what happened?
I'm by no means a Blender person, I'm still very new to it. I'm more used to Milkshape 3D and UV Mapper, but not great at either of them.
But what I think happened is that you duplicated something on the model and it appears twice on the map. When I used the unwrap option for my plant when I was having trouble with something (it ended up unrelated, I had the UV channels fine), and it placed all the individual planes on the map next to each other! You can select them one by one and put on top of each other, but if I know that I'm going to have multiple copies of something (and I definitely do with plants a lot), I make one instance (say it's a flower), map it, and then duplicate it and place where I want it. In Milkshape at least, if you duplicate something it keeps the map of the original thing. That way I can have a plane-based plant using tens or hundreds of planes (it's better to stay in tens for the poly count ;) ), and all the planes share exactly the same map. For example, my tree has a trunk, several branches, and a bunch of planes that make leaves. And this (https://i.imgur.com/EJu9bUk.png) is the UV map – all the branches and the trunk share the piece on the left, and all the planes share the piece on the right.
I think that's what I have done though.
Quote" I make one instance (say it's a flower), map it, and then duplicate it and place where I want it"
That's what I did. So I thought that the UV map will have only one rectangle wall piece shown even though I have lots of different sizes walls, there is only one face on the UV map for them all to refer to. (At least, this is what I think is happening, maybe I misunderstand how it works).
Somehow, I went to move the wall piece to re-arrange the UV map cos it was getting crowded. I used 'G' and a new piece appeared. But if I can just move that back over the top of the other wall piece so they are stacked and it looks like I can only see one, then that's fine by me if that works...
I am making a total mess of how I am making Edge Seams, so I will need to completely re-do the whole UV map anyway. I was just hoping to be able to look at the textures on the model before going too much further.
Let me see if I can just move that extra one back and double it up....
For what I understand, you selected one piece on the UV map, moved it, and then you found out that there's another piece under it? If so, that's normal. There should be an option to select all of them, but I can't help with that because I don't know Blender enough. If there isn't an option like that, just use UV Mapper to move/resize the stacked parts, it's a tiny free program. In order to do that, you need to export your model as OBJ.
No idea about seams at all, someone experienced with Blender should be able to help with that.
I also find it a bit difficult to see what's going on in your Blender from what you write. Basically the uv map is just a virtual image of your mesh. It is like tailoring a coat in real but backward, cutting it along seams and then lying all pieces on the floor to paint them. That's what unwrapping is since the texture image is of course always a 2D picture and the game needs some info how to put it on your 3D model.
The steps when unwrapping in Blender is cleaning up the model by removing doubled vertices and then marking seams along edges where you want to "unfold" your model and then click unwrap. The faces in your uv map can be scaled and arranged manually as you like. For example to overlap them for efficient use of the texture or so. The second option is to unwrap as "smart uv project". Here you don't need seams and all faces are arranged separately. Both ways have their advantages. I normally use smart project to get all faces with correct proportions. For items with round shapes I use seams to get connected faces.
In any case it's not changing your mesh. Only defining a map with coordinates for every face to add texture. Maybe that helps you a bit. :)
@Voeille that's exactly what I did! I didn't realise until this thread that there were multiple versions all stacked up.
@Tom Sawyer Whatever I am doing when I select the seams is not giving me a nice neat unwrap. I've got wonky bits all over the place! Not to worry. I'm nearly finished putting the textures on in photoshop so I'll see what I end up with. I think that will make it easier for next time. I think I'll try the Smart UV that you mention and see if that helps me.
thanks to you both!
It's not really multiple versions stacked up, it's maps for different parts of the model. It's good to stack things up and make several parts of the model share the same texture. Let's say you have two planes. If you want them to share the same texture, one thing you can do is stack them up, and the other is put them next to each other on the map and copy the texture. But you never want to do the latter, because two planes would take more space, and you'd need to make them smaller, which you definitely don't want. You want each piece that needs a separate texture as big on the map as possible, and share as much texture as possible. That gives you room for more detail without the need to use large files.
Edit: I made a mistake with not stacking enough on this (https://i.imgur.com/02LQsFP.png) map for this (https://i.imgur.com/8mHBaTF.png) lamp. Those two parts at the bottom should be stacked, instead of letting them just reflect 2 sides of a cube each. That gives me room to make them a bit different if I wanted, but I don't think I would for that model, so I'm just wasting space. It's not a big deal for that map as there isn't much going on, but still, it was a bad practice to do it, and definitely not the most efficient map layout for that model. Incidentally, while speaking about that lamp, it's a good example to show how important on-texture shading is. This (https://i.imgur.com/0u4cvud.png) is how it looked before I did it (and this (https://i.imgur.com/fM20ByD.png) was the texture). Never ignore on-texture shading, but that's something done later, after your model is ready.
thanks for being so generous with advice
@Voeille The difference in that lamp is huge with the on-texture shading. I've not gotten up to that yet, and don't actually know what it is! But it looks magic compared to the first version. I'm hoping to get back to my model straight after work today... I'm yet to see how my texture map actually turns out on the model. I'm expecting a hilarious result with lots of opportunities to learn :-\ :D
On texture shading is, well, shading put directly on the texture. AO maps can't replace it, at least for all I can tell after making plants.