Been Learning Blender 2.8/2.9

[monkeyfrogstudio]

While I've done 3D modeling for quite some time, I am fairly new to Blender. Been dabbling in it, but not taking it too seriously. Then I decided to go through a complete tutorial, treating 3D as if I were a beginner, learning and unlearning (bad habits). I'll say this - Blender has changed a lot over the years. I used to hate it back with the old UI (v2.7x days) and refused to use/learn it. But since 2.8? Wow. What a difference. I actually love working in Blender now. Gotta love the price, too.

So, here's my first completed project, from modeling, to material creation, to lighting and rendering, in Blender (from a tutorial offered on FlippedNormals):







It was a lot of fun. I learned a lot. And now I am back to being excited about working in 3D again.

[SolarPortal]

nice work m8

i was an avid blender disliker on 2.7 and earlier with its horrible interface. 2.8 has changed that entirely and yeah being free cant argue haha But i suppose thats what happens when you get lots of large studios investing big bucks into a package lol.

keep it up!!... perhaps you will be able to start making packs to sell on the store for the next versions

[monkeyfrogstudio]

Thanks! Yeah, I had started in 3D using 3D Studio MAX and then migrated over to MODO. But with everyone moving to subscription and the mounting costs of 3D software, I decided to revisit Blender. With the 2.8 release (and now 2.9), this software has really blossomed! I really love working in Blender now.

MODO has a nice native rendering engine, but working with its shader tree (how you work with materials) and searching through the zillions of rendering options, it was always a fight to get a great, noise-free render. I hated rendering in MODO. But Blender? Holy cow. It's dead simple and I'm surprised at how good a render you can get out of Cycles. And it's dead easy to get good results. Love it.

I'd love to make packs of game-ready objects! Once I have my hands on the beta, I can start looking into that.

BTW - Speaking of making Skyline specific packs - could more than models/materials be included? For example, could game-ready assets be made/offered/sold that include working doors with triggers, etc., so people could just drop them into a level and they would just work?

[SolarPortal]

[StarFire]

Got to hand it to the blender team as they have turned that tool around, but thats what happens when somthing gets fully supported. For me its now relaxing to model in blender where as using max was very stressfull, just my personal opinion though.

Creating some Game Objects would be awesome, we need as much available contnet as possible, I will happily help you in the development of these so that all you packs will combine with the pre-existing systems.
I have been writing a set of Game object managers that will act as a frame work for adding any interactive elementrs to the GO library. This way you can ensure they will interact correctly with the characters and vehicles. this is not to say you can not write a complete system yourself but will save time if we all work from a shared framework. I will be getting back to this frame work as soon as Solar gets me his version of skyline
Once back on that job I will document the managers and how to use them so yourself and others can get into developing game ready interact Game objects.

[monkeyfrogstudio]

[SolarPortal]

[StarFire]

[monkeyfrogstudio]

Thanks. I have an Operator Preset for various things already. It makes your life easier in the end.

When I work for games, I tend to set the grid and units to match whatever engine I am creating for. Some games still use a power of two grid (eight subdivisions instead of 10) and some use real-world measurements (cm or mm). In most cases, in my initial Blender tests, I've found that setting units to none and the grid what I like, I can create using the grid and then just adjust the scale via export (as you've indicated).

BTW - You mention FBX. Will Skyline support GLTF 2.0? If not now, maybe in the future? Have you also looked into USD?

[SolarPortal]

[monkeyfrogstudio]

USD is a Pixar format that stands for Universal Scene Description. It is a bit new, but with Pixar behind it, most of the 3D apps, including Blender 2.9, support it. It's like GLTF, but apparently more. Here's a link:





AssImp already supports GLTF and should probably support USD, too. But I am not sure about the last one since I haven't looked.

[SolarPortal]

interesting, as mentioned before, will add to the to do list, but no promises when it will be done

[monkeyfrogstudio]

Thanks, but not worried. FBX is quite fine.