Do you 3d? As in Max, Maya, Blender, SketchUp, Other? Or Modding Games?

m0nk3yboy wrote:

Blender 2.5 looks like it could be the GUI refresh I was hoping for...

May have to give that a whirl once it's stabilised itself. :)

I may have to jump the Maya ship myself, at home: $3,500 vs free? I know Blender is a very powerful 3D tool, but the UI was so unusable to me (read: I didn't want to learn it :P) that I kept my distance. With these UI updates, I may be able to more easily set the controls to something I'm more familiar with (or like better).

That reminds me: does anyone know if Blender has or can use hotbox and gestural commands? That was a very fast and always awesome feature once I learned how to make my own gesture commands and Marking Menus in Maya...

blender seems like a fun tool, I played around with it a bit a couple years ago but I didn't like the UI so dropped it. I have been using Maya for quite some years now though.

btw, autodesk is offering free 3 year licences to all their products if you are a student (or can get a hold of a university email address)

I used to use Truespace 3D back in the day (aka 15 years ago) and dabbled in 3D Studio. Haven't done any modeling work in a long time though and was never particularly skilled at it.

WipEout wrote:
m0nk3yboy wrote:

Blender 2.5 looks like it could be the GUI refresh I was hoping for...

May have to give that a whirl once it's stabilised itself. :)

I may have to jump the Maya ship myself, at home: $3,500 vs free? I know Blender is a very powerful 3D tool, but the UI was so unusable to me (read: I didn't want to learn it :P) that I kept my distance. With these UI updates, I may be able to more easily set the controls to something I'm more familiar with (or like better).

That reminds me: does anyone know if Blender has or can use hotbox and gestural commands? That was a very fast and always awesome feature once I learned how to make my own gesture commands and Marking Menus in Maya...

There's a series of video tutorial online that I was watching, initially through you tube, but then through the author's site, where he flings the windows around a basically sets it up just like MAX. I'll see if I can dig them up. I'm pretty sure I found them linked from the blender website.

[added]

look for "blender survival guide by creative cow"

When we moved, I measured out our new place and modeled it in SketchUp so we could figure out how to lay out our furniture. I used to do that with some free 2D CAD program, but as a total amateur SketchUp was exactly what I was looking for for 3D modeling, and it's just plain fun to use too.

You should check out the "Post a picture... Something You Created" thread. There are a number of stills of 3d work done by gwjers.

I primarily use Lightwave. I started with 3d Studio and migrated over to Lightwave just before version 5 at the dawn of SDS (subdivision surfaces).

I have dabbled with Silo, Modo, Maya, Sketchup, Zbrush and did professional game art with 3dsmax. I too, have been scared off by Blender but I have seen some decent rigging tutorials. But, yeah, I'm just as tapped for time as everyone else. If I had a nickel for every project/software I wanted to work on...

Sculptris is really easy to get into and its so much fun you can't go wrong.

I just discovered today an open source RTS game engine called Spring that I am going to look into modding. I really want to make a fantasy themed RTS/RPG in the vein of Mechcommander 2 and/or Dawn of War 2.

Gravey wrote:

When we moved, I measured out our new place and modeled it in SketchUp so we could figure out how to lay out our furniture. I used to do that with some free 2D CAD program, but as a total amateur SketchUp was exactly what I was looking for for 3D modeling, and it's just plain fun to use too.

My brother is a robotics technologist. He did some CAD in college, but that was it. He keeps saying "I should bring my CAD skills up to date", but doesn't. Me, CAD is my bread and butter. He did his laundry room renovation in sketchup, including the exact models of the washing machines he bought, and ordered his counters from the dimensions of the sketchup model (measured against his acutal room measurements). He said it fit within an 1/8". I was impressed, and it looks good. The model is excellent.

It's amazing how easy it would be for everyone to use it. I've met some Architects that I was surprised they could use a set square, and they can use sketchup fairly well.

When we get to the era where we all have a 3d printer on the desktop, and you can buy a 3d model of a replacement part from any manufacturer, we'll all have to know how to use a 3d package a little bit.

Ghostship wrote:

He did his laundry room renovation in sketchup, including the exact models of the washing machines he bought, and ordered his counters from the dimensions of the sketchup model (measured against his acutal room measurements). He said it fit within an 1/8". I was impressed, and it looks good. The model is excellent.

It's amazing how easy it would be for everyone to use it. I've met some Architects that I was surprised they could use a set square, and they can use sketchup fairly well.

Absolutely. I was pretty amazed how easy it was to get started in SketchUp. Here's our basement suite (excluding non-furniture-containing rooms), which was also my first real 3D project. Having all our furniture be from Ikea also helps, in that you can probably find a model of it by name in the Warehouse (Billy bookcase, Malm bed, etc), plus the TV, Xbox etc, so just download and drop in.

IMAGE(http://www3.telus.net/public/me8428/files/suite.jpg)

Gravey wrote:
Ghostship wrote:

He did his laundry room renovation in sketchup, including the exact models of the washing machines he bought, and ordered his counters from the dimensions of the sketchup model (measured against his acutal room measurements). He said it fit within an 1/8". I was impressed, and it looks good. The model is excellent.

It's amazing how easy it would be for everyone to use it. I've met some Architects that I was surprised they could use a set square, and they can use sketchup fairly well.

Absolutely. I was pretty amazed how easy it was to get started in SketchUp. Here's our basement suite (excluding non-furniture-containing rooms), which was also my first real 3D project. Having all our furniture be from Ikea also helps, in that you can probably find a model of it by name in the Warehouse (Billy bookcase, Malm bed, etc), plus the TV, Xbox etc, so just download and drop in.

Part of the beauty of Sketchup is it's pick-up-and-play ease for anyone familiar with computers. This looks really nice! Have you seen some of the user-created object models out there? It's my modern dollhouse. I love playing with the animations!
I think I'm going to do this in our new apartment, too : )

When I did some renovations in my basement, I used Sketchup to wrap my head around the furnace room I was building. It was extremely helpful as a visualization tool. It was pretty easy to use after I wrestled with it for about an hour.

Also , I'm pretty sure Maximum PC did an article on using Sketchup to create Source engine levels.

Interesting this thread was started not too long ago. I've been playing with Blender for a few months now, and I want to take it more seriously. My big project I want to focus on is doing an accurate reproduction of an apartment building in my city, and perhaps in the future even doing it as a job. I decided to start a blog about it, hopefully to keep me reminded about it and keep focused.

http://kalenjohnson.blogspot.com/

If anything, it will be good to help me to continue to wrap my head around 3D modeling. I started a few weeks ago, and going back to it yesterday, I already see there are some issues I have created for myself. Topology is so important, and so easy to screw up! Loop cuts that make triangles are not a good thing....

Also, for the discussions about Blender's UI. Of course, that is the biggest knock against it. Everyone who first opens it goes "wtf?" The 2.5 UI is much nicer though, from the moment you open it, it actually looks like a 3D program now, and not so frightening.

If anyone wants to try it out, I really do recommend doing a tutorial or two on it, and at the VERY least get a list of common commands, I think BlenderGuru.com has put out a nice .pdf of common shortcuts.

I made my first 3D model this week, a hex! I used sketchup. Put a texture on the top and wanted the sides to just be a brown color, but when I export as dae and import into Panda3d (python 3d API) it shows up with the grass texture on top, but the other hex faces are blank/white. Can anyone offer some help with this? I am a complete clueless newbie with 3d graphics.

The texture jumped to the top of the building? Normally when that happens to me it means I didn't delete the history and the UVs have shifted or scaled somewhat off the 0-1 space, though admittedly I haven't used either program, and that may or may not apply.

delete me

Ghostship wrote:

Hard to tell from those views what your modelling approach is, but it looks a little vertical. I think you're identifying the repetitive parts of the building. Usually the first two or three floors are unique, the middle storeys are the same, then the top few are unique. I just expected to see more of a floor by floor approach over, going vertically up similar "bays".

That's true, the middle 20 something floors are the same. The bottom floors and the roof were going to come later on, but I started with the center section which is mostly the same. I'm not sure what you mean by a "floor by floor" approach though. Do you mean actually modeling every single floor individually?

Usually. But don't re-model the floors which are the same. Group them or whatever Blender calls it and array them, or whatever Blender calls it.

Sketchup is pretty awesome. I am hoping they get some more robust functionality with curves.

This is what I'm looking for, starting about 35 seconds in:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-K1TT...

Bonzai3d is a lot like SKetchup but includes things like nurbs surfaces. Its not free but $500 is pretty cheap these days for a feature rich modeler.

Oh and I think the export problem out of sketchup is because I don't believe Sketchup assigns uv's so its probably just a default mapping projection. If there are any options for the format you are exporting to, I would look there first.

You can map textures in sketchup, but if you're used to UVW mapping, it's a bit weird.

You're looking for bezier curves?

NURBS was always strange to me. The only time I've ever seen any demand for it, was when National Defense posted a job for modelling radar targets using NURBS, because the software they had needed it. Of course there wasn't much more detail than that in the job posting.

All of the entertainment stuff I've seen (which isn't much and is isolated mostly to amateur 3d forums on the internet) has been all poly modelling, and recently sculpting.

There is a guy who has models of astronauts and city workers at manholes, all posted on the 3dwarehouse. Some surprisingly organic stuff considering the problems I've had with curves in sketchup.

You're looking for bezier curves?

NURBS was always strange to me. The only time I've ever seen any demand for it, was when National Defense posted a job for modelling radar targets using NURBS, because the software they had needed it. Of course there wasn't much more detail than that in the job posting.

Nurbs are really a pain and sloppy to work with. I prefer solids modeling like solidworks or inventor.

The appealing thing about the video I shared is that sometimes you come across a work flow where you slap your forehead wondering why it hasn't always been this way. I can't think of a better complement to box modeling than being able to drag out a straight edge on a point and make it a curve. Subd's does this already but it makes all the edges into curves and you have no little control over the shape of the new curves until you add more edge loops.

I'm having fun learning what Sketchup can do. I'm starting on Pro/E at work, and working with something simple and fun like Sketchup is a refreshing change of pace.

If you're looking for something fun to play with and don't mind waiting for exceedingly long renders, check out the Indigo plugin for SU.
http://www.indigorenderer.com/sketchup/

Michael wrote:

I'm having fun learning what Sketchup can do. I'm starting on Pro/E at work, and working with something simple and fun like Sketchup is a refreshing change of pace.

If you're looking for something fun to play with and don't mind waiting for exceedingly long renders, check out the Indigo plugin for SU.
http://www.indigorenderer.com/sketchup/

That's a pretty nice renderer. What would you consider to be exceedingly long? 3, 4, 5 times the render time, or are we talking 20x plus?

I like that it plugs into the other apps too.

I don't even know fully at this point, because after four hours it clicked through another render refinement and posted that another three and a half hours were coming. At that point I killed it because I was annoyed. That seemed a bit much considering I had two walls, a floor, and a table and chair set. Perhaps I just have to tweak the settings a little bit (I just hit "go" once I had installed), but I'll set it up to run while I'm at work today and see what happens. Here's my super-quick sketch as well as the render at the four hour point:

IMAGE(http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a92/MichaelEHermes/DiningRoom.png)

IMAGE(http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a92/MichaelEHermes/im1296402158.png)

If there's any raytracing option, check those settings. Raytracing kills render time. Same with Ambient Occlusion. Also if you're doing a test render, you should cut your output resolution in half or 1/4 of your final output to save time. Indigo looks like a pretty cool renderer. I will need to look into it.

That's pretty impressive what it can do with Sketchup. I will have to download that and give it a try again. But that's the Pro version you are using, right Michael?

WipEout - There's a lot of options for the tracing method used. Looking a little bit into the Indigo forums it looks like the default might not have been the most efficient. Thanks for the tips, I'll look into getting it to work a little faster. Having previously rendered scenes in Blender pretty quickly, I think my expectations might be a bit off - in one of the discussions I saw someone mention "letting the render cook for a few days" o_0 I also don't have the best machine for these tasks, just a 3.0 GHz dual-core.

Citizen86 - I'm using the free version. I added a few of the other toolbars to the default view, but I have the free version of Sketchup and the Indigo renderer.

Here's one I started when I left for work this morning, 10.5 hours later:

IMAGE(http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a92/MichaelEHermes/im1296473699.png)

Yeah, definitely play with some of the settings. Renders can take a while, but that doesn't seem like 10+ hours worth of rendering

Here's a quick SketchUp model I made in the past half hour or so... the "blagh these dimensions aren't accurate!!! part of me is convulsing, but the fun part of me had a blast. This is St. Stanislaus Kostka in Chicago, where I was baptized:

IMAGE(http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a92/MichaelEHermes/StStans-1.png)' alt='IMAGE(IMAGE(http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a92/MichaelEHermes/StStans-1.png))' />

http://dannakay.smugmug.com/Various-...

Yes, there is only one steeple/tower - the other one burned down.

This may be a long shot but is anyone here using vray for Maya on the Mac? Im tying to get my job to switch over to it from Mental Ray but can't seem to find a working demo.

Emerge from the 2d depths of plainitude *arise thread! in lay tongue*

Here be my main personal project of late, started 2 years ago, mostly worked in it for a straight month, then a year later I picked it up again only to be held back by the aging of my rig. Finally I composed this scene earlier this year on a laptop but found it imposible to tweak lighting or shading effectively. After upgrading to a new rig I've been very busy and made some considerable quantum leaps regarding the final quality. So, my main interest in posting this here is to get some feedback on it.
IMAGE(http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j219/feeank/afiche_05.png)
Taken from the description of the piece I wrote when I first uploaded it to cgtalk's gallery:

This began back in 2009 in an effort to create a caricature of the lead singer of the group, Ronnie Spector on my spare time. After being neglected for the most part of the last two years, having never reached a stage where I felt the resemblance was obvious, I scraped the idea and this came to be as a by product. The two other "Ronettes" are the same "Ronnie" model posed to slightly resemble Estelle Bennet and Nedra Talley in a general way.

You can check my WIP thread over CGtalk here though you may not be able to see images posted there if you're not registered.

Any comment or critique is welcomed and appreciated.

I'd crit, but:
1- you're way better than me
and
2- anything you hear at CGtalk will be sevaral orders of magnitude better than anything I could add.

You have planted a seed. I now have an urge to get back into character modelling for fun.

Did you have a photo reference for the grip on the mic?
CG hands always get me.
Pinky finger. It's really hard to bend the last knuckle of your pinky (mine anyhow). Holding something lightly you'll probably only bend the first knuckle. The last one only a little, and obtuse angle at least.
Last two fingers are for gripping, first two and thumb for manipulating.
Just trying to pull something out of my backside in hopes that it's something useful.