Blender Queries
drcharbonneau
Posts: 0
I'm doing the gingerbread man tutorial, Gus is stuck in grayscale. How do I get the materials to apply to an object?
I considered this miight be a good thread to start about general Blender queries. I was told you folks could help me through it, so I'm wading in, but reached a small drop-off...
Gus1.JPG
1346 x 699 - 110K
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...you might do better addressing this on the Blender community forum. They are incredibly supportive.
http://cgcookie.com/blender/cgc-series/blender-basics-introduction-beginners/
that would be a good start before anything else
also since im not yet 100% checked out on 2.66 ill ahve to guess that its the same as the previous versions so i will ask the easy questions
is the material you want to use an imgage file?
is the mesh UVMapped?
doyou know how to unwrap it?
if you just want to add a basic color to it for the render go to the materials icon in the tools menu (looks like a sphere with red triangles)
and set a color
K... I've been told the opposite by another member, but you may be right.
Basically, in Blender you have to assign a material to the object. You can search YouTube for videos on Blender materials and will find a lot, but here are a couple to get started: Materials Part I, Materials Part II, Basic UV Mapping, and finally Andrew Price's The Secrets of Realistic Texturing. These are just some vidoes... there are a lot of them and which the best are for any individual's learning will vary based on what that person's background is, what they do/don't know already, and just how the presenter resonates with them. Good luck, and don't feel you have to go to other forums to ask questions, unless DAZ word comes down that they for some reason don't want the discussion here. There are people who use and like Blender here, and the advantage is that they use it in conjunction with DAZ Studio. :)
As I said, I'm working through their tutorial, so this is the beginner lesson. All went well till I was following the instructions to add material/texture and instead of color and bumpmaps, I ended up as the picture states.
I don't mind going to Blender's comm. I'd have done that were I not recommended otherwise by a member here.
I did try just changing the color and it failed. I'm already familiar with the interface. Went over that Friday...
Often we are missing something simple when this happens. The best answer to it besides asking questions, as you have, is to go over the specific area of information from other sources. Hearing/seeing/reading other versions of something often end up pointing out something we missed. Once we miss something from a particular source, we can often look at it repeatedly and still miss it. Our brains are funny that way.
Maybe YOUR brain's funny like that; mine's just mildly dyslexic... :-)
I watched the video. Yes I sometimes have to step away from the machine for a moment. As of this immediate moment, it's 8:30am and we just chaged to DST here in Indiana, so I have yet to fire up Blender this morning. Ahh.... I smell the coffee and am going to get some... among other morning routines.
Thanx Gedd.
There are 4 videos in that post actually ;p
Watching the first was telling me I'd been following instructions, but the manual's tutorial left out the part about assign. The video did show where to change the color. I ended up figuring out on my own that it is the drop-down menu that appears in the expander box at the left of the naming text box. It may be my machine's vvolume settings, but the first video was difficult to hear. That's cool, though, that there are all those Ytube videos.
What sucks is that Google just has to force its advertising foot in the scene at some time when you don't want it. Google can take its foot and...>:-(
Something to consider.... most of the advanced options in shaders get lost when transferring objects between packages. Basic settings and the UV/materials cary over but things like reflection, refraction, fresnel, etc... often get lost. Final texturing needs to be done as a last step specifically for the render engine. To put it another way, shaders are a feature of a render engine. In a package like Blender which has multiple render engines available, this can get confusing as there are multiple shader networks available depending on the render engine being used. In exporting to other packages, the settings don't translate often because both paring down of what gets passed through on export/import and loss due to different render engines having different shader networks with only small portions being mapped across.
So what this means is, in learning texturing we want to focus on what is somewhat universal first, then on what translates between the different tools we specifically use in our workflow. It can be confusing, but it can also direct what we focus on in the learning process so we learn what we need first. There is unfortunately no simple tutorials showing this... we just have to figure this out as we go at the moment. Just remember, if it was easy, everyone would be doing it ;)
There are people here who are much more familiar with Blender then I am, so if anyone wants to jump in and correct or clarify anything I've said, feel free :)
Like I said in the Launch Post (LP; some refer to as OP), this is for general Blender learning and queries, so it might even be beneficial to the whole community to pin it up top. I don't know how long the site admins have the "edit" function set for, or whether that can be enabled indefinitely for a single post, but I know if I have questions, other beginners will too, so it's just a good thing to have handy since so many tout Blender. As implied, the toughest thing, for many, is to ask questions. Five year olds do better than most of us because we often are shushed as we grow older.
What I'm alluding to is if the LP is editable forever, at least I can c&p a link like you posted up top so it doesn't get buried.
As for "everyone would be doing it," you may be right, but I'm convinced some otherwise very intelligent people do not have the type of brain that sees in 3, let alone 4, 5, 6...n dimensions. Most artistic types, like the post editor here, don't do math. In nuts and bolts I started a "food for thought (FFT)" type thread about particle physics and "if only" it was updated to include superscript, subscript and had a good selection of math symbols in the smileys, for instance infinity, it would be easier to explain. As it was, last night I wrote a fairly extensive post to answer some of the enthusiastic queries about my own developing "Frame Theory (FT)" that aligns remarkably well with Blender, but at submit time the server failed. I had neglected to copy the text to my clipboard, so it was lost. Sigh...
To even begin describing, in words, the mathematical mechanics of infinity is a real task. Blender, or perhaps even Bryce or Carrara, the latter two i don't know yet, may offer the ability to make the picture that is worth the thousand words... multiplied into the animation that is worth a thousand pictures. One reason I fervently reject so many "mainstream" scientific minds, regardless of their gifted level, is because so many are as demanding as crack users and meth users. The latter are extremely mentally damaged to the point of becoming ill fit for socialization. Artwork especially is incredibly enhanced by the voices of constructive critique. A demanding mind is no constructive use to anyone. Don't do meth or crack kids. Don't demand of others either, save for respect.
Here's Gus now...
The red sketched arrow (from W7's snipping tool) is where the drop down menu has the assignment list.
The blue arrow points to the clicking place...
The first video appears to have a different button than in 2.66... This may clear that up for otheres with this same query.
I was understanding the manual and doing as it said, but Blender needs to update that little omission, although it may be I just need to scale up my browser zoom to see what might otherwise be obvious.
Well there will always be omissions in training materials, and inaccuracies due to version differences, that's just part of the learning process. It can be very frustrating however being stuck over something simple that is missing, wrong, etc...
A related issue is that there are many ways to do any given thing. The most efficient one for a given person or task isn't necessarily the one being shown. Really learning something is not just being able to do the tasks, but being efficient, with enough breadth to be able to apply the methods creatively to get new and expanded results. (When all one has is a hammer, screws look like nails.) ;)
Now we have a thread to circumvent all that ;-)
I checked at 200% zoom, which does help a 60 year old dude with 60 years of scleratic floaters... :-) ... Even in the text that little detail is missing. Yes. You are correct in that. While working through this first tutorial, I ended up playing with a tool not yet mentioned while finding the right method to get the "resize" function to work. Deform will let you stretch that little guy like Mr. Bill meets Sluggo riding the bulldozer...
Here's a question I may have asked elsewhere. When rigging, is it possible to scale the diameter of the bone heads? (For the hips we would loosely call these heads, but there are also muscle "levers" called trochantors). If I have my way with the program, one fine day, I'll have the bones accurately modeled. In the case these cannot be diametrically scaled, without also scaling the length proportionally, will it be possible to build a bone chain within them follows the contour, but move as a single bone?
why scale the bone points? if they hide parts of the mesh that you eant to see in the setup use b-bones or sticks
also post the link to the tutorials that you are using so that i can go over them to see what was missed in them in order to better explain the ideas involved because so far im lost
ive been using blender for over 10 years and know the software from a to z
the bones that are shown for rigging do not show in the renders so scale shouldnt be an issue for most people but if they are distracting from the process there are built in options for the style used to not require the almost pyramidical standard style bone
and the answer is no the size cannot be scaled without effecting the entire bone
the link that i posted has never showed anything about making a mesh of a "gingerbread man" and was entirely remade specificaly for 2.66
and from the last images posted it looks like you are using a basic texture image that is either repeated or tiled without UVmapping the mesh and it is giving off bad results
without knowing the totality of the given tut i cannot accurately say what the solution is
I could place a link to the gingerbread man tutorial page. Surprisingly enough, while playing with the bones in the properties window a bit more, I found the different bone representations. UV mapping I understand, but actually doing it at this phase, for me, is putting the cart ahead of the horse. (...and we know how thilly that is :=) ... the thills of the cart or carriage would be sticking out like the forks on a lift truck... )
The bottleneck I'm trying to find is "panning." How does one pan the 3Dview port? I'm considering starting the whole beginner's tutorial from scratch to see what I've missed.
Addendum:
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Your_First_Animation/1.A_static_Gingerbread_Man
There's the link.
I would suggest watching the videos that simpleplanning pointed out as they are quick and cover essential information. As for the bones, it seems the part you are misunderstanding is that the bones are just mechanisms for defining translation for the mesh. They have no purpose visibly other then to show the modeler how the mesh deformation structure is defined.
This is getting annoying. Not your input. That's great. I just typed about a paragraph of considerations and sub-queries, then lost it to a "You must be a member to post..." error. The top header says I am logged in. I have to remember about that inconvenient possibility, here, an copy what I type to my (fill in the blank) clipboard. >:-(
My question: Could I set up a separate layer, sketch in some intersecting lines, perhaps a plane, and create a point snap reference to get the bones in place properly on still another layer? Do the bones need to be on the same layer as the model, or could I turn off the model's layer, place the bones where they belong, then turn off the point snap layer? Would it matter, if I hadn't applied any material to the point snap sketch, whether the layer was on or off at render time?
Also, in my intro thread (commons I think) I placed (not knowing about the freebie forum then) a link to camstudio. It's a gadget that could be used to illustrate an instruction right in these threads if they'll allow an .avi file to be uploaded.
I wanted to make a note about the tutorials simpleplanning linked to, as I'm going through them now myself. They are very well done, well explained, and move very fast. That means that while they are understandable by someone just starting out, the pace things are covered means someone new to blender will miss a lot typically on first and second pass. On the other hand, due to the speed the material is covered, it is good for someone who already has some familiarity with blender to be able to go back through to catch up on things they forgot or missed without feeling like they are wasting a lot of time one often feels like when going through beginner level tutorials. I definitely recommend new users to plan on going back through them more then once, preferrably with time spent playing with the program in-between, and for people that don't have all the basic shortcuts down pat, it is a good refresher.
Hi Gedd,
My dillemna is this: My time is spread thin. To spend an hour on video tutorils that sometimes are garbled or low volume on a machine that I can't turn up too much without infringing on others, isn't usually an option, not to mention I'm running a slower net connection that can turn a 10 minute video into a 40 minute video. Although I don't doubt they are wonderfully produced, it's often easier just to have mentoring by a plain old fashioned answer to what should be a relatively simple question. THAT speeds up my progress. :)
Luckily I don't work as a faculty member somewhere with professorship work. I'd likely have an hour at best to devote to it all, instead of my self-created schedule. I have a couple or 3 hours each day to spend on ALL computer learning efforts and that can be usurped by production in an already learned app. Remember that faceted sphere? I'm preparing to actually build one of those. Imagine how much time that might require... ;=)
Have you tried out Download Helper? It's a free plugin for FireFox browser that lets you record the videos off YouTube and Vimeo to your hard drive. That way you can start the video and then pause it. Let DH download at the resolution you want while you do something else. Watch the video later when you've got the time.
Good luck on learning Blender! I've known of Blender since version 1.8, but I never could seriously get into it until 2010 when 2.5 was being developed. I'm so glad I no longer have to navigate that old 2.49 interface!! The learning curve is steep, and I think that as time goes along, I tend to work on 'automatic' and forget how hard it is for beginners. Keep at it! You will get it in time.
Have fun rigging, btw. Eventually, you'll want to check out Nathan Vegdahl's DVD, Humane Rigging.
Actually I saved the whole manual to a folder and view them offline on another machine while working on this one, or vice versa should I try that next.
I found the answer to my own question in Navigating/3DView.
Ctrl + 2 = pan up, +8 = pan down, +4 = pan right, +6 = pan left. or "view" menu in 3D View Header/Navigation and select a choice...
Simple answer...
Next query:
When applying a Boolean operation, in thi case union, I get the error message "Modifier is disabled, skipping apply." Perhaps I could get a few hints as to removing other modifiers?
After getting properly in step with upgrades to IE (to 10) and RealPlayer, I've been happily downloading from the video salad bar. I'm far more impressed with Blender than over a year ago when I first installed a copy on another machine, just by seeing what it can do, perusing the videos from time to time while they are downloading. The question that comes to mind is "Why would I need much of anything else unless I'm going to need dimensions and building criteria?"
it may be the way you're approaching the methodology
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDweCpDAB_o
additionally some modelers insist Boolean operations should be avoided whenever possible.
you may want to look into re topology, especially if you're using Blender 2.6
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maDuLzl6MXU
I'm still learning Blender, I just got into it when 2.6 came out and I took a few months off so I'm still noobing with it. Take my response (and any other responses I've ever contributed) with a grain of salt
Booleans were created by the Devil to mislead you ;p
Actually, I was in love with the concept of Booleans when I first started modeling but they have so many pitfalls... eventually that probably won't be the case but until then I don't personally recommend them except in Bryce, which is it's own world, and one other modeler (Modo? Rhino? don't remember...) which supposedly does a uniquely good job with them.
The other thing about Booleans is that one doesn't learn some of the details of what make good topology as they are a shortcut, and learning good topo in my experience means going to the root of meshes, the very fundamentals. What one learns eventually is that in a good mesh, every vert, every poly counts. Until learning that well, shortcuts tend to be a distraction rather then a help in truly learning.
There are some tools (modelers) that are well set up with this mindset in mind. Max has some of these features built in as it came from a drafting background, but some architectural modelers are much better for modeling buildings and houses quickly and efficiently. For an all around package I love Blender, but specialized tools, especially moving forward, will become much more efficient at modeling specific types of objects as they hone their interface and tools to that task with removing any distractions and providing shortcuts which will end up being invaluable to speed and efficiency with the task at hand.
The nice thing about Blender is that the basic design, while monolithic, is very customizable. I envision that people will make custom interfaces for it for handling specific tasks, much like skins for music players, but much more useful.