Tried to use blender in our studio :(

[FreakyDude]

And your question or statement is???


the multiuv thing, I can't help you with, but surely you can import 2 models and save/load the uv's amongst these objects in either max or maya. I know max has something like that, it had it way back at version ?5?

the cutting, I see people complain about it every now and then and I don't really have any problems with it. Only thing I miss is that you can't define a plane to cut along. But you can snap to verts.
You know about how the knife tool only cuts the selected part of the mesh right? and you know you can constrain the cutting to certain axis by pressing mmb or using the (shift)xyz button combinations? And split edges and rip them, and collapse and delete an edgeloop without creating a gap, and subdivide it or multisubdivide it.
If you mean with adding to many edges, do you mean you want Ngons? look at the development of the Bmesh system. It's a whole new system in the works for blender that will be much more flexible and as a side effect will have ngons. There are builds around but it isn't in the "official blender" yet.

You don't need to do the delete rebuild thing all the time, you just need to model a little differently, maybe.

[Michael-Williamson]

..The current knife tool adds too many extra edges which is bad for low-poly modeling...and the delete-rebuild technique is too time consuming.

http://www.dimension-z.net (http://www.dimension-z.net/)

I've done a lot of low poly games work in my time and find Blender pretty capable (over the years I've used a lot of stuff) The knife tool can get similar results to cut/knife/subdivide/addedges tools in most other packages, but large parts of its functionality aren't obvious at first. You know that you can change how it adds edges in the mesh tools panel (innervert -fan -path)?..


The knife doesn't work exactly the same as any other package I've ever used, it's quirky like that and frankly I prefer the cut tool in wings... however It can get the SAME RESULTS as those other tools without too much faff...

If you get more specific then maybe we can help, right now I'm not going to guess the thousands of situations that you could be talking about and right up possible solutions...

although I have covered a lot of this in other threads if you fancy a search....

[riyazgomes]

Hey Michael....Our current project involves buildings.....lots of cuts for doors, windows, etc......tried using all the possible workarounds....but all were too time consuming....:(...especially if you have lots of doors and windows to cut)....and bad when the doors and windows are shaped like arches...etc.

Regarding the multiple uvs...its not really blenders fault....and yes exporting 2 objects and copy pasting uvs into another channel in max/maya works but it still does not get rid of the max/maya dependency.

[PanzerMKZ]

Have you tried some of the svn builds from say graphicall.org or blenderbuilds.com? I know that once this darn black friday holiday is over I got more work to do on my auto svn build system for linux blender builds. 2.45 is alittle old for now. Alot of work has been done in the svn.



Panzer

[riyazgomes]

Will try some builds....but am unsure if they will be stable enough.

[FreakyDude]

I was just wondering (by the way, I still use 2.44 at home, cause 2.45 doesn't run on edgy without a new version of some dependancy that does not appear to be available for edgy, and updating is not high enough on my priority list),
could you show a more complete example of what you would like to achieve modelingwise in a certain timeframe? I've done a few houses/interiors in blender, and I still think most of the extra time could be nulified by modeling things a little different. And as I said, if that doesn't float your boat, there will be a new mesh system in a future version.

I'd like to try to model something within a certain timeframe, to see if only for myself, if your argument stands up.

[riyazgomes]

Hey Freakydude.....I have attached the reference for one of the bldgs that we are working on....while we are cutting the mesh for windows/doors.....We are not extruding them because of the poly count.....The cuts are mainly to help us with the texturing....also there should be no open vertices in the model.

You also have to keep in mind that our project involves over 300 of buildings like these :)....on average each building has around 6 windows/doors so even a 5min workaround per window/door amounts to 150 hours of wasted time :(

-Riyaz

[LetterRip]

So are multi-uv exporter limitations? If so what exporter(s) are you using/have tried?? OBJ, FBX, Collada, LWO, DXF, 3DS?

LetterRip

[riyazgomes]

Hi Letterrip.....the only exporter that does multi-uv exporting ..that I know of...Is the Panda DirectX exporter for max.....To me, Collada seems like the best format because their is not much work to do after importing....and also the model scale also accurately transfers from blender.....but a major problem with collada is that it leaves behind dependencies in the max file...which means that if the client does not have collada..I opens but gives error messages.

Obj is by far the most stable format...rarely gives any errors...fbx is also a good format...however the smoothing groups go all wonky :) when imported...makes a lot of rework needed....never really like 3ds, dxf format...Lwo format is one that Iv not really tried much.

[LetterRip]

Could you file bug reports related to the smoothing groups problem with FBX? Also you might mention the rest of your comment in the bug report related to the other formats, and I'll see if our format expert can solve some of the issues for you.

LetterRip

[ChevyVanDude]

You can try to hide the parts you don't want to be cut, by selecting that mesh and press H.
To unhide it again, press Alt+H.
Hope it helps

[kawallo]

For this kind of work, considering the huge amount of buildings you have to create, I think the best choice to build your models is Sketchup. Then you can use another 3d generic software like blender to map and render your scene.

[ctguitars]

Hi Lads,

For this many buildings and in the off chance someone in your group/company has Lightwave I would look at LWCAD here:

http://www.wtools3d.com/


Excellent plugin for Lightwave - turns it into a CAD / architectural package. I use Blender also, but for buildings with arches and doors and windows - LWCAD with lightwave then export via obj to blender and any other app.

http://www.netactivesolutions.net/sitepages/3d_pages/streetvue1.htm


Quick scene with LWCAD - arches etc. Into Vue Infinite for veg and render in this case.

The same scene in LW with a character done in Blender animated:

http://www.tidalsound.com/3dstuff/hoopywalks.avi - 339kb [ maybe xvid, cant remember ]

Aidan

[FreakyDude]

sorry but what kind of polycount are you thinking about?
I started building this about 5 minutes ago but if you don´t extrude things like doors and windows, how detailed should the rest of these things be? like ornaments-outsets etc?
Can you show something a little more concrete? if not in violation of any rules of course.

[riyazgomes]

Well we are not able to show and share the meshes...however I can say that the poly count is around 2000-3000 tris......basically what we do is model the basic shape and cut out the windows without extruding them.

[riyazgomes]

Could you file bug reports related to the smoothing groups problem with FBX? Also you might mention the rest of your comment in the bug report related to the other formats, and I'll see if our format expert can solve some of the issues for you.

LetterRip

Im not sure how to file bug reports...with regards to solving issues ...I think either a directx or collada format may be the best solution

[paintbox]

I am a long time user of the excellent ultimate unwrap 3D, a software specifically designed for unwrapping. Version 3 was just released. It happens to have a ton of import / export plug-ins.

http://www.unwrap3d.com/formats.aspx

If you want I could do a test with a trial model to see if any of that helps you get it into Max. Or just buy Unwrap3D, the pro version is only $69

There are also plug-ins for Max to import U3D meshes directly. The only downside I can conceive of is, is that it is another step in the workflow. You might not want that if you have lots of models to convert.

[riyazgomes]

I was just going through the blender conference vids and the 'what I like to see in blender' video' covered the cut tool.....I guess this tool is one of the most important mainly for game artists because since we have such low polygon limits we have to make selective cuts.

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