Blender help/tutorial/question thread

Joco · Post by **Joco** » Sat Nov 18, 2006 2:06 pm

I thought of making thread where we who use blender may ask questions put in small tutorials and help each other. I will put up somwthing here soon, but i wanted to start the thread so that you who want to can start asking and give tip to others.
Don't care if nobody has writen here for a long time, this thread will never be a dead thread, ask whenever you want to ask anything (I will ask alot as well!).

Cheers

/Joco

El Scumbago · Post by **El Scumbago** » Sun Nov 19, 2006 1:06 am

Use the Tavern (just in case you considered using the Private Tavern).

Joco · Post by **Joco** » Sun Nov 19, 2006 12:44 pm

Should I make a new thread or can you move this one?

Andres Indoril · Post by **Andres Indoril** » Sun Nov 19, 2006 12:56 pm

Someone should just move this one because multiple threads are always BAD!

El Scumbago · Post by **El Scumbago** » Mon Nov 20, 2006 4:10 pm

Moved as per request. The tuts may commence (with my blessings).

Mr. Tissue Box · Post by **Mr. Tissue Box** » Sat Dec 02, 2006 5:53 pm

Hello! I'm new to the forums and I've always wanted to learn how to build a tileset using Blender. Because I don't have 3DSMax. Thanks!

horodnicdragos · Post by **horodnicdragos** » Sat Dec 02, 2006 6:25 pm

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro

Now do you expect me to open your head and squeeze in all the knowledge? Since you are new, all I can say is "Welcome aboard!". Remember to read the Forum FAQ and Tamriel Rebuilt FAQs.

Post by **Haplo** » Sat Dec 02, 2006 9:13 pm

That blender tutorial is utter feces, unless all you want to learn how to do is use the extrude function.

Joco · Post by **Joco** » Sat Dec 02, 2006 9:49 pm

Sorry, I am too bad in english to understad what you wrote...

PoHa! · Post by **PoHa!** » Sat Dec 02, 2006 9:55 pm

Haplo means to say that the tutorial that Horodnic posted is not a good one.

Mr. Tissue Box · Post by **Mr. Tissue Box** » Sun Dec 03, 2006 12:03 am

Well, is there a specific tutorial for making a tileset in Blender? I'm really eager to make a new house for me.

horodnicdragos · Post by **horodnicdragos** » Sun Dec 03, 2006 7:52 am

That's where I learned blender from. I found it pretty explained compared to other tutorials. If it's not tutorials where do people learn how to use it? It's not that user-friendly.

Well, is there a specific tutorial for making a tileset in Blender? I'm really eager to make a new house for me.

No.

Joco · Post by **Joco** » Mon Dec 04, 2006 8:44 am

The best tutorial to get basic knowledge that is free is the one pdf that i posted a while ago in another thread. The noob to pro make you able to do do some things but you don't understrand really how blender works. I tried to use it and sure, i learned something but most i have discovered myself, what i have later read in the other blender book.

horodnicdragos · Post by **horodnicdragos** » Mon Dec 04, 2006 8:17 pm

I agree with the fact that most of it is discovering by yourself. But you have to build a little base of knowledge from where you start to work.

And I also found the thread that Joco was talking about. Here you go:

http://tamriel-rebuilt.org/old_forum/viewtopic.php?t=17463&highlight=blender

In case you can't open pdf files you can download Adobe Acrobat from here:

http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html

Or you can get this alternative, that I use and it's pretty cool, called eXpert PDF Reader. Oh right and here's the link:

http://www.visagesoft.com/products/pdfreader/

Both of them are freeware.

Joco · Post by **Joco** » Wed Dec 06, 2006 11:11 am

Thanks horodnic. Good help i believe

Nairb · Post by **Nairb** » Sun Dec 10, 2006 11:42 pm

most of these tutorials are OK, but not great. To start out, you should use the tutorials on the blender.org site, listed under infocenter -> using blender -> video Tutorials -> Getting started. These are really good tutorials, and cover the basics. you should also learn modeling first, then rendering and lighting.
If you need any specific help on a part of blender, just ask me. I have been using blender for around 2 1/2 years, and should be able to help guide you in the right direction.
Remember, blender requires a extremely high learning curve to start out, but after you get past the learning curve it becomes extremely easy.

*edit* a extremely good community is www.blenderartists.com. if you cant find what you want on their forums, it doesnt exist.

El Scumbago · Post by **El Scumbago** » Sun Dec 10, 2006 11:50 pm

Is this the same Nairb who was modding here when I first came(2 years ago)?

Nairb · Post by **Nairb** » Sun Dec 10, 2006 11:59 pm

might be..... who knows? (I started half a year before I made those bottles i belive) I guess the mystery will never be solved.....

TheImperialDragon · Post by **TheImperialDragon** » Mon Dec 11, 2006 12:17 am

horodnicdragos wrote:http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro

Now do you expect me to open your head and squeeze in all the knowledge? Since you are new, all I can say is "Welcome aboard!". Remember to read the Forum FAQ and Tamriel Rebuilt FAQs.

That one, I found it useful at the start, and only did like four-six pages of it before getting bored and moving on to something else. The best way to learn Blender, as everyone says, is to experiment and learn it on your own.

That tutorial is still good for reference, however. Use it when you're stumped at how to do something (like UV mapping).

http://www.blender3d.org/cms/Import___Export.5.0.html

That is where you can get the wavefront (I think that's the right one) exporter/importer for OBJ files, the NIF one is not really supported, or maintained. What is recommended by just about everyone these days (as far as I know) is to simply import an OBJ in NIFSkope, then save it as an NIF, adding whatever NiBlocks you need.

So, in a nutshell:

.blend -> .obj USING Blender
.obj -> .nif USING NIFSkope

Joco · Post by **Joco** » Mon Feb 26, 2007 9:54 am

Can you apply the normal map to the mesh?
I am dealing with exporting the nifs, still, and I have serious problems with getting both the texture and the normal map to get along.

PoHa! · Post by **PoHa!** » Mon Feb 26, 2007 3:06 pm

You don't really 'apply' the normal map to the mesh (at least for OB, that is). Create your normal map, and name it the same as your texture, except with a _n.dds on the end instead of just .dds. Then put it in the same folder with your texture, and OB/CS will automatically find it.

If that's not what you mean, it may help to have more specific information.

Joco · Post by **Joco** » Mon Feb 26, 2007 3:32 pm

Well, since i am making the cliff in blender i have to export it and then the normal map doesnt come along...

PoHa! · Post by **PoHa!** » Mon Feb 26, 2007 5:49 pm

Normal maps are textures made from the color map. You don't make them with Blender.

Joco · Post by **Joco** » Mon Feb 26, 2007 6:59 pm

well, displacement map then. I cant finish my cliff for goldmoor until I can export this file with all functions. Can any one help me? i could send the blend file...

Gez · Post by **Gez** » Sun Mar 04, 2007 5:00 pm

Okay, a complete noob question.

Why oh why does Blender hate me so? It refuses to display textures. I chose "Draw Type: Textured", yet instead of displaying the textures on the object (as "Draw Type: Textured" would let one naively believes), Blender thinks it would be better to display everything in solid pink.

Thus provokes on my end a large number of furious fulminations.

And yes, I have set Blender's texture directory to be to a place where I have .tga version of all my textures.

Blender seems to only be happy when I put the texture files in same directory the meshes. (Despite setting, and resetting everytime the texture directory as my texture directory.)

And, since Blender really, really hates me, if I do put the 11000+ texture files in the blender mesh directory, then what happens is that I have to search my meshes among all the picture files -- Because the designers of Blender thought it would be a catastrophically bad idea to use standard gui widgets for selecting files, such as those that do automatically filter out all the files that don't have the extension we want.

So now, I'm importing a Nif (using the last Niftools filter). It has a texture, let say "Texture.tga" -- no path in the NiTexture stuff, it's relative, not absolute. After the import, this very very very hateful Blender changes the texture path to "D:\Blender\Texture.tga" --- raaargh! I had reset the texture directory just before importing! --- and if I manually change the texture's path to say just "texture.tga" or "D:\Morrowind\Data\Textures\Texture.tga", Blender changes it to "untitled".

I really hate Blender. But not as much as it hates me.

Joco · Post by **Joco** » Sun Mar 04, 2007 5:50 pm

I have been meesing with blendr the whole day now but exact the situation you had was the otherway for me. I exported i file from blender with a .jpg texture and it didnt work in nifscope. Then i opened the file in nifscope and changed the texture to a .dds. then I imported the nif file into blender and the directory of the texture was correct but blender couldnt read the dds.

The_Warder · Post by **The_Warder** » Mon Mar 05, 2007 1:09 am

blender doesn't have the ability to read .dds textures.

gez can I use this as my new quote? ""I really hate Blender. But not as much as it hates me."" it cracked me up big time.

Joco · Post by **Joco** » Mon Mar 05, 2007 1:07 pm

Sorry, gez, i now discovered exactly what you said and it is really annoying. It seems you have to have the texture in the same folder as you save the nif in.

Andres Indoril · Post by **Andres Indoril** » Mon Mar 05, 2007 1:12 pm

Well, you can manually change the directory... Can't you?

Gez · Post by **Gez** » Mon Mar 05, 2007 3:20 pm

Yes you can. It's just that it doesn't work.

@Warder: Help yourself!

Joco · Post by **Joco** » Tue Mar 06, 2007 5:00 pm

When I want to use the modifier "decimate" i get the error "non manifold mesh". What does this mean?

Joco · Post by **Joco** » Wed Mar 07, 2007 7:48 pm

When I want to import a nif into Cs, exactly how do I do?
I tried with file/import/ but then it asked for a text file...

Billay · Post by **Billay** » Thu Mar 08, 2007 2:36 am

You would go to the type the object is (static,armor,weapon..) in the object window and right click and select new then select your nif.

Joco · Post by **Joco** » Thu Mar 08, 2007 8:34 am

Thanks!!!

Joco · Post by **Joco** » Tue Apr 17, 2007 4:12 pm

Ok a quite basic question maybe but I need to know. Do I have to apply a decimator to be able to use the model? If I don't there will be faces that are not polygons but quadrilaterals.

Morden · Post by **Morden** » Tue Apr 17, 2007 11:38 pm

The model has to be triangulated before it's put into OB I believe. I can't remember which menu its under in blender, but it can be done.

Joco · Post by **Joco** » Wed Apr 18, 2007 5:16 am

Yea, ok thanks. I know how to do it I just wondered weather it had to be done or not. I discovered that when I exported the object I was dealing with it atomically became triangles everywhere.