My experiments wit Anim8or, Vol.II. Your opinions and advice

S

Sirren67

Look, Ma! Two Heads!
My latest achievement in 3d modeling...



...and now the the actual 2D result in a game I'm modding... :lol:



Now, I have a few troubles with my tools... Anim8or is simple to use, but it's mostly a surface editor: no boolean subtractions, no nurbs and so on. In addiction to this not many tutorials around, even if it's a popular tool. Even if I haven't fully overgrown it yet, I really feel the need to find a more versatile program.
There's a free, powerful 3d editor: Blender. The problem is its interface. Learning to operate it would require at least one or two months of fighting, just to handle the interface... Not to learn how to model... I tinkered with it for a while, and no, it's not fit for beginners. On the other hand there's plenty of resources around, and it's FREE. What would you do? Squeeze Anim8or to the last drop? Take a HUGE breath and learn Blender? Find some affordable commercial product? Lightwave comes to my mind, for example: it's somewhat affordable and there's a decent quantity of resources/tutorials around. Please don't name 3dMax or Maya, they're really out of my reach...
Advices and opinions about my MS Paint-processed .FRMs are welcome.

EDIT, as usual....
Aahhrrgghh, what's the trouble with the image size? They should be much huger. The code between tags is :"http://i72.imagethrust.com/t/109857/immagine.jpg" What am I doing wrong?!?

Edit, chapter 2.
I managed to turn my images into thumbnails, so now you can see them in a decent size...
 
You could always try Wings3D. It's free and extremely easy to use, IMHO, and it also has a very nice UV tool. If you're interested I can give some links for tutorials also.

EDIT: Great model, btw!
 
The fact you got the scale and perspective correct is great! Once you find art to layover the truck or even draw the art onto it I'd love to see it in Fallout.

Sincerely,
The Vault Dweller
 
Have you conisdered Milk Shape 3D? I have used this (and I'm not even a modeler) and made good progress with it. There are pleanty of tutorials on it and its easy to pick up. It has everything you could need for modeling.

The truck looks good, doesnt fit the Fallout theme (its not for Fallout though, right?) the way it looks now, however its a good start.
 
Thanks for your appreciation folks! I just worn you: now that you can see my work more in detail you'll discover some flaws...
Anyway...
To Nova: I checked wings3d some time ago, it seemed a pretty incomplete package to me... That's how it is considered by the guys who dwell @ Gamedev. Are you using it? What do you think about it? Is it "productive"? I checked the site and saw that it can render... Odds are I know of a previous version. Please let me know.

To The_Vault_Dweller: actually I was going to make textures for that lorry/truck... The problem it's I'd be supposed to learn some serious 2d package... I downloaded The Gimp, but that meant banging against an interface (see the Blender thingie). That vehicle really need some writing on its side, but that's something you can't do with MS Paint :cry: .
By the way, just a curiosity if I may: @ Gamedev I found about a person with your nick, he's working on a crpg sharing some features with Fallout (2d, isometric, PC skills, and so on): is that you? If so, best my best whishes.

To Tycell: I actually considered Milkshape. I was a complete beginner and seemed to me that it was very easy to operate. In the end I chose Anim8or because it's free. Practically it's Plug And Play, so to speak, I had not to wait for my money to get to swizerland and get the activation code. I'll consider about redownloading the trial version, though.
My vehicle is for Fo2, actually... My mod is set some six month before the bomb, and I need pristine vehicles to fill the streets. That's practically the reason why I went into 3d. I'm still to make some which is truly retro/futuristic, though...

See you soon, folks. Cheers.
 
Well, I don't think wings3d is incomplete, regardless of what other people say. It's what I use and what I found the easiest and by far the fastest way of modelling and mapping.

I would say yes, it is productive but that is purely a subjective view. You'd have to make up your own mind about that. But from the sound of it, you tried an old version. If you plan on trying it again, I seriously recommend the development version. I never had any problems with those, stability wise.

And yes, it can render, but it's a very simple one, but there are several plugins to other renderers, some also free. I've never really rendered that much, but I'd definitly look into POVray I think it's called for what you're going to use it for.
 
By the way, just a curiosity if I may: @ Gamedev I found about a person with your nick, he's working on a crpg sharing some features with Fallout (2d, isometric, PC skills, and so on): is that you? If so, best my best whishes.
Click to expand...

No thats not me, but whoever that person is I deeply respect and admire them.

:D ,
The Vault Dweller
 
Get 3dsmax, not that hard to learn, and pretty easy to use once you've gotten in to it. The hard part of making a model is allways skinning them, y'know :wink:
 
Update: the truck is a somewhat older model, the car a work in progress (headlights and the rear part of the body really need some trimming).



For Nova: thanks for the info, mate.

For The_Vault_Dweller: yeah, not much good stuff around, not from the indusry anyway...

For Kahgan: I checked 3dMax today, it's 3,495 dollars... I'm really not eligible for a student license... The damn pack looks juicy though.
I did realize that skinning is a kind of nightmare :cry: ... The truck shows it all. The real model is much better. As a side note I really whish that Fallout had a huger palette. I fought with the car all afternoon to find a suitable colour, and in the end I had to choose a simple gray. Yellow, green, red, blue... They all either don't fit in the game, or haven't enough shades...
Cheers.
 
There's a scaled-down free version of 3dMax, called GMax, it doesn't render however, which I gather is pretty important to your project?

If you want an easy way to skinmap your models, seriously check wings3d, even if you aren't going to use it for modelling. You take the model, chose UV mapping from the menu, assign colours and project the mappings, a few stitchings of the faces to form something recogniseable and you have a decent skinmap. Easy.
 
Thanks, Nova. I'm downloading wings 3d. Sadly Gmax can't be downloaded anymore, they just keep the forums... Rendering wasn't going to be a problem, both Anim8or and blender can export/import 3ds files, amongst others.
Cheers.
 
Yeah, but Gmax couldn't export to .3ds :p if it could export to anything at all, save for gmax files.
 
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