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Re: [Discussion] Sketchup, Blender, 3Dmax and other 3D programs

Posted: 12 Jul 2010 17:37
by K.Y.Chung
I've just further modified the rendering script so that it can now generate the sprites for virtually all types of objects. So it may be a good option for Sketchup users to export the scene as collada and then import into blender for rendering.

Re: [Discussion] Sketchup, Blender, 3Dmax and other 3D programs

Posted: 12 Jul 2010 22:45
by X.G.fr0sty
Just tested the building script on a cube, and only 3 frames showed up..

(Im only testing it on a cube, to save render time till later)

Re: [Discussion] Sketchup, Blender, 3Dmax and other 3D programs

Posted: 13 Jul 2010 04:47
by K.Y.Chung
The problem comes from a careless mistake of me :wink: . I've fixed it and please copy the code again. "We apologize for any inconvenience caused"

Re: [Discussion] Sketchup, Blender, 3Dmax and other 3D programs

Posted: 14 Jul 2010 20:19
by olahaldor
Anyone use LightWave 3D?

Re: [Discussion] Sketchup, Blender, 3Dmax and other 3D programs

Posted: 15 Jul 2010 06:05
by X.G.fr0sty
heard of it.. got it. never used it yet :P... Im aiming to make a movie in it... but im in story boarding mode right now :P

Re: [Discussion] Sketchup, Blender, 3Dmax and other 3D programs

Posted: 15 Jul 2010 11:03
by K.Y.Chung
It's my turn to have question now.

Maybe all of you already know that we need to make the vehicle anti-aliased but also keep the border sharp. The method I'm using now is to have the sprites rendered in very high resolution (say full HD), then resize it using a very complicated action in PS (of course it is automated otherwise I must got my arm handicapped).

I think it is too stupid using this method, and I've just found that I can do so by setting "key" instead of "sky" or "premul" in the Render tab. I got an image with a black background. However, some pixels of the vehicle are also totally black, so the vehicle is "broken" when I clear the background. Is there any suggestions or workaround for it?

Re: [Discussion] Sketchup, Blender, 3Dmax and other 3D programs

Posted: 15 Jul 2010 15:33
by olahaldor
You'd want to render with alpha channels and use the alpha channel to select what is supposed to be deleted or replaced with that blue color.

Re: [Discussion] Sketchup, Blender, 3Dmax and other 3D programs

Posted: 15 Jul 2010 17:14
by K.Y.Chung
In fact, it is OK to continue using current method to prepare the sprites. However, I would like to further enhance the speed and efficiency of development as well as finding a complete open source solution (say Blender + gimp) for those newbies to follow. I attempted to adapt the very complicated PS action to be script-fu for use in gimp, but nothing is really achieved up to now.

Re: [Discussion] Sketchup, Blender, 3Dmax and other 3D programs

Posted: 23 Jul 2010 12:03
by X.G.fr0sty
Chung; A little of topic (its not about lomo)

I was looking into converting from blender too sketchup and also from sketchup to blender, now there are a number of ways that invole A LOT of messing about;

How-ever ive also noticed that .dae is used in sketchup.. and can be imported/exported into blender.
Now, testing out the python script in blender, im getting the error to "re-install the full version of python"

When reading the code, there is no real code, only the lines of who made it.
And the 2nd version of the .dae coding(older version); it just say's to keep entering that error message...
----------
So my little question to you is...

If you and others can find the time, could you create a python script for blender(2.49); to import/export .sketch files direct..

Thanks if you can't, but tried... sweet if you can/have..
And okay, if you can but wont

Re: [Discussion] Sketchup, Blender, 3Dmax and other 3D programs

Posted: 23 Jul 2010 17:20
by K.Y.Chung
Are you talking about something like this?

In fact I still can't realize the magic of Sketchup, but I know there are many mod developers would like to use it for building the 3D model. I tried to work out a solution for those people using 2 approaches:

1. A rendering script for Sketchup
2. A good method to import those model from Sketchup to Blender without messing up

but I'm sorry to say that nothing was achieved up to this moment by both approaches even with just a single simple cube, so I decide not to say anything about such attempt here until I see you asking for it :cry: . Also I've just realized that my rendering script is not suitable for those who would like to keep the lighting perspective in the same direction. I need to provide another version which rotates the model rather than orbiting the camera (but it is MUCH more simple to do so in fact).

Re: [Discussion] Sketchup, Blender, 3Dmax and other 3D programs

Posted: 23 Jul 2010 23:47
by X.G.fr0sty
yes; something like that, just without the whole zipping part :P

Sketchup can export collada(.dae); but the script is wrong in blender, and the script is either not coded in, or is coded wrong that it keeps having the error.

Re: [Discussion] Sketchup, Blender, 3Dmax and other 3D programs

Posted: 07 Aug 2010 16:00
by K.Y.Chung
I've revised the rendering script again. This time you can choose to rotate the mesh object or orbit the camera. Rotating the mesh object can keep lighting directions remain unchanged with respect to camera (which is what the build-in objects do), while orbiting the camera can keep lighting directions to be the same with respect to the mesh object.

Re: [Discussion] Sketchup, Blender, 3Dmax and other 3D programs

Posted: 10 Aug 2010 03:03
by Zoidberg
K.Y.Chung wrote:I've revised the rendering script again. This time you can choose to rotate the mesh object or orbit the camera. Rotating the mesh object can keep lighting directions remain unchanged with respect to camera (which is what the build-in objects do), while orbiting the camera can keep lighting directions to be the same with respect to the mesh object.
Just want to say thank you for your scripts. I work entirely in Blender and have previously been using animation rendering to spin my objects, which took a long time and was labor intensive. This has script in particular has reduced rendering time of a project I'm working on to only about 2 minutes per 208 sprites. Yay automation! The addition of having the camera rotate has been very helpful, thanks.

Re: [Discussion] Sketchup, Blender, 3Dmax and other 3D programs

Posted: 07 Sep 2010 14:34
by K.Y.Chung
I've been revising the Blender scene to have better rendered sprites. I need to give thanks to inspirations from strongbow. I used to think that I need dozens of lights in the scene to have good results, but I found that I have been running towards a wrong direction. Today I found that there are already a prefect scene template for those who would like to make the sprites in Blender from OpenTTD wiki. OK I admit that I'm too late to tell the old news, but I still hope someone may find it useful.

http://wiki.openttd.org/32bit_Graphics_ ... umentation

Re: [Discussion] Sketchup, Blender, 3Dmax and other 3D programs

Posted: 07 Sep 2010 16:46
by Illegal_Alien
OTTD and Locomotion are not the same. Keep that in mind. In other words, pobaly that template got the wrong lights.

Re: [Discussion] Sketchup, Blender, 3Dmax and other 3D programs

Posted: 08 Sep 2010 06:54
by K.Y.Chung
Yes, so I'm having investigations on it, but it seems that they don't make obvious differences. I'll try to modify it so that it can work well with my rendering script.

Re: [Discussion] Sketchup, Blender, 3Dmax and other 3D programs

Posted: 13 Sep 2010 14:41
by Tattoo
I checked out the OTTD lightsetup.max and even tho the lights aren't in the proper position, they can be moved to work. I like the the way these work too. These are giving me a better lighted model now and I'll probably be using it more but I still have to compare it with other things to see if it's best. Thanks for the info about this K.Y. It's been there for quite a while but if you didn't mention it, I wouldn't have known about it. I'm really curious to know why the spheres are there. I rendered with and without them and didn't see any difference. I tried it with the way the original scene is setup and I enlarged them to surround the model, lights and camera if maybe they gave some reflections somehow but still no difference. Whatever. But I'm using 3 lights in my scene to get the look I have now. I used a sky before but didn't like the outcome. Now the sky with an omni for shadows seem to work good. I'm gonna do some more comparisons to see which I like best but so far it's lookin like I'm liking this new setup. Thanks again K.Y.

I'd also like to mention something else I found recently. I was trying different render settings because the default anti-alias wasn't good enough and I got tired of rendering the sprites larger and then shrinking them down to the proper size. I kept getting some blue pixels in the sprites around the edge. It was really bad and they're hardly noticeable by me but someone with better eyes would probably see them. I then tried Catmull-Rom and the output is a lot better. I don't have to render larger any more. The render is more clear and there's no need to apply contrast to them now unless I really want to. I don't know if Blender or any other program has Catmull-Rom or not but if you use max, you should try it. It's what I'll be using from now on....

EDIT: I forgot to mention that the intensity of the new lights are waaaay too bright and needed to be dimmed down. It's hard to believe that they wold use them that bright...

Re: [Discussion] Sketchup, Blender, 3Dmax and other 3D progr

Posted: 14 Sep 2010 14:56
by K.Y.Chung
CatRom is available in Blender but it can't eliminate anti-aliased edges around the object. I still need to record and use a complicated action to shrink the images by PS (but it's fully automated so I won't get tired of it but the computer :lol: ).

The hemisphere in my scene was used to implement so called "faked GI" as mentioned in Blender noob to pro, but I also found that it is not needed and it takes more time to render so it has been removed in my new experimental scenes.

Here are the sprites rendered from the 3 experimental scenes and I beg the comments from everyone.

Re: [Discussion] Sketchup, Blender, 3Dmax and other 3D programs

Posted: 14 Sep 2010 19:31
by Illegal_Alien
They all seem to be fine by me, although i can compare them better by using the same model, for each of the render variantions.

Re: [Discussion] Sketchup, Blender, 3Dmax and other 3D programs

Posted: 14 Sep 2010 21:25
by X.G.fr0sty
The first one get my vote; as you get the nice shadow effect...