Things to avoid when writing an age

[Tinuviel]

I was thinking of adding a new page to the wiki, but before I do that I want to know if you think it would be a good idea.

When I started here I made the decision to learn blender before I made any ages. And I did a lot of the tutorials found on internet and became very pleased with myself that I was able to learn all this. But just before I entered the RAD contest now, I suddenly discovered there is a lot I need to relearn because I can’t do it the way I originally learned blender. And that I have to find alternative ways to do things or leave it out because it can’t be done at all. I have spent a lot of time trying to find solution to some of my problem only to find out there are none.

The wiki page I want to make will be a list of things you at the present can’t do when making an age, things that might affect the wrong way, things that could be good to know, but are not that obvious. And things that will make your age work poorly or slow down performance. Like:
- The texture types you can use in blender are Blend, Image and Plug in.
- In blenders Map to tab, only stencil and col will affect the texture. (as far as I know)
- Blender’s modifiers like subsurf do not export well and can give high polycounts. That again might lead to slow performance.
- Turn of Shadow buffer.
- Turning down the col-slider in Map itput might make the object transparent.
- Giving the material some color will also give the object the same color, even if you have the col-slider of the texture all up.

Now, I am still very new to age writing, and if you think this is a good idea, I will need help in finding things to put into this page. Because I still have not encountered all. Any thoughts and input will be good. It could of course go under blenders FAQ, and not under its own page. But I was thinking of making this just as a fast listing and a short overview of things to avoid, and not how to do things. When things do come available, we can just delete it from the list.

[Trylon]

Sounds like a great start. I'd say you should definitely go ahead with it.

[mar]

That is a good idea.

[ardent red]

Great idea!
I never knew you could use plugins to create textures- aren't they just python files which create a procedural texture, much like the ones (noise, clouds, wood etc.) that come with blender? If so, why can't we use the built-in procedurals as well, without baking the materials into an image and then using the image as a UV texture? (see, Tinuviel- the wiki page doesn't exist yet, and already I'm learning something from it !)

[Paradox]

Plugins for textures do not affect Plasma. There are five texture types that affect Plasma:

None: (not a lack of a texture, but the actual None texture) This exports just a plain plLayer with no attached texture.

Image: Exports a plLayer and a plMipmap texture using the input image.

EnvironMap: Exports a plLayer and a plCubicEnvironMap or plDynamicEnvMap based on the settings.

Blend: Exports a plLayer and generates a plMipmap texture based on the blend pattern.

Magic: Exports a plLayer and generates a plDynamicTextMap object.

[Paradox]

The mapping buttons do not affect Plasma in any way. All textures are exported using UV coordinates.

The Map To options provide a variety of options:

Col (button): Causes the plLayer to affect the object.

Amb (button): Causes the plLayer and hsGMaterial to export with LightMap flags.

Hard (button): Causes the plLayer to be exported with BindNext and RestartPassHere flags.

Stencil (button): Causes the previous plLayer to be exported with BindNext and RestartPassHere flags.

Col (slider): Controls the opacity of the plLayer.

There might be more of these... Nadnerb can probably give a more definitive explanation.

[Tinuviel]

As I said Ardent Red, I am new to this age writing So thanks, Paradox, for correcting me. But I am sure I have read somewhere that one could use the plugin.

Since there have been some interest in a page like this, I will start to set it up to night. It will not contain explanations to why things should not be used since I am to much a newbee to know the reason. But hopefuly others will find it useful when they start to write. I was lucky because I discovered that one should not use subsurf and turn of shaowbuf before the Rad-contest. But I see others have not. And I feel bad since it might affect the score they get on their shell.

[Corvus]

A very good idea, Tinuviel. This will be very helpful for people (like me) who start to write an age. I already came across some of the mentioned issues.

[Jojon]

Nothing wrong with subsurf division as such - it's a great tool for modelling smoothly curving surfaces, without the hassle of manipulating huge arrays of vertices -- one just need to keep in mind that in our context, it pays off to be a bit thrifty and that one should be prepared for the exponential growth in vertex population, as the modifier is applied, knowing that it affects the entire mesh and be willing to go over the mesh afterwards, removing complexity in places where you can't tell the difference anyway. In some cases it may pay off to split a mesh before subsurfing, so that you can work on the part that needs it, without affecting the rest and afterwards join the meshes back together.