Jennifer's Classroom

[Junee]

Pappou let's hope that those Blender issues are resolved. I want to see some results of your little project, it looks very nice.

That's indeed one fine pillar, but if it it is to be truly "clear" it will have be changed to a glass or korvspad material... :9

korvspad.. sausage water..? I don't think that is what you meant.

Vork harder I say! Harder!

Yes Ma'am! I got some reading done today but then I got the not so brilliant idea of reading while lying on my bed and I blacked out for over an hour. It seemed very appropriate at the time.
(Then I was playing around in Word and found a font called MS Reference 1, I think that's the one Blender was using when you codenamed all your files and textures. )

But hey thanks for the praise you two. I *am* proud of it. But for now I think I have to ban myself from Blender too just as I have banned myself from all the other funny things on my computer for the upcoming two weeks...

[pappou]

Several Issues

First, Junee said:
“Pappou let's hope that those Blender issues are resolved. I want to see some results of your little project, it looks very nice.”

Thanks for looking at it, Junee. Now that you mention it, i too thought of it as a “little project” when i started, because i wanted something small to test these lessons, but also something that was closer to the architectural demands of Gestoypahts. [In this case, the 'little project' is one wall of the courtyard in MotherCity where Explorer first landed.]

But i see now that nothing done in 3D, using mildly complex textures, is little. I am amazed at the the planning called for just to do that one little facade. Presently, i am also trying to do the building behind it, and will no longer be dismayed (i hope) at the unfolding list of problems.

Do like Inanna did and try a building. I can see why Myst/Uru was taken up more with paths in the forest than the likes of getting into buildings in Ae'gura.

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Second, can anyone suggest why this wall texture turns itself upside down:

B CtYd bld gr fl 1.png (84.37 KiB) Viewed 3842 times

Note i had to put it in upside down in the UV editor on the right to get it to come out correctly on the left ground floor.

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Third, you cannot see in these small photos, but the corrected right-side-up photo on the left needs sharpening; is there anyway to sharpen in Blender? The photo taken up in the UV editor was plenty sharp, so it seems to be in the Blender reductions that it has lost its clarity.

[Jojon]

Oh, but I did mean sausage water, I thought that was "klart som korvspad".

I may need to tailor my bad punning to suit the age groups of those upon whom I impose it... :7


@pappou

You believe modelling a natural organic forest path is easier than doing a building? -Muahahah.

Your UV-map faces are upside down. Select them in the UV/image editor and hit "M" for mirroring options - pick "Y axis" and Bob's your rebuilding uncle.

Actually, make sure UV/image editor menu:View->Update Automatically is ticked, then grab hold of a single corner of one of your faces and whisk it around for a bit, to see how it affects the model over in the 3D view.

If you fiddle around with this for a bit, you'll notice how the UV-map polygons are simply the model polygons, puzzled together on the 2D plane image and realize that you could have turned it right manually as well, by box-selecting the top vertices and dragging them to their right position and then done the same for the bottom ones. (when translating or transforming, one can, here too, press X, Y, or Z, to limit mainipulation to a single axis).

You may also notice that the texture of any quad gets increasingly distorted, the more it deviates from its proportions in the model. This is because of the old headache causer of a quad, in this environment, really being two triangles and you can't replicate the outline of a square (our four-sided texture image) with a triangle.

In the "UV face select" mode view window, "M" works differently, mirroring which corner of the face, in the UV-map, is which. You will not see any greater change of the face in the UV/image editor - the tri/quad looks just the same -- what has been altered, is which corner is considered "up" or whatever. Likewise you can press "R" to rotate the corner numbering around -- you will see the effect on the model in the view, but the shape of the face in the UV/image editor will remain the same.


The image on the left, in your last picture, is not a new processed copy of the original image, but simply the image mapped onto the 3D object - zoom in and it will get sharper. I do notice that the (presumably non-mipmapped) mapping in Blender can look considerably different between two zoom-depths just a slight nudge apart... Every time the view refreshes, pixels are fetched from the original image, for plotting in the 3D projection; the image itself is not "applied" onto the object and tacked there with staples.


Hope I didn't just make it worse now...

[ametist]

Here I come, not with blowing trumpets though I'm struggling to catch up. I've read through all these posts and I find myself rather confused with all that 'meshes' and UV-talk I'm just at the 'try to make a porcupine-lesson' and I'm ending up with this

!!!! Can't even give the little piggy a nice happy tail... or eyes .... or a pig-nose.... Sigh,
So, please Jennifer, or someone else who think this is 'klart som korvspad' ( det var kul Jojon! he,he) - some tips and tricks for those issues?

IMHO you're making fantastic pillars Sophia and Junee!!! I can do one, but not with the 'flutes' on Yet...

I quite understand pappou when he describe 'sweat is falling from my nose'

I find this very hard but FUN! A GREAT THANKS to you Jennifer, you write very good lessons!! When I follow them exactly i can do what you say, but then when I start to practise, suddenly I've clicked some weird button somewhere and the menues are unknown and such things, yep. But I'll struggle on, cause I would so much like to be able to import a little thingy to my own uru and now when Sophia is writing a 'newbie-newbie' section to the wiki-tutorial, maybe, maybe I can do that!

[pappou]

Jojon said: @pappou

You believe modelling a natural organic forest path is easier than doing a building? -Muahahah.

***********************

I know; I know; Reality was hanging over me as i spoke those foolish words.

But my thinking ran thusly: The idea is mere supposition on my part, of course; its purpose is to offer at least one reason for Cyan's obvious preference for the organic situation while it persistently shy's away from urban situations.
Truly, there is some basis for it. Drawing suggests how easy it is to present the leafage at hand in all its detail in the forest, wherein the front face covers a slew of less tedious stuff behind. The front row does all the work.
Yes, i know. That same argument holds for the street as well.

But there is also the phenomenon of the railroad track in the forest. The path keeps the hiker from getting into the poison ivy off the trail (not unlike the way the street keeps one out of trouble in the bars along the way). That is really what happens in the neighborhoods and Ae'gura. It may seem otherwise, but ti's a sham. You may count on one hand the exceptions – that is, a node which breaks out of the rule of the thoroughfare with all its locked doors: The assembly hall, the book room, the classroom and the egg rooms. If you want, you may also add the water garden as a node beyond the thoroughfare. But that still is only five. All else is really just scampering around in streets. (In Ae'gura there is the Museum, the Library, the Kadish Gallery, the Pub...? Even the round Court of the Kings is a wide street scene.

So, what is the point? I am anticipating (due largely to my experience with architectural rendering) that the really tedious stuff is found in Atrus' laboratory in Revelation (MIV). Or, in places like the wonderful kitchen there. Each object has to be crafted – many, to the extent of being individually animated.

My point is that a jungle rubber plant leaf may sway in the breeze, but it still hides a great deal of undetailed mischief behind it. You would be surprised (i think) at how quickly i can draw a whole shaffalera tree, with extreme detail (seemingly) – noting that each leaf is set out upon its twig, springing from a five pronged center, one pronged center after another. But it is all sham. You lavish a bit of explicit detail up front and that lovely stuff of course hides what is behind. A split leaf philodendron plant is much easier. In no time at all the whole thing is laid out before your very eyes. But all those pots and pans in the kitchen, the games on the tables, plus all the vases and brik-a-brak which may not be animated, but has to be done in the round – all that stuff set out in a room is not sham. Each pot really has to be thrown, so to speak.

Partly, this indoor experience is made so difficult because one is no longer on the railroad track. One travels at will, hither and yon, getting up close and backing off. There is much less chance in the rooms to put up items as mere cheap painted cheese cloth (the ironic admission of this argument being the water world of Ahnonay).

In my own story boards of Explorer landing in MotherCity, i describe a couple of dinner settings. Try drawing a convincing, fully laid, table ala Hogarth. Compare that to a sketch of your rose garden out back. The latter is a snap.

That, at any rate, is my thinking. Maybe if i have to develop Jennifer's jungle in 3D i change my mind. But for now, i suspect the 40 stalwart lads and lasses working on Atrus' crowed desk top were saying, Man, give me the jungle any day.

[pappou]

Aw, ametist. Your piggy is a darling. She may be blind, but she's got class.

ama tessy.png (55.61 KiB) Viewed 3805 times

Mine was a spider at first. Then it turned into a giant ant -- the ant that ate Philadelphia. (Or was it Newark?)

[Junee]

Oh, but I did mean sausage water, I thought that was "klart som korvspad".

I may need to tailor my bad punning to suit the age groups of those upon whom I impose it... :7

Oh I got it I just wanted to make sure that I really did and that it wasn't a misinterpretation from my side. I usually react on people saying things in Swedish and then it turns out they had no idea it meant something else for me. And Ametist now too, oh my we're flooding the place.

*laughs at the classy piggy* It's really cute! Maybe you can add spheres as eyes? (Make them, scale them down and then move them into the appropriate place? (And possibly join them by that ctrl-j command too but I dare not give advices like that when I haven't tested it myself. ))

Since I'm banned from Blender I have of course been thinking about what you can do with it and now I'm wondering how you make leaves. Because if you make like a fern-like plant it would be easier to just make a leaf-shaped thing and then use a texture that is transparent at places instead of making a very delicate model of a real leaf. How would you do that?
And if you have a cylinder with a sphere inside it, can you scale down the cylinder and make it get a "bump" on the middle where the sphere is? I know that's pretty easy to test on my own but then I'd get stuck..

[Jojon]

Pappou, you are right, of course, in that there is a lot of "psycho-optical" trickery going on and that with a huge complex structure, like foiliage, one can get away with quite a bit, since we ignore all that complexity anyway, or we'd be struck all day, processing what we see.
...and there is nothing random about the way plants grow either, a tree of a certain species, will sprout a branch or a certain number of them, at a certain angle of rotation, from the previous one and they will all reach towards whatever position where they can collect the most light - all predicatble and reproduceable, with some structured thinking and botanic knowledge.


@Ametist and Junee:

Ah, more turnip people -- soon we will *muahah* sweep through the ages with our *miyehheh* army of writers and... err.. nevermind..


For a little piglet's snout, select that frontmost polygon and press "E", to "extrude" it. Then you can subdivide (splitting a line in half, or a square into four smaller ones, for example) a few times to round it off and generally add detail. You can do the same a couple of times for the tail, scaling and rotating each new section as you go.


Sounds like that fern leaf is pretty much done already -- you have it all figured out - a simple rectanglular plane, subdivided a few times along its length, so you may bend it, with the (transparency painted in your preferred art package, included in the picture file) texture mapped onto it. All you need to think of in Blender, is to tick the "use alpha" button in Shading/textures/Map_image and to mind the "Zoffs" value in Shading/material/Links_and_pipeline, which needs to be higher for transparent objects closer to the viewer, than for what's behind them, i.e. "draw this on top of that".

There is one "Shrinkwrapping (almost)" script at blender.org, but I have not tried it -- its naming suggests it's not a perfect implementation of the concept, though. :7

[Jennifer_P]

Cute piggy, pappou! I also found a tutorial link you might find helpful (or at least amusing): http://yorik.orgfree.com/tutorials/architecture-blender.html

That, at any rate, is my thinking. Maybe if i have to develop Jennifer's jungle in 3D i change my mind. But for now, i suspect the 40 stalwart lads and lasses working on Atrus' crowed desk top were saying, Man, give me the jungle any day.

Well, the grass is always greener on the other side. I'm sure the jungle people were thinking, "ARGH I hate all these stupid leaves! Why can't the wretched things just simply connect to their branches? Ugh, my trees look barren and I've already used up half my polygon budget! And oh great, and now this darned bark texture won't go on the tree right and the outlines around the alpha textured leaves won't go away. Oh for the simple bliss of spheres and cubes and straight lines--how I wish I was working on inorganic models!"

@ametist
Okay, let's see here...

!!!! Can't even give the little piggy a nice happy tail... or eyes .... or a pig-nose.... Sigh,
So, please Jennifer, or someone else who think this is 'klart som korvspad' ( det var kul Jojon! he,he) - some tips and tricks for those issues?

Firstly, remember that you need to have enough vertices to get a good round leg or curve. You can't make a nice round octagon if you only have five vertices to work with--you'd end up only being able to make a pentagon, and that isn't very smooth or round looking! So, you should check to make sure that you have enough vertices to work with on your model. If not, you can either just start over again with an icosphere with more vertices, or else use the Subdivide command on your existing model to add more vertices to it. The subdivide command is located (in Edit mode) in the 3D view header bar (teal-colored bar) in the Mesh menu under the submenu "Edges". Simply select the part of the model that you want to add more vertices to, and hit Subdivide.
If a lack of vertices isn't the real issue (and I suspect that it isn't) then I'd suggest that you try some extrusion for the tail and nose. For the limbs, try grabbing and dragging a vertex with Proportion Edit Falloff turned on (at a higher setting--remember you can change the setting by scrolling your mouse wheel?). This should allow you to get a nice smooth rounded appearance on the limbs instead of a pokey one. And while you're at it, try experimenting with the different types of Proportional Edit Falloff that are available. You can also extrude the limbs a bit if you think it would look good. Well, try it out and let me know if any of this works out for you. If not, we'll keep on trying.

When I follow the lessons exactly i can do what you say, but then when I start to practise, suddenly I've clicked some weird button somewhere and the menues are unknown and such things, yep.

Hehe, don't worry about it. More and more buttons will become familiar to you, and pretty soon you'll be needing them all.

The path keeps the hiker from getting into the poison ivy off the trail (not unlike the way the street keeps one out of trouble in the bars along the way). That is really what happens in the neighborhoods and Ae'gura. It may seem otherwise, but it's a sham.

Wow, you're right...I didn't notice till you pointed it out.

Since I'm banned from Blender I have of course been thinking about what you can do with it and now I'm wondering how you make leaves. Because if you make like a fern-like plant it would be easier to just make a leaf-shaped thing and then use a texture that is transparent at places instead of making a very delicate model of a real leaf. How would you do that?

Well, to do that, you would use a texture image with "alpha" in it, alpha being the stuff that counts as transparency in a texture. So you'd have a square image with a leaf in the center surrounded by transparent alpha. Then just slap that texture onto a plane or a triangle and presto, instant leaf!

And if you have a cylinder with a sphere inside it, can you scale down the cylinder and make it get a "bump" on the middle where the sphere is? I know that's pretty easy to test on my own but then I'd get stuck.

You certainly could. But it would be just as easy to create the sphere the right size and just move it into the cylinder.

[ametist]

THANKS guys -Jojon, Junee and Jennifer for tips and advices
and
THANKS pappou for the nice outfit for the pig, that made her The Little Piggy!!!
I'll take her to Spa and return later on to show her new look