Jennifer's Classroom

[Jennifer_P]

Nice work, Junee! Your little forest is just adorable. And the gears look fine, no worries. I see you even got the orange slice...

Pappou, I'm gonna have to skim your question 1, because I haven't played those Myst games yet (still stuck in Riven) and want to be surprised. But yeah, on question 2 oversimplification might be an issue for a binary puzzle--consider however, the choice between Sirrus, Achenar, and Atrus at the end of the original Myst...that would be considered a binary puzzle, because it's Choice A, you die, Choice B, you die, and Choice C, you live. Myst games often end with a binary puzzle, "You must choose!" sort of thing, it seems. In this case, though, the binary puzzle is appropriate because the player has been given enough clues to float a boat in, plus it's the end of the game and it's time to win or lose.
And what delightful little maps you've made! You know, if I found those maps in the original Myst game while hunting around for clues, I'd never know they weren't part of the game. How'd you get the "browning" of the paper? /clap Good job!
But as for the maze of twisty passages, all alike...I recall that when I was playing Zork, I was a lot more afraid of that particular maze than of the monsters! I never got quite that level of fear out of getting lost in the Selenitic maze...

[pappou]

Yes, Jennifer, i see what you mean:

Myst games often end with a binary puzzle; its the "You must choose!" sort of thing. In the Myst case, though, the binary puzzle is appropriate because the player has been given enough clues to float a boat in, plus it's the end of the game and it's time to win or lose.

You put that into focus nicely. I guess i was thinking negatively, where too little preparation leads to a too abrupt 'binary decision' – a crude way to do it. But with your twist the 'binary decision' can be very powerful. For instance, i can see that the ending to Exile was even more dramatic than Myst's. Exile was smashing, so to speak. (Have you played that? In case you have not, i say no more.)

A couple of the sketches i showed you were taken directly out of the Journal which came with the original Myst CD. They had that neat page color. Another sketch was done (purposefully) from a similar yellow office pad. The 'Journal' touch was nice, but they were too small.

But i guess the traditional Myst Maze is not so claustrophobic as are certain other games. Claustrophobia is a powerful gaming tool – Baker failed to emphasize that. Instead, what Cyan traditionally has done is dim the lights. It is interesting how that impacts one's claustrophobic nerves. My old video card was so bad that in the Cleft i literally could not see. I had to look up at the outline of the cleft against the sky to get oriented. But of course, that did not allow for any details down in the bottom. I played by touch and feel – when the pointer lit up, i knew i had something. Then there was the lava room. Getting the fan going in the lava room (using that clunky little pair of circular handles) was terrible for me. Some time i am going back there with my new video card to see what things really looked like.

[Jennifer_P]

A couple of the sketches i showed you were taken directly out of the Journal which came with the original Myst CD. They had that neat page color. Another sketch was done (purposefully) from a similar yellow office pad. The 'Journal' touch was nice, but they were too small.

Ah, the memories...

But i guess the traditional Myst Maze is not so claustrophobic as are certain other games. Claustrophobia is a powerful gaming tool – Baker failed to emphasize that. Instead, what Cyan traditionally has done is dim the lights. It is interesting how that impacts one's claustrophobic nerves. My old video card was so bad that in the Cleft i literally could not see. I had to look up at the outline of the cleft against the sky to get oriented. But of course, that did not allow for any details down in the bottom. I played by touch and feel – when the pointer lit up, i knew i had something. Then there was the lava room. Getting the fan going in the lava room (using that clunky little pair of circular handles) was terrible for me. Some time i am going back there with my new video card to see what things really looked like.

Yeah, the thing about the Zork's maze that inspired fear in me wasn't so much that it was claustrophobic as that there was apparently no way to solve it ...I'm not sure, they might have randomly generated it or something. At any rate, once you got lost, you were DOOMED! But I don't know if I'd consider the Cleft a true maze, since it was so easy to solve--although they certainly put some effort into making the player clamber around to get where they wanted to go. (I wonder why?) As for Channelwood, I too had to make a map of that one; it was a real maze in 2D frame mode. When I played it again in realMyst, I was like, "Hey, it's easy to find my way around now!" It was a big change...

Lesson 7
Okay, today we are going to do some reaaally cool things. ;D So buckle your seatbelts, 'cause here we go!

The colors, man, the colors!
Let's start off (like usual) with a fresh, spanking, brand-new Blender cube. Now, you know in the 3D view header where you change from Object View to Edit View? Well, click on the words "Object View," as if you want to go into Edit Mode. However, instead of going into Edit Mode, select "Vertex Paint" from the menu which pops up. Cool, a whole new panel of weird buttons. Well, look for the subwindow down there called "Paint". (It's between the "Mesh" subwindow and the "Multires" subwindow and it has a good-sized white rectangle in it.) You got that?

Okay, you've undoubtedly noticed that your cursor looks like a paintbrush...so go ahead and paint on your cube! OoooooH!!! ...Of course, white isn't the most interesting paint color (in spite of this obvious fact, people persist in painting their houses with it), so go ahead and click on that white rectangle in the Paint subwindow and select the color you want to paint with. Pick something Phil would like!

How vertex painting works
Played around enough? Well, by now you've probably realized that you don't really get a lot of control about where your paint goes. I mean, suppose you were trying to put a flame job on the cube, then what? You couldn't exactly do that with painting the way you are now... How to solve this conundrum? Well, first let's examine how the color gets put onto the cube in the first place. Notice that what we are doing is called "vertex painting" for a reason; in fact, we are indeed literally painting the eight vertices that make up the cube. Let's try an experiment to see how this works, shall we? Orient your view of the cube so that you are looking directly at one face of it, and get close to that face, so that it almost fills your whole 3D view screen. In the Paint subwindow, find the little slider bar labeled "Size" and set the size of your paintbrush so that it's about the size of the 3D cursor. Now, try painting on the cube everywhere EXCEPT where the vertices are. (If you don't recall where the vertices of a cube are, just go into Edit Mode and look for all the little golden dot-like squares that are at the eight points of the cube--those are the vertices) So what happens when you don't paint on a vertex? NOTHING! But now orient the cube around so that one corner is directly facing you, and place a single dab of color directly on the corner (feel free to make your brush bigger again to make this easier). Ah, now it works... So if Blender only paints the vertices, how do we get colors across the surface of the entire cube? Well, for that Blender just pretty much says, "Well, I've got red on the left vertex, and blue on the right vertex. But what am I supposed to color the middle space in between those vertices? Oh, I know...I'll just make it purple in the middle, red-purple on the middle-left, and blue-purple on the middle-right, and that'll be fine." And that's how it works. Go ahead, try coloring one corner red and the corner next to it blue--you'll get purples in between.

We need more vertices Scotty!
So what about that flame job, you may be wondering? Obviously, it's impossible with the number of vertices we have right now. So, we'll just have to add some more. [disclaimer]Everyone remember that large amounts of vertices are bad for game performance and cause lag, nausea, and dizziness.[/disclaimer] Okay, let's hop into Edit Mode. Now, in the 3D view header bar, select "Mesh", then "Edges" and then "Subdivide". *Poof!* More vertices. Do another subdivide. Yet more vertices! Do it again! MORE! MORE MORE MORE MORE MOOORRE! *cough* ...Do Subdivide enough times that you freeze Blender and have to restart the program, or else wait forever in suspense for the Subdivide command to be executed (or not, because Blender crashed). There is a valuable lesson here: if you're planning to play with a LOT of vertices, save first, in case you crash or something goes hideously wrong...

Viewing and rendering your painted model
Well, get a fresh cube (File, New) with a bunch more vertices than the standard eight, and go back to Vertex Paint Mode. Try painting it again and check out how much better control you get over where the paint goes--MUCH better! Well, now go back to Object Mode. Bye bye colors...Want to get them back? Well, in the 3D view header bar, just to the right of the words "Object Mode," there is another little options menu that looks like a little brown cube with thingies on each side. It is called "Viewport Shading", if you hover your mouse over it. Go ahead and click on the little brown cube, and observe all the options you get. These options determine how you view your cube. Try them all out, rotating around your cube to observe their effects. The "Textured" option is the viewing mode that we need, of course. Note that if you want a nice picture (render) of your work, you can click the far right button on the 3D view header bar, the button that looks like a little landscape photo. Also note that if you're in Wireframe mode, you'll get a render of a Wireframe model, if you're in Solid mode, you'll get a render of a Solid model, and if you're in Textured mode you'll get what you want--a Textured render that shows the vertex painting.

So go ahead and try out the capabilities of vertex painting. Can you paint a moonscape or earthscape onto an icosphere? Can you paint a picture on a grid? Can you give the Suzanne (the monkey head is officially named Suzanne) a nice cute paint job?

[Norfren]

I'm quite advanced in Povray and now I try to become acquianted with Blender. So I find this thread very helpful. Can any summary be found somewhere that what properties of objects can be exported to Uru from Blender? For example, light sources are always exported as single point lights, or area lights, spotlights, ambient occlusion etc. will be transferred, too? Or can multiple texture layers with stencils be used in Uru?

[Jennifer_P]

Hm...I don't know of any summaries of which Blender features will work in Uru; you might try the GoW wiki here: http://guildofwriters.com/wiki/ Or just ask on this forum--I'm sure the rest of the Guild is more of an expert right now than I am, since I haven't gotten the latest plugin version to work.

[Jennifer_P]

Lesson 8
Well, today we're going to learn a very powerful and easy tool and some useful commands.

Extrusion
Extrusion is a process by which you can pull or push in the mesh of your model, making bulges and hollows. You can pull your models like taffy, punch dents in them, and do all sorts of good stuff like that. And how do we access this marvelous tool? Why, in Edit Mode, from the 3D view window, of course. But first, go ahead and open up a model you'd like to play with (or just start with a fresh cube) and select a single vertex. Then, in the 3D view header bar, choose the menu option "Mesh" and then choose "Extrude". Now, move your mouse around and you'll notice that a new vertex has been drawn out from the vertex you selected...in a word, the new vertex was EXTRUDED from the old vertex. Cool. Okay, now try two vertices that are next to each other and define an edge (the line between them will be yellow, not half yellow). Try extruding again; this time a little menu will pop up asking you if you want to extrude "Only Edges" or "Only Vertices". Choose "Only Edges" and note that the entire edge is extruded this time. Now try it wih "Only Vertices". As you can see, the vertices are extruded separately. What next? This time, select three or four vertices which make up a closed polygon (the lines connecting the vertices should be pure gold) and try extruding (Only Edges). Ooooh... It doesn't get better than this, I tell ya. Oh, but it does! Create a cube and select ALL of the vertices and extrude. This time, the popup menu has two new choices, "Region" and "Individual Faces". Go ahead and try Individual Faces. Cool, huh? And what does Region do? Well, try it out...



Proportional Edit Falloff
There is another tool, Proportional Edit Falloff, which also gives very powerful results. This tool basically transfers the effect that you apply to one vertex or area to the area which surrounds the selected vertex or area. This way, you only have to change one vertex to cause a similar change in hundreds of other nearby vertices. And best of all, the change can be controlled so as to be useful. Let's see how this works, shall we? In the picture above, do you see the yellow arrow, which is pointing at the Proportional Edit Falloff (PEF) button? Well, go ahead and click that button, and in the menu that pops up, choose "On". Notice that another little menu button has now appeared to the right of the PEF button. Go ahead and click it and see what is inside--various ways in which the vertices surrounding the vertex which is selected will be affected by a change to said selected vertex. To test this out, go ahead and create a nice grid, say, 30 X 30. Now, select a single vertex in the center and try to drag it around like you want to move it...got that? Well, with it still selected, and dragged slightly away from where it was but NOT YET PLACED and released (i.e. you can still move it around and you haven't let go of it yet) scroll your mouse wheel. A circle should appear that grows as you continue scrolling--if not then you are probably scrolling your mouse wheel in the wrong direction. Within this circle of influence, all vertices are affected by the proportional edit falloff, and with a big enough circle you can manipulate the entire mesh at once! Try some of the other styles of PEF and see what you can make--sand dunes, mountains, pits, and much, much more.
Your test: create a simple porcupine out of an icosphere using the PEF tools and extrusion.

Helpful Commands
To help you in this, there are a few useful commands you might find helpful. In the picture...
1. Green--the buttons pointed to by the green arrows will let you select either single vertices at a time, or whole edges at a time, or whole faces at a time.
2. Pink arrow--this button lets you hide the vertices that are behind the vertices in front. Blah, it's hard to explain. Just try it, you'll see what I mean.

And other useful stuff:
1. Remember, you can use the "a" key to deselect all the vertices you currently have selected--and, if you don't have any vertices selected, the "a" key will select all the vertices of an object for you...a very helpful key.
2. Pressing the "b" key and dragging across a bunch of vertices will let you select them with a square. This command can also be accessed in the 3D view header bar under "Select".
3. Press the "b" key twice in a row to use circle select, a circular region around your mouse that will select all the vertices inside of it when you left click on some. You can increase or decrease the size of your circle selector by scrolling your mouse wheel. I don't know where in the menus to find this command, I'm afraid...

[Jennifer_P]

And you don't have to be perfect with the porcupine. Spend as much time as you want or have. Here's my little guy; I spent only a few minutes making him:

[Jojon]

It's a squeecupine.

[Jennifer_P]

Cute, isn't he? But I think he needs some beady black icosphere eyes.

[Gabriel]

Hi Jennifer, everyone

Just landed and starting at lesson 1, I use a three button mouse with a thumb ball but it works well enough in lesson 1.

I see you are up to lesson 8, so looks like I'm going to have to play "catch up"