by Chilvence » Thu Oct 04, 2007 1:31 pm
Nash, I simply would not bother with milkshape3d, nor encourage anyone else to use it. Despite the fact that it costs 30 bucks when Blender is free, it is severely lacking in long term usability. It does the bare bones of what you need for a Quake 3 era model, but the simple fact is that every implementation feature wise is severely trounced by Blender.
Skeleton rigging can take hours to get right in MS3d, yet with Blender using the envelope rigging, you can be away in 20 minutes. I am not exaggerating, personally I would say you can go much faster than that. Not only that, but when I last used MS3d (admittedly a long time ago), it had hideous bugs in its animation system that cost me hours of extra work.
I couldn't even work out the uvmapping in MS3d, I gave up and resorted to using npherno's skin tool. Which is probably the worst thing to do, since it forces the crappy md2 format on you (another thing which I would not want anyone to suffer again). However after marking a few edge seams on your mesh in Blender, you can literally unwrap the whole thing to a usable level with one button.
It's also worth mentioning, that while I do believe learning to model with raw vertices and triangles may be slightly beneficial to your overall understanding of 3d, it is NOT n00b friendly. Any other tool you can name has a much more intelligent method of generating a mesh, even if it takes a while to actually find it. That in itself is often the main problem, there is no 3d equivalent of the 'line' tool in so far as the obvious usage and intended effect.
My personal favourite method is edge extrusion, since it allows me to build models almost exactly like I would have in q2mdl, but with a turbo speed boost. I would usually start a model with one flat plane, wrap it around itself on one axis and then build the rest on that single loop.
You might as well learn how to do it 'properly' from the start, then at least you aren't jammed in a corner with that hurdle to overcome later. Believe me (and you may well know, if you remember any of my long posts about this subject here in the past), that is not the position you want to be in.
I also find your statement that you aren't trying to help people enter the industry belittling and shortsighted. Perhaps your motivation is just wanting to see the Zdoom forum crowd actually start to use the modelling features of GZDoom for once, I do not know. But you are going about it the wrong way in any case. The right thing to do is to encourage people to try to get something out of 3d-modelling in general, then they can decide if they want to build a wad file with some models, and they will probably be good at it. If you just force people to learn modelling as fast as humanly possible, they will probably come out with crap and then have a hard-learned skill that they find hard to expand on in future. THAT is what you have to consider, not whether or not any individual is a prodigy destined for rockstar-fame or not, that viewpoint is exceedingly shallow.
So my point is, whatever you think is worth learning, it is worth learning properly. I know q2mdl so well that I can predict when its going to crash with 100% accuracy. 90% of my modelling hobby was spent on this. But it is the program equivalent of a hammer and some nails, you can use the damn thing even if the head is nearly falling off and your 'nails' consist of random bits of rusted metal you pulled out of a door frame 16 years ago, but that doesn't mean that it is good... you may have to suffer the bloat for learning something more modern, but as long as you aren't paying for it, it makes no sense to learn the old and rusty version.
Nash, I simply would not bother with milkshape3d, nor encourage anyone else to use it. Despite the fact that it costs 30 bucks when Blender is free, it is severely lacking in long term usability. It does the bare bones of what you need for a Quake 3 era model, but the simple fact is that every implementation feature wise is severely trounced by Blender.
Skeleton rigging can take hours to get right in MS3d, yet with Blender using the envelope rigging, you can be away in 20 minutes. I am not exaggerating, personally I would say you can go much faster than that. Not only that, but when I last used MS3d (admittedly a long time ago), it had hideous bugs in its animation system that cost me hours of extra work.
I couldn't even work out the uvmapping in MS3d, I gave up and resorted to using npherno's skin tool. Which is probably the worst thing to do, since it forces the crappy md2 format on you (another thing which I would not want anyone to suffer again). However after marking a few edge seams on your mesh in Blender, you can literally unwrap the whole thing to a usable level with one button.
It's also worth mentioning, that while I do believe learning to model with raw vertices and triangles may be slightly beneficial to your overall understanding of 3d, it is NOT n00b friendly. Any other tool you can name has a much more intelligent method of generating a mesh, even if it takes a while to actually find it. That in itself is often the main problem, there is no 3d equivalent of the 'line' tool in so far as the obvious usage and intended effect.
My personal favourite method is edge extrusion, since it allows me to build models almost exactly like I would have in q2mdl, but with a turbo speed boost. I would usually start a model with one flat plane, wrap it around itself on one axis and then build the rest on that single loop.
You might as well learn how to do it 'properly' from the start, then at least you aren't jammed in a corner with that hurdle to overcome later. Believe me (and you may well know, if you remember any of my long posts about this subject here in the past), that is not the position you want to be in.
I also find your statement that you aren't trying to help people enter the industry belittling and shortsighted. Perhaps your motivation is just wanting to see the Zdoom forum crowd actually start to use the modelling features of GZDoom for once, I do not know. But you are going about it the wrong way in any case. The right thing to do is to encourage people to try to get something out of 3d-modelling in general, then they can decide if they want to build a wad file with some models, and they will probably be good at it. If you just force people to learn modelling as fast as humanly possible, they will probably come out with crap and then have a hard-learned skill that they find hard to expand on in future. THAT is what you have to consider, not whether or not any individual is a prodigy destined for rockstar-fame or not, that viewpoint is exceedingly shallow.
So my point is, whatever you think is worth learning, it is worth learning properly. I know q2mdl so well that I can predict when its going to crash with 100% accuracy. 90% of my modelling hobby was spent on this. But it is the program equivalent of a hammer and some nails, you can use the damn thing even if the head is nearly falling off and your 'nails' consist of random bits of rusted metal you pulled out of a door frame 16 years ago, but that doesn't mean that it is good... you may have to suffer the bloat for learning something more modern, but as long as you aren't paying for it, it makes no sense to learn the old and rusty version.