Making game content for spring with Blender

Making game content for spring with Blender

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Flaka
Posts: 66
Joined: 23 Jan 2018, 18:34

Making game content for spring with Blender

Post by Flaka »

Hello guys - i started making 3d modells with Blender. i want to make the content potentially usable with springrts. in short i want to know "what can i do in Blender and what i cannot do there" (i want to know which steps of unit development i can do in Blender and for which steps i have to use eventually othere programms)

i consider 3 steps (pls correct me if there are more things do to which i dont see right now):
1. 3d Modelling (this should be no problem to do in Blender i guess)

2. texturing??? (can i make full compatible texture and colouring with Blender?)
first i thougt "no problem" then i read some things at wiki (https://springrts.com/wiki/3DModels:Textures) about texturig and now i am not sure anymore. especially those 2 texture thing - can this be done with blender?

3. animation???
till now i have no idea about it maybe someone can enlight me.
ivand
Posts: 310
Joined: 27 Jun 2007, 17:05

Re: Making game content for spring with Blender

Post by ivand »

I'm not qualified to talk about #1 and #3, but as far as texturing is concerned you should absolutely be able to do texturing in any software that supports it.


Texture2 is rather simple concept:
  • G channel specifies reflectivity. If you use modern PBR texturing pipeline, this will be equivalent of metallic/metalness.
  • R channel specifies emission strength. In the editors emission is usually represented either with 4 channels (RGB as color, A as a mix strength) or a single channel that specifies amount of emission from base color. The latter is what you put in G channel of texture2. The former cannot be done with primitive spring texturing system if emission color is different to the base color.
  • A channel is a single bit value. To keep it simple value of 0.0 means that fragment is not rendered, value of 1.0 specifies that the fragment is shaded.
All in all, tex1 + tex2 allow to get basic Blinn-Phong shading going, that most editors should still support. If you want something fancier and up-to-date as far as modern rendering standards, I suggest you look at my PBR implementation for spring models: This introduces much more modern Cook-Torrance lighting model and slightly better shadows. Most importantly, though, the texturing workflow used in the PBR implementation should be 100% compatible with the current modeling/texturing software, including Blender.
Last edited by ivand on 23 Jan 2019, 23:54, edited 1 time in total.
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FLOZi
MC: Legacy & Spring 1944 Developer
Posts: 6240
Joined: 29 Apr 2005, 01:14

Re: Making game content for spring with Blender

Post by FLOZi »

You can do all three, though with caveats on 3 in particular. You should ask Anarchid / search the forum for his blender-animation-to-lua stuff.
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Forboding Angel
Evolution RTS Developer
Posts: 14673
Joined: 17 Nov 2005, 02:43

Re: Making game content for spring with Blender

Post by Forboding Angel »

I highly recommend that you snip the bits of code from otherprojects that make texture 2 much more useful in separating specularity from reflectivity. Effectively, R channel = glow, B channel = Specular, G channel = Reflectivity.
Flaka
Posts: 66
Joined: 23 Jan 2018, 18:34

Re: Making game content for spring with Blender

Post by Flaka »

at the moment i don't need to make fancier stuff. at first, i want to learn the workflow. i already made some units but i stopped it because like i said i need to get a whole understanding to make a unit work in spring. For that reason, i actually experiment just with a cube. making uv mapping => export to upspring. Here i stuck at the moment cause cube is black in upsring. textures doesn't show up correctly and also uv mapping in uspring seems to have a problem with the exact coordinates (i used .obj file format) - so someone could give me guidance here i would appreciate.

anyway: if i understood right i could make (with the right knowledge) the whole workflow including double texturing and animation in Blender in a way that units will work in Spring. Is that correct?

last question for this moment: is there some possibility to test if unit works correctly in spring? kind of programm with spring test enviroment?
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FLOZi
MC: Legacy & Spring 1944 Developer
Posts: 6240
Joined: 29 Apr 2005, 01:14

Re: Making game content for spring with Blender

Post by FLOZi »

Spring is its own test environment. If you upload the .obj somewhere I will take a look at it.
Flaka
Posts: 66
Joined: 23 Jan 2018, 18:34

Re: Making game content for spring with Blender

Post by Flaka »

@Flozi - i can send you the .obj with discord. but my test object is only a cube because the material/texture is actually the problem and this is what i want to understand now.

is it a problem that the cube has a self made texture? i have seen also that blender creates a .mtl file along with that .obj file. i guess thats where the data of the material is saved. u need this too?

just tell me exactly what u need and i will send it to you via discord. i can change the texture also for an BAR texture if that helps
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FLOZi
MC: Legacy & Spring 1944 Developer
Posts: 6240
Joined: 29 Apr 2005, 01:14

Re: Making game content for spring with Blender

Post by FLOZi »

Just the obj should be sufficient, I don't tend to use discord but I suppose I can hop on if you don't have an alternative
Flaka
Posts: 66
Joined: 23 Jan 2018, 18:34

Re: Making game content for spring with Blender

Post by Flaka »

i can send u with anything u want. email if u send me your contact. can i attach a file also here? i dont see anything just image and url - maybe i am blind.

my email: timoschoefer@web.de so send me your contact there if u want.
gajop
Moderator
Posts: 3051
Joined: 05 Aug 2009, 20:42

Re: Making game content for spring with Blender

Post by gajop »

See https://github.com/springcabal . A lot of our games are made in blender and exported in .dae (collada)
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FLOZi
MC: Legacy & Spring 1944 Developer
Posts: 6240
Joined: 29 Apr 2005, 01:14

Re: Making game content for spring with Blender

Post by FLOZi »

The obj you sent me has no uvs, would explain why the texture was black :P So question becomes why does it have no UVs, how did you export it to obj?
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