Betta Fighter Concept

[Argh]

And don't worry, I'm sure that somebody will make use of it, if it's ever pretty enough.

Don't stress out about that right now, though, this is your first real attempt to do this, and... well, everybody's first attempts suck. Mine was a terrible excuse for a fighter plane, a long long time ago, and trust me, it was really 'horrible.

Look at it as a learning experience, where the final results may or may not be worth the effort. But your next models will be, I'm sure.

[smoth]

feel proud modeler guy, most people here lack the testicular fortitude to man up and do the effort you are doing.

argh is right.

[overkill]

smoth and argh are right.
but DEAR GOD, do not dare leaving that model (looks like crap, sorry but its true, well the skin is crap) on a 1024x1024 texture. reuvmap it and stick it ona 512x512, texture it, get it looking good, follow our advice.
After that use your learned skills to put it on a SMALLER texture. really, that model is ugly and it will lag slower comps/ comps with low vram.

[MidKnight]

@smoth, argh: I feel happier now

I never understood why modelers always complained about people complaining until now. I also never understood why modelers manage to crank out 5 or 6 updates to a single model. Now I put two and two together lol

@overkill: I'll probably do that, but only when I'm willing to go through uvmapping the entire model again (read: maybe in a few months, or once my texturing skills improve.).

[Argh]

I'll probably do that, but only when I'm willing to go through uvmapping the entire model again (read: maybe in a few months, or once my texturing skills improve.).

Suggestion: instead of worrying about painting skills right now... worry about uvmapping it better. Uvmapping is often at least as important as painting.

Hell... I'm probably asking for trouble, but... send it to me, I'll re-do the map, and show you one way to do it, that could help make things better.

That's all, mind ye. I won't paint it for you. But seeing how it can be done might help you a lot (although how we uvmap is pretty individual- I do it one way, others do it in the ways they think are best).

Send in .3DS format, if you're interested.

[MidKnight]

@argh: If i could export it into 3dsmax, then i would have uvmapped it there instead of in Blender, as much as i hate 3dsmax. the thing is, for some reason, the .3ds and the .s3o export scripts fail! the python console gives an error on a description line!

though if i find a way, I'll gladly send you the model

[Argh]

3DS failed? Not just .max?

Export as OBJ, then.

[MidKnight]

blender has .max export options?

trying on linux, maybe this'll work

[Argh]

I thought a plugin was available, but I'm probably wrong.

At any rate, I have nothing that can deal with .max here, so 3DS or OBJ, take your pick.

[MidKnight]

it works in linux! ^_^
after some file juggling, i have attached a zip archive to the main post. It contains everything except the s3o (upspring obviously doesn't work on linux, and I'm lazy)

if you manage to uvmap the cockpit without that wierd distortion i keep getting, then you're a better uvmapper than i (well of course you are, but I can't say, for example "if you manage to uvmap the cockpit without that wierd distortion i keep getting, then you're a better uvmapper than Smoth and MR. D" because I am not smoth or mr. d, and erivatively, can't speak for them. If you can find a better compliment, tell me and I'll give it to you. That indeed was a joke )

[Argh]

The 3DS file is missing most of your geometry

I'll update Blender and export over here.

[MidKnight]

Okay then.

also: blender teensie-fied my uvmaps to fit them together, so don't bash me for wasting uvmap space by having my UVs up in the corner

also also: i appended a little joke to my last post. (the one with the ^_^)

[Argh]

Got bored with what I'm doing (which is appallingly boring grind-work). Not only revamped the uvs, but did a speed-painted skin:



Anyhow, here's the revamped model, fixed a few things (mesh edges that didn't match up, hidden face removal), and that upper fin is gone.

You can just mirror that part to restore it, of course.

[smoth]

honestly, I actually like what you did with that texture argh.

[Argh]

Personally I think it sucks, it was just a 1-hour speedpaint, using the same methods that are letting me churn out World Builder stuff. A lot less work than units for P.U.R.E., to put it one way.

I just figured that it would be fun to show how the reworked uvmap can be utilized to arrive at a non-crappy result in a real hurry- there's a lot more space to work with, and it was arranged to keep it as simple as possible to get angles right, etc.

Only major problem was the "cockpit"- MidKnight was trying for something there where he probably should have added one more quad, to smooth the transition out. I decided that, instead of fighting the geometry and resultant map, I'd just work around it's limitations. Hence the triangular windows, which avoids making a "window" stretch over an impossible angle.

[MidKnight]

WOAH

And you call that texture a "crappy speed-paint?"
don't sell yourself short, argh. my texture was just photoshop effects/gradients, and even that took me 2.5 hours (ofc that may just have to do with the fact that this is my first try at texturing , but still)

in that time, all I managed to do was play around with betta's wing design:


don't worry, I won't be taking it further than a render.

Also: could you please tell me how you did the greebling, or atleast point me to a texturing tutorial/place where you got the fan/metal textures?

Edit:how did you match mesh edges without welding them? and how does one detect/remove hidden faces?

[smoth]

I don't know argh, it just works. You did well.

[Pressure Line]

i might have made the fans in the wings a bit more... fan-ish but yeah. looks good.

[Wolf-In-Exile]

@wolf: pressureline told me the same thing. My problem is, how will i seperate them after mapping?

You select the parts and detach them from the combined mesh, reset their origins and that's it.

Btw nice retexture Argh.

[Argh]

ofc that may just have to do with the fact that this is my first try at texturing , but

No "buts" there. You only get fast if you do enough, and consciously try to get faster.

A lot how you go fast is that you know what things should look like, and how to do it. That will sound like mystical bullshit, but it's the way it really is.


Now... I think I promised to talk about how I revamped this, so here's what I did, in a nutshell. If some of this doesn't make sense yet, that's OK.

1. I exported from Blender, using OBJ, because you're quite right, the 3DS script borked in 2.48, which is obnoxious.

2. I then took it into Rhino (my primary modeling application) and cut it in half. Removed the left wing, the left side of the bottom winglet, etc. Exploded the mesh, and named various sections for a later part of my typical workflow.

3. I found quite a few faces that were hidden on the inside of the model, so I cut those. That, in turn, revealed that you didn't get the verts lined up really tight on the joints between the body and the wings, so I tightened them. Won't bother explaining how, IDK how to do that in Blender, maybe KDR can explain how to do vert alignments.

4. Exported to Wings, for a quick, nasty revamp of the uvmap. All I ended up doing there was cut the "cockpit" quad away from the body, to map it using a different projection than the upper half of the body, and I re-unfolded that insides of the side-wings and bottom wing, and then aligned the edges, so that they were perpendicular. That sentence will make sense when you look at the uvmap.

5. Exported to OBJ, and used UVMapper Pro to arrange the maps to make reasonably-efficient use of the space, with emphasis on keeping everything easy to paint over sheer efficiency, and re-mapped quite a bit of the model. I used simple planar projections for the wings and sides of the wings, the top of the body and bottom, and ... pretty much everything, except for the insides of the wings.

Planar projections can cause horrible distortion, but they're great for flat surfaces, or stuff where the distortion won't be really obvious, because they're easy to paint. You can't use them on rounded stuff very well, of course, so it's a judgment call, whether you can get away with it or not.

6. Paint. With everything lined up, etc. painting was easy and fun, not a horrible chore. Can't always be this way, of course, but in this case it was very simple.

I don't know argh, it just works. You did well.

Meh, it's not great, but what the hell, it took an hour. Glad you liked it.

i might have made the fans in the wings a bit more... fan-ish but yeah. looks good.

I just re-used a stock greeble I made for the underside fans on the Resistance Fighter. Didn't feel like building / rendering anything new for a speedpaint.