Need 3D Modelling Advice, Pile o Pinback Buttons

[SinbadEV]

So, Long story short... my current hair-brained scheme would benefit from me being able to make some nominally convincing looking 3D Buttons... also called Badges or Pins or Pinbacks or apparently Button Badges... you know, rounded pictures with pins on the back... so... I'm looking for a free 3D modelling tool that will let me make a bunch of buttons, texture them, and render them as photo realistic examples of what the "real" buttons I want to sell would look like. Bonus points if the thing has a physics engine that would allow me to render a short clip of a bunch of buttons being drops on a surface.

Long version is that I am thinking about creating a Kickstarter to buy myself a good quality button maker system (and other basic supplies like button blanks and a decent printer)... by pre-selling the buttons I will make through Kickstarter. The purpose of the rendered button images and video would be to used to make the Kickstarter page and pitch video not look like ass.

I know there are a lot of options out there but I'm looking for:
- Simple enough for someone who has only ever used Wings and 3D Studio Max
- Free
- Photo-Realistic Rendering
- Physics Simulation for falling objects.

[Funkencool]

I couldn't say much about the simplicity but Blender has photo-realistic rendering and a capable physics engine (I think it's called Bullet).

[SinbadEV]

I couldn't say much about the simplicity but Blender has photo-realistic rendering and a capable physics engine (I think it's called Bullet).

Yeah... I downloaded Blender because it looked like the Bullet solid body physics was what I was searching for (when no one replied right away I took to google...) but... [explitive deleted] it hurts my brain... I can't even follow the Bullet tutorials I've found because it's so far away from the 3D modelling paradigm I've got. It looks like Blender does good with the Photo-realistic lighting/rendering stuff too so I think I'm going to have to "bite the bullet" here. I'm going to give it a try again later.

[Funkencool]

yea.. but I think you could get away with just modeling the buttons in either wings or 3d max, importing the models in to blender. Then all you need is to learn the rendering and animating part (or find someone nice enough to take your models and render them for you).
Or... make some units in spring and have fun with them, it does tote physics after all

[SinbadEV]

yea.. but I think you could get away with just modeling the buttons in either wings or 3d max, importing the models in to blender. Then all you need is to learn the rendering and animating part (or find someone nice enough to take your models and render them for you).

That was my fallback plan

Or... make some units in spring and have fun with them, it does tote physics after all

Yeah... but I was hoping for a little more "photo-realism".

[PicassoCT]

3.141.. -rated to the max..

Also, because it is unavoidable:

Its a button, you do know how a button works?

Or your port your buttons into spring, (a empty level all grey) and Explode(button1, SFX.NO_HEATCLOUD+SFX.FALL) them

[SinbadEV]

Or your port your buttons into spring, (a empty level all grey) and Explode(button1, SFX.NO_HEATCLOUD+SFX.FALL) them

The problem there is the Spring Collision really doesn't adequately represent "heaps" of stuff.

An update if you want it... I managed to get the game physics working for tumbling button shaped things in Blender so I'm just going to grin an bear it until I learn how to model and render something that isn't a gray blob.

[SinbadEV]

So I modelled my Button in Wings and imported it to Blender... the issue is that I want to use cylindrical "Collision bounds" but blender generated this stupid cyclinder:



But if I model a flattened disk in Blender is generates the correct cylinder... theories? (searching seems to come up the general opinion that Blender is perfect and always generates perfect collision bounds so why would you ever want to change them idiot?)

[KaiserJ]

edit: what you want is a custom bounding shape

http://www.blender.org/forum/ is a good resource for learning the basics

i'm sure you can even get a tutorial for a falling object effect w/ custom bounds that's very similar to what you're describing if you look around