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davidbrinnen — Bryce picknick area
Published: 2014-06-09 08:31:56 +0000 UTC; Views: 879; Favourites: 11; Downloads: 8
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Been a busy week mostly every free moment sunk into Wings 3D trying to get to grips with modelling stuff. I tried a demo of Modo which is terrific - but also the price is terrifying! And besides, my attitude is that you buy the tool that suits your level of competence, which is why I've never bought a badminton racket for more than £45 - although I've been playing for... er... over 25 years now, I've never got beyond £45 badminton racket level of competence. I break the strings in about six months. Which if you know the game will tell you I'm not very accurate. One of the people I play with, and who beats me continually, breaks the strings once every 20 years. Although they have been playing for twice as long. I hope to be as good one day.So I see we have our first set of terrains in the store www.daz3d.com/bryce-7-1-pro-hi… which is nice. And here's a render with a few additions of my own made in Wings 3d.
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Comments: 15
Excellent image, David.
I am of the mind set that says "If you can get something as good as Wings 3D for free, why pay for something else?" Wings 3D is awesome, and totally free, as you know! Bryce is a fantastic application too, for what it is able to do, and your tutorials for it and Wings 3D are excellent!
Keep up the good work my friend!
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Wings 3D is good, very good for free, but I keep hitting limitations on what I can load in even with LAA engaged. I'm only on my second commercial modeling project with Wings and I am being thwarted by this problem. Now it all depends if I can make some money with my models. If not enough, then I stick with Wings. If it will cover the cost of Modo, then I will invest. It is just the economics of time. I don't object to paying for software, I don't think it is unreasonable and it keeps people in jobs. Living in an area were I see the results of early retirement and also high unemployment, I am all for work - even a bad job (and I know I've had my share) is better than no job at all. So I try not to grumble if I struggle sometimes doing something I like or if it is going to cost me money. That's fair enough. At least I am no longer working on a line in a factory putting bottles on a conveyor belt for 7 hours a day.
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David, I have learned to create my models in stages. For example, I created a Star Craft model with a full interior and exterior. I made the hull as a separate part, and used a low poly version of it to help with modeling all the other parts. The other parts included control panels, seats, tables, cabinetry, engines, weaponry, etc. Each of these things were modeled and UV mapped separately. This is how I get around the memory limitations of Wings 3D and other modelers. What I figured out was that if I model a part in the position I need it to be in, upon importing it into an app like DAZ Studio, it will remain where I had it in Wings 3D in relation to the other parts. This allows final assembly to be done in DAZ Studio. If I had Poser or one of several other programs, it would still do this upon import.
Assembly for me involves the bringing together of all the parts, using the DAZ Joint Editor to set the origin and end points, parenting the parts to each other in a logical order, and then assigning limits to rotations, movements and scales. Once all of this is done and saved, I can then concentrate on making and applying textures.
A lot of what I know about Wings 3D is due to your excellent tutorials, and you have even helped me out when I had a question for you. Creating a tutorial to address the question is to my way of thinking going above and beyond the call. I can think of no one else that is actually doing that! So I must indeed give credit where it is due, and you my friend are due that credit in a big way!
Thank You many times over!
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Yes what you say is true and this is the way I am presently working. The swapping in and out is troublesome though if I need to make a fix because something is not aligned correctly. For example, if I export an object with say 50 sub components, even though they may be grouped in the object, Wings still sees them as separate parts. So that even though those parts all have the same material and share the same UV map on export. IF...
well...
when I bring them back in for fixing, on import Wings decides to break the materials up so that each part, has its own material and it's own UV map. All duplicates. And then if I export suddenly I've a multiplication of bits and instead of being able to reassign the parts all in one material, I have 50 materials to adjust. So each time I bring the object back in, I have to painstakingly assign all the parts back to their one material and then delete all the duplicates and then all the duplicate UV maps.
Just taking this step out of the loop could save me at least an hour per model. I can't seem to find an option in Wings to stop it breaking the models up like this. On import into other software, this doesn't happen, so it does not have to happen. Just Wings makes it happen.
So that's my present bug bear. Other than that, I've been happy with Wings for most tasks. And have some interesting (well to me at least) topics to cover as soon as I've cleared my desk of pressing tasks.
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It seems you are having problems that I am not having, though it may be due to the way I work rather than to the way Wings 3D works. I create a Save file in the .wings native format. This file would update automatically if I allowed it to but I think taking that action upon myself rather than letting the program do it has saved me a lot of headaches. What I normally do is import only the geometry I need to work on and I will do what is needed, and then export it again. I do the UV Mapping individually for each part. If there is enough room on a template for more than one part, I don't put both on the template. To me it is better to wastes a bit of space on a template, than to try arranging the sections in a logical way for more than one part. I don't mind having many UV maps for any complex model, even if it means the memory size is greater.
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Yes, it is a problem brought about by importing. If I could do everything I needed to in Wings, as you say, there would not be so many issues. However I need to shuffle my objects around with multiple bits of software and this is where Wings "helpful" reallocation of materials and UV maps is an issue. It was fine while I only say had ten or fifteen components to an object but once that figure gets much beyond that, so does the headache. Even if I use just default, the default becomes default 1, 2, 3, 4 for each separate component the material is applied to. I don't know what constitutes a complex model. My present model has 78 maps split over 51 "parts/objects" - to avoid the loading issues. I can load about five to six of these "parts" into wings at any one time before I start running into problems. It is manageable at the moment, but not ideal. It wouldn't be so bad if I could just block delete the duplicate materials, or even just use the delete key, but Wings insists on using mouse menu and when it comes to UV templates it even wants to do a yes/no confirmation - which is tiresome when you have maybe nearly 100 materials/templates to delete. So even if there was just an easier way to do that bit it would be a great help.
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I know what you mean. I was having that issue as well, until I figured my own way to get around that. I also found that once you have all the parts imported into an app like DAZ Studio, each of them have their own material zones. What I do to reduce how many mat zones a part has is decide what areas I want to use identical textures on and in Wings 3D I reassign materials to the part after the UV Mapping is done. I can assign less materials and I can rearrange them to work the way I want. This allows for some interesting decoration for the model. I have several shader textures in DAZ Studio that can take advantage of the mat zones. This allows for more options in surfacing a model.
The model I am working on at this time will benefit from this, because I can assign textures to some of the UV Mapped templates and load those onto the model, and assign shaders to other parts to complete it. The ability to do that is in my way of thinking fantastic.
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Aye, well I've not really progressed my DS learning very much. It gives me no pleasure to use DS. Which is a shame, because I can see the software is capable of a lot, but I just have not learned to like using it. Maybe given enough time...
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Nice ! but where is the English turf...
If the software could have a life equal to that of badminton rackets (25 years)... I would agree to pay more.
Finally, MODO is clearly a racket competition!
I tried a demo of 3D COAT... I'll probably order it.
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3D coat looks interesting. I hope you will let me know how you get on with it. Choosing a modeler is hard. So much time has to be committed to learning new things. As for the English turf. If I want to see that, I have only to get on my bike (my other hobby besides Badminton). Until I replaced my old Scooby my pushbike was the most expensive transport I owned, but my new Scooby cost a bit more.
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