Help with BLENDER order of operations please!

[Dai-22]

Hello, I am quite new to blender, not brand new but newish. And I have not understood the order of operations for saving and importing edited tree’s with transparent leaves and bark materials etc. I have saved a few tree’s/4 without armature (don’t know if that matters?), but don’t know if I bake all trees with textures etc, which I don’t want to do because I would like shadowing to occur and also at night I would not like sunlit trees etc.

So do i need armature? And what is the order of saving the materials, importing them, and applying them in unity. As I currently just get a grey tree with white pages in Unity?

Also, I have no idea as of yet, what to do with .obj objects I have, or character faces, in regard to rendering. How do I paint a face, differently to The standard model colour, or apply hair texture in blender? Then im,port it. If anyone knows where to find this out better, any help is appreciated.
I only ask because the current cookie or make human faces and bodies are a bit limited, also I have weapons etc. Is there a mapping grid program I need also?

I know its a lot to ask but hey, where else?
Thanks for reading.

[BIGTIMEMASTER]

That is a handful of large, broad, complicated questions. Yet luckily, they are all the types of things covered in beginner tutorials.

This is something I see all the time. Nobody wants to be a beginner. Everybody wants to believe they are beyond the basics. But then they ask stuff like this. You’ll learn faster if you start thinking along the lines of, “I’m a total moron and don’t know anything,” versus, “I got this”.

It looks like most of your issues revolve around not understanding file formats and basic rendering. I’d look up blender to unity 101 tutorials, and also check out unity’s art documentation. Somebody could take the time to answer these questions one by one, but that won’t do you any good. You’ll just run in to more problems if you don’t get this fundamental knowledge down.

To give a little more to go on, .obj files are your 3d models. obj format is a pretty standard format that most programs accept just fine. the model is grey because it has no material applied. A material is composed of textures, and a shader, which is a script, tells the engine how to display the material.

So you need to do the unity tutorials to know how to bring an asset into unity, and apply textures and create a material. For trees and other things with transparency, you have to know how to apply the correct shader so that the transparanecy is rendered correctly. Don’t worry, this is all just a matter of knowing which button to tick, but it is not a simple checklist. You have to understand what is happening otherwise you’ll never be able to troubleshoot problems on your on.

Probably much of that doesn’t make sense at this point because of unfamiliar words, but if you just take the time to do the tutorials I promise you it will all start becoming much more clear.

[Dai-22]

@BIGTIMEMASTER

That is a handful of large, broad, complicated questions. Yet luckily, they are all the types of things covered in beginner tutorials.

This is something I see all the time. Nobody wants to be a beginner. Everybody wants to believe they are beyond the basics. But then they ask stuff like this. You’ll learn faster if you start thinking along the lines of, “I’m a total moron and don’t know anything,” versus, “I got this”.

It looks like most of your issues revolve around not understanding file formats and basic rendering. I’d look up blender to unity 101 tutorials, and also check out unity’s art documentation. Somebody could take the time to answer these questions one by one, but that won’t do you any good. You’ll just run in to more problems if you don’t get this fundamental knowledge down.

To give a little more to go on, .obj files are your 3d models. obj format is a pretty standard format that most programs accept just fine. the model is grey because it has no material applied. A material is composed of textures, and a shader, which is a script, tells the engine how to display the material.

So you need to do the unity tutorials to know how to bring an asset into unity, and apply textures and create a material. For trees and other things with transparency, you have to know how to apply the correct shader so that the transparanecy is rendered correctly. Don’t worry, this is all just a matter of knowing which button to tick, but it is not a simple checklist. You have to understand what is happening otherwise you’ll never be able to troubleshoot problems on your on.

Probably much of that doesn’t make sense at this point because of unfamiliar words, but if you just take the time to do the tutorials I promise you it will all start becoming much more clear.

I get your point. But I have already made the tree’s, and all node settings in blender, it’s the import that’s the problem.
But yes, shader script import/have no clue so will have to root around for a tutorial as to how to apply the shader etc in unity. And I know why the .obj (other items) are grey such as tables etc, but how does anyone make sure the handle texture is on the draw and not the desk top etc. I will look more into this in blender anyway, but the forum in blender seems limited to the TUTORIAL-teachers, on the subject at hand, and I have to look for a title that matches what im looking for? Uhh, uv unwrap mapping or texture wrapping/baking. Theres literally thousands of titles and most are cgi not game orientated, but will hope I find something soon.

If I don’t, i’ll just continue to finish Brackeys tower defence, and VS 2010 book on C# until I do. So many things are free so downloading daily assets also takes ages, so looking through people posts on blender is seemingly too time consuming. Especially as Gimp, Inkscape, MakeHuman, Cookie and more, are being learned. And memory usage and limitation etc. Probably gonna take a while

[Dai-22]

Ok, i’ve figured out UV - mapping & seam/unwrap and edit etc. Just one main problem, is there an editor to put a uv-face map on in 3d to paint it? Because the un-wrapped face is very difficult to paint etc. Otherwise it will probably take a year of messing around back and forth to just edit the main characters face? I can’t find anything…probably not, but worth the ask

[BIGTIMEMASTER]

@Dai-22

Ok, i’ve figured out UV - mapping & seam/unwrap and edit etc. Just one main problem, is there an editor to put a uv-face map on in 3d to paint it? Because the un-wrapped face is very difficult to paint etc. Otherwise it will probably take a year of messing around back and forth to just edit the main characters face? I can’t find anything…probably not, but worth the ask

Substance Painter.

I believe Photoshop has 3d painting as well.

It sounds like you are taking things one step at a time, and that is good. But it may help if you find some basic overviews of the whole game asset creation pipeline. Understanding the basic terminology and typical parts of the pipeline will help answer questions like this.

For myself, I usually start by blocking out my model in 3d application. Then, subdivide and sculpt a hi resolution version in zbrush. Then, unwrap the lo-poly version and layout the UV’s in 3d application. Then, bake normal and ambient occlusion maps, move into substance painter and create textures. Export textures and lo poly model, assemble in game engine. Rejoice.

To make it even a little more simple, and give you some keywords to start your google searching from, the basic steps are this:

block modeling in 3d application – maya, blender, whatever you use

3d sculpting in zbrush – this is an optional step and not important for a beginner

UV unwrapping and layout – again in your 3d application

Map baking – this is an optional step that usually coincides with 3d sculpting

texturing – many programs can do this, but the very best is Substance Painter.

compiling in game engine – read your game engines documentation and beginner tutorials.

There is a lot of steps required within each stage, obviously, which is your task to discover on your own. There is a ton of tutorials and information written about all this, and ultimately the way you like to work will be up to you and depend on what programs you choose.

NOTE: After a brief google search, I see that Blender has 3d painting functionality.

[Dai-22]

@BIGTIMEMASTER

Substance Painter.

I believe Photoshop has 3d painting as well.

It sounds like you are taking things one step at a time, and that is good. But it may help if you find some basic overviews of the whole game asset creation pipeline. Understanding the basic terminology and typical parts of the pipeline will help answer questions like this.

For myself, I usually start by blocking out my model in 3d application. Then, subdivide and sculpt a hi resolution version in zbrush. Then, unwrap the lo-poly version and layout the UV’s in 3d application. Then, bake normal and ambient occlusion maps, move into substance painter and create textures. Export textures and lo poly model, assemble in game engine. Rejoice.

To make it even a little more simple, and give you some keywords to start your google searching from, the basic steps are this:

block modeling in 3d application – maya, blender, whatever you use

3d sculpting in zbrush – this is an optional step and not important for a beginner

UV unwrapping and layout – again in your 3d application

Map baking – this is an optional step that usually coincides with 3d sculpting

texturing – many programs can do this, but the very best is Substance Painter.

compiling in game engine – read your game engines documentation and beginner tutorials.

There is a lot of steps required within each stage, obviously, which is your task to discover on your own. There is a ton of tutorials and information written about all this, and ultimately the way you like to work will be up to you and depend on what programs you choose.

NOTE: After a brief google search, I see that Blender has 3d painting functionality.

I have a question about .obj files, are they automatically locked? or do all sites that give them for free, lock them? Or do I need a program to open them for editing other than blender etc?

I ask because no matter how many websites I go to to get royalty free items in 3d, they cannot be altered or have textures applied, just re-sized? Is this just the companies or people conning everyone into thinking they can use them (turbosquid / ghantee etc)…

[BIGTIMEMASTER]

Locked? I don’t know what you mean. When you import an .obj file into your 3d program, you should be able to manipulate it however you want. If it has a rig, that might be locking your ability to manipulate vertices. In maya, you just select the transform components, right click, and select break connection.

Maybe something to do with blender that I don’t know about. But just type these questions right into google. Almost always somebody else has faced the same issue.