Down & Dirty - Using Blender to convert .obj files

Building using prims, sculpties and meshes. Texture creation techniques.
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Shandon Loring
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Down & Dirty - Using Blender to convert .obj files

Post by Shandon Loring »

Pay attention to the permissions and licensing.
The following is some real basic instructions in how to get and convert .obj files to .dae for upload.
You should follow Ozwell's instructions in how to correctly upload mesh
viewtopic.php?f=25&t=3199
(superior job Oz, thank you!!)

This post is just some down and dirty instructions to get you started with some Blender stuff.
I'm not much of a tutorial writer, and I'm very new myself at converting and uploading mesh, but hopefully this will help somebody here. :D

Naturally I welcome corrections and additional help for us all.


IN BLENDER

start blender

click somewhere to make splash screen go away

[when touching shortcut keys it is important to hover mouse somewhere in editing area, not on and edge of screen and not over menus, etc]

press A on your keyboard twice to select everything on screen

press X on your keyboard to delete everything on screen

click OK Delete

import .obj file

use your zoom wheel on mouse to zoom in or out so you can see object

rt click on object, it will outline everything in orange

change to edit mode
(bottomish of Blender, it probably says Object Mode when you start. Click on it and select Edit Mode)

on left of Blender screen...

Shading/UVs>Faces Smooth

hover mouse over object (not over the menu panel)

press W on your keyboard to get Special Menu

choose Remove Doubles option

export your object as a Collada .dae file

upload to Kitely



-------------------------------
AN EXAMPLE FILE TO PLAY WITH
-------------------------------
This one actually already comes with .dae file when you download it, but it makes an easy example to play with.
HINT: some .dae files are already ready to upload! YMWV
You won't get rid of many vertices in this one, but it's good practice for other objects you might want.
http://tf3dm.com/3d-model/tent-33766.html

This site has many many objects. Lots of stuff for free, and lots of stuff you can purchase too.

Pay attention to the permissions and licensing.


-------------------------------
TEXTURING
-------------------------------
This tent comes with six textures, three each for interiour and exteriour.
The textures marked with _d are the basic 'diffuse' textures that you would normally use.
The _n is the normal (or bumpiness) texture
The _s is the specular (or shininess) texture

(maybe somebody else here can teach us more about texturing cuz 'normal' and 'specular' don't seem to do anything for me)

For this example of the tent, once you upload the .dae file (follow Ozwell's directions for that), change the color of the whole thing to white.

Then upload at least the two _d textures...
tent_exterior_d
and
tent_interior_d

Then Edit>Edit Linked>Select Face
and select the exteriour of your tent and apply the tent_exterior_d
then
select the interiour of your tent and apply the tent_interior_d


-------------------------------
A LITTLE BIT MORE YOU CAN DO IN BLENDER FOR MORE COMPLEX MODELS...
-------------------------------

In the Info area, usually at the top of the interface, you’ll get a notification displaying the number of vertices that you removed.

You can further refine it by....

After using Remove Doubles tool, you can go to the Options panel (on left of screen) and change the merge distance. It's probably set to 0.0001
At its minimum, it will only merge the vertices that are in the same exact position, but you can increase it to merge vertices that are close to each other.

Pay attention the Tris number. You want that as low as you can and still have a good looking object

You can try other numbers like 0.001, or 0.05, etc.. to get low Tris, and still maintain a nice model.


(Remove Doubles is only applied to the selected vertices, but you can activate the Unselected option to include the unselected vertices that are very close to the selected ones.)


Pay attention to the permissions and licensing.
Last edited by Shandon Loring on Tue Mar 05, 2019 3:05 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Down & Dirty - Using Blender to convert .obj files

Post by Serene Jewell »

VERY nice. Thanks, Shandon!
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