Hint:
Blender.
Is.
Horrible.
Oh really?
I'd guess you've
not yet seen what can be
done in it with a bit of work then?
Seriously, how much have you used it? Blender's interface
is more unusual than most other 3d apps, and so it has a steeper learning curve than TS - but once you know the main shortcut keys, it becomes much much faster, and enormously powerful. However, without any sort of tutorial or guide, a complete newbie will probably run into difficulty, possibly scaring them away from it altogether.
Personally I think that choosing a modeling program is like choosing a favourite ice cream flavour. You can't have an opinion on what is good unless you've tried it.
You only need look at Karma's Fenris model to see that TS can put out models as good as any other program can. So my advice is get a bunch of demos and try them all out. See what works for you.
That's a good point.
You're right that TS can put out good models in the right hands, but I wouldn't say as good as any other program. Everyone has limits on their patience, and because of the way you model in TS, it makes many seemingly simple operations very frustrating.
A good example is if you're in the middle of editing a mesh - say, just extruded a spike out of a face, and you want to put an identical spike behind it. In blender, you select the verts/faces/edges with box select or any of the other selection methods, press shift+d to duplicate them, y to constrain to the y axis, slide it back and click to set. Textures will be preserved.
In TS, you need to select each face (not verts), (which in itself can get tedious, because of the different selection modes, and the fact that you need to do it properly, or you won't be able to detach the selected verts from the rest of the mesh), then you need to click the detach from object button (if it will let you that is), duplicate the newly created piece, move it backwards, add-select the other spike, then Boolean them back onto the rest of the mesh - which will probably screw up the texturing somewhere, if it doesn't ruin the whole thing, or crash because it's unstable. Do some booleans on complex objects, and you'll get a lot of crashes. TS has crashed for stupid reasons more than all my other programs combined.
If someone sees that I'm missing some crucial hint here on how TS can do the above operation more easily, please, let me know. As such though, I can provide you with dozens of similar examples - where a seemingly simple geometry/texture edit is made tedious/difficult/unstable just through how TS works.
==================
Mini-Tutorial-Feature-Guide-Thing!======================
dr22:
Ok, happy to help, though ideally it'd be with a nice new shiny tutorial.
What I'll do here is write up an overall guide on how things work with blender. I won't handle all the ins and outs of getting a model textured and into FS just yet - that's a much bigger job. Just stick with learning to build ship meshes for now.
====
Interface Stuff====
Right, when you start up blender, you'll see your start screen with the 3d window being the big main one, and another window with a control panel along the bottom. This can be completely customised to suit whatever viewing needs you have. For example, I have a dual screen setup, and I use my left monitor as ONLY a 3d window, and my right hand screen with my control panel down the bottom and usually the UV mapping window above that.
The active window is whichever one the cursor is hovering over - so you can't for example rotate the 3d view unless your cursor is over that window.
You can scale these windows however you want, and can merge or split them by hovering your mouse over the boarder between them and middle-clicking. You can change what each windows function is by clicking the square drop down icon in the top/bottom left of each window.
Have a quick play with that to see how it works.
====
View controls====
You can use the mouse, num-pad or a combination of both. The arrow keys on the num-pad (8, 4, 6 and 2) will snap rotate the view in that direction in set increments. The numbers 7, 1 and 3 will snap the view to top, front and side respectively, and if you want to view from the other side (ie, from the bottom, back or other side), hold ctrl while pressing the number. (Eg, to view from the bottom, you'd hold ctrl and press 7)
The mouse pretty much just uses the middle mouse button and scroll to control the view. To rotate, just middle click somewhere in the 3d window and drag it around. Holding shift before middle click will pan the view, and ctrl will zoom (though it's easier to use the scroll wheel here).
The final two things to note about views are that blender can display your model from a perspective viewpoint or an orthogonal one. Num-pad 5 toggles this setting, and the "." key will centre and zoom the view on whatever it is you've got selected (works with whole objects, verts, and just about anything else)
====
Modes====
Onto the editing part - Blender has a couple of different 3d window modes to it. Object mode is the default one - and it will allow you to select your various objects in the scene. To edit something in edit mode, you'll first need to have it selected (pink) in object mode.
You can find the rest of the modes by clicking the 'Object Mode' dropdown box which is towards the middle of the 3d window's control bar (not the control panel). Of these, edit mode is the only one you should worry about at this stage - and you should also note that to quickly get in and out of edit mode, just press tab.
====
Editing Stuff====
==
Selections==
Ok, Edit mode mainly works on whatever you've selected. Normally, this will be vertices because the wire-frame mesh editing is one of blenders strongest points, but it can quite easily be faces or edges too. To change what type of thing you want to select, you'll find the verts, edges and face select modes towards the right of the 3d windows control bar.
Let's just use verts for now, and we'll only fiddle with the default cube in the scene to demonstrate some of the other functions.
You can select verts/edges/faces in a number of ways, but the most common ones are to 1) press b and click+drag a box around it, 2) hold shift and right click next to all the bits you want (they'll turn yellow when selected), or if you want to select a number of verts that are attached by edges to each other, 3) right click one vert, hold ctrl and tap the num-pad + key, and this will add any verts to the scene that are directly connected to the ones you've already got selected.
Another handy thing is the a key. It will toggle whether all or no verts are selected. If you've got none selected, it will select all of them. If you've got some selected, it will deselect them.
==
Editing Functions==
Ok, once you've made your selection (just select the 4 verts that make up one side of the cube for now), you can do just about anything with it. The main things you'll need to know about here though are the Grab, Rotate, Scale and Extrude functions. (each one is activated by tapping the associated first letter of the words.)
So, tap g to grab our selection, and begin moving it around with your mouse. Something to keep in mind here is that when doing it like this, blender will ONLY edit things according to the plane at which the selection is viewed. In other words and in this case, your camera will affect the 'plane' along which your selected object can be moved. Eg, if you press g while in top view, you'll only be able to move the object along the 'ground' plane.
Onto what you can do while you've got your object grabbed - there's a lot. To cancel the move, you can right click at any time and it will snap back to it's original position.
To snap it between pre-set grid increments, hold Ctrl.
To perform tiny free movements, hold shift.
To perform tiny snap movements, hold shift and Ctrl.
>>(most importantly)>>To constrain it so it will only move along any one axis, just tap the axis letter (once for the global axis, twice for local, thrice to de-constrain it).
To move around one pixel at a time, tap the arrow keys.
You can do a couple of other things too, but you won't need them for now.
Now - most of the above controls work when in Scale (s) and Rotate (r) too - so it gives you whatever degree of control over your selection that you want.
Extrude (e) is a bit different - it will basically, duplicate your selection, but attach it by edges to the original ones. You should note though that this is context sensitive. What this means is that if you only have one vert selected and press e, it will extrude only that vert, no questions asked. However, if blender detects an edge between two verts, or a face between 3 or 4, it will pop up a little menu when you press e. This will allow you to extrude the piece in exactly the way you wanted - ie, as a face, edges or individual verts. Have a play with this on the cube to see what it does.
The extrude button basically allows you to grow your ships out of whatever you start with, so it's a very important one.
==
Editing Menus==
If you ever get confused, need to find a shortcut or something, press the space bar when over the 3d window. It will pop up a menu that is able to access most of blenders editing functions (the remaining lot are in the 'Weird' w menu), and it will list the shortcuts for each one too.
Also through this menu you can access the add menu, where you can add more primitive shapes at your blender-cursors location. (The blender cursor is that black crosshair with the red and white striped circle through it. You place it by left-clicking somewhere, and centre it by pressing Shift+c) Keep in mind that any objects you create through this menu will be aligned with your view plane again, so it can sometimes get ugly.
And finally, to delete your selection, press x, and it will give you an option for exactly what it is about your selection you want deleted.
====
Final Notes====
Anyways, I think I'll end this monster post there for now, since it's getting late, I need to get up early tomorrow, and I think that's probably more than enough information to try and absorb anyway.
Just use it as a kind of introductory function list rather than a sequential tutorial I guess. For a very, very old, but still decent blender tutorial, have a look here:
http://freespace.volitionwatch.com/fs2/mods/fighterguide/step1-1.phpThere's a lot in there that can actually be done via easier means, but it's still got a good overall sequence. Worth a look if you're feeling slightly fried by the above monster.
There is also some great stuff on the blender website, such as some good introductory videos here:
http://blender.org/cms/Getting_started.400.0.htmlIf you're having trouble with or don't understand fully any of the above, just say so and I'll do my best to sort it out.
