Hey, Noob here. About Tomatallian's Low-Poly TF2

Essence

Got a question.

I am using blender, and I searched on Google after seeing this video:
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PH9ze6wwHrY&eurl[/ame]

I found the pack, and I would like to know how to use it
As the subject says, I am a TOTAL noob.
So, if you could explain it to me like I am a retard, that would be appreciated.
Anyway, avemagnadude, the video creator, used blender but I can't even figure out how to get the textures on the models, let alone animate, so if you could explain both, I would love you,

Neavah

I'm not sure what your asking.

You want to know how to create the textures in blender, and animate...? Or you have the models (rigs included) and textures, and don't know how apply them to the models?

Michael Knubben

- http://www.blendernation.com/ - on the right you have a link to tutorials. This is the major Blender news site. Interesting to follow, if you want to get into Blender.
- http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro - a book that supposedly takes you from noob to pro, as the title suggests.
- blenderartist.org is the community forum for Blender. Blender-specific questions will get answered much quicker on there, as we (polycount) only have a handful of members that actually use Blender.
- http://www.cgcookie.com/articles/blender

I'll alert one of said Blender-using members to the existence of this thread, he'll be able to help you with specific problems. Your main goal now is to get to know Blender, though. Follow some beginners tutorials on the interface, and on simple things like applying textures.
One thing if you're going to make an animation like this one: For the love of christ, don't filter the textures. Preserve the lovely pixels!

Good luck

Essence

Well, the pack is Obj. and .Max
What I am basically asking since Tamilllian did it, I would like to know how to put the textures ON THE MODELS. And how to animate them.
If you would like a screenshot of what I see in Blender. I will take one.

Yozora

What you're asking for are a set of very specialized skills that take a substantial amount of time to learn.

Mightypea gave some great links to learn blender with, 3d animation isn't something you can just jump into and produce something decent in a few hours with no prior knowledge of anything 3d-related.

Heres a page teaching you how to animate with blender; http://www.blender.org/education-help/tutorials/animation/

Ok theres only like 4 tutorials there, but if you read the first one you'll understand some of the basics of 3d animation at least.

Haledire

I just picked up the model pack to take a look at it. The OBJ file you'll be importing into blender won't have a bone structure set up, so you'll need to follow a rigging tutorial to be able to animate the characters.

For rigging and animating, I'd recommend this tutorial:

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:Tutorials/Animation/BSoD/Character_Animation

This tutorial is one of the more complete ones I've run across while researching blender information

On adding the textures, the UV map transfers over ok, so it's just a matter of applying a material for the model, adding the texture file into it, and finally setting the material to pull the UV information to send the texture back to.

For lack of a specific tutorial link for that, I'll give you the steps and see if you can figure it out from there.

Step 1: Importing the model properly
This is important because the model you open may have multiple weapons as well as the character. Since they use the same texture space, you can either import them all as one object and then manually split them or do the intelligent thing and tell the importer to split the objects by group.

For the Pyro obj, this splits the objects into the Pyro character, the Fire Axe, the Shotgun, and the Flamethrower.

Step 2: Applying Materials
Each object will have no material assigned to it. To assign a material, select an object (lets start with the Pyro character).

On the button window (this should be the bottom section of the blender window if you have a default install) click the third icon from the first group of icons in the header (it should be a gray ball).

This brings up your "shading" buttons, which is where all of your material controls will be. The only thing you should see at first is a panel that says "Links and Pipeline" and one that says "Preview". In the Links and Pipeline panel, click "Add New". I won't worry about the naming at the moment, but typically it's a good idea to name the material for what the material is for (as you should in any program really), that would be in one of the sections of the panel that changes.

Step 3: Preparing to set a Texture
From here, you need to find the Texture panel (you may have to hold the middle mouse button to drag the button window over to the Texture panel). This panel will have a bunch of blank bars with another Add New button off to the side. Click the Add New button and one of the blank bars gets the word Tex inserted. Before moving on, you'll notice the panel has gained 2 new tabs at the top. We're interested in the "Map Input" tab at the moment. In this tab, we need to set the Texture information to be pulled from the UV (by default the information is set to Orco, or "Original Coordinates").

Step 4: Loading the Texture Image file
We are now done with the Material Button's section of the Shading section we have been in for the past two steps, we now want to move over to the Texture buttons. In the header of the button window, click on the third icon of the second set of icons (it should look like a box with spots on it). These are your texture buttons. The panels you see should switch to the Texture panel and another Preview panel.

In the texture panel, you'll see a drop down box under the words "Texture Type". Click the box and look for "Image". Selecting this will bring up a new panel called "Image" with a box that says "Load". Click on Load and your 3D view window should change to a file browser window. Find the appropriate texture (if you've been following for the Pyro character, you should be looking for pyro_flat.tga or pyro_flat_blue.tga), click on it and click the select image button.

To see how the model renders out, hit the F12 key on your keyboard. This should run the renderer. Provided the character is sitting within view of the camera, you should now see the texture on the character. If it looks faceted (which it will, because the model imports without any smoothing) you need to go to the edit buttons (5th button of the first group in the button window header) and look for the "Set Smooth" button in the Link and Materials panel.

Hope this is clear enough. Most material tutorials I've looked up assume you're making a totally new texture, so the extra steps might get confusing for what you're trying to do with these models. If I can find a more concise tutorial I'll post it up.

Essence

Wow...just...wow, thank you man, that helped me alot.
Here's a picture:
http://i31.tinypic.com/e5s75c.png

*EDIT NVM FIGURED IT OUT*

Anyway, thanks for your help, your tutorial link can probably help me.
If it doesn't I'll post here.

Essence

Yup, new question, ok, there is a part in the tutorial(The one haledire posted) where they are rigging the character, how do I view the armature(or whatever) because I am using the scout, who is supposed to already rigged. So?

Haledire

Unfortunately, the only files in the pack that are rigged are the .max files that have rigged in their filename, the OBJ files don't carry armature/bone data. The scout_rigged.max file has the character rigged with a 3dsmax biped object fitted to the character with additional bones to control deformations.

You'll have to make a bone system from scratch in blender unfortunately.

Essence

That is good for me, I need to learn armature.

Essence

Ok, what the hell, it's not letting me weight paint now.
I am at the part of the tutorial, where I am weight painting the upper body, all the options are correct for the weight painting.

Lamoot

The options aren't correct, otherwise it would work. Can you describe what options there are, what step are you at, or best of all, post the .blend itself and I can take a look.

You can upload the file here if you decide to do so:

http://www.pasteall.org/blend/

Essence

http://www.pasteall.org/blend/664

Lamoot

Ok found the problem. Try this:

1. Delete the armature modifier from the mesh.
2. Keep the mesh selected and then also select the armature (so that the armature object is the active one)
3. ctrl+p -> armature, to make the armature object a parent.
4. Go to armature pose mode, then select the child mesh and go to weight paint
5. Paint away

Does this work?

Essence

Yes, that did help thank you.
New Question, how come I can't use views and stuff.

Lamoot

What kind of views do you mean?

The better you describe the problem, the easier it is for me to identify the cause and help you. Please provide more info with any future problem you might have

Essence

Yes, I did get a bit informal now didn't I?
Har Har Har

Anyway, well, I still had this problem in the *.blend I provided you with, basically, kind of a big deal, some of the views think they can out smart me, but I have yet to meet one who can outsmart user-controlled view.
.....
Ok....
Back on subject, if you open up the .blend, try and go into top view, side view, even when I put the object(In this case, the scout) in the center of the plane, it doesn't even come close, for front view, it's a little bit below the plane looking at the scout.

Haledire

I assume you mean the render view? If you imported into a default scene, there is a camera object (the pyramid with a triangle off to the side of it). You need to move that to change your render area. You can either select the model and pull it up into the camera's field of vision, or you can move the camera down.

One handy method would be to select the camera, hit Numpad 0, then hit the G key and you will move the camera based on it's own view angle. To be able to tell what your render area is, there are 2 rectangles in the center of the camera view. As long as your object is within the second rectangle it is within the render view.

Blender won't do viewport final renders. You can hit the render button (last button on the 3D view header) but that will simply render what you see on your screen while you work normally (no lighting, no material effects, etc).