Blender! Does it work with spark?

IronsoulIronsoul Join Date: 2011-03-12 Member: 86048Members
in Modding
<div class="IPBDescription">the modelling, animation, and everything else program</div>Hey guys, quick question. I am a poor person(financially, relative to rich people) and I cannot afford the programs like 3ds max, maya, photoshop etc. So obviously, I look for free and open source equivalents.

I am deciding whether or not I should go ahead and learn blender, as I want to work with the spark engine in the future to make some mods/games.

The question is: Does blender work with the spark engine? If yes, how well?

some key aspects to pay attention to when answering:

do static models import correctly?
what about uv unwrap, how well does that work with blender?
animations... any problems there?
also rigging, that's another important aspect.

I look forward to a response... because blender is pretty awesome, and with the 3dbuzz tutorial series, I can get into it to work with it fairly easily.
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Comments

  • ZurikiZuriki Join Date: 2010-11-20 Member: 75105Members
    edited November 2011
    The issue is with textures, Spark uses a specific type of DAE format which is incompatible with the default methods that are used by most modelling programs such as 3DS, hence the 3DS plugin they provide to export in the correct format. If you do export using the default type it looks for a .material file in /ns2/ instead of looking for the material file where you specify. At least, that is how it has worked for me thusfar.

    In short, not really.

    <b>Edit:</b> I heard somewhere about .OBJ files working for props in Spark, but don't hold me to that I haven't investigated that possibility.
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  • fsfodfsfod uk Join Date: 2004-04-09 Member: 27810Members, NS2 Developer, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, Squad Five Gold, Subnautica Playtester, NS2 Community Developer, Pistachionauts
    <!--quoteo(post=1884400:date=Nov 9 2011, 01:31 PM:name=Zuriki)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Zuriki @ Nov 9 2011, 01:31 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1884400"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->If you do export using the default type it looks for a .material file in /ns2/ instead of looking for the material file where you specify. At least, that is how it has worked for me thusfar.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

    Were you not able to manually correct the texture path in the DAE file
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  • MaxMax Technical Director, Unknown Worlds Entertainment Join Date: 2002-03-15 Member: 318Super Administrators, Retired Developer, NS1 Playtester, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, Constellation, Subnautica Developer, Pistachionauts, Future Perfect Developer
    <!--quoteo(post=1884400:date=Nov 9 2011, 05:31 AM:name=Zuriki)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Zuriki @ Nov 9 2011, 05:31 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1884400"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->The issue is with textures, Spark uses a specific type of DAE format which is incompatible with the default methods that are used by most modelling programs such as 3DS, hence the 3DS plugin they provide to export in the correct format. If you do export using the default type it looks for a .material file in /ns2/ instead of looking for the material file where you specify. At least, that is how it has worked for me thusfar.

    In short, not really.

    <b>Edit:</b> I heard somewhere about .OBJ files working for props in Spark, but don't hold me to that I haven't investigated that possibility.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
    We don't do anything non-standard with DAE. We include our own plugin (which actually isn't our own, it's <a href="http://collada.org/mediawiki/index.php/ColladaMax" target="_blank">ColladaMax</a> with a few improvements) because the default Collada exporter from our 3D Studio MAX just crashes when we export.

    The problem is that Collada is really complex, so not all programs implement the standard fully or correctly (including our own tools that read them).

    So, there's no fundamental reason why Blender, Maya, Wavefront, whatever wouldn't work, but since we only use 3D Studio MAX, we haven't tested or fixes issues related to those other tools.
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  • IronsoulIronsoul Join Date: 2011-03-12 Member: 86048Members
    ok, thanks for the feedback so far. If anyone knows for sure about how well blender works, that would be great. In a significant amount of time, after I finally get around to using it, I'll be sure to tell you of my experience.
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  • ZurikiZuriki Join Date: 2010-11-20 Member: 75105Members
    edited November 2011
    <!--quoteo(post=1884464:date=Nov 9 2011, 07:56 PM:name=Max)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Max @ Nov 9 2011, 07:56 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1884464"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->We don't do anything non-standard with DAE. We include our own plugin (which actually isn't our own, it's <a href="http://collada.org/mediawiki/index.php/ColladaMax" target="_blank">ColladaMax</a> with a few improvements) because the default Collada exporter from our 3D Studio MAX just crashes when we export.

    The problem is that Collada is really complex, so not all programs implement the standard fully or correctly (including our own tools that read them).

    So, there's no fundamental reason why Blender, Maya, Wavefront, whatever wouldn't work, but since we only use 3D Studio MAX, we haven't tested or fixes issues related to those other tools.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

    I probably worded what I was saying poorly. What I meant was, when I export with the regular built-in DAE format with 3DS, the compiled model is looking for the right textures, or is looking but not finding. Resulting in an untextured model.

    After fiddling around in the DAE file, I managed to get it to work with regular 3DS exported DAE files. Depending on the implementation in Blender, the same steps might be easily applied to your DAE files too. The issue seemed to be that file locations were not relative to the model itself.
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  • SKINZSKINZ Join Date: 2008-11-11 Member: 65422Members
    <!--quoteo(post=1884543:date=Nov 10 2011, 05:13 AM:name=Ironsoul)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Ironsoul @ Nov 10 2011, 05:13 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1884543"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->ok, thanks for the feedback so far. If anyone knows for sure about how well blender works, that would be great. In a significant amount of time, after I finally get around to using it, I'll be sure to tell you of my experience.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

    How has your experience with Blender been thus far? Any configuration issues I should be aware of as I setup my environment?
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  • persoperso Join Date: 2003-02-19 Member: 13740Members, WC 2013 - Supporter
    edited April 2012
    At least the latest version works perfectly well for me. You may have to edit the collada file after exporting it. Just open the exported .dae file and search for "init_from" or ".dds" and check that they point to the correct location. If your .material and .model files are in the same directory you should just strip the directory path and leave only the filename.
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