Sunday, June 9, 2013

Blender


June 9th, 2013

My oldest daughter and I are working on a project for the Oculus Rift. We will be building a scene from Ready Player One. It is her honors project for next year. We expect it to take all summer to complete. The project will include a small book that documents the process of creating the scene.

We will need to learn several toolsets:
1. Blender : A free 3D modeling application for building static mesh objects
2. UDK : Engine to create the world which will include blender objects.

There is an amazing 41 part tutorial on youtube that we've starting watching. I finished the first 4 parts today and was able to create a dinosaur. I think it looks more like a robotic squirrel but regardless, it was amazingly easy.

I need to figure out how to import the blender objects into UDK. It looks a bit complicated. You have to create the object and then a clipping model of the object that defines how it will be interacted with. I will start with something simple and then see if I can get it into UDK including textures on the object.

2 comments:

  1. I started seriously learning Blender about a month and a half ago in late April, also in preparation for Rift development. Personally, though there are many good video tutorials out there, I really like written instruction. This wiki was a great help to me starting out:

    Blender 3D: Noob to Pro

    I suggest all of Unit 1, and Unit 2 up until about Dice Modeling or so. After that it tended to fall apart a bit for me, but the introduction was super helpful.

    In about a month I've went from learning the very basics of Blender to full scenes, and right now I'm wrapping up my first human head model. I've tinkered with 3D since the DOS days (Strata Vision 3D!), but never very seriously, so I'm still very green. It's doable, so hang in there!

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  2. Those models looks good. I've been trying to learn as quickly as possible. I've been working through the tutorials from cgboorman which are really good. I've only watched 12 but I've learned a ton. I will look at the wiki you mentioned after that.

    I've also been working on understanding the easiest way to get blender meshes and textures into UDK. If you have a link to a great tutorial on that it'd be much appreciated. I have imported an FBX export into UDK. I saw a great tutorial on importing an ASE into UDK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63Wz0FoK2U0

    I have a feeling that high end game developers don't have to do as much work to move meshes into UDK when they use 3D studio tools such as Maya. But at a $3500 cost, that ain't gonna happen.

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