Fredrik Hansson

there is a setting under user preferences -> input called emulate 3 button mouse that lets you use alt instead of the middle mouse button to rotate the viewport it might be off by default. if it just won't work just use the middle mouse button + ctrl and shift to rotate move and zoom the viewport.

using blender myself and i must say that it works quite well with Le its a bit tricky the first time you export to get the materials and animation speed right but all you need to do is to go into blenders animation settings and set the fps to 30 instead of the default 25 and assign a image with the material name in the uv/image editor to the mesh and its all good even 2.5 works now with its fbx exporter tho you need to export to the same harddrive as your .blend file. now as for the modeling+rigging tools inside of 3dsmax vs blender i have used max from v1.0 until around a year ago or so and i really don't want to go back i work much faster in blender than in max and theres really no features i miss from max other than the shell modifier unless i use 2.5 where they have added something similar

its quite simple actually just make sure that the open ends of your meshes line up and are on a grid line. you can set the grid spacing in the view properties to something that is easy to place in the editor (min 0.1 units) as for the lining up part just move the meshes into place or for places like an T intersection press alt d to make a clone of the surrounding parts and move + rotate them into the openings so you can match up the verts. you can also turn on vertex snapping so its easier to move verts so they match.

updated version with a small bugfix

actually planning on "printing" this using my cnc mill well more carve from a few pieces of wood or plastic but the machine will do it for me

getting myself distracted again... luckily this might be helpful as some training on animation/posing

heres a quick video of how far i have gotten in the code section of my game so far

File Name: Office Chair File Submitter: Fredrik Hansson File Submitted: 17 Feb 2010 File Updated: 10 May 2011 File Category: Models Triangles: 1934 LOD Versions: No License: © Fredrik Hansson Free for noncommercial use the collision on this is a bit off in 2.3 making it fly away in some random direction when interacting with the player controller but seem to be working just fine in 2.31 Click here to download this file

the first number would be the imported files size and the second would the file size it expects for the current terrain size

i see some pretty bad collapsing of the knee area in that last image take a look here might help some with that http://wiki.polycount.net/Limb_Topology

same rig as before just added some more shapes to the control bones to make it easier to work with. oh and he has found his gun so i better go hide under a rock now

spent some time today fixing up the rig i made for this guy had a horrible ik rig before but its much nicer now with some extra controls for foot roll/tumble. still have to get some better controls setup for the hands + head and if i knew how to the spine but i can live with doing that part using fk

thanks guys now i just finished my "lowpoly" for the head at 3007tris and a 2048 normal+diffuse map and rendered in the editor using just 2 lights maybe a bit on the higher end for how many triangles for just a head but i guess it depends on the final target way to much for the game im making but this was just for fun anyway and i have been a bit curious on how to do facial rigs so might give that a try after i finish the texture the hair is just a single color and the eyebrows are a bit to strong as they are right now.

here is a little something i have been working on for a few days just to cure some boredom might use him later. i do plan on making a lowpoly version and seeing how to best do the skin so it looks good without any specific skin shader. and heres something i plan on sharing once i can get rid of the collision issues i seem to be having with it and finally some of the stuff i have moved into the engine for my game still have to animate the alien there but im going to wait untill blender 2.5 can export proper fbx files

you really should look over those shoes they look way to square (the sole shape part) and his feet look kinda huge looks great otherwise

had some troubles with something similar myself a few days ago and i found it easiest to first copy the main objects rotation into a temporary variable then set the rotation to 0,0,0 create the hinges and finally rotate things back i first tried to calculate the new up vector for the hinge but it was just to much trouble compared to this heres parts of the code i used for getting the hinges to work on mine self.seat=LoadModel("abstract::office_rollerchair_seat.gmf") Rot=self.model:GetRotation(1) self.model:SetRotation(Vec3(0,0,0)) self.joint = CreateJointHinge( self.model, self.seat,self.seat:GetPosition(1),Vec3(0,1,0)) self.model:SetRotation(Rot) self.seat:SetRotation( self.model:GetRotation(1),1 ) self.seat:SetPosition( self.model:GetPosition(1) )

just to clarify the material name you get in the gmf using the fbx exporter is the same as the imagename you have assigned in the uv/image editor and the blender materials are completely ignored so i usually just select the parts that need that material and create a new 32x32 image with the name i want and export and then do it for the other parts aswell

you can find it in one of the older sdk versions i know 2.13 have it

obj should work just fine but you need to put an edge split modifier on top of the mesh since blender don't really have any smoothing groups preferably with edges set to sharp (ctrl+e with an edge selected) or click the export normals might help. on the other hand the fbx exporter seems to be working quite well with leadwerks so might be better anyway especially since it works with animated meshes aswell

File Name: Automatic Converter and .gmf xnormal tangetspace calculator File Submitter: Fredrik Hansson File Submitted: 25 Jan 2010 File Updated: 17 Mar 2010 File Category: Tools and Utilities AssetBuilder.exe this tool detects any changes in a folder and runs any custom command on that file if the format exists in filters.txt it might convert the file twice the first time you save a file like a psd in photoshop but usually just a single time if it would do it twice every time hold f8 while saving to get the file options dialog again and increase the delay timer value and it should filter out those multiple file changes that it detects one warning however never make a filter that converts to a format that exist in the filters.txt so making one that goes fbx2gmf results in a .gmf and if you then make a filter that runs gmffixer you get an infinite loop of file changes. GMFFixer.exe takes any existing gmf file and recalculates the tangetns to match the ones in xnormal (normalmap settings = +x -y +z) GMFfixer.exe filename.gmf fbxfixer.exe converts any fbx file first by the fbx2gmf.exe from the sdk then runs the same calculation as gmffixer.exe has mainly made for use with the assetbuilder.exe since that only takes a single command per format fbxfixer.exe C:\LeadwerksSdkDir\Tools\fbx2gmf.exe filename.fbx // edit:17/03/10 fixed a bug where holding down F8 to change options for a file would cause all files after that to also popup the dialog Click here to download this file