Tutorial- from Blender to Leadwerk's Scene Editor

[afecelis]

Hi guys, long time no see.

I had some spare time today, and I saw several threads asking about how to create scenes for LE, so I thought this quick intro could be useful:

part 1:

part 2:

 

For those using other 3d applications, it's still useful as long as you can export to obj.

 

cheers,

Alvaro

[afecelis]

Big version on Vimeo

 

[Marleys Ghost]

Thanks for that afecelis, I will take a look at that later

[Niosop]

Great tutorial I really think that Blender should be at the top of the list of modeling programs people should look at. It's insanely powerful and FREE! Plus, any tutorials we do for Blender can be used by anyone, where as 3DS,Maya,etc tutorials can only be used by those that either have the program or can afford to buy it.

[afecelis]

Thanks for commenting guys. I'm glad you find the tut useful. I also think blender is a very powerful 3d application and little by little it's gaining a place among the different 3d fields, game dev included .

 

As a side note; I just tried the obj2gmf converter and it works fine, you just double click on it and then it asks for the .obj file to convert. The only thing, comparing the 2 objs created (the one from unwrap 3d and the one converted with obj2gmf) is that the shading looks different in the one converted with LE's tool, as if it had a weird shadow, similar to when you haven't smoothed your surfaces, whereas the file saved from unwrap3d displays just fine.

Obj2gmf version:

 

unwrap3d version:

 

I wonder what causes it.

 

regards,

Alvaro

[Niosop]

Could you try exporting from blender to fbx instead of obj and running the fbx2gmf converter to see the results?

[afecelis]

Nice tip! I just exported my mesh to autodesk's fbx using the following settings:

and using fbx2gmf, the file shows up just fine!

 

So another alternative and efficient workflow would be:

1. Model/texture in blender

2. Export to fbx

3. convert using fbx2gmf.

 

thanks again for the suggestion

Setting up the scene in the editor should be the same.

 

regards,

Alvaro

[Roland]

Thanks a lot for this very instructive video

Great work

[Niosop]

Yeah, I usually use FBX instead of OBJ for a final step because FBX preserves smoothing groups and mesh hierarchy properly.

[Fredrik Hansson]

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

[afecelis]

Indeed, but I'd rather do the fbx workflow; adding an edge split modifier may solve the obj smoothing issue, but duplicates a lot of vertices and adds unnecessary polycount to the mesh. It seems like fbx is a great format to work with LE, since as you say, it supports both static and animated meshes properly

Or, if your mesh is non-curve, setting its rendering mode to "solid" will do the trick with no extra vertex count.

[Niosop]

Yup. The only problem is you can't import fbx, but as long as you keep the .blend file around it's not a big deal.

[Marleys Ghost]

Got around to watching these this morning, very useful, Thanks again afecelis

[Josh]

Thanks for commenting guys. I'm glad you find the tut useful. I also think blender is a very powerful 3d application and little by little it's gaining a place among the different 3d fields, game dev included .

 

As a side note; I just tried the obj2gmf converter and it works fine, you just double click on it and then it asks for the .obj file to convert. The only thing, comparing the 2 objs created (the one from unwrap 3d and the one converted with obj2gmf) is that the shading looks different in the one converted with LE's tool, as if it had a weird shadow, similar to when you haven't smoothed your surfaces, whereas the file saved from unwrap3d displays just fine.

Obj2gmf version:

 

unwrap3d version:

 

I wonder what causes it.

 

regards,

Alvaro

 

The integrated model editor will be able to solve that problem, for most models.

[Josh]

This would make a great new resource:

http://leadwerks.com/werkspace/index.php?/page/index.html?do=add&category=1

[afecelis]

done!

Thanks for the link, I had no idea there was a place to put resources in.

 

regards,

Alvaro