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I'm thinking about using Blender...

by Caleb Child · in Artist Corner · 11/13/2006 (11:36 pm) · 10 replies

A friend was talking to me about Blender, and I decided to check up on it. I thought it looked like a decent enough modeling program, and especially since it was free, I might like to use it for my Torque projects. I was learning Maya, but only the full version can export to Torque, so then I started with Milkshape, and it did not appear as if had the capacity to build models in the manner I am now accustomed to.

What I was hoping you people could tell me is what you have to say about blender, anything specific about what it can and cannot do, things I should look out for, things to be aware of. How does it compare to Milkshape, or to Maya?
Basically anything good or bad that you have to say about using blender for my DTS exporting, or anything else to keep in mind before I start learning to use it.

Thank you, I appreciate your sagely wisdom.
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Torque Owner Gustavo Munoz
#1
11/14/2006 (12:52 am)
Go for it, it is a really powerfull app. And it works very well for dts files. Search for videotutos here and at the blender site, there is very good info.

Torque Owner Hadoken
#2
11/14/2006 (5:46 am)
Blender is definetely a great modeling tool. In general, if you want to use it to create game objects it's probably much faster than anything else (although it takes a while to learn how to use it, it's got a quite original interface).
However, the blender to dts exporter is not as full-featured as, say, max2dts. Although it's a pretty good exporter, it does have some issues when it comes to more advanced stuff, such as having multiple textures per object etc. Maybe it's just me, but I don't think it's easy or even possible to create "complex" dts objects using the current exporter. It probably depends on what you need to do after all.

Scott Hsu-Storaker
#3
11/14/2006 (9:56 am)
I use it for everything and it was the main production tool we used on our just-completed project. It's not for everyone, as has been said, but it has served me very very well over the years. Here are a bunch of our tuts, some specific for Blender and Torque together:

www.lowpolycoop.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=9

There are a few tricks when it comes to transparency and mulitple textures ,but some can be worked around. It can't hurt to download and try it. Download some of our models if you just want to practice exporting if you'd like.

Scott

Torque Owner Redacted
#4
11/14/2006 (11:52 am)
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Torque Owner Benoit Touchette
#5
11/14/2006 (12:30 pm)
Joseph, can you send me that sample .blend cube. I'd be interested to see how that works. My email is in my profile.

Torque Owner Redacted
#6
11/14/2006 (12:34 pm)
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Torque Owner Redacted
#7
11/14/2006 (3:49 pm)
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Torque Owner Hadoken
#8
11/14/2006 (4:44 pm)
Thanks a lot for the example file Joseph, it's gonna be really useful!
I remember having some problems using this exporter with my last torque project but honestly my scene was quite complex (multiple armatures and materials for a single object) and while working with more basic objects was a piece of cake, exporting that scene got me some headaches. A friend of mine was doing something similar with max and apparently it was less painful.
However, that was quite a few months ago, so maybe it wasn't the latest version of the exporter

Torque Owner Redacted
#9
11/14/2006 (5:15 pm)
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Torque Owner Benoit Touchette
#10
11/15/2006 (5:16 am)
Thanks for the update :)