Black Friday Event

It appears that even model traders have a Black Friday now. CGTrader and Sketchfab are both in the mix, may as well take advantage of the event!

On a side note, you can find the 3D printable Norman helmet I made in the Youtube tutorial on Cults3D, download here.





I am going to be making regular videos on Youtube as soon as my new mic arrives from Amazon. 



Please bear with me while I update this site. It has been neglected due to being involved in way too many things at once.

Wings and other things

This week in Wings and other things.


This week I got to look at a great new tool that is being coded for Wings3D by Micheus Vieira from the Wings3D team. 

He's calling it the curve tool, but I believe it will be much more than that. I saw screenshot examples of what it can do, and a short video of it in action.

Personally, I'm very excited at the thought of getting my hands on it when it's completed and bug tested so that I can waste a day or two twisting ready mapped cylinders into rope!

I also managed to add a couple of chapters to my new book that's all about UV mapping and other related subjects and made a few tutorial videos for YouTube

And now it's time to get back to writing. The Stitch command is on my list of things-to-do.

Simon.

Wings and other things

This week in Wings and other things

It was brought to my attention recently that Wings3D was being used by more communities than I was aware of so I decided to do a little article on the subject which can be found here.

I've extended the article to include a few other games that you might not know that you could use Wings3D for as well. Check it out.

I have also been told this week that the guys at Wings3D, namely Micheus, has a nif exporter on his "to-do" list. This is something I am very excited about as nif files are used extensively by Bethesda's Elder Scrolls series, and also Fallout and some other games such as the Star Trek RPG.

Meanwhile, the Battle Siege Royale game by Skjold Game Studios has taken a turn in its design. 

Real maps are now being used by extracting the terrain and height information from satellite images and imported into the Unreal engine.

This is also being used for the castle information, although sadly this is only useful for positioning and layout. The castles aren't quite in the same condition as they were 800 years ago, so some embellishment and guesswork have had to be employed.

All this said, Wings3D is still heavily used in the development of the models for the game along with Maya and Substance Painter and a myriad of other software.

UV mapping. A nightmare to behold.

As any modeller will tell you, the biggest nightmare we face is UV mapping our finished model.

Well, they're wrong. The biggest nightmare you can face is writing about UV mapping your finished model!

The above was mapped by hand using Wings3D UV editor and textured using Substance Painter.

I've tried all the software out there, free and paid for, and I still haven't found anything that beats doing it all by hand. 

Hopefully, my new book (when finished) will provide some tips and tricks to allow you to complete this task with a little less head pain.

Today I will be fighting writing about cone shapes. Just think how much fun I have on a Friday afternoon and be jealous!