Blender - creating vertices and building faces

Blender seems to be crashing when I select multiple faces of my test subject. I first import the 3DS file I created with MED's export using the default settings - it appears the way I expected. I then switch to UV face mode, select one face, hold the control key down, then select a second face and wham - Blender crashes. Is this that bug? It's happening every single time.

blender usually is really stable for me.

can you upload your test model? then i could test if it crashes for me too.

Here's the details, as screenshots:

Screenshot #1 - before the crash
Before the crash, this is what I'm seeing. After finishing the import of the 3DS file, I'm here in about 3 to 4 seconds. I right-clicked on the face as shown. When I hold the control key and right-click on the face clockwise from here (or any face at that), I get this:

Screenshot #2 - after the crash
These are the crash details I'm getting. Zonealarm Pro pops up a notice saying of Blender trying to access dwwin.exe, which seems to be the error-reporting console (as I once denied it and the error reporting thing didn't come up and Blender just closed). It's happening every single time I do this.

This is my simple test subject, one of which MED's UV mapping system is making it tricky to process properly.

strange, it doesn't crash for me. works fine here... what graphics card do you use? do you use the latest drivers?

i think instead of [control] you have to hold [shift] to select additional faces! does selecting all faces ([a] key) work?

Holding shift works, but using control (as it is with other programs) causes the crash to happen. I use Nvidia GeForce 7600 GT as the video card. The drivers are those from the CD, otherwise never updated (but should be fairly recent). Pressing the A key works just fine. It's as soon as I right-click (this should normally be left-click) on something while holding the control key. Normally, when selecting multiple objects, it's the control key. The shift key is used to select a range.

It seems like everything is backwards in Blender. It's left-click to select things and control to add/subtract to the selection, not right-click and shift. It's often messing me up as all other programs have it the opposite of what Blender is using (and Blender doesn't seem to remember the settings every time which adds to the annoyance as snapping is disabled and that sort of thing.

i could reproduce the crash now! try to delete the default cube before you work with your imported object. then it doesn't seem to happen anymore! [ctrl+click] somehow seems to wrongly pick the cube although it shouldn't. i will file a bug report.

but you have to use [shift+click] in uv/face select mode anyway!

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[file -> save default settings] saves your default settings (but also the scene so maybe do it with an empty or the default scene).

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yeah, some things are a bit quirky in blender. some of the behaviour can get changed in the preferences and to some things you would get used to quickly. for the next version they plan to do a complete event system overhaul so you will be able to customize all key bindings.

Now that I've resolved this crash issue, I'm now trying to figure out how to apply a UV map to it, a top mapping in my case. I've figured out how to add a texture file, one of my old BMP files. I've searched for a way to create a UV map and there doesn't seem to be a way of doing it, at least from what I've seen.

with your faces selected press "u". experiment with what option works best for you. make sure you are in top view if you want to project from top.

I've used every option and nothing is appearing. If it was working, I'd see the object as green, not white. By the time I could have this solved with Blender, I could've already manually processed about 150 to 200 skin vertices using my only known method - punching a lot of numbers into calculator and manually setting skin vertices one by one in MED's skin edittor. It's still nothing compared to 2000+ for hundreds of models.

do you have an uv/image editor window open too so that you see what you are doing? and are you sure that you have applied the image correctly?

sure it takes you longer now but once you have figured it out you very likely will be a lot faster with blender.

No, I don't have a UV/image edittor window open as I don't know where it is. This user-interface is much more confusing than that of MED. This is what I'm doing:

Screenshot #1 - I select the faces using the shift key to select them. Having noticed the top view was on "user" instead of "top" as I expected it to be, I set the view mode as needed.

Screenshot #2 - After having it selected to top, I place the mouse cursor in the top view and press the U key as you told me to. A menu comes up. The option I choose is the one highlighted. I've tried the others without success.

Screenshot #3 - Upon creating the UV maps (supposedly), and pressing the A key to have nothing selected, I get this, no texture or anything. I checked to make sure it was in textured mode and that isn't the issue. It appears as if the UV map didn't get created at all.

Screenshot #4 - As a guide, this is what it should be, as from in MED.

It took me about 20 minutes to texture it properly because of the faulty design of MED awkwardly stretching everything. That's why I'm looking for other alternatives to the UV map creation. I do this, in MED, in order to do what I'm after (after creating the UV map):

1. I first select one of the vertices, usually in a north-south, top-bottom, or west-east direction in order.
2. I next take note of the position of that vertex. Depending on the view, the positions I take vary some. For a top view, as I've been after, I take the X position and copy the whole thing.
3. I take out calculator and paste this number into it and multiply by 4, the texture scale I want (which simulates 0.25 in WED).
4. I copy the result I got in calculator and paste it to the X position of the skin vertex.
5. I repeat steps 2 through 4 for the Y position.
6. I repeat steps 1 through 5 for each vertex in the skin mapping until everything is done.

In a good run, I could do 3 or 4 vertices per minute, not much on this model. But, for landscapes and things with 2000+ vertices, it's a real nightmare to use this method.

sorry, i don't quite get your med workflow description otherwise i could do a short blender video tutorial for you.

you could upload the final textured med object. maybe i can figure out what you want to do by looking at your uv-map.

I've explained it very well in my feature request here.

Picture adding a block in WED and texturing it. By default, the texture scale is 1. If I drop it down to 0.25, it simulates exactly what I'm after with models. Look at the screenshots in this example to help understand. To give some examples:

1. I have a model that is 16x16 quants and a single skin of the size 1024x1024. When I select this and if it's the only thing there, the area the skin vertices spans is the entire 1024x1024 texture space and it looks so fine, there's no meaning in using it. If it was a series of 16x16-quant squares in a 2x2 grid with only one selected, the skin vertices would then span 512x512 in the corner of the square I selected. If I have a part of a model far out (like 16384 quants) and I'm trying to texture a 16x16-quant area, the area covered on the skin map would be so small, you'd have to zoom in to at least 4x (and even there it's very tight) in order to reliably manipulate it.
2. Now let's say I have a model that is 4096x4096 quants in a square with a texture size of only 64x64. When I create the UV map, the texels are just downright huge (as if setting the texture scale on a WED block to 64!). No matter how it is adjusted, the entire texture area is used without any overlap. If I raised the size of the texture to 256x256, it'd use a 256x256 area instead giving a 16x texture scale (still huge). If I used a 16384x16384-quant model square on a 64x64 texture, it'd still use the 64x64 size making a WED texture scale equivelent of 256. Imagine seeing each texture pixel as 256 quants. It doesn't even look like anything usable. Now, if I moved the skin vertices to 4096x4096, the size of the original model, the texture would tile 64 times and would look like WED's texture scale of 1. In my case, what I'm after, would be moving them to 16384x16384 to get the 0.25 scale (WED equivelent) which would look very fine and is what I'm after. The further apart the skin vertices are, the finer the texture appears. The spring as shown in the 4th screenshot in my most recent reply above uses this 0.25 texture scale. If a vertex was at (8, 8), I'd place the skin vertex at (32, 32) and otherwise just multiply everything by the same scale factor. With odd positions, like 3.2894417, this is where I need to use calculator.

Why can't I just use the scale tool? It's very inaccurate and doesn't scale properly (and when things are stitched together, there is a noticable texture misalignment.

The concept is easy to use - just multiply the positions of the vertices as per the mapping type for placing the skin vertices. Someone else gave me a small plug-in that otherwise does this, but skin vertices aren't affected at all, but the actual model's mesh is (which is helpful). It's the default system for positioning the skin vertices that's the problem - it scales covering the area of the model to the area of where the object is placed and it causes very strange values to occur in very unusual ways and the scaling is set on each axis rather than being proportional causing odd distortions. I don't know if the user who gave me that would mind me posting it as a reference for manipulating the skin vertices. It seems as if the SDK doesn't even allow that and it only seems to apply to that of the 6.31 version.

in blender you can easily scale the uvs by entering a precise number. there also are various ways to do mappings which prevent distortions. if i understand you correctly this is what you are after?

if you upload the spring example with final uv-map i can show you how to achieve the same mapping in blender.

I can prevent the starting distortions by using a square-shaped area set to a power of 2 (that's what that odd square-shaped thing is in my sample - it's to keep things proportional, but still, it doesn't go any larger than the actual texture area initially. With this set proportionally, I can simply move the skin vertices to the top left corner so nothing is below 0, but at least one vertex on each axis is equal to 0 and from there, I'd just multiply the skin vertex positions by a set scale, which, due to MED always having it within the texture, would be a power of 2 so I get the 4x multiplier factor. To prevent the odd positioning thing, I have to create a group. Since MED has a bug in it in that I can't build faces if the vertices used to make the face with spans multiple groups (I've reported this since 6.40.2 was out and it hasn't been fixed yet along with a host of other bugs in MED that I've reported and haven't been fixed (want me to name some of them?)) To work around this, I have to select all groups and merge them (and MED has crashed twice upon doing so already)).

Anyway, here's that spring sample: Download - 3 KB ZIP file. Because the spring itself is 16x16 quants on the top view, a 64x64 texture would cover the entire thing quite well and with both being a power of 2, it's much easier. Let's say I wanted a 2x texture scale instead of this 4x texture scale. For this, I'd just divide each skin vertex's position by 2 to get it.

Edit: springgreen.zip, not greenspring.zip

i would unwrap this a bit differently (is this the final wanted uv-map in your example?). a planar mapping isn't that great for cylindrical objects but of course in med this isn't really possible in a better way.

so would you be interested in a video of how i would do it in blender?

In my case, planar mapping is what I seem to prefer. Although I do have spheres and things like that where other types of mappings are better, almost all of my cases seem to use planar mapping, or whatever MED uses.

As to the video, that depends. It seems as if I don't have a lot of codecs and often can't view videos because of it, uncompressed (but zipped up (the bzip2 algorithm in Winzip works very well with videos - my videos from my animations compress better than 2000:1 in some cases)) is my best method at the moment. If otherwise, a series of many screenshots would be useful.

i would do a short flash animation like the tutorials in my signature.

Please don't use flash - I don't want to have to install the flash plug-in in Firefox or use any other browser. Flash often has sounds and those types of ads are ultra annoying and I'd rather go without it.

i have disabled flash in firefox for the same reasons but just for watching the video you could use ie. i don't have and want to use any other software to capture videos.

Well, like you have in this thread, screenshots are useful. I don't know what I'm doing wrong to cause UV maps to not get created. I have, however, found out how to get the UV map window visible, but it replaces either the 3D view or the the second view. Although there is a third view (the very bottom area where all those buttons are), it doesn't seem worth "replacing". How do you manage to get the vertical splitter? From the start, I'm only able to get one more additional view added. One of your screenshots has 5 items - I only get up to 3....

ok, then just some hints:

• to split a window right click at a border of the window. if you click on a vertical border you can split windows horizontally, if you click on a horizontal border you can split windows vertically. like you see in the appearing pop up menu you can also join them again of course.
  
  
• with the leftmost button on a window header you can set the type of the window.
  
  
• you got the uv window visible? good! it's very helpful! best try to make a window layout like in my above screenshot. one uv window and one 3d view in face select mode.
  
  
• in the uv window load your textures (image -> open). the texture will get assigned to the currently selected faces.
  
  
• in the 3d view window header you can set the draw mode to textured.
  
  
• then you can either do projections like in med, or use the more advanced unwrap function (i will explain the unwrap function later).
  
  
• to do projections, select the wanted faces, press "u" and select the projection method. also make sure you are in the right view (top, side,...) since many projections types depend on it. experiment with that a bit...
  
  
• in the uv window you can select your uvs and move [g], scale [s] or rotate [r] them. to select all linked uvs of a selected uv press [l]. during move, scale or rotate mode you can also input numbers. use [tab] to jump to the next input field. also try out [view -> properties].
  
  

i hope this helps so far? if not just keep asking...

I've got the texture now imported and from all those tests trying to create a UV map, I have a *huge* mess in the UV map window. I have polygons going in every which direction imaginable criss-crossing in several weird ways making it utterly impossible to tell what face is what without selecting them individually. How do you completely erase the UV maps so I can start over? This mess was funny-looking so I snagged a screenshot of it:

Screenshot #5 (~316 KB) - The huge mess with the UV map window. Lines from faces are going in every direction possible all tangled up and criss-crossing each other in such a jumbled up mess.

hm... looks like you did something wrong. i don't know what you did but maybe you should try to do one thing after another and not all faces at once.

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to start over either select all faces ([a]), press "u" and select "reset 1/1".

or set the lower window to be a button window, press [f9] to show the edit buttons and then in the mesh panel press the texface [delete] button. i think this also deletes the texture assignments though.

I used the "reset 1/1" thing as you said and things did get "cleaned up", however, the UV map is still present. Using the texface delete button apparently did help, but the UV map is still there. As long as it doesn't delete the actual BMP file I was using (I've got like 5 or 6 backups of it anyway).

Blender's interface is a lot more confusing than MED's at a glance, and as you start with it, but I can say that after having used both, that Blender is far superior. Even having keyboard shortcuts makes everything quicker.
Plus, you get all the features in one free package - I only have 3DGS Extra, so no bones in MED. Blender does bones, all sorts, physics, fluid simulation... all right, I'll stop advertising
Blender is very flexible, at the cost of being more confusing.

I find that for UV mapping, I just select the faces, then rotate the camera so they appear as I want them UV mapped, then unwrap them in the 'from window' mode. Lets you do large numbers of faces easily and accurately.

i just started using blender, and it's great! rips med! learning quickly with the "noob to pro" tutorial (under documentation).
trouble is, they all say to use "u" to do the UV thingy, but its just doing "undo". how do i fix this? i'd rather use ctrl+z for undo (which also works) and u for UVs.

any help?

thanks guys,

julz

Are you in the UV face select mode?

lol, no! thanks for the quick help! silly me

another question: how do i choose my own "default" window layout for ever time it starts? (instead of changing it manually every time). i've got a laptop with a little touchpad, so it can get quite tedious editing all the windows myself.

thanks again,

julz

Set it up like you want it, then go to File > Save default settings. However, it will also save any objects in the scene as default as well, so clear everything out before saving defaults.

ah, thanks guys!

i'm loving blender

did this to just figure some stuff out: (thought i might as well show it)



low image quality but this isn't showcase stuff anyway

julz