Extra NG

[uncle twist]

Keep at it Andy, you`ll get it dialed in.

 

[Mikeymike21]

Looks great!

 

[asj5547]

The Extra NG looks incredible, excellent work.

 

[abaser]

Quick update. I had a little time tonight to mess around with this, even though I thought I was taking the night off from it. For the most part, I can now get it to import into RF relatively in tact and the correct colors at least, but I can not get the smoothing groups to come along with the file. I've tried every possible setting I can think of in Blender to export them, and have tried the .fbx converter and converted from binary to ascii. I'm honestly at a loss for anything else I can try on my own. So, if there's any experienced Blender users out there that would like to share their settings, or possibly a small test file, please inbox me.

 

[abaser]

The Extra NG looks incredible, excellent work.

Thanks, but you haven't seen it on your screen yet in RF. The screenys don't do it justice on how bad it really looks.

 

[technoid]

What's that saying. It's always darkest before the light. You'll get there.

 

[abaser]

What's that saying. It's always darkest before the light. You'll get there.

It’s getting pretty dark over here my friend.

 

[technoid]

It’s getting pretty dark over here my friend.

Yeah I've been there I know what you mean. Maybe legoman will see this and chime in on it.

 

[legoman]

in blender I use a edge split modifier so edges with more than a 30 degree "breakover angle" get split as well as any edge I have marked as hard. (the angle is adjustable). I also make sure the roughness is 0.00 on the materials. RF does not handle it right, it was messing up the colors alot. on export under Geometery there is a smoothing option normal typically works.

I use 2.82a and I know things change so let me know if anything is not right or confusing. fell free to use @legoman to get my attention sometimes i will just skim threads and look at the picture or click mark server read on the non designers corner subforums

 

[abaser]

in blender I use a edge split modifier so edges with more than a 30 degree "breakover angle" get split as well as any edge I have marked as hard. (the angle is adjustable). I also make sure the roughness is 0.00 on the materials. RF does not handle it right, it was messing up the colors alot. on export under Geometery there is a smoothing option normal typically works.

I use 2.82a and I know things change so let me know if anything is not right or confusing. fell free to use @legoman to get my attention sometimes i will just skim threads and look at the picture or click mark server read on the non designers corner subforums

Thank you. Looks like I’m real close on settings. About the only thing I see different is the edge split modifier. I’ll definitely give that a shot. If I’m not mistaken I’m using the same version of blender or at least very close to it.

 

[abaser]

Well, it's getting closer at least. I applied the edge split modifiers and set sharp edges on a few parts just to see if I could tell a difference in the ones I didn't define the ES mod. I can definitely see the difference. The cowling and spinner have something funky going on, but I'll deal with that once I get this other lined out. Thanks for the help logoman. I owe you one.

 

[uncle twist]

Glad to see you`re getting things figured out Andy....

 

[abaser]

I'm still slowly chipping away at getting this imported. No real progress to show, but it's getting there. I've found a bit more bad geometry that needs taken care of, and just a few more parts to finish smoothing. Once the geometry is fixed I'll have to remap (oh joy). I think while I'm at it I'll go ahead and add the pilot to the map as well.

 

[abaser]

Started playing with a design idea this morning. Not quite married to it though so thought I'd ask opinions. Go with an original like this, or copy a released design?

Things have been going quite slowly lately. I've had problems with both gimp and blender on this file. It's almost like it's not meant to be. The big issue I'm dealing with currently is if I associate the .tga to the model, blender immediately shuts down and the file will not reopen after that. I've had to revert back to more than one previously saved files because of this. Thankfully, I do a lot of incremental saving so I haven't lost too much. However, I've got to get this figured out in order to attach the .tga to the model and import into RF. Currently I'm using a tga. Gimp on the other hand just refused to open all together and I had to reinstall it a couple times to get that lined out.

 

[technoid]

Started playing with a design idea this morning. Not quite married to it though so thought I'd ask opinions. Go with an original like this, or copy a released design?

Things have been going quite slowly lately. I've had problems with both gimp and blender on this file. It's almost like it's not meant to be. The big issue I'm dealing with currently is if I associate the .tga to the model, blender immediately shuts down and the file will not reopen after that. I've had to revert back to more than one previously saved files because of this. Thankfully, I do a lot of incremental saving so I haven't lost too much. However, I've got to get this figured out in order to attach the .tga to the model and import into RF. Currently I'm using a tga. Gimp on the other hand just refused to open all together and I had to reinstall it a couple times to get that lined out.

It looks good to me.

 

[uncle twist]

That CS/design looks real nice, I especially like the shadow effect on it. you could also release a diff. CS later if you desire. I hope you get your issues figured out with it, it`s definitely cool plane. I`d really consider doing a CS on it. ...

 

[abaser]

It took a little time tonight, but I finally got my issues resolved in blender. Only thing I can figure out is the last time I saved my .tga, something went wrong in the save process and corrupted both my .tga file and gimp causing the startup issues there. With the .tga file being corrupt, it was causing blender to crash. I ended up going back to an autosave file from my last modeling session and reassigning the newest .tga file and all was well again. Once that was resolved, I did a little more work on the CS. I went back and made the checkerboard squares larger, and I think that looks much better, but I need to adjust the drop shadows a bit to make them match their respective parts.

 

[uncle twist]

Whew..!! glad to hear your issue is resolved, I sure hope that`s the end of it, and yes the bigger checkerboard does look better IMHO. The drop shadows really give it a 3D look, I love it.!!. Is it a tool/feature in GIMP ??, I seem to recall a tutorial explaining it ? I could be wrong though..

 

[technoid]

Oh yes it looks much better now. It's good to hear you found the problem and fixed it.

 

[abaser]

Whew..!! glad to hear your issue is resolved, I sure hope that`s the end of it, and yes the bigger checkerboard does look better IMHO. The drop shadows really give it a 3D look, I love it.!!. Is it a tool/feature in GIMP ??, I seem to recall a tutorial explaining it ? I could be wrong though..

It’s a filter. You select an area, go filter >lights and shadows > drop shadow and set the parameters. It’ll generate and create a new layer. In the newer gimp versions it’ll give a preview which helps dial it in, but that’s also the version that screwed me.