O2 light to Blender to O2 light

[Sanctuary]

original post removed considering there's now available thanks to the scripting work of Vektorboson a proper OFP P3D importer and exporter for Blender 2.49b

Available and fully working , coming directly from Vektorboson astounding forge of wonders .

Blender 2.49b Importer and Exporter for OFP P3D format

You can get the Blender 2.49b scripts from Vektorboson website :
https://bitbucket.org/vektorboson/blender_ofp/downloads

Get the tutorial with it that explain steps by steps how to use and the descriptions of the features.

If you have never used Blender, it's the occasion for you to download this more than awesome complete modelling/animating open source package with more features than you would dream, there are thousands of very well done tutorial (like this great one (http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Collections/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro)) to get you on level with the application.

Don't be afraid by the interface, it is much easier to learn and use than you think.
We could use this thread to help&hint about Blender if someone has questions.

Those Importer and Exporter scripts are only for use with Blender 2.49b
http://www.blender.org/development/release-logs/blender-249/
Available for download here :
http://download.blender.org/release/Blender2.49b/

Note : the latest version of Blender , less feature complete than 2.49b for now, is Blender 2.57b that you can get to learn the new interface too (but can't use Vektorboson import/export there) for when the new Blender version will become as feature complete as 2.49b.

You can have on your computer both version of Blender installed without a problem, they don't conflict.

[[APS]Gnat]

Wow ! Nice tut. Sanctuary
The Poly Reduction option is the 1 thing that really interests me here.
I guess I'm going to ask a silly question, know of any reason why this might not work for O2 for ArmA and ArmAII ?

[Sanctuary]

Actually, it should work even better as ArmA O2 can import .OBJ files cutting the need to work with Lithunwrap/P2MS/anim8or in the middle of the process of re-importing your Blender reworked model into O2.
(be sure to have your model with 1 UV mapped texture = 1 material so you don't lose the UV mapping).

And one of the original release of O2 had the 3DS export if i remember well, so if you use this O2 instead of their latest release, you can then remove the whole Lithunwrap/P2MS/anim8or as you can then export in 3DS from O2 and import it directly in Blender.

Hopefully, when the blender P3D import/export will be released all of this will be even easier.
The poly reduction script is completely awesome.

[TRexian]

Indeed, as a longtime Blenderhead, this is AWESOME. I've been playing with my own Blender -> O2 tutorial myself (keep procrastinating on it) and I'm happy to read your process.

I do export to OBJ, which then often requires reversing normals in O2, but the UV mapping is preserved. Do you have some tips on exporting to OBJ?

Also, at the risk of REALLY pushing this, can you do a pdf of the tut with the pics integrated? :)

Fantastic stuff!

[Sanctuary]

The Blender OBJ export is always reversing the normals for me, seems it can't be helped as i found it the nicest way to get the whole UV maps kept intact when leaving Blender. I always have to reverse the faces in O2, fortunately it seems to keep the smooth/sharp edges that was originally made in O2 too.

The settings i use for the export are in one of the tutorial screenshots.

The PDF is a good idea, didn't thought about that.

I did one with Open Office, i'm not very good at making PDF, but hopefully it is easier to read with the pictures included instead of linked (due to forum image limits).

You can get the PDF there :
http://www.mediafire.com/?zmzymqmy3uq

[Sanctuary]

Vektorboson has released his
Blender 2.49b Importer and Exporter for OFP P3D format
http://forums.bistudio.com/showpost.php?p=1608983&postcount=1

Meaning than the annoying method originally described in the 1st post (http://forums.bistudio.com/showpost.php?p=1608983&postcount=1) and later up to this one (with multiple file format conversions) is now thankfully obsolete, you can now import/export OFP P3D from Blender directly with UV, named selections and lods easily as explained in the tutorial you can obtain with the release.

I have used his alpha and beta scripts for a while, the recent M202A1 (http://forums.bistudio.com/showpost.php?p=1902706&postcount=269) and some of the WW4 weapons are made with Blender and have been exported with his script.

1st post (http://forums.bistudio.com/showpost.php?p=1608983&postcount=1) have been remade with the download links and informations. So go and read the 1st post (http://forums.bistudio.com/showpost.php?p=1608983&postcount=1) of this thread.

I hope it will get some of you to use Blender, it's a very impressive modelling/animation and more open source package that is very close to professional (and much expensive) professional applications.

The Blender Fundation with the years have made some CG open movies to showcase the capabilities of their Blender, that you can watch here :
Elephant's dream (http://orange.blender.org/download)
Big Buck Bunny (http://www.bigbuckbunny.org/index.php/download/)
Sintel (http://www.sintel.org/wp-content/content/download.html)

We could use this thread to discuss hints&tricks for Blender in case some people are using it and are interested.

[f00bar]

Hi Sanctuary,

I am amazed by the amount of work that both
you & Vektorboson have put into making these
blender resources available.

The PDF looks great & is a lot easier to follow than
forum posts.

As both a 3D modelling software & addon making novice
I wanted to ask you some questions about O2 & Blender:

* Is it better to invest my time to learn a lot about O2
& then move to Blender?

* Should Blender be used to do the majority of the modelling
with O2 used for the OFP specific tasks that Blender cannot
accomplish?

I am finding that the learning curve for O2 is steep, mainly
due to translation issues & the lack of context sensitive help
which requires constantly referring to notes & other documentation.

Blender also seems like it will take a considerable amount of time
to learn the basics.

In your experience, what would be the best starting point & what
would be the most efficient use of my time?

[Sanctuary]

In my opinion, if your goal is to make models for OFP, it is important to learn the O2 basics (http://ofp.gamepark.cz/_hosted/brsseb/tutorials.htm) first so you're not going to be lost when you'll need to work on finalizing your P3D (memory lods, hit point lods etc...) and quick fix whatever selection/vertices/faces you may notice during the process.

Then you can move to learn Blender that is much superior to O2 light due to the extreme amount of modelling tools that simply are not available in O2 light (either they're removed from the "light" version of O2, or just never were a part of the program).
You should be able to model things not only more easily but even quicker.

Blender additionally provide very good UV mapping tool for your texture, much better than O2 "gizmo mapping" in my opinion.

And finally about the help, the Blender community is very large and lively as it's a very successfull piece of open source package, it's not an obscure program none use.
There are literally thousand of tutorial and video to follow to learn every bits of tricks and techniques you would imagine, and many community website dedicaced to Blender.

Blenderartists (http://www.blenderartists.org/forum/) by example feature a support section in which you will always find someone helping you on your modelling/texturing/animation/sequencing/scripts/etc... problems.
It makes learning Blender much easier than learning O2 light (that has only a couple of tutorial for beginners)

Additionally if later you're interested by more than OFP or more than just modelling Blender has lots of other functions to cover nearly anything you can do in 3D creation similarly to packages like 3DS Max or Maya

By example here's a little video i made for fun in Blender using a model i sculpted in Sculptris then retopologized/UV mapped/normal baked in Blender and for which i loaded a motion capture animation :
http://vimeo.com/20670061

And i must say i'm far from a Blender expert, people mastering Blender are able to do real wonders with this program (as shown in the short CG movies from the Blender Fundation).
Here's by example a nice short Blender showcase from a very experienced Blender user that got everything from this video modelled/textured/animated/rendered inside of blender :
http://www.vimeo.com/15598596

[Macser]

* Should Blender be used to do the majority of the modelling
with O2 used for the OFP specific tasks that Blender cannot
accomplish?
If Sanc doesn't mind I'll butt in on that point. :)

Creating a model from scratch is possible in blender.
You can build it,unwrap and map it.You can also create Res/View lods
without completely destroying mapping.You can put in your point based
lods and even do good skin weighting.

You need O2 to apply mass,re-path textures to accomodate Pac/Paa,and
rename lods.And of course named properties.

But creatively speaking,Vektor's scripts allow you to stay in the Blender
environment until you're ready to finalize for OFP.

[f00bar]

@Sanctuary:
your ogre animation was impressive & your
animations look very natural.
The dancer/martial artist movie was very
fluid & hypnotic ;)

I'm slowly making my way through brsserb's O2 tutorials
which are a huge help in navigating the program. I've
read through them several times but I keep needing to go
back to them for reference.

Speaking of brsserb's tutorials, I found a blender video
tutorial which is very similar to his "Lesson 3 -
Making your first weapon".

The person who made the blender tutorial is able to
produce a rifle model in less than 30 minutes from a 2D
template image:

Blender beginner tutorial. How to make a barrett .50 cal
http://youtu.be/yLkEkl3NbZM

Part 2:
http://youtu.be/tKqHSTLO3aY

Part 3:
http://youtu.be/vZJAgwxeT4k

@Macser: thanks for the info!

[Sanctuary]

@Sanctuary:
your ogre animation was impressive & your
animations look very natural.
It's not my animation, it's a freely available mocap animation made by the Carnegie Mellon University.
If i was able to do animation that smooth i would really be happy :D

Nice tutorials by the way, should be very usefull for learning blender.

[f00bar]

I did some playing around with Blender this
evening & I found the following useful links
for starting a model based on a photo or
other 2D image(s):

Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Modeling a Fox from Guide Images
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro/Creating_Models_With_Photo_Assistance

Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/2D Image (logo) to a 3D Model
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro/2D_Image_%28logo%29_to_a_3D_Model

These helped fill in some details that were not
apparent in the Barret .50 cal video tutorials.

[Sanctuary]

There is an electronic magazine for Blender being regularly published since 2005, it's free and can be downloaded by anyone, PDF format and often have some .blend file following the articles in the magazines with it.

http://blenderart.org/

Lots of interesting reading you can learn from on many Blender related subjects.

[Sanctuary]

Here's a collection of hints and tricks for Blender 2.49b from Macser and me that i put in PDF format for whoever this can help with attempts to detail the explanations for even beginner understanding and illustrating each of them with pictures.

Most of those usefull things to know are applicable in Blender 2.57b too, assuming you know where to find the buttons and functions that have moved elsewhere in the new interface.

http://www.mediafire.com/?lqdv83d3gaf9b7m
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=7V8H9700
http://www.sendspace.com/file/c1yjbw