I did not want to open a can of worms. I didn't want to get into the pros and cons of Blender. This forum is not about Blender. But the question of rendering models that we make in MOI came up and it's unavoidable, since MOI doesn't do rendering and that is often what modelers want as an end result. I tried to say that the problems that I've had with Blender are "personal"; I have to feel that way because I've seen too much great work done with Blender (the short video, 'Spring', is beautiful!). I don't think my difficulties are all related to the UI, but even the Blender faithful have been critical of the old UI, and this is why it has been completely redone in V-2.8. I looked at the older Blender and wouldn't go there because the UI was a mess; or I should say, too confusing to me. As soon as 2.8 was released, I got it and started watching tutorials. Anyone who rejected the old Blender should take a look at the new one. And there is another option. Apparently the in-group still thinks that the UI is not sufficiently user friendly, because they have just issued BlenderForArtists, which is (I think) an effort to attract those of us who were not born on Mars. Returning to my "personal" problems, I can only restate that I don't understand why the rendering is unacceptable. I selected the colors, made the paint shine, selected 'glass' for the canopy, added a 'sun' and a ground plane. The result wasn't even a bad joke. I added three more 'area lights', to bring out the dark (totally black) spots. Then I had unwanted light reflections in the body. I added other planes with patterns so that there would be something to reflect in the shiny paint. I had been proceeding on the assumption that after I had selected colors, materials, lights, ground and background that I would have something that only required fine tuning. Instead, I apparently have to start all over; but I can only do again what I did the first time, as I don't know what I did wrong. I'm only reiterating here for those newbies who are just getting into modeling. To me, the modeling is easy (with MOI). I don't think I'm alone in saying that it gets more difficult from there.
So,if all problems are related to render your vehicle,you should post your questions not here,in a modeling forum
my suggestion is always model in real scale from the beginning
when you export to a render platform,you need to have camera,distance from object all in coherent scale
As you can see it's just 128 millimeters,check in your Blender scene if all is in scale
It's a toy model or a real vehicle?
Dimensions in millimeters
I suggest you to get a solid without mirroring
Avoid patches like these
Else you have also this free one! (more classic) :) (Epic Games / Unreal)
(you have also free Twin Motion from Epic Games in absolute easy way : a fabulous one + cool interface and not headaches! )
(don't open the Youtube site of this guy! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHx1jeKRMi_wDAwvvhaIDYA/videos :)
Thank you Mauro! You may have found the problem. First, I did design everything to proper dimensions -- but in inches, not millimetres! You Europeans won't like this, but the fact is that sometimes the English system makes more sense than the French system. The first things that I had to draw were the wheels/tires. With a few exceptions (like the old 400-mm size, that my Citroen had, and works out to about 15.75-inches diameter) all tires are in inches. I chose 13-inches for the tires. I then had to decide to go with inches or centimetres, and I went with the former. What isn't much appreciated is that the crazy English system was based on Human Scale, and if you are designing something for people, it makes more sense. When I design an engine, it's always in millimetres. Now, to the problem of rendering. When I brought the model into Blender, it was Huge. I thought, okay, I'll just scale it down. I did 'Select All' and scaled it. Then I noticed that the camera was very hard to find because it got scaled down also! I thought that 'Select All' would mean only the model, not things like lights and camera. So I selected the camera and scaled it up. Things seemed okay at that stage so I went on to selecting colors, materials, etc. But you have me wondering. Maybe the rendering looks so bad because -- relative to what goes on with ray tracing -- I've reduced the model down to thumb-nail size! Now you guys haven't had the problem, but you started with the model and when you translated and brought it into Blender you probably didn't go through all that scaling nonsense. You see, you guys know what you are doing and I'm stumbling around in the dark. But now I at least have a theory as to why my rendering looks bad, and I can go back and see what I have to do to avoid scaling. But if this theory pans out, I have to wonder what sort of scale is "best". If the scale changes the look of the model, that is a question, and one that I never thought of. In reality, you have to change the scale by a huge factor before light behaves differently. But ray tracing is not reality. Okay, thanks to Mauro, I have things to try.
I do lurk here still-- mainly because I really like Michael and his program, though I seldom use it these days.
Here are a few quick renders of your "dymaxion" vehicle done in Blender. Note none of these 1920 x 1080 renders took longer than 3 seconds EEVEE (that includes volumetric effects, area lights with soft shadows, HDRI maps and DOF!)
Took about an hour to set it up-- much of it adding decals and modifiers to surfaces.
And for what's it's worth, I pretty much used all my EEVEE Materials System to quickly add materials. KIT OPS to add decals (the MOI 3D logo I did awhile back) and HDRI Haven for the HDRI. Judicious use of volumetric fog along with area and point lights combined with camera depth of field to create the atmospheric effects.
The new Blender is much easier than older versions, but yes, it is more difficult to learn it all. Consider though:
MoI3D and Rhino focus only on modeling.
Blender does:
- Modeling including non-destructive parametric: See NITROX3D
- UV Unwrapping
- Material creation
- Texture painting
- Sculpting (like Zbrush)
- Animation
- Real time rendering EEVEE and Path Tracing CYCLES
- Motion design
- Fluid simulation
- Particle effects
- Cloth effects
- Soft body effects
- Full compositor
- Full video editor
- (and I'm sure I'm missing something)
So, of course that's going to be harder. And for the Cinema 4D guys that think Blender is hard-- I think Cinema 4D is hard LOL!
Not to mention they literally update it every day-- and it's free-- and it's the most supported platform in the world with the most users-- many of them pros.
Lastly, check this guy out-- he's insane (and a huge Blender user).
His YT videos are fun to watch and take only a minute or two:
and that's because it was all rendered in EEVEE-- even the people. Literally all in realtime. Just amazing.
Check out what I mean. Watch as the girl is composited realtime in the 3D preview:
Alas a meter is now this! Very more explicite. :):):)
It is defined by taking the fixed numerical value of the speed of light in vacuum c to be 299792458 when expressed in the unit m⋅s−1, where the second is defined in terms of the caesium frequency ΔνCs.
Wow greats guys, I had a little busy time on duty, I love see that after all, here many using Blender and thanks Michael.
@chippwalters you made a nice one with awesome paint with flakes, very nice, with decal Is something that I wanted do, but now no more necessary and Mauro you gave a good help for most errors on model now Tim you have to take a time and shortly you can really render what you desire. :)
Pilou is the first resource for any help with moi3D, and your scripts are awesome, that I use every times, and without now is impossible, thanks very much for these.
And my last thought, don't lost your time with Blender For artist, is a fork not really different than standard and lacks in documentation and final users that can help you.
Thanks Chip. I really like the metallic blue. As for what I said about scaling, with more thought, I don't see that as the problem. When I brought the model into Blender it was much too large. Zoom out to see the whole thing and the camera becomes a tiny dot. All the tutorials that I've seen deal with little things (e.g. the monkey head) that are only a few units high. Obviously, a car has to be something like three orders of magnitude larger. The camera and the lights can't fit both scales. I'm still lost. But I'm very impressed with what you guys can do.
Being a noob like you in Blender i need to do some training
Vespa scooter was my very first render,but i used Blender Luxcore,now l try Cycles
Need a simplemodel, i used your -Uro- but modified :) :) :)
It reminds me the Blue Flame rocket vehicle,did the record speed in 1970 at Bonneville Salt Flats
These are my exercises:
use a background image and a simple floor
shadow catching with HDRI
solve unwanted reflection
trying different carpaints
achieve a transition color ramp
add decals
:) :)
You can use measure tool in Blender to check if your original dimension is the same inside Blender
I know URO in Moi is 4 meters so i check
Many thanks to Chipp BlenderGuru for the video !
@Franz
I build chairs and so I have a question:
Do you work at pade, balestrini, scm or greda?
Thanks Chip. I never dreamed that the default units in Blender were metres. That is one giant monkey! Your video certainly explains why my model started out so large when I brought it into Blender. However, I don't really care what the scale is or if it agrees in MOI and Blender. I'm only trying to render this one model, so the scale should be (?) irrelevant. What I was wondering about was if the scale affects the quality of the rendering. Also, because I inadvertently scaled the camera, I wondered if that would affect quality. I guess I should show you what my (personal) problem is. This is the best that I've been able to do. I specified 'Glass', but it doesn't show as such. And the 'Sun' doesn't produce anything like 'sunlight'. I had to add some area lights just to bring out some of the totally black areas of the model; and these reflect in the paint which gives the wrong effect. This is the best that I can do. I don't know what else to change as I have already specified what I want, and this is the result. Anyhow, as I said, this forum is not about Blender and I didn't offer this model to get into all this. But some of you have had fun with the model, so that's what matters.
Uro dim.jpg
