hi,
I'd like to learn stuff about rendering. I've downloaded blender and I've been using Gimp for about a year now so I know how to use that, but I'm not that good with blender. Can anyone give me tips? And it would be great if someone had some simutrans .blend files for me so I could edit them in blender.
Anime
Search the wiki... :-)
But I have for you:
http://en.wiki.simutrans.com/index.php/Creating_addons
On that page you find links to here:
http://www.blenderartists.org/
Looks like the link to the templates is outdated... I'll move this topic to the appropriate board to see if any of the current artists knows where they might be... :)
(not fussing at you, in case it sounds like it - I also forget to search sometimes :) )
There is an excellent article here (http://forum.simutrans.com/index.php?topic=2401.0) about making Simutrans graphics for Pak128.Britain. That includes links to two .blend examples. The best technique, I find, is simply to use the existing .blend files, save them under another file name, and alter what is already there, rather than trying to set up the lighting, scale and rendering settings again. If you would like more .blend files, I have a few from Pak128.Britain - send me a PM and I can e-mail them to you. The Hood has almost all of the .blend files used in Pak128.Britain, but he is currently away. If you need anything that I do not have, do send him a message and he can send you the files when he returns.
I learned most from here: Blender 3D: Noob to Pro (http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro).
It's an online wikibook with tons of examples and fair explanations. Don't try to make everything, but give it a quick read (pay attention to the first chapters, how to model and that stuff) and you'll learn much more that you will use to create addons ;)
You may also want to read carefully the skinning/texturing chapters. It's important because the skin is just how your model will finally look like; personally, I prefer UV-Mapping better than Texturing, but better try googling yourself :)
And remember, because, in Simutrans, the graphics are quite low resolution, don't spend ages modelling things in exquisite detail, only for most of that detail to be lost when you export it ;-)
Okay, I've got some new questions now :)
1. Can you also model regular pak 128 (not pak 128.britain) vehicles in Blender or do you need to colour them in with Gimp or Pixel paint?
2. How can I save my .blend files as a .png file?
1. I'm not sure - I have never tried. Pak128 is more heterogenous than Pak128.Britian, so probably, but you might need to adjust the lighting settings from the Pak128.Britain .blends.
2. Press F12 then F3. In the Pak128.Britain .blends, things are all set up already. If you are not using these, you might have to set up your own. You will need 8 rotations for vehicles and 4 for buildings, so you will need to export then rotate then re-export a number of times to get the requisite number of graphics. Then you will need to copy and paste them out into a .png file with the correct colour background and alignment.
1. Both. All my plane pak (and also some trains and ships...) was made by modelling the airplanes with blender (with a previous "hand-made" texture), then renderizing all 8 views. After that, I used ps (gimp for your case) to make last fixes as vehicle lights, windows and pixel corrections.
2. Press F10 until format tab appears in the bottom window. Adjust the render size to 128 for both width and height. There is also a combo that allows you to select the image output format; default is jpeg, you should choose png there. Then you can put together your png files using gimp, and take a look to Shades (you can get it from the Tools sub-forum) wich will help you a lot to post-process your composed images (great for adjusting alignment and special colors).