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Tag: Blender

  • 25000 polygons later… (Blender)

    25000 polygons later… (Blender)

    That was a bit unexpected, I got some serious optimisation to do!

    While trying to learn blender, I almost bar a few small things before it goes to the next stage, completed my tank wagon.



    It was an interesting project and the modelling took a week longer than I wanted, most of it is because I am trying to undo the way Max works as this is now muscle memory (GMAX which got me into modelling works way differently than Blender) and the unique ways that blender works. For example, the way you start an object in Blender requires working from primitives, I work mostly with splines in *max these days which is massively different. When I completed a spline, I can add a surface modifier or an extrude modifier. Blender so far, from what I noticed unless someone wants to leave a comment, you have to convert the spline to a mesh (curve in Blender) which means you can’t edit the spline once its a mesh without undoing everything, whereas in max, you have a modifier stack and you can go back several iterations to make a minor change

    Blender has more advantages though, it works on anything, I have it on my tablet, phone (as I am avoiding the iPhone at the moment), in fact, anything that includes OpenGL – that isn’t my remote desktop annoyingly. Plus Blender 5.0 completely changes the file format, making it incompatible with earlier versions apart from 4.5 LTS. Which means the version on my tablets is Version 3.6.22. Yeah, annoying. The version on Ubuntu ARM from what I tried is 3.0.1 from memory, which is even older!

    Getting it to work on my Windows On ARM laptop – the Lenovo Thinkbook X13s is a royal pain in the arse and requires some hackery and I’ve not tried the Mac yet.

    Max? If it runs Windows, it works. If it runs Wine, it doesn’t, even more frustrating as I have had 3D Studio Max 5 working for a demo in Wine – once. That’s it. Otherwise, Virtual Machine time for Windows. More space needed, more overheads for limited resources and more hopes and dreams needed. It does work without Open GL on the 2 old versions I’ve tried – and they work in a virtual machine.

    If you want to play with the source files, download below.
    (Download here – Google Drive)

    3 file formats included, blend (original), glb (used on this site) and FBX (if you fancy a different program as well as the blender iterations I went through. (3 of them)

  • More tank wagon progress!

    More tank wagon progress!

    I didn’t think I’ll get this far with Blender, but I am making progress.

    The “spur of the moment and I want to learn a new skill” thing is actually getting somewhere, once I got the hang of Blender.


    However, some bits have made it in that shouldn’t on export like the sky box, hence why there are a couple of things that most certainly shouldn’t be there. The polycount is also rather high for my liking. Now I am getting on with Blender, my next challenge is to buy an ARM based laptop for Linux and for a big reason, battery life as I spend more time away from a plug that actually on it. (Anyone like to help? Theres a donation button available)

    Hopefully, I’ll have this out in the next month when/if I finish it. There is already a space for it on the page.

  • Developing in Blender

    Developing in Blender

    This object is a tank full of trouble! Literally.

    It should be no secret that I am a MAX developer, I’m trained in it, I worked with it for years and well, it makes sense. So, I tried Blender, like I’ve been doing for years, I did have previous experience, but as in the future , I’d like to go over to Linux and therefore Blender, it would make sense for me to try it. I just wish I could get hold of a PineBook Pro (they look interesting), I would go for the MNT Reform, but the prices are quite “Galactic” for what they are. They have some nice features and nice Right To Repair ideas, but still. Or even Framework would be a choice, despite my laptop of choice is actually a Toughbook.

    So I started my first object as a test, this used splines, just splines, this is how it looked.


    It was meant to be a Wickham Railbus, downsized to 25% of the screenshot size, which was built out of lines, or spline modelling, using diagrams as a start, then using a surface modifier or Blenders equivalent of, to form the shape. It wouldn’t be out of my comfort zone if it was max as I now do this almost all the time. But as the UI on Blender and the naming of tools is vastly different, its a lot harder. So I left it, wanted another go for something simpler to get the basics of it, so I built this thing.

    Now I spent about 3 hours on it, the screenshot is what I started with, however, its not how it looks. I noticed a lot of mistakes and I keep finding them, so I had another go and the model below is how it looks.

    Yeah, not much, but there is one bigger twist! So I tried it on my Hyper-V virtual machine which I use in and outside the house. Then found that Hyper-V doesn’t support a feature that Blender requires, meaning it won’t start Oh well, back to the drawing board. Hopefully, this will look more like a 10T or 12T wagon, its slow, but I’m learning how Blender works and my god, the amount of tutorials (and Google) I needed to even get this far.

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