clipka wrote:
> Wings 3D insists that real geometry needs volume. 

I have no problem with that. But it shouldn't let me delete an edge or 
vertex that would cause the geometry to not have volume.

That's like saying "my word processor insists text is always in a specific 
character set, but I let you delete the character set indicator from the 
document file."

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

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Darren New schrieb:
> clipka wrote:
>> Wings 3D insists that real geometry needs volume. 
> 
> I have no problem with that. But it shouldn't let me delete an edge or 
> vertex that would cause the geometry to not have volume.

Actually Wings 3D's model is not /fully/ volume-aware, because volume is 
really difficult mathematically to handle; instead, it "only" insists on 
objects being topologically "closed" surfaces.

And yes, Wings 3D /does/ enforce this. There is no way whatsoever to get 
it into an inconsistent state from /this/ perspective.

The display engine might not be able to cope though with all possible 
configurations that are valid with regards to this model, which is 
what's causing you problems.


The most common "visual inconsistencies" in Wings 3D, from my 
experience, are polygons folded over one another, and edges of virtually 
zero length.

The latter can easily be eradicated by selecting all short edges and 
collapsing them to points (use a very small value, and visually verify 
afterwards that the points created this way are all where you'd expect some.

As for the former, look out for edges that, when highlighted, seem to 
"span" multiple vertices. They're a bit of a hassle though.

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On 11/8/2009 4:10 PM, Darren New wrote:
> You go back to it after a couple months not using it, and even the
> simple trivial stuff like making a box bigger is once again completely
> unobvious. Sheesh.

One day Blender, The GIMP, Inkscape and Wings3D will all be great 
programs. Maybe on par with Firefox and Thunderbird.

Mike

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clipka wrote:

> Stefan Viljoen schrieb:
> 
>> I wonder if the upcoming 2.5 revamp is going to make it much easier or
>> harder, and how well existing Blender experience will translate for users
>> who must now use a new interface...
> 
> I hope existing Blender experience will /not/ translate at all, because
> my existing Blender experience is way deep in the negative realm :-P

Tee hee - right on! Mine too. I've got even bigger problems - I find myself
regularly scaling when I want to pan or translating when I want to pan when
using Moray nowadays - all down to "wiring" done in my subconscious by
Blender use.
-- 
Stefan Viljoen

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Darren New wrote:

> Stefan Viljoen wrote:
>> I wonder if the upcoming 2.5 revamp is going to make it much easier or
>> harder, and how well existing Blender experience will translate for users
>> who must now use a new interface...
> 
> I must say, I was quite amused how one video talking about it said how
> very cool it was that you could right-click on a button and tell it to
> show you the documentation for it, like this wasn't technology back in
> Win3.1. :-)

That's the thing! Read on their site the other day that the core Windowing
system is based on some Atari ST (!) GUI library of twelve or fifteen years
ago... so no surprise that such modern GUI features aren't there yet.
 
> Even more amusing was the person going on to say "I won't do it, because
> it doesn't work yet, but..."

Ouch!
 
> Yeah, it'll probably help once people get around to filling in what all
> the buttons do on the right pages of the Wiki it references. I just think
> Blender isn't quite ready to be used by someone uninterested in
> contributing.

Hmm... never thought of it like that. I've used it a little bit and find it
mostly useful and easy for constructing simple, odd geometry that would be
hard or impossible (for me) to do with Pov code. But its textures and
materials system I find -extremely- confusing and hard to understand. Never
mind the "NLA" editor, and the real hard-core stuff like rigging and
animation is completely indecipherable. But then, I've not really invested
REAL time (years) to get to learn all of that. And some people (admittedly
more dogged, hard-working and / or intelligent maybe?) can do AmAzInG stuff
with it. I was blown away by the sheer quality of Elephant's Dream and Big
Buck Bunny, but then, as you say, it was basically core contributors that
did that, and were real hard-core blend-heads.

-- 
Stefan Viljoen

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Darren New wrote:

> Actually, I think the real problem with all the modelers is they all want
> you to do operations that fit well with their internal data structures,
> and they all treat solids as connected surfaces. So, for example, you
> can't take a cube and drill a hole through it. You have to first add
> vertexes to edges,
> connect them, then delete the faces in the middle, and etc.  There's CSG,
> but that's still not quite the same thing, methinks. It's not like clay

I agree - the few times I've played around with blender, the first thing
that irritated the hell of me was not having "Pov-like" CSG that works
well. Probably did something wrong, but trying blender CSG always seems
to "shatter" vertices around the interface point, making it neigh
impossible to do anything else with the object after the difference was
applied - it turned -black- with all the thousands of vertices generated by
the boolean op.

-- 
Stefan Viljoen

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SharkD wrote:

> On 11/8/2009 4:10 PM, Darren New wrote:
>> You go back to it after a couple months not using it, and even the
>> simple trivial stuff like making a box bigger is once again completely
>> unobvious. Sheesh.
> 
> One day Blender, The GIMP, Inkscape and Wings3D will all be great
> programs. Maybe on par with Firefox and Thunderbird.
> 
> Mike

Yeah one day... I think it might also be typical "internal tool" sickness
that runs like a thread through the entire Blender app. I. e. Blender was
never intended to be publically usable or distributed, it was developed as
an internal animation tool for specialized use, by people and for people
who were assumed to already be very knowledgeable in how (and why) it
works, and what it does. If you had a question, you just shouted across the
hallway for the guy who -wrote- that function or feature, thus obviating
documentation. Of course, the public does NOT have this recourse, and from
there all the UI troubles.
-- 
Stefan Viljoen

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Stefan Viljoen wrote:
> Hmm... never thought of it like that. I've used it a little bit and find it
> mostly useful and easy for constructing simple, odd geometry that would be
> hard or impossible (for me) to do with Pov code. 

Yeah. It's actually not too bad in the drag-around-the-vertecies kind of 
development.

 > But its textures and
> materials system I find -extremely- confusing and hard to understand. 

Yep. I think the real trick is that it doesn't really target the procedural 
texture stuff at all. It *wants* you to take photographs and slap them on 
there - that works well!

> Never
> mind the "NLA" editor, and the real hard-core stuff like rigging and
> animation is completely indecipherable. 

It really wasn't too bad. But again, it doesn't seem to target that. 
Hash:Animation Master, for example, does a much better job with rigging and 
assigning vertecies and handling skin deformation and lip sync and stuff 
like that. (Not that H:AM has usable documentation either, mind. Even the 
help files are generations out of date with the software, let alone the 
printed text it comes with.)

> But then, I've not really invested
> REAL time (years) to get to learn all of that. 

It doesn't take years to get the basics. I did the stuff on my youtube 
channel (dnew) in just a few days of screwing around with it and following 
the tutorials. It literally took me longer to find decent documentation than 
it did to get comfortable with the elementary workings of the program by 
following the documentation.

Not that it looks good, mind, but that's my lack of artistic rather than my 
lack of ability to manipulate the program.

But the cloth sim sucks, the fluid sim is broken, the character animation 
stuff sucks compared to H:AM, the materials suck compared to POV, the Python 
interface is broken, etc.  It tries to do everything, and does it all 
half-assed.

Nevertheless, it actually does manage to do half an ass of everything, so I 
really wish it would be easier to learn for when I want to put together a 
walk-thru thru a textured building with moving lighting or something.

> it was basically core contributors that
> did that, and were real hard-core blend-heads.

Yeah, it's always easier to get good output from a program when you say "I 
need fur, so I will implement exactly what I need."  I think that's how half 
the features got in there, which is why they're all so half-assed. They only 
work well enough to generate the output the author needed at the moment. 
Mind, nothing wrong with that in FOSS; it just makes it less useful to *me*, 
because I'm not willing to contribute the time it would take to fix it.

It's a shame all the free and cheap modelers and animation packages only 
either handle a small portion of the job or suck so hard at a broad base of 
things. I'd love to play around with animations, but I can't justify 
thousands of dollars for software to fiddle around.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

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Stefan Viljoen escreveu:
> I find myself
> regularly scaling when I want to pan or translating when I want to pan when
> using Moray nowadays - all down to "wiring" done in my subconscious by
> Blender use.

I find myself often typing :wq to quit notepad.

-- 
a game sig: http://tinyurl.com/d3rxz9

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Stefan Viljoen escreveu:
> Darren New wrote:
> 
>> Stefan Viljoen wrote:
>>> I wonder if the upcoming 2.5 revamp is going to make it much easier or
>>> harder, and how well existing Blender experience will translate for users
>>> who must now use a new interface...
>> I must say, I was quite amused how one video talking about it said how
>> very cool it was that you could right-click on a button and tell it to
>> show you the documentation for it, like this wasn't technology back in
>> Win3.1. :-)
> 
> That's the thing! Read on their site the other day that the core Windowing
> system is based on some Atari ST (!) GUI library of twelve or fifteen years
> ago... so no surprise that such modern GUI features aren't there yet.

Funnily enough, it seems Microsoft Excell 2009 doesn't show offer you 
Help among the options when you right-click any of its "ribbon" buttons. 
  BTW, pretty much all 3D modellers are not based on overlapping windows.

> Hmm... never thought of it like that. I've used it a little bit and find it
> mostly useful and easy for constructing simple, odd geometry that would be
> hard or impossible (for me) to do with Pov code. But its textures and
> materials system I find -extremely- confusing and hard to understand. Never
> mind the "NLA" editor, and the real hard-core stuff like rigging and
> animation is completely indecipherable. But then, I've not really invested
> REAL time (years) to get to learn all of that. And some people (admittedly
> more dogged, hard-working and / or intelligent maybe?) can do AmAzInG stuff
> with it. I was blown away by the sheer quality of Elephant's Dream and Big
> Buck Bunny, but then, as you say, it was basically core contributors that
> did that, and were real hard-core blend-heads.

Here's an animation done by a brazilian Blender n00b:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_FMYYcbnsM
http://www.blender.com.br/index.php?option=com_fireboard&Itemid=10&func=view&id=8822&catid=5&limit=10&limitstart=0

yes, it's ugly for today's standards, but I myself can't even start to 
imagine how he did pull it off...

here's a much nicer one, from another brazilian guy:
http://www.epifania.art.br/

See Subtitled Short.

Point is that enoughly motivated people can do wonders with Blender if 
they just sit to learn to use it rather than complain of perceived 
limitations.  Isn't it true for everything we do, actually?  C 
programming, anyone? short code Povray?...

-- 
a game sig: http://tinyurl.com/d3rxz9

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