but anyway I allways use several tools, even in a same project.
Even being able to model any object with Wings, I may feel in the mood for a certain object to use Hamapatch splines for that, just for a change, or as is mroe suited than other.
Yup, surely. The fact is that you are not visualizing them, neither fixing opengl/dx problems that will happen with certain smoothing normals issues. One of the reasons why is better to have them at edit time, and not at export time. You need to know when normals will darken the surface a bit, etc, etc...Or how a human face does look with certain smoothing vertex normals.i made my own exporter which generates smoothing groups out of blender's smooth/solid face information. i do floodfills to convert smooth areas surrounded by solid areas to smoothing groups. for solid faces i can set an angle threshold to let the floodfill algorithm group them together to bigger patches. it works quite well!
I agree there are lots of solutions. Mine tend to be not model with Blender and just import the obj in it and animate there the character, or simply export the obj and do add the smooth groups/hard edges in whatever the modelers I have: Wings3d, Milkshape, etc.Is not that a game artist needs it actually a really final result only, but in edit time.
Anyway, stuff can be done anyway, faster or slower, better or not, in that I'd agree.
Somebody mentioned that in an older post (I didn't) Actually I think it looks like lately they're more eager to include requested features, or that may be my impression.it's not really true that the blender developers are elitist.
I don't think they are elitists (well, not the developers; as I do have seen elitist users) I think they're focused in movie making, more than in games. That's said by some of them, at least.
I was many months asking for better character animation tools, as well as a few others did (it's clear that Blender users are majorly modelers, texturers and people more in the mood of renders and scene building than character animators, I mean, I have been seen since years few character animators, there. ) I had lost hope of seing the essential features to make animation much more functional. But now is actually hapening.Just download 2.40 alpha 2...is really good now in that department. I am testing right now ghosting (very similar to my XSI hehe) , and that automatic IK sweet thing.
I have even just imported x files exported by Jox or ben's x exporter and added smooth groups *after* all animation was done, outside , in other package. So, there are allways many ways, and easy ones, of course. I just meant it'd be really important to have multiple UVs, and smooth groups viewing and checking in viewport, not only at export time. I model for games basing a lot on how smoothing surfaces do react with certain smooth groups/hard edges. And is not same effect than breaking the mesh.
that's true, and they are right about that. I think one have to take Blender on what it is, not try to think is an allmighty tool, neithe rthat it sucks, as nothing of that is true.they are quite open for suggestions. the problem is that they have limited programmer resources and of course the programmers first work on what they like to work on the most.
I could do stuff with complex workarounds which I actually know and have done when 3d softwares, even comercial, was not capable to do stuff, or just for being the freak I am. But today I see no reason for that. Even Blender has that road: make it easier for the artist, as we could be loosing the target, which is make art, not make art in a lot of time, and in the most complex and time consuming way. I am all about speed and accurateness on get my ideas into 3d.
BTW, try 2.40 alpha 2, it has several cool things....
Dunno if jox will continue updating his x exporter branch for irrlicht, would be cool, I have not tested his 1.32 exporter with this alpha...I think the API has changed, so...dunno.
Just like adobe buying macromedia; we all thought flash, dreamweaver, freehand and the other tools would disappear, but they're still there, even under the same names and brands. Commercially it's not a smart move, so what they are really buying is the right to use the names and brands as well for the profit of a single company.
he isn't really a blender developer.
