Search Unity

  1. Megacity Metro Demo now available. Download now.
    Dismiss Notice
  2. Unity support for visionOS is now available. Learn more in our blog post.
    Dismiss Notice

New Blender Version Released

Discussion in 'Asset Importing & Exporting' started by drJones, Feb 20, 2007.

  1. drJones

    drJones

    Joined:
    Oct 19, 2005
    Posts:
    1,351
    just FYI 2.43 is out now. gamepro useful stuff:

    -multiple UV maps.
    -built-in baking - no tangent space normal maps though - bah!
    -edgesplit (i hope this is as useful as it sounds - maybe its me but smoothing with blender-unity never seems to work as well as it should).

    i don't know if multiple UV's or edgesplit work with collada or unity yet i haven't tried it out.

    http://www.blender.org/development/release-logs/blender-243/

    PS what the hell did they do to their site?
     
  2. bigkahuna

    bigkahuna

    Joined:
    Apr 30, 2006
    Posts:
    5,434
    I haven't seen any new developments in the Collada exporter in months... :(
     
  3. pete

    pete

    Joined:
    Jul 21, 2005
    Posts:
    1,647
    it's really a pretty big release! have you guys tried the sculpt mode? looks great but kind of buggy for me so far. well i shouldn't say buggy but doesn't quite worked as i expected. sometimes it seems to work but the strength just isn't strong enough. other times all i can do is grab - draw, inflate etc don't seen to do anything. still don't have it all sussed though. while testing it in the rc builds i figured it was me being on 10.3.9 but don't know for sure. retopo sure is a big bonus and the ao baker looks cool. now if i only had a minute to check it all out!
     
  4. Eric5h5

    Eric5h5

    Volunteer Moderator Moderator

    Joined:
    Jul 19, 2006
    Posts:
    32,401
    Mutiple UVs doesn't seem to work when importing into Unity (pretty much as expected). Edge splitting works though (remember to turn off "automatically calculate normals" in Unity when importing). Of course, you have to apply it, in which case it's no different than doing it manually, which was always possible. More convenient though.

    --Eric
     
  5. drJones

    drJones

    Joined:
    Oct 19, 2005
    Posts:
    1,351
    it seems the engine they were working on (which i think is the only reason they were doing the exporter) is toast:

    http://cannibal.illusoft.com/

    lame ; (

    @pete eric

    i couldn't download it last night for some reason but will be trying it now, thanks for the info. i'm not surprised multiple uv's don't work yet, i imagine both the exporter unity have to be updated to accept them.
     
  6. bigkahuna

    bigkahuna

    Joined:
    Apr 30, 2006
    Posts:
    5,434
    Yup. Been using sculpt to create some very nice terrains and for adding bumps to smooth objects. Haven't tried the official release yet, only the beta's and pre-releases.

    Bummers about the Collada exporter, but when there hadn't been any progress for many months I started to suspect the guy had lost interest.
     
  7. pete

    pete

    Joined:
    Jul 21, 2005
    Posts:
    1,647
    the official release seems pretty solid as usual. i think my issues with sculpt mode are more that my machine can't handle enough polys and scale. and wt... i thought the collada guy was getting paid! wasnt someone financing it? maybe i'm dreaming but here's to hoping...

    it doesn't help the free pipeline but i noticed a lightwave motion file exporter. was that there before? for some reason i thought it was only lwo files. ah well nevermind - i'll try it myself!
     
  8. bigkahuna

    bigkahuna

    Joined:
    Apr 30, 2006
    Posts:
    5,434
    The way I understood it, Otee offered to pay the guy upon completion. Since it was never completed, I'd guess he never got paid. In retrospect it was probably a smart move on Otee's part.

    I also thought that the Collada script was what Unity used to import .blends natively. I might be wrong on that, but if so maybe Otee will continue the script's development?

    Back to Blender 2.43: some very impressive improvements. If they ever get the bugs in the Blender game engine worked out it could become a viable alternative as well.
     
  9. polytropoi

    polytropoi

    Joined:
    Aug 16, 2006
    Posts:
    681
    The combination of Blender and Unity is fantastic, EXCEPT I can't get my characters in, which is... the opposite of fantastic. It sucks. It's terrible, it makes me very sad. Kahuna's right, the collada exporter is not moving; I'm left hoping for a third party FBX exporter of some kind, dependent as I am on the kindness of strangers smart enough to program that kinda stuff.

    I'm very excited about the new Blender developments, and I think Unity could change the world, but it's like my two best friends just can't get along. I want to tell stories, and my Blender characters are waiting at the gates, but can't get inside. "Please Sir! Let us in! For God's sake, think of the children! Think of the squid-dragons! Think of the mutant chickens!"

    Indeed.
     
  10. forestjohnson

    forestjohnson

    Joined:
    Oct 1, 2005
    Posts:
    1,370
    Can I use the normal baking and multires to make a high res model, bake the normals and ambient occlusion, set it to a lower res and export, then apply the normals in unity to get the details?

    I get the impression that this is what zbrush does. If blender can do this I might want to try to get better at modeling... :)

    Here is my attempt, it doesn't work.
     

    Attached Files:

  11. drJones

    drJones

    Joined:
    Oct 19, 2005
    Posts:
    1,351
    you need tangent space normal mapping for that and, but of course, its the one thing blender can't bake at the moment (only camera space).

    EDIT: but yes you can do ambient occlusion - i think it just didn't work out because you were also trying to bake the normals as well - baking AO worked before as well with the external bray baker script.
     
  12. pete

    pete

    Joined:
    Jul 21, 2005
    Posts:
    1,647
    well it sure ain't zbrush! but it's promising and yes it's along those lines. i thought i read tanget space is in the works. might have been another app. haven't looked in a long time but you can use ati's normal mapper or nvidia's melody (both used to be free). melody had a gui but was pc only last i looked. there's a bunch of free binaries out there with guis slapped on for ati's. most pc but some mac. google...
     
  13. bigkahuna

    bigkahuna

    Joined:
    Apr 30, 2006
    Posts:
    5,434