Author Topic: Brick-Making How to [Blender-Style] [Also Image Heavy]  (Read 12070 times)

This topic exists because this topic exists.
Anyway.  Tutorial stuffs:

So you want to make bricks with blender eh?
Well this is an attempt to tell you how.  If anything doesn't make sense please say so.
If you're stupid don't bother.

Ok to start out open up Blender.



You're still with me? Yes? good.

I stretched out the pane on the right so I could see what I was doing.  I use that area the most when making bricks.


We're going to be making a simple brick today, a 2x3.

The actual measurements for that are 1 x 1.5 x 0.6, so select the cube object from the topright menu, select the objects tab from the menu below, and change the scale values to 1, 1.5, and .6.

Next go over to the left a little and change the Z axis position value to .6.



That's actually really important.  If any part of the brick is below the bottom plane, bad things happen.  You can test that out for yourself.

I'm also pretty sure that the bottom-most part of the brick MUST be on that bottom plane but... don't quote me on that.



ok, so now you have a basic, visible mesh.  It's what your brick will actually look like.

You can name this mesh all sorts of things to have different effects.  Just check here for all of your wonderful naming opportunities.

I named mine MESH, because I wanted to be able to paint it whatever color I wanted.  I could also name it cube, cigaretteras, or dfaklgfdakgcigarettef, and it would have the same effect.



Add whatever new objects you want to give the brick whatever visual appearance you desire.

Since I'm making a 2x3, I don't really need any more visible meshes.  So I'm just gonna go ahead and create the collision mesh.

To do this, I hit Shift+D, then I middle click, then I type in 0, then i hit enter.

What did I just do?

I hit shift+D to actually make the duplication.
I hit middle click to bind the movement onto an axis, if I hold middleclick and move in a direction, i can actually choose which axis im binding it too.



I typed in 0 to state that I want to move the duplicatoin 0 units along the selected axis.
Then i hit enter to confirm my choice.

Boom.  A new object in the exact same place as the old one.



Next I need to rename this new object to COLLISION1



Donez.  The obj2blb program actually expresses this object using a format something like...

-0.000000 0.000000 0.000000
3.000001 2.000000 3.000000

that.

Then the game draws a rectangle using those two points, and... magic happens.

What does this mean?  Collision meshes in blender are very limited.  As mentioned here you can only have 10 collision meshes per brick, and each collision mesh is reduced to its bounding box.

next I need to make a bounding box.  The obj2blb page says it's not necessary, but really, if you want to be sure on the amount of space your brick is going to take up, make your own bounding box.  Keep in mind that if any of the collision boxes are outside of the bounding box, they won't work.



I used the same method for this, that i used to make the collision mesh.

Next I need to save the brick, however, i kinda spaced on it and ended up exporting it first instead.



ohwell.



ok so we're at the exportation screen.  Navigate to whereever you want to find your [whatever].obj and name it



The brick needs to be exported in the proper format.  So all that stuff on the left?  That needs to change.



If you don't want to set these settings every time, click the + right next to Operator Presets to define your own preset.

Name it something.



Hit ok and boom, now you can select that preset from the presets dropdown menu thing.



great now hit the export button and you have a new .obj file located somewhere on your computer.


I should take some time here to mention the orientation of the brick we exported.  The way I have my blb preset set up, Y(the green arrow) will be forward when I place this brick down in the game.  X(red) will be to the right and Z(blue) will naturally be going in a vertical direction.  That's just how I have it set up, but those settings can be changed while exporting.

But anyway, remember how I didn't save earlier?  Imma do that now.





Ok that's done now navigate to the .obj file location.



cut and paste it somewhere else.  I actually have a folder set up for making bricks, so I pasted it there.



Then make a new folder called Brick_somethingorotherhere.




Drag the .obj file you created earlier onto the blbconverter.



now you have a .blb file.  Delete the .obj file (it's pretty much useless now.  If you want to make any changes to it you have to re-export anyway)



copy your new .blb file into it's folder and take a look at your handiwork





Beautiful isn't it?  You didn't have to type any of that.

Ok now you need to make the server.cs file, so the server knows what to do with this .blb file.

Create a new text file.



name it server.cs(yes include the extension and remove any txt's on the end)



It may or may not say that, just hit yes.



open your new server.cs with a text editor



This is the format I use for my bricks.


Just fill it in with whatever.


ok so you may have noticed i had an iconname "blablah/Test"
Test is an image file I use for all of my brick icons before I actually release them.
You don't actually need one, but if you want your brick to have an icon in the brick menu it is advised.
Also I found this neat tutorial for creating icons here



ok now we need to make the description and namecheck txt's.






Le format for descriptions



le format for namecheck



ok now we need to actually make the zip file, and put it in the game so we can test it out.




copy all of the files into the zip file



lookee there they are



great now copy the zip file into your add-ons folder





I have a version of blockland set up with default add-ons so that loading is faster.

Now test it, and make sure you enable it.



at this point I actually went into the game and the brick wasn't there.  It turns out I forgot to save the server.cs.  So i was just passing around an empty .cs file.  ...  this is why we test these things.  Went and rewrote it, copied it over and restarted the game.  So bleh look its in the menu now



ghosting works




so does building...

So yeah that's pretty much it.  This is a very basic tutorial for a very basic brick.  If you want more information just experiment, and try not to be a dumbo about it.

« Last Edit: May 10, 2013, 10:01:23 PM by Dglider »

Pretty good tutorial. But the obj to blb made all of the faces omni quads, which kinda stinks.

Great guide man, just what I needed.

Take out the part about namecheck, it's completely useless

Pretty good tutorial. But the obj to blb made all of the faces omni quads, which kinda stinks.
General needs to release his converter :c

Thank you! Finally I can try make a brick with this tutorial. :D

Wait-- where do you get the blbConverter.exe?
I got lost there.


Download it here: http://blockland.us/files/blbConverter.rar.
Thanks for the help!

Edit: Why does it say, "The version of this file is not compatible with the version of Windows you're running. Check your computer's system information to see whether you need a x86 (32-bit) or x64 (64-bit) version of the program, and then contact the software publisher?"
« Last Edit: April 23, 2013, 07:22:03 PM by OzmarBlock »

Download it here: http://blockland.us/files/blbConverter.rar.
Added a link to its forum topic.

Edit: Why does it say, "The version of this file is not compatible with the version of Windows you're running. Check your computer's system information to see whether you need a x86 (32-bit) or x64 (64-bit) version of the program, and then contact the software publisher?"
Well, I'm not sure why it would say that.  If you're using Windows XP, the file you downloaded might be a 64-bit program(Windows Vista and up).

The only suggestions I can give are to redownload the program, though I don't think this is the case some websites change the file downloaded depending on what type of browser you're using[64-bit or 32-bit], or find a friend who has a 64-bit operating system and run it on that.

i have a qustion anbot collision that may be a dumb quiestion or not but...what if you have more then one block? do you still have only one collision that ingolfs the hole build or do you coppy it put the collision in it and name eatch brick for collision COLLISION1 COLLISION2 COLLISION3 ect....i just downloaded this yaster day so..i want to try to make...some stuff he he

i have a qustion anbot collision that may be a dumb quiestion or not but...what if you have more then one block? do you still have only one collision that ingolfs the hole build or do you coppy it put the collision in it and name eatch brick for collision COLLISION1 COLLISION2 COLLISION3 ect....i just downloaded this yaster day so..i want to try to make...some stuff he he

I'm not sure what your situation/question is.  If you can explain it in a different way, such as with pictures or proper english, I might be able to help you.

this

Uploaded with ImageShack.us im tryin to make starcraft bricks for my starcraft addon that im still waiting for a scripter on >_> but back on topit do i coppy the model and rename all the brics COLLISION1 or name eatch brick COLLISION1 COLLISION 2 COLLISION3 and so on?

Ok so the game limits it to 10 collision boxes per brick.  Copying everything and renaming it would put you well over 10.  For this object I'd suggest making 4 new boxes.  1 for the top, and 1 for each leg.  (5 if there's another leg in the back that I can't see)

You would name each collision box something different.
So you could use COLLISION1 COLLISION2 COLLISION3
or COLLISIONA COLLISIONB COLLISIONC

As long as they say COLLISION, and then have something different at the end it should work fine.


Alternatively you can use an older version of blender to export the object as a .dts.  And then use that as the collision shape, but that's a quite a bit more complicated.  I suggest using this way until you're comfortable with it.  The .dts collision shapes can always be added on later.

nvm this messeg fixed the problem i hade
« Last Edit: May 17, 2013, 01:05:59 PM by nuketf »

Okay so I did this all, Yet I think I screwed it up, It wont show up! any diagnoses? Also thank you for your great tutorial!