Brick Texturing Help

[Lucius]

I needed a brick that didn't exist so I decided to create one. I think that it went pretty well though I have a few problems:

• Lighting just doesn't look good. Maybe thats a problem with the normals or do all bricks normally have this problem?
• obj2brick placed all my quads in the omni section which is alright for the middle bit of the brick but not the ends.
• obj2brick didn't get any uv coordinates correct. This is obviously to be expected and it doesn't really matter much for the spiral part of the brick, it's mainly the rectangular boxes at each end.

Am I doing anything wrong? I don't have too much problem editing the .blb file by hand, there are a few good references on the forum which I can use. The main issue is that there are tons of quads to sift through and it's hard identifying which ones to move to the correct section and edit the UV coordinates and possibly the normals. Is there any way to at least have the bottom and top of the brick correctly textured?

Here is how obj2brick layed out the file:

Code: [Select]

3 3 36
SPECIALBRICK

1

0.000000 -0.000736 -0.002480
3.000000 3.001471 36.007710
COVERAGE: //TBNESW
0 : 999
0 : 999
0 : 999
0 : 999
0 : 999
0 : 999
----------------top quads:
0
----------------bottom quads:
0
----------------north quads:
0
----------------east quads:
0
----------------south quads:
0
----------------west quads:
0
----------------omni quads:
276

// ...

If for some reason you want to, you can grab the .obj or .blb here.

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[DYLANzzz]

Might as well throw up something if no one's going to answer, even though this really isn't my area of expertice.

1) Idk, I think the lighting looks cool but then again it does kinda look ugly :P. Have you tried smooth shading? (I have no idea if this even works with bricks?)
2 & 3) I always thought obj2brick was kinda a quick and dirty way to produce bricks. I've never editted a .blb by hand myself but I assumed that for anything more complex than just an untextured, simple collision, complex graphic mesh for a brick you would have to do the things by hand.

[TristanLuigi]

1) Try using quads instead of triangles.
2) Remove the ends and use separate bricks.
3) Do this on the separate bricks in #2 and it might be easier.

[LeetZero]

1) Try using quads instead of triangles.
2) Remove the ends and use separate bricks.
3) Do this on the separate bricks in #2 and it might be easier.

#1 Physically impossible in a spiral. At the very least, even if he does make them quads they would be N-Gons and the game would just make them triangles again.
#2 This is a must, I am not sure why you made a strict size, make just a small portion of it and let people customize the height and the ends.


All exporters I ever used forgeted me over regarding UV Coords except General's. And yes, you should fix normals allright.

[Barnabas]

What model do you use for making models, Lucius? You can get rid of the triangulated look by smoothshading it. Make sure you make some smoothing groups too.

@Leet

Quads are possible in this shape. A quad means a polygon with 4 vertices.

[LeetZero]

What model do you use for making models, Lucius? You can get rid of the triangulated look by smoothshading it. Make sure you make some smoothing groups too.

@Leet

Quads are possible in this shape. A quad means a polygon with 4 vertices.

Yes, but Blockland automatically splits it into tris if it's not a perfect plane.

[Lucius]

I feel like this program would really help. It claims to automatically sort quads into the correct groups which would easily allow me to specify the texture coordinates. If anybody has it on hand and has some time to send it to me, I'd love to have it.

What model do you use for making models, Lucius? You can get rid of the triangulated look by smoothshading it. Make sure you make some smoothing groups too.

I'm using OpenSCAD, converting the exported .stl file to a .obj, then using MilkShape to add things like the bounding and collision boxes before using Badspot's obj2blb. Initially it was smooth shaded and didn't seem to look very good so I just followed Trader's flatshading tutorial. I don't really know what a smoothing group is, I'll search around.

#2 This is a must, I am not sure why you made a strict size, make just a small portion of it and let people customize the height and the ends.

Me neither. It's a great idea to make the brick just be the spiral. I'll do that. I've created a ton of other crazy bricks that people might use. Eventually I might release them (and the code to create them).

OpenSCAD is really interesting and is very well documented. It's quite fun to play around with. If you're interested in making Blockland bricks with it I've written two small modules which allow you to easily create bricks which are of the correct size and will line up with the brick grid.

Code: (bl_bricks.scad) [Select]

// Blockland brick modules by Lucius

BL_BRICK_HEIGHT = 1.2;
BL_PLATE_HEIGHT = 1.2/3;

module bl_brick(x=1, y=1, z=1, cen=true) {
if(cen) {
translate([0, 0, 0.6*z])
cube([1*x, 1*y, BL_BRICK_HEIGHT*z], center=cen);
} else {
cube([1*x, 1*y, BL_BRICK_HEIGHT*z]);
}
}

module bl_plate(x=1, y=1, z=1, cen=true) {
if(cen) {
translate([0, 0, 0.2*z])
cube([1*x, 1*y, BL_PLATE_HEIGHT*z], center=cen);
} else {
cube([1*x, 1*y, BL_PLATE_HEIGHT*z]);
}
}
I'm still working on the rounds module.

The code for the pillar brick is below:

Code: [Select]

include <bl_bricks.scad>

module strange_brick(height) {
bl_brick(3, 3, 1);

translate([0, 0, BL_BRICK_HEIGHT])
linear_extrude(height=BL_BRICK_HEIGHT*height, twist=360)
square(2, center=true);

translate([0, 0, BL_BRICK_HEIGHT*(height + 1)])
bl_brick(3, 3, 1);
}

strange_brick(10);
I use this online converter to convert the exported .stl file to .obj. After that I just use MilkShape. Too bad OpenSCAD can't directly export to .obj.

Thanks guys! This is my first brick :)

[Barnabas]

Here's a tutorial about smoothing groups in Milkshape3D.