Starting out

[matsquatch]

So following on from my introduction thread, I've been having a go at some of the tutorials out there.

I knocked a very rough waiting room up in Sketchup (didn't finish it as I needed to have a better think about door and window frames)

but then this afternoon, I had a go at the toolstore lesson - it's quite old now, so 3DCanvas is now Crafter, and the buttons are different and I don't have PSP, so there were a few moments of grumpiness as I tried to figure out what was going on (if anyone can point me in the direction of whatever "merge objects" became, I'd be grateful!!). I downloaded GIMP, but couldn't get on with it, but remembered I had Photoshop Elements, and that seemed to make an ok job of the textures (though I have so many questions about textures). I managed to make the basic shape, and after a bit of a fight getting the textures to show up, I got something that looked like a tool store! (The door is upside down though!)

So, so far, I like Sketchup (but can't afford to be paying for a Pro licence, so don't know how feasible that is), think I'm ok with Photoshop Elements (though need to do some reading), 3DCrafter I'm still not sure about, though it does seem decent enough for applying textures and exporting to the game (though I haven't actually managed it yet!!)

First steps undertaken, many more to come!

[Nobkins]

Hey Matt. Sent u a PM before I saw this thread.

Have a look at this playlist. Shows how to make a forward facing tree using only freeware tools and get it in game. Might get you started.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... xSb7_U-KBd

[matsquatch]

Thanks Jim, have replied to the PM.

So this is what I've got



it's the base of the hut - I *think* it's because I haven't been able to group the three cubes into one object so far - I just can't figure it out. Can post up a screenshot of the 3DCrafter page if it might help anyone point me in the right direction.....

[briyeo]

When you export your model from Crafter you need to make sure all the elements of the model are selected

[briyeo]

Some screenshots to hopefully answer some of your questions.

If your door texture is upside down or the wrong way around horizontally, there are buttons that will correct this in Crafter. The one highlighted in the pic is the vertical one, the one to the right will flip your texture horizontally. You have to click the required button that will correct it then re apply the texture.

[briyeo]

Merging components, select the shape you wish to remain as the name of the merger, then hold ctrl and select the other shape. When both are selected hit the shape merge button.

[briyeo]

Exporting the whole model. You need to ensure all shapes and groups are selecting before exporting, check the hierarchy over on the right to see if everything is selected. Your model should become all translucent too. Ctrl+A and clicking on the scene usually selects everything after a few tries, but I think just selecting them all in the hierarchy does the same job. Notice my door texture is now the correct way round.

[briyeo]

It is best not to merge every shape, or at least save a copy of your model in an un-merged state too. You will find you often need to go back a few stages. SAVE SAVE and SAVE again, you will most likely have to learn that the hard way though Matt.

[briyeo]

This is the beginning of a tutorial on how to build a Steam Loco, you will think that is far too advanced for where you are at the moment. But Mike Rennie is a Payware Loco maker that uses Crafter for his models, in this partial tutorial (he didn't have the time to continue with it unfortunately) he covers making the wheels. But I found he covers it in such a way that I learnt a lot of basic Crafter techniques that I didn't have a clue about before. Keep it Bookmarked for future reference.

http://railworksamerica.com/forum/viewt ... 396c332640

[VictoryWorks]

I agree with you that GIMP is not at all user friendly. I use it but only for the final export as it does .dds format very well with this plugin https://code.google.com/archive/p/gimp-dds/
For all the main art work I use Paint.NET which is the most straight forward art package I've ever found but still really powerful. It has lots of useful plugins as well (although I've not found one that does .dds nicely, hence the final part using GIMP).

So my work flow is:
Create textures in Paint.NET. If it has an alpha channel than save as .png or .tga. and then load into GIMP. Save as .dds. If it doesn't have an alpha channel then you can just copy (ctrl-c) paste (ctrl-v) it from Paint to GIMP (making sure you've flattened any layers in Paint.NET). Click "Add alpha channel", "White", in GIMP to make sure it has one and then save as .dds.