A Beginners Guide to Modeling in Wings3D With Sections on UV

A Beginners Guide to Modeling in
Wings3D
With Sections on UV Mapping
And
Animation Using Marzipan
For use in Silent Walk FPS
With an Addenda of Tips and Tricks
By: Steve Murtaugh
[email protected]
SIMPLE MODELING IN WINGS 3D
THE TORSO
1. Create a 6-sided cylinder.
2. Scale Z down.
3. Select bottom face and scale uniform down and move Y up.
4. Extrude selected face Y down then scale up uniformly.
5. Deselect. Now select top face, inset some and scale down.
6. Move slightly upward.
7.Extrude Y up.
8. Extrude Y again then scale uniform larger.
9. Extrude Y again then scale uniform larger again.
10. Do this 3 more times but scaled at same, smaller, and smaller.
11. Congratulations, you've made a torso.
Save (export) it.
THE ARMS
1. Create a 6-sided cylinder.
2. Scale object radial Y and scale Y down.
3. Select top face, extrude slightly, rotate Z slightly, then scale X slightly.
4. Extrude normal, rotate Z and scale X again.
5. Do 1 more time without final scaling.
6. Deselect. Now select bottom face and extrude Y downward.
7. Move face forward Z slightly and rotate slightly X.
8. Inset face, extrude normal and scale several times as done for the head of the torso.
9. Scale y if needed from view along X, rotate object around X slightly
10. Now you’ve got an arm.
SUBASSEMBLY
1.
Move the arm X somewhat, Load your torso, and adjust arm location and scale (uniform) accordingly.
You may want to rotate the arm around Z to fit into the body.
2. Duplicate the arm in the X direction and flip X and adjust position
3. You’ve now completed the torso and arms.
LEGS
Do the legs the same as you did the arms, but without the top face extrusions and rotations. One leg first
then duplicate and flip X as in arms. When making the foot you will want to move the face forward Z to get
a characteristic foot shape. You will want to do only the first couple steps as in making the hand and you
will not be scaling smaller into a rounded shape. Once completed, combine all and position standing at the
floor level. If going directly to Marzipan to make a static .man model you will want to rotate all around the
X-axis so the head is in the Z+ direction.
(This is one of my Kachinas from Anasazi Ambush 27.6kb, 178 vertices, 158 facets)
All in all try to keep the number of polygons to a minimum. You could even cut out some of the
extrusion/rotations of the upper arms, hands, head, etc.
OK, I decided to make it easy on you and detail the legs quickly.
1. You can start from scratch and build as the arm, or just take your arm, delete the top and bottom potions
then rotate Y 180 degrees. Either way get something like this with a single flat face on each end.
2. Select the bottom face.Then extrude normal down; Z scale larger, move Z forward.
3. If you need a little more then extrude normal or Y down.
4. OK, You have a leg, select the leg,duplicate X and you have a set to add to your model. Again scale and
adjust location to fit your model.
VARIATIONS
Ok so we now have a model that is suitable for a Kachina, or a Klingon, or anything else in a skirt-like
form (Scotsman?). What if that’s not what we need?
1.
Lets move the legs down and out of the way (just easier to see)
Select the bottom face of the torso.
2. Move Y up and scale X down a little.
3. Extrude Y down and scale X smaller. Then scale Z a small amount.
4. Deselect then get your legs and move them back upward (Y)
A more “normal” guy
WOMAN
1. Start with the original torso.Select the 4 front top to bottom lines of the upper torso.
2. (Arms moved for accessability) Cut the lines in 4 parts, deselect the 2 upper rows of points and delete the
bottom points. Then select and connect the 8 top points.
3. Select the top, central line, move Z forward, and scale X larger.
4. You can then adjust various body proportions to resemble a more female figure.
Bring your arms back and you’ve got it.
DETAILING THE HEAD
1. We'll keep it simple, only adding a nose. Many models will not even need this.
Start with the basic head.
2. Now select some lines around the nose area. We will be cutting and shifting to make the nose.
3. Now cut these lines into 4, deselect the needed points and delete the rest.
Then select the 2 points below the nose line, connect and cut into 4.
4. Connect these points.
5. Select these lines (one at a time) and move X closer to center. Move the associated points upward Y.
Then move the tip of the nose forward Z.
6. Adjust some scaling a little and we have a reasonable head shape.
LETS DO SOME HAIR
Many of your figures will not need this as short hair can be handled through textures.
Longer hair will be addressed here, but the same principles can be applied
when making helmets or other headgear and deformations.
1. Select all the faces that will become hair.
2. Extrude Region normal slightly.
3. Select the bottom, outer edge lines of the hair.
4. Move downward Y and scale uniform.
Select the edges at this level and scale uniform.
TA-DA! We have a head with Hair.
UV MAPPING
For UV Mapping we'll start with a basic cube so you get an idea of what is up.
Open UV Mapper, Then open Model, select your cube (make one in Wings3D)
You'll see this basic info.
Click OK.
Since the cube hasn't been UV mapped yet, you will see this
Click EDIT > NEW UV MAP > PLANAR
This Box will pop up:
For now just click OK
This is what you will see:
Since its oriented Z (Front) and split front-back we just see the front and back surfaces
To show how these will look I will periodically show you views from UV Mapper Pro.
It’s a little more refined than the Classic but everything I'll show can be done in Classic
except for the 3D view.
Lets see how this Planar mapping looks when a texture is applied.
Front Perspective View
Rear Perspective View
This would be OK if you are doing a basic colored box that only has detail on the front and back.
Lets try another map.
Box Mapping
(split back-front)
This is much better for most boxy objects
But what if we want to use a basic square texture replicated on all sides of our box?
No problem UV Mapper will let you adjust the position and scaling of the faces
Selected Face
and relocating it
Until overlayed on central face.
Do this with all faces then rescale.
There !
Alternatively, you could go back into Wings3D, and load your cube. Then select, one at a time, each face,
assign it a new material and save. Then come back to UV Mapper select, by material/face, and Planar map
from the corresponding axis.
We'll go into some of this a little further on..
There are several other mapping options, cylindrical, spherical, and variants, with-without end caps, etc.
feel free to experiment with some basic shapes and see your results.
You can also select faces, etc and flip them, move them (or rotate Pro only) then to facilitate mapping or
even adjust to a map made for something else. Playing with this will greatly improve your understanding of
UV mapping.
If you worked through the modeling tutorial, lets go back to Wings 3D, where we can work on assigning
materials to a model, and see how UV mapping works on it.
Open Wings3D and load your figure model or whatever parts you completed. For simplicity, I will just use
the torso and one arm that we developed in the modeling tutorial. Click on WINDOW > GEOMETRY
GRAPH
You will have something like this:
As you can see we don't know which part is which, off hand
(We have 2 objects, the arm and torso, but they are named Cylinder 1 or somesuch name.)
Use select object and click on the torso, in the Geometry graph right click on the one that is highlighted and
select rename.
Rename it torso, then select the arm and rename to arm.
Now Click WINDOW > OUTLINER and drag the new outliner window off the geometry graph, deselect
all
Click on default2 then right Click it and click select. Right Click and Rename this the same as the object
name, then right click the name and click assign to selection;do the same for default 3.
If you are using a more complete model, continue this process for all objects.
You can also select faces and assign to new materials, say if you wanted to map the hands different from
the rest of the arm.
Now save your model and Open UV Mapper and load your model.
Use select by material and select torso then use new UV map and select Planar,Z, axis.
It should look like this:
Now scale and move it over to the upper left.
Select the arm the same way, but Map Planar, X-axis, and don’t split.
Now scale it and move it to a clear area.
You may want to rescale and move the torso so all parts fill out the map area.
In some cases (say fitting to an existing texture), you may not end up filling the map.
Now lets see how a texture looks.
Hmmm… Maybe we should cylindrical map that arm…
Looks a little weird in the map but textures more effectively. Lets leave it at that.
Save your object and also save the UV Template, to use in a paint program.
For those of you who will be doing a bit of modeling and uv mapping, I highly recommend the Pro version
of UV Mapper, if you can afford it. Although all I did here can be done in classic, you will find that Pro is
much more productive than the classic version (time wise, anyway). I believe its around $60 US nowadays.
ANIMATING USING WINGS3D AND MARZIPAN
OK now we're to the animating stage.
Its actually easier than you might think.
If you've followed through the modeling portion you can use the model you developed from that.
I will use the female figure I developed.
Don't worry if you haven't UV Mapped your model yet, for this tutorial it really isn't needed.
However, you really should do that before any modeling for animation.
OK Open Wings3D and import your model. Adjust it to the axis center at bottom.
Save (export) this object in position as"Position 1"
Now you will also see why I had you model legs and arms with a slight bend…
It is easier to animate for simple walking.
Shift to a view along X-axis and select the Left arm.
Rotate it around x about +15 degrees and reposition it with the shoulder in the original location.
Now do the same for the Left leg but rotated -15 degrees
The right arm -15 degrees and the right leg +15 degrees.
Now save this one as "Position 2"
Reverse all this so all + 15 degrees are in the -15 degree position etc.
(30 degrees of rotation opposite current position)
Relocate limbs as appropriate
Save this one as "Position 3"
OK now you have saved all of your walk positions.
We will use these in Marzipan in the sequence of position 1,2,1,3 with 4 total frames.
But first…
Marzipan has a swapped y-z coordinate system so reopen, one at a time, each model
and combine all sub-objects then rotate around X 90 degrees and reposition to "Floor"
Resave each position.
Now open Marzipan
Open Position 1 model
And left click on the 1 frame
Open Position 2 model, left click 2 frame
Right click 1 frame then left click 3 frame
(copies Position 1 model to frame 3)
Then Open Position 3 model and left click 4 frame
Now click SETTINGS > NUMBER OF FRAMES
And input 4
Then SETTINGS>ANIMATION SPEED
You can just leave it at 20 (or add a value for your desired speed)
Try it out, Click the arrow in the bottom right to watch your animation.
You did it !
Save Your animation.
Add your Texture, if you've done the UV Mapping, and see how it looks.
Three things to note,
1. Your model may be out of scale if you made it on-the-fly
(I usually load something like Swat.man when modeling so I get a good scale)
2. Texture from UV Mapper will need to be flipped vertically.
(This can be done in UV Mapper, manually or in Marzipan)
3. Models made Right-handed in Wings 3D will be left-handed in Marzipan
(Correct this by taking your model in Wings, combine all, then Flip X)
TRICKS AND TIPS #1
MULTI-PART MODELS
One limitation in SW1 is that opacity/transparency can only be set for an entire object. So what do you do if you need parts of a model
to look solid while some parts need to be transparent? Multiple models or as I'll call them, Multi-part models. This can also be a
solution to situations where part of a model needs to animate but making an animation using the full model and adjusting the animated
parts yields a large file.
For an example, I'll use a Tardis (Dr. Who) control panel, which requires transparency and animation.
First here is the final look:
So first I create the Base.
UV Map it, create texture
Roate 90 degree x,save, import to Marzipan, and create 1 frame .man file
Create the Pillars Assembly
Shown Transparent here to show all parts
Position in relation to the base
Save only the Pillar assembly
Reposition the pillar assembly in a few other positions for its animation sequence and save these also.
(or, alternatively, you can just do your positioning in Marzipan).
(I feel I have better position control in my modeler.)
And make your animation of the pillar assembly in Marzipan.
This way the base is about 41 kb and the Pillar animation is 903 kb
If I had made a single model and animated the pillar part saving all as 1 .man file it would be at least 1.23 meg
Usually I build everything first, then Combine it all, Rotate 90 degrees and position so as to be acceptable in Marzipan.
Then Save each individual assembly (Base and Pillar(s))
When you use these in SW, Import the base and its texture, and position it. Then import the Pillar assembly,
locate it in the same position, and set its opacity to the desired level.
MAKING A WALL WITH A WINDOW
First make a cube in Wings3D
Then select 1 face, click the line select, you should have 4 lines selected
Right Click and select cut 3 3
Select 2 opposite points and connect (c)
Do this for the other points along those edges
Select the resulting lines and cut 3 3
Connect the remining points to get this
Do the same for the opposite large face of the cube
Then select the central face of the 2 sides
Then select Bridge to get a cutout
Now scale the thickness (here its x-axis) down to almost nothing
To work in SW and Marzipan, scale the other axes (Here Y and Z) by 20 times to be in scale as a wall.
(to scale by exact amount select scale radial X (in this case), then press TAB, a box will open so you can put in numeric input [2000])
Rotate 90 degree for Marzipan use, reposition to "Floor" level, Save,UV Map this planar, open in Marzipan and save your 1 frame
.man file to use in SW with an appropriate wall texture.
TEXTURING USING EXISTING TEXTURES
I'm going to use the female figure originally developed in the modeling tutorial
as a base to apply some other existing texture.
I will show this using UVMapper Pro so we can see the 3D result
But I will only use the techniques available in UVMapper Classic (free version)
First I modified my female figure to have hair (covered in the tutorial)
Then, in Wings3D, I created 2 more materials, face and hair, and assigned them to the appropriate faces.
Save this and open in UVMapper
For now just map the whole thing planar, split front-back
Now lets get a texture
Obviously, at first glance this will not do.
In UVMapper Pro, I could probably adjust my parts enough to fit but for Classic, I need to modiy the texture.
So, using a paint program I'm going to relocate the hands and arms.
Now I'm going to modify my models map in UV Mapper to look close to this.
Just work with each material (select by material) and adjust and reposition as needed.
We're doing this without a texture so its easier to see.
Now, in Classic, just save your model, then save the template
You can then open the template in a paint program and paste the corresponding graphic elements
from the Texture onto it and resave as your final texture.
I will show here in UVMapper pro a similar process just manipulating the UV Map.
We load our texture in Pro
Now just grab the part of the UV Map and reposition, scale etc to overlay the texture.
In Process…
And Done!
TIPS AND TRICKS #2
A useful trick in rendering for low-poly models is to use a really good texture that makes the model look
more detailed. One way to do this, if you are decent at modelling, is to make a detailed model, texture it
and render the model from various positions, that can be used to create a
texture map for your low-poly version.
I did this for my Tardis Control, which turned out rather well (I think, anyway!)
Low-poly Tardis Console (Base only) 40 kb (41 kb with pillar)
High-poly Version (935kb)
Some of the textural elements used
Render of Console top surfaces added to our new texture map
And How it Looks in SW
49 kb as oppossed to 935 kb
(5% original size)
TRICKS AND TIPS #3
SIMULATING ANIMATED SURFACES
(CREATIVE UV MAPPING)
This will use UVMapper Pro
It can be done in Classic, but requires a little more effort
Lets simulate an active computer screen
First make a cube, rescale it
Select face and inset, extrude
Scale slightly
Make a new box, scale and position.
Make a 3rd box, again scale and position
OK we have a basic shape
Lets rename the objects and assign some materials.
Do this for Base, Table, Screen. Then select only
The display face and assign it a material
Lets UV Map it before we go on.
(This will make it easier a little further on)
Export your object then open it in UVMapper
Select by material and box map the base, table and screen.
Relocate each to separate corners for now
(
(I've added lables and some divisions for clarity)
Now, as I'm planning on the base, screen and most of the table to be a uniform texture; lets grab those parts
and move them all together, in fact, overlapping
Go ahead and rescale them a little and map the display planar z no split
Save your model and template.
Open the model in Wings3D, scale it if needed and rotate around x
and reposition so as to work OK in Marzipan/SW
Save it as Console1
Open your template in a paint program and paste in an appropriate texture for most of the model
Such as a brushed metal, also paste in an appropriate graphic for the table top.
Copy the display protion to 2 other places and design slightly different graphics for each.
Something like this:
Save your texture
Now open your model in UVMapper
Select the display and move to one of the other display graphics.
Save as Console2. Do this again with the remaining portion of the display graphic and save as Console3
(In UVMapper classic You will need to map each model and put display graphic on resulting template
Then combine all into one graphic)
Load Console1 into Marzipan and click frame 1
Do this again with Console 2 and 3 and frames 2 and 3
Set the frame numbers to 3 and set speed around 40
Save your animation file and Voila! An animated computer screen.
Flip your texture vertical for use in Marzipan and SW.