Bricks in Motion
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Then what do you use Blender for?
I believe I already answered that.
I use Blender mainly to fix normals and fill empty faces because it's easier to do it in Blender than in Carrara. Also, Blender treats repeated pieces as one where as Carrara treats each piece as individual meshes. For example, if you have a model that has multiple 1x1 round bricks and you fix the top hollow stud, the fixes are applied to every 1x1 round brick in the model in Blender. In Carrara, your fixes is applied to that one piece you selected only. You have to repeat the same task to the other pieces one at a time.
oh..... oops...... Alright, so if I've got it straight (probably don't) is: You use MLCAD to build the models. Then, you make them look all nice and ready for animation, which you use Carrara for.
Through my own understanding, Blender is also a free animation program, if I'm not mistaken. Would it be easier (for a beginner) to do it all in Blender? I don't want to spend money on something (Carrara) that I might not be ready for.
Well, here's how I see it, Blender is a tool with a vast amount of capabilities, a person would take months to years to understand all the features it has (creating mesh models, shaders, building bone structures for rigging, and its rather large set of keyboard shortcuts for its many functions). Carrara is a pricey tool with just as many features as Blender, only they simplified many things with its user-friendly language, tool locations, and keyboard and mouse functionality.
Now Anim8or is another free tool and it's pretty basic, which I think is a good place to start for beginners. It separates the four components of 3D animation from one another, unlike Blender and Carrara in which they are placed together in one view window. You have your Modeling mode, your Rigging mode (Figure) where you can build the bone structure for your mesh model(s) to attach to for animation, your Sequence mode in which to set up keyframes for animation and then your Animation mode where you put all your rigged models and animation sequences together to create a scene.
Basically, you can't just jump straight into 3D animation without being familiar with the parts that make up 3D animation (building models, building bone structures, keyframe, lighting, material settings, etc.). Anim8or is a good place to start for beginners with no budget. And yes, you can do it all in Blender. I believe Leonardo has done it (although mainly as background elements for stop-motion, last I checked).
We were asking like what setting or effect do you use in the particle emmitter so that they shoot in a straight line and seperately (like under modification or motion). Also, what settings do you suggest for the look of the lasers? Do you use an aura and blur effect on the emmitter, or do you select an object to be shot?
Great. Thanks, Lech. That was really helpful. I'll work more in Anim8tor, and work my way up.
For laser fire using a particle emitter, you must have no forces affecting, it must have 0% air friction and if it's emitting from a single cannon, 0 disbursement angle (include error variation). You also need to set the number of particles per second and the maximum particles the emitter can generate. If you're using Carrara 5, I'm not sure if there's much difference from what I use. As I've said before, you got to play around with it. Can't keep coming to me to skip steps in the learning process. You need to have an understanding of how particle systems work, and that part I can answer for you:
A particle system is a way to simulate elements that can't be done using traditional mesh models. This includes clouds, hair, rain, snow, smoke, etc.
A particle system includes an emitter where the particles generate from. There are multiple factors that contribute to the behavior of the particle system. You can have particles emit from a single point, a line, a plane, a box, or an object or parts of an object you choose the particles to emit from. For example, if you want to simulate hair, you choose the faces of a head model for the particle to emit from.
You also specify the number of particles generated per second. If you're simulating a fountain, you may want thousands of particles generated per second.
You specify the velocity of the particles, how fast the particles move away from the emitter. You may want a high velocity for a cannon, or low for smoke.
You specify the disbursement angle. If you're simulating a sprinkler system, you want the particles to go in multiple directions. Or you want to simulate a water hose, you want to have low disbursement.
And of course, there's the specification of what kind of particle you want to emit. If you're simulating water, you use metaball, if you're simulating smoke, a face camera will do, etc. If you're simulating bubbles, you use sphere objects.
Then there's the physics part of the particle system. Air friction, friction with objects, bounce factor, gravitation force, other forces, the mass of the particles, size of the particle, etc. all those factors affect the behavior of your particle system.
Other factors include a particle's life and how you can utilize that for such things as shader. Example would be an explosion. The particle starts out with a bright color, then over time changes to black to (smoke, basically) then dies off.
I've already mentioned the settings for the laser bolt object the system emits: an elongated sphere with nothing on its shader setting other than glow and Aura enabled. The rest is up to you to set up.
Last edited by Lechnology (January 30, 2010 (09:29pm))
A cheap rendering using LDView of a Dreadnought I'm building. A work in progress.
And before you purist start complaining about the improbabilities, this model can be physically built, but for the sake of file size, I didn't build the internal support.
That's pretty great! I like it. An amazing color scheme with a symmetrical design.
That's sweet. How long did that take to model it?
AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!! IT IS GREAT!!!!!!!!!!
P.S. How can you speed up the rate at which particles move through space?
Last edited by BuilderBrothers (January 31, 2010 (08:06pm))
That's sweet. How long did that take to model it?
Excluding the time wasted on building it Imperial-Star-Destroyer-style (using plates and wedges) 4 hours.
How can you speed up the rate at which particles move through space?
Uh...don't know if that's the right question. You want the particle to accelerate? To do that, just apply a force.
Last edited by Lechnology (January 31, 2010 (08:31pm))
Greenscreener Studios wrote:That's sweet. How long did that take to model it?
Excluding the time wasted on building it Imperial-Star-Destroyer-style (using plates and wedges) 4 hours.
Yikes... 
the end result is awesome though.
I just realize the color scheme wasn't consistent with my other ships so I had to change it.
More parts added including the forward covering (which will be enhanced later).
A tower in the front opening.
And other fillers.
looks better IMO
The shape is nice, but I'm not a fan of the color scheme.
- Aaron
What type of force and what amount would you recommend Lechnology?
By the way, what force would you recommend that we use to make the particles move faster?
First of all, are you sure you want to "accelerate"? That means the particle moves faster and faster than before as time passes. I don't think you want to do that for laser fire. But if that's what you want, I have no recommendation as to which force because it depends on what you're doing.
I'm assuming you meant that you want the particle to travel further away from the emitter per second, and that is Physics 101: velocity.
Trying to figure out what to put in the area I've highlighted in rectangles (see below). Basically, this ship is a giant laser cannon and giant laser cannons you require a lot of energy, which means a lot of coolant to prevent overheating, which means you need vents, but I don't know if vents work for this...Thoughts?
Where can you change the velocity Lechnology? And to what do you apply it to? Do you apply it to the particle emmiter under the motion tab under physics?
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