Minetest Forums

This is probably the wrong place to post, but wasn't sure where it would be more fitting, anyway...

I'm going to start a video series on my youtube channel on using Blender for Minetest, creating nodes, exporting them, etc, etc. My question is what areas of Blender would you guys like for me to make videos on? The first episode will just be an introduction, going over where to download, and the basics of the interface and such, will move on from there to making a simple node in the second episode, probably a fire hydrant, for no reason in particular.

I can't guarantee that every reply will get a video, but I'll do my best. The videos will be releasing on Thursdays, starting the 26th.

Feel free to be very specific, with things like, how would I make this thing, or what method would I use to create this other thing.

Nathan.S wrote:I'm going to start a video series on my youtube channel on using Blender for Minetest,
creating nodes, exporting them, etc,
what areas of Blender would you guys like for me to make videos on?
making a simple node in the second episode, probably a fire hydrant

How about simple furniture:
* Wall-painting / Carpet (=flat box, texture on one side) + how to place it ingame
* Big sign (=flat box like painting, but 2-3 blocks wide, for big text, like "Saloon")
* Table (=2 boxes, like slab-on-fencepost,
but show interaction with other stuff ingame,
like how a normal glass hangs in the air over a table / how to fix that)
* Cup/Mug/Bowl/Drinking-glass to put on that table / transparency

* Armchair/Sofa (=stairs, with one more box in center removed) + wool-texture
* chimney/smokestack, to put on a roof (instead of your fire-hydrant)

Nathan.S wrote:This is probably the wrong place to post, but wasn't sure where it would be more fitting, anyway...

I'm going to start a video series on my youtube channel on using Blender for Minetest, creating nodes, exporting them, etc, etc. My question is what areas of Blender would you guys like for me to make videos on? The first episode will just be an introduction, going over where to download, and the basics of the interface and such, will move on from there to making a simple node in the second episode, probably a fire hydrant, for no reason in particular.

I can't guarantee that every reply will get a video, but I'll do my best. The videos will be releasing on Thursdays, starting the 26th.

Feel free to be very specific, with things like, how would I make this thing, or what method would I use to create this other thing.

This will be awesome, and extremely giving of you Nathan... and it will be a great help to others. Especially since you will be covering MT specific topics (which will most times be helpful in non-MT situations as well)

Put it this way... it just took me 3 hrs to figure out how to join 2 individual meshes :P
and I'm still getting my butt kicked with mapping, I have no idea what Im doing wrong but, Im just gonna keep at it. I'll finish my new models first though then get back to tackling that.

I think a good first topic as well would be how to set up the interface the way you have it... I have no idea I just use the default settings but I'd like to have the same set up as you because it seems more straigh-forward.
I checked the pie-menu ticker etc but have no idea how to activate it, etc

I have downloaded all your previous blender tutorials and you do a lot of stuff with the interface and controls
and that's usually where you lose me...just switching between simple tasks
I imagine this stuff is second nature to you, but you go kinda fast sometimes without explaining what exactly you are doing.
I think the introduction you mention about the interface will be the most valuable to me.

Hajo, lots of ideas there, I'll se what I can do on those. Might have to ask for some clarification on a few, but will do that when I'm at a computer.

Tumeninodes, UV mapping and stuff will be covered a little in my second video, and I'll probably go more in depth later.

Naphiophelios I have utilized a widget that shows my key strokes, so that will hopefully help on that point, plus I'm trying to mention all the keys I'm using.

I've personally become really interested in animation.

Animation you say, I can do a video on that. Probably do one on adding bones to a model as well.

Hopefully this isn't getting off topic, but I've been messing with Poser (on Linux too), and I'm thinking about Maya as well. Do you have experience with any of that software or only Blender? I'm wondering which is the easiest to animate with. What do you think is the difficulty level of animating with Blender? I want to animate characters. Thanks so much for any insight!!!

I've never animated with anything outside of Blender, so I wouldn't know what is easier. They probably are all about the same, you just need to learn them before they become easy...

This is a really good idea!
One thing I suggest is showing how to get rid of shading and texture filters from the texture preview.

D00med I think I cover that briefly in the first episode, not yet released,. I'll link others when it comes out and you will have to let me know if that is what you meant.

ok then

"Probably do one on adding bones to a model as well."

I've been a member of this board for perhaps 20 minutes :) but that exactly what I'm searching for right now. If I have a walking animation how exactly does minetest\blender know where the arm pivots, and what the attack animation should look like (and how to encode in blender for game playback).

Take a look at the mobs redo mobs and you can see where the keyframes are listed.

TheFourthPlace These videos I've made might be of some help to you.
http://nathansalapat.com/minetest/creating-mobs-blender
http://nathansalapat.com/minetest/texturing-mobs-gimp
http://nathansalapat.com/minetest/creating-mobs-lua

Short Summary:
Create your model, add bones and create animations. Make sure that the animations you want are all in the active time range and export as .B3d or .X.

@hajo, for that table, you'd want it to be the height of one node then, so items could be placed on top of it. Would you like for it to still be two parts, leg and top, because I've done things like that in the past and could do a video on creating it.

I'll do a video on creating signs/carpets/paintings. they'd all use the same methods, with just small tweaks so that will be easy to do.

Transparent meshes don't always work super good, but I haven't worked with them in a while, so maybe the engine has improved on that point, can certainly cover that as well.

First video is live, check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lk1FwlJFqBg

Nice video.
Could you upload a blender file of your scale cube and settings etc.? then people could use it as a start-up file.

Nathan.S wrote:that table, you'd want it to be the height of one node then,
so items could be placed on top of it.

Sure, the table should be usable.
The slab-on-fencepost-table way just to show a "poor man's table",
built with standard parts, and the resulting "floating glass"-problem.
Mods like homedecor already have several nicer tables.

I meant, perhaps it is possible to have items that align themselves
to surfaces of full- as well as half height/width.
But maybe that's a limitation of the engine.

I'll do a video on creating signs/carpets/paintings. they'd all use the same methods,
with just small tweaks so that will be easy to do.

That would be nice, thanks.

The engine only allows one node per node, if that makes sense. It would be possible to make an item sit on top of a slab, but then it would only work on a slab, it would sit inside of a normal node.

space in minetest is devided into a grid of 1m blocks. Each of these grid nodes can be occupied by exactly one node only. You are requesting for two nodes to occupy the space of one. This is not possible in the strict sense.

Some entities are bigger than the space of the node they are assigned to like for example some plants that reach into neighbouring space. You may have noticed the effect when another node is placed there then the part of the entity that is outside of it's assigned node might be overriden. One could imagine a glass to be assigned to the node above the table as it normally is and then sliding down to meet the hitbox of the table applied as offset to the glass model or texture. Technically the glass would still be occupying the node "above" the table, in which therefore no other node could be placed. In your example you would have a low table and glass and above that a reserved space where you could not place anything although it looks empty. This is for example the reason that curtain rods in the Home-Decor mod cannot occupy the space between windows and the ceiling if this is only half a slab above or furniture may not be placed on carpets.

A more cumbersome method to achieve this would be to supply models of tables including things that could be placed on them. If one adds a legit object to such a table the model of the empty table gets simply swapped with a model of a table with the desired object on it. So all you need to do is make a list of all possible combinations and supply the models ;-P . . . or maybe supply some code that combines models on the fly ingame and registers some new custom node, which actually might be really usefull for many uses though the realisation may not be trivial.

(oops, too slow, got ninja'd)

But your response is far better than mine.

New video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4pS1nfX0sc

Just me creating two fire hydrants, one with 90 degree corners, and the other with a more rounded shape. Video is the entire process, modeling, UV mapping, creating textures in GIMP. I discuss the pros and cons of both modeling styles, and give plenty of helpful tips on how to save time and cut down on the amount of work you need to do to create your models.

Hi Nathan, just checked in to say that I have been watching your videos, and am now working over the default blender tutorials on blender.org.

It's worth pointing out for other new modellers that in order to export in a irrlicht compatible format from blender you'll probably want to export as .b3d format (due to the need for animations).

The addon needed can be found here : https://github.com/alrusdi/blender-b3d-exporter . I had to install this in to : C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.78\scripts\addons

Then once installed I had to enable the export script in user preferences under 'Addons', then 'save user settings'.

I'm sure there are other ways to do it, and this should have been covered a dozen time on the board.

TheFourthPlace The only time you need to use .b3d is when you want to have an animated mesh, usually for mods or entities, for nodes an obj works just fine, and comes default with Blender. Objs also have the benefit of being importable to many software packages whereas .b3d doesn't seem to be able to be imported by anything.

I thought I covered how to install the .b3d export script in this video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lk1FwlJFqBg There is a version of it maintained on the Minetest github which is what I use, but I think it is a fork of the one you listed.