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PatMarrNC - all messages by user

2016/10/9 7:14:19
Muvizu Hot Rod for the store very cool Clayster! Above and beyond the models themselves (which are always very nice) I like your way of showcasing your latest offering. You have a knack for this side of things, and you might want to explore advertising as a possible outlet for your talents.

On a related topic, now that Ikes has taught me how to get glass into an FBX, I'll have to post a car too. I think the Muvizu store benefits from the modelling enthusiasm of the users! In fact, the availability of so much extra content is part of the reason why Muvizu is such a good value... no other animation platform offers so much content for so little money.

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edited by PatMarrNC on 09/10/2016
2016/10/9 7:07:14
TRANSPARENT MATERIALS IN FBX FILES This is one of those topics that has driven many of us to the brink of insanity... and thanks to IKES, I may have new information for that will help some of those who haven't been able to get transparent material (such as glass) into their FBX files.

When I saw that IKES had uploaded cars with glass, I asked him how he did it. He told me step by step... and I followed his instructions... but it didn't work! So Ikes sent me an OBJ and its MTL file to compare with mine,

Much to my surprise, I discovered that my modeling program stripped out the information needed to get the transparency working!! I manually entered the missing information into my MTL file, converted it to FBX, and whattaya know?? It had transparency!!

After reading some threads and seeing that guys who use Milkshape have a time with this, I discovered that Milkshape does the same thing! It strips out a key part of the material description that allows Colors (not textures, they're handled differently... and Milkshape doesn't strip that out... which is why you can get transparency when using textures)

Anyway, here are two examples of an MTL file... one showing what many of our Modeling programs generates, and then an edited version that actually works:

newmtl blue
Ka 0.8 0.8 0.8
Kd 0 0 1
Ks 0 0 0
Ns 64

newmtl banjo
Ka 0.611765 0.611765 0.611765
Kd 1 1 1
Ks 1 1 1
Ns 0
map_Kd /home/pat/Pictures/BANJO.png


Notice that the blue material (a color) has one less line than the banjo material, which uses a texture file. With a texture file, if there are alpha areas in the texture, the alpha is inherited from the image.

The first material only shows information for Ambient (Ka) Diffuse (Kd) Specular (Ks) and shininess (Ns). For colors, Alpha is declared as a decimal percentage after the letter "d". With that in mind, here's the edited version that works:

newmtl blue
Ka 0.8 0.8 0.8
Kd 0 0 1
Ks 0 0 0
Ns 64
d 0.20
illum 2


Since "d" is a percentage of opacity:
d 0.0 = totally clear
d 1.0 = totally opaque (solid)
d 0.2 = 20% opaque (or 80% clear)

In conclusion.. if you've been having a fit trying to get transparency into your FBX files, start by looking at the MTL file that gets generated along with your OBJ file. If it lacks the "d" parameter, that may be your problem.
edited by PatMarrNC on 09/10/2016
2016/10/8 18:06:24
3D artists: Chubby bellies (and other parts) I'm not at my graphics PC at the moment, so I can't test how small you can make characters... but the new asian and south asian characters come with children that might be reducible to an infant (depending on how you frame the shot) They have round heads, so they keep that child-like appearance when you reduce them.

Thanks to Ziggy for responding to a forum request in such a timely and excellent way!
edited by PatMarrNC on 08/10/2016
2016/10/8 5:55:32
NEW IN THE MUVIZU STORE..... mindiflyth wrote:
The piano is certainly very impressive, but a whole new hairstyle for Mandy seems like a newsworthy item all by itself! May I ask what program you used to create it?


You make good points, Mindiflyth! I've been scratching my head trying to figure out what kind of content to create, and it's slowly dawning on me that common items that can be used in everybody's projects (like hair, cars, etc) are more useful to more people than specialty items. A set of new hairstyles fitted to the OBJ mannequins would probably be very useful to a lot of people!

In answer to your question, this particular hair was exported from Poser, (like the long curly hair BRAJ posted a while ago when he was still active on the forum.) I'll start including new hair styles on the musicians when I post sets of musical instruments I'm modelling.
2016/10/7 18:15:20
NEW IN THE MUVIZU STORE..... uploaded to the store and awaiting approval: a grand piano for your music videos! The animation shown in the video below is still recorded in the set, so open the timeline and hit PLAY to see the same thing. Added bonus: custom hair for Mandy!

youtube demo video:



2D view from my modelling software: