Project SNC | Dream Chaser

[Chuck Tetakel]

I just did a quick and dirty high poly version through sculpting. Not the most effecient method though since I did the low poly first.

 

[Kyle]

Out of curiosity, do you have the Orbiter import/export addon for Blender? It'll make converting blender files to meshes a lot quicker.

 

[Chuck Tetakel]

I tried it, but sofar i wasn't able to get it into exporting without throwing an error.
Currently blender just crashes, leaving me with a half exported file, whenever i export to .msh.
Sofar i only was able to get the model to orbiter through Wings3d, but that is not an option anymore, since its only possible to get the model from blender to wings by using .obj, which centers all pivots points at 0,0,0 , making it impossible to animate properly.
Also the Blender .3ds exporter is kind of useless, since i nearly always get a corrupted file.

Does somebody maybe know a fix for this constant crashing ?

edit: Crashing is caused by the apply modifiers option. Without it it still throws an error though

 

[cottontail]

Thanks for the response.

:2cents: In terms of the unknown location error -- in my brief experience with blender -- it's usually caused by loose geometry.

 

[Chuck Tetakel]

Hmm it seems like loose geometry is not the cause of the problem. The edge split modifier does not seem to be the cause either.
Does somebody has any other idea what could be the cause ?
Or could somebody take a look over my .blend ?

 

[RacerX]

Perhaps it is related to the 65500 faces limit with some exporters. Try to decimate it (just for testing purposes) see if it exports

 

[4throck]

Hmm it seems like loose geometry is not the cause of the problem. The edge split modifier does not seem to be the cause either.
Does somebody has any other idea what could be the cause ?
Or could somebody take a look over my .blend ?

It is bad geometry for sure, as the exporter is always right.

» First things to check are if you have all your modifiers applied, and all rotations and origins are also applied.
» Then check if all objects are unique within blender (and not duplicated).
» Also use only one texture by material, and only a single material for each object.
» Select only some objects to export may help to identify the offending parts.

You can find the offending object by opening the half exported .msh file and looking at the group that made it crash. You will then need to troubleshoot group by group...

After the mesh is exported, open it in Mesh Wizard and see it there are empty groups. Those will crash Orbiter and must be removed in Blender.

Finally, the export process may mess your normals or give a non smooth appearance to the model. You will have to go back to Blender and subdivide the offending areas...

But all in all if it crashes or if it doesn't look good, it's your wrong, not the exporter. :thumbup:

 

[Chuck Tetakel]

Thanks for the help first!

It seems to work now. It helped to export it as .3ds and then just reimport it.
Seems like i screwed something up along the way of modelling the Model.
Altough it works now i might redo the UV-map layout. Currently there are very visible seams.

 

[4throck]

Yes.
3DS export looks like an easy solution, but the bad geometry will show on the seams.
The only good solution is to redo the geometry. Export/import may degrade your geometry even more, generate double faces, etc, etc. You should avoid it.

Most tutorials and teachers will only cover detailed modelling for renders, not for gaming or exporting.
So you tend to spend many hours doing something that looks excellent, but doesn't quite work outside of the modelling software.
Yet it pays off to take the time to sort things out. In my case, I had a "nice time" modeling cubes, applying modifiers and materials and exporting them...
Tedious but informative ;-)

I've found out that the GLSL realtime rendering in Blender is very close to Orbiter's, so the model will look the same when exported.
If not, you do have a problem and it will only get worse as you add normalmaps, lightsources, etc, etc.

You will loose more time trying to fix it than simply redoing the parts that need it.
Indeed, you may as well do a low poly version of some parts and simply bake the details you already have...

 

[Chuck Tetakel]

The seam Problem is actually not caused by bad geometry, but by just simply a bad UV-Layout. But i fixed that already now and made a new one.
The export and re-import didn't actually altered any of the Geometry, so the export issue i had before might not have been caused by bad geometry.

Thanks for the GLSL Tip. Although i have it activated on default i wasn`t quite sure if it represents the model similar to Orbiter. So that is definitely good to know.

 

[Donamy]

Yes.
3DS export looks like an easy solution, but the bad geometry will show on the seams.
The only good solution is to redo the geometry. Export/import may degrade your geometry even more, generate double faces, etc, etc. You should avoid it.

Most tutorials and teachers will only cover detailed modelling for renders, not for gaming or exporting.
So you tend to spend many hours doing something that looks excellent, but doesn't quite work outside of the modelling software.
Yet it pays off to take the time to sort things out. In my case, I had a "nice time" modeling cubes, applying modifiers and materials and exporting them...
Tedious but informative ;-)

I've found out that the GLSL realtime rendering in Blender is very close to Orbiter's, so the model will look the same when exported.
If not, you do have a problem and it will only get worse as you add normalmaps, lightsources, etc, etc.

You will loose more time trying to fix it than simply redoing the parts that need it.
Indeed, you may as well do a low poly version of some parts and simply bake the details you already have...

What software do you use for baking ?

 

[Chuck Tetakel]

What software do you use for baking ?

Well i can not speak for 4throck but i either use Blender bake features or the bake functions that are directly implemented into substance designer.

Normally i use substance designer to do normal map, AO-map and curvature map bakes and Blender for things like full render bake (btw. the full render bake can also be used to bake the mirror reflection onto a texture. Helpfull for creating fake reflections for the windows for example.)

 

[4throck]

I've used the Blender bake to create normalmaps for lowpoly models, based on high poly ones. It simply works, after some messing around with image and object selection order :thumbup:

---------- Post added at 21:44 ---------- Previous post was at 21:42 ----------

Thanks for the GLSL Tip. Although i have it activated on default i wasn`t quite sure if it represents the model similar to Orbiter. So that is definitely good to know.

Similar indeed, but GLSL is OpenGL and Orbiter is DirectX.
Anyway, if should be close both in appearance and in performance.

 

[Chuck Tetakel]

jimd Helps me with the coding now!

Here is a screenshot of the SC3 version that is used for testing purporses currently.

Theres currently some strange problem with the some of the parts (Black shaded Flap). There seems to be some problem with the normals. The strange thing is that the normals are pointing outside, so its possible to see the texture just fine, but the shading is wrong. Does anybody had a similar problem ?

EDIT: Nevermind got it fixed. Had to apply the rotation of the Object origins.

 

[Chuck Tetakel]

Some Progress.

Worked on the adapter and the Launcher. The Plan is to finish for now the Dream Chaser and release it with some adapter/s and release the launcher later on.
I am not sure how long we need though.

Here some progress pictures.

Also i will try to resume work on the astronaut meshes. I wasnt really able to do much work with blender on it, since the polycount was just too high for blender to handle. So i purchased Zbrush and already made some nice progress with it on the model. Sofar my plan was to release the Astronaut Mesh free for use in other Projects.

 

[Kyle]

What an excellent job! Can't wait for release.

 

[Chuck Tetakel]

Not dead yet started working on it again .

I started remodelling the cockpit. This time only consisting of MFDs. I also renewed the seats, because the old ones looked horrible, though the new ones are still far from being finished yet.

Also i got all control surfaces working so far, but other than that i didn`t really got farther.

I still got 2 problems.

1. In comparison to the ISS PMA docking ports, the dream chaser one is way too small. (The scale of the model is right though i think. 1 Unit in Orbiter = 1 Meter ?)

2. I still get visible seams, when zooming out.
I already put a huge margin on the texture. The only other idea i have is scaling up the parts where the seams are visible.

 

[PhantomCruiser]

I'm still in the relatively simple world when it comes to modeling, but I'll use MeshWizard to rescale the model into the dimensions I need.

For instance; my rocket has a known diameter of 2.9 meters, so I'll model everything in anim8tor and export it for Orbiter. Then I'll notice in Orbiter that it's pointing in the wrong direction, way bigger or smaller than it should be and I'll fire up meshwizard.

I can reorient the axis, as well as rescale it (making the span of the rocket 2.9 meters along the X axis). I usually have to fiddle with it if there are and greebles to account for, but it works, and is probably an over complicated method.

Dreamchaser should have a 7 meter wingspan? It certainly looks good, looking forward to taking her out for a spin.

 

[Chuck Tetakel]

Thanks for the reply :thumbup:
The scale of the Model should be right. The Wingspan and the length are shown in Meshwizard as ~7 and ~9m. Does somebody know the dimensions of the docking port that dream chaser / Iss uses? I modeled from the reference images i got, but maybe they were already not too accurate.

 

[PhantomCruiser]

How does it look when docked with Thorton's ISS 3.2? Or maybe this? [ame="http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=2179"]Artemis Themis PMA[/ame]

Your model looks bang-on to all the pictures I've seen. I'd hate to think that they'd need another sort of adapter to mate to a PMA...