Blender Inquiries (Dahell does this mean?)

[iheartibuki]

Okay, I changed the original title of this thread so I don't have to start a new one since most of the questions here so far are Blender-related anyway and I have 2 Blender questions:

1) I obtained a model online that is fully rigged (no license needed for it but I can't reveal it yet because I want it to be a surprise ) and it was made using Blender v 2.53. It also has quads so I have to triangulate all the meshes since that's what the mesh.ascii exporter is expecting. The model only has vertex colorization, so no textures. I was planning to retexture this model though unfortunately, whenever I try to unwrap the meshes in UV mode, a lot of them produce what looks like a right triangle that is mostly pink and splits the square UV surface into half diagonally. I don't think this is right because the mesh that I was unwrapping is cylindrical in shape.

I tried to bake maps using this "unwrapped" mesh for texturing but all it did was freeze my 2.49b and my machine. . For some reason I also can't edit the meshes in edit mode. When I use 2.63 I'm able to edit the meshes though. Loading the blend file locally into 2.49b and appending the scene into it produces the same results. Does this have to do with loading a .blend file made with a newer version of Blender into an older one? If so, are there workarounds to let me finally load the model so I can unwrap it properly and texture it?

2) When you have a model with a gazillion bones with long names, how do you see the full names of the current selected bones' parents bones. Also, it seems like once you occupy the entire screen with bones names in 2.49, you can't scroll to bones not shown on screen so you can reparent your selected bones. Is there a way to at least generate a list of bones and indexes so you can just manually reparent the bones in the mesh.ascii file? Is there a workaround for this too other than reparenting in notepad?

Thanks in advance!

[Dazzy]

Ill answer these tonight, im in a rush this morning

[iheartibuki]

Ill answer these tonight, im in a rush this morning

Will await the words of wisdom, oh wise one!

[Dazzy]

Okay, I changed the original title of this thread so I don't have to start a new one since most of the questions here so far are Blender-related anyway and I have 2 Blender questions:

1) I obtained a model online that is fully rigged (no license needed for it but I can't reveal it yet because I want it to be a surprise ) and it was made using Blender v 2.53. It also has quads so I have to triangulate all the meshes since that's what the mesh.ascii exporter is expecting. The model only has vertex colorization, so no textures. I was planning to retexture this model though unfortunately, whenever I try to unwrap the meshes in UV mode, a lot of them produce what looks like a right triangle that is mostly pink and splits the square UV surface into half diagonally. I don't think this is right because the mesh that I was unwrapping is cylindrical in shape.

I tried to bake maps using this "unwrapped" mesh for texturing but all it did was freeze my 2.49b and my machine. . For some reason I also can't edit the meshes in edit mode. When I use 2.63 I'm able to edit the meshes though. Loading the blend file locally into 2.49b and appending the scene into it produces the same results. Does this have to do with loading a .blend file made with a newer version of Blender into an older one? If so, are there workarounds to let me finally load the model so I can unwrap it properly and texture it?

2) When you have a model with a gazillion bones with long names, how do you see the full names of the current selected bones' parents bones. Also, it seems like once you occupy the entire screen with bones names in 2.49, you can't scroll to bones not shown on screen so you can reparent your selected bones. Is there a way to at least generate a list of bones and indexes so you can just manually reparent the bones in the mesh.ascii file? Is there a workaround for this too other than reparenting in notepad?

Thanks in advance!

Sorry for the wait D:

1) Unwrapping the model is not a good way of doing it, the uv would have to be manually created because usually it does generate that.
Cant edit the meshes? Wierd... should work, maybe open in 2.49b exporting as whatever format (mesh.ascii maybe) and re-importing? Usually having a blend from 2.6 works great in 2.49b, ive done this before.

2) That happened to me too, when trying Leo from T6, only way to do it, is name non useful bones to unused then your list will become smaller, from there it should be ok, depends on how many bones you have.

[iheartibuki]

Sorry for the wait D:

1) Unwrapping the model is not a good way of doing it, the uv would have to be manually created because usually it does generate that.
Cant edit the meshes? Wierd... should work, maybe open in 2.49b exporting as whatever format (mesh.ascii maybe) and re-importing? Usually having a blend from 2.6 works great in 2.49b, ive done this before.

2) That happened to me too, when trying Leo from T6, only way to do it, is name non useful bones to unused then your list will become smaller, from there it should be ok, depends on how many bones you have.

No worries, I was busy checking out the bikini costumes in DOA5 anyways, lol!

1) I was under the impression that you generate the UV when you unwrap the model. I'll look up manually creating it. Yeah, I can't edit the meshes in 2.49b, I hit tab, then click on any of the vertices and none of them turn yellow. I also tried exporting a mesh in obj format, reimported it and no dice.

2) IC, I'll try these later on. I suppose you can hide useful bones that you don't have to reparent or use as parents to bring your list down then just unhide them later on. What I did with Dan was rename some of the bones to really short ones while keeping tabs of the XNA standard names.

Thanks for the reply!

[Dazzy]

No worries, I was busy checking out the bikini costumes in DOA5 anyways, lol!

1) I was under the impression that you generate the UV when you unwrap the model. I'll look up manually creating it. Yeah, I can't edit the meshes in 2.49b, I hit tab, then click on any of the vertices and none of them turn yellow. I also tried exporting a mesh in obj format, reimported it and no dice.

2) IC, I'll try these later on. I suppose you can hide useful bones that you don't have to reparent or use as parents to bring your list down then just unhide them later on. What I did with Dan was rename some of the bones to really short ones while keeping tabs of the XNA standard names.

Thanks for the reply!

Lol!

Nah, that never works. Wierd. Im sure that is supposed to work. I can edit mine! D:

Ok, thats a good idea actually ^^

Your Welcome

[Love2Raid]

Has this been solved yet, or... XD

I have some ideas, but if you've already figured it out then it's not necessary for me to write walls of text.

[iheartibuki]

Has this been solved yet, or... XD

I have some ideas, but if you've already figured it out then it's not necessary for me to write walls of text.

Efficiency, I like that. No, this problem hasn't been solved and it's in the back burner right now. If you would like to share your good wisdom feel free, I'd be happy to resurrect it from the ashes!

[Love2Raid]

Oh, alright!
XD

I have had a similar experience, and after some googling I found the solution. When you save a .blend file in the latest Blender (2.63) and open that one in 2.49, it won't look *OK since there isn't full support for that version anymore by default. But what you can do, is open this file in Blender 2.63 again, then save as 'legacy file' (there should be a little square somewhere that you can tick). Now the model will look OK in 2.49.

*You will only see the edges of the meshes, not the faces. The model will look like it's in wireframe mode, when it's not. UV maps are missing and can't be created and more annoying things that I don't know about. Don't bother with it, just save as 'legacy' file thingy and open in 2.49 without any problems!

About the bones, yes, the list in 2.49 is terrible to work with when you have a model that has many bones. You can either decide to do the armature editing work in a newer Blender version (like 2.63) or simply use another method for parenting:
- select the bone that is supposed to become the 'child'
- select the bone that is supposed to become the 'parent'
- go to armature -> parent -> make parent -> then choose if you want to keep the distance between them (offset) or if you want them to be attached (connected)

This must be done in Edit Mode, obviously. XD

That's it, pretty much!

[iheartibuki]

^ Wow, many thanks for these tips! I'm gonna go ahead and try them later, hopefully they'll work for me so I can release this guy sooner.

BTW, got another question: is there a way to do small movements in Blender when you're moving objects or armature for mesh modding, or do you pretty much just drag 'em all over and pray that everything lines up?

See what you got yourself into?

EDIT: Ok I discovered how to do it, so no need to answer this question. Time to do my very first major surgery (at least to me, ) soon.