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[justanother1]

http://up2dat3d.forumotion.com/


After reading some of the newb questions in here I believe we need a newb tutorial. I'm actually quite a newb to 3Drad, but not to modeling. Hopefully some of you will find this helpfull....

First, to follow along your gonna need http://www.wings3d.com but you might wanna download http://sourceforge.net/projects/wings/files/wings/1.3.1/wings-1.3.1.exe/download this older version instead as the new 1.4.1 "stable release" still had I bug that I found.
Your also gonna need to http://www.getpaint.net "get paint.net" and these plug-ins http://forums.getpaint.net/index.php?app=core&module=attach&section=attach&attach_id=807 and http://forums.getpaint.net/index.php?/forum/7-plugins-publishing-only/ get a few of the packs.
put the plugin .dll's in your Program Files\Paint.net\Effects folder...
We'll actually start with paint.net. I searched "tire texture" at http://images.google.com and used the very first one that came up... it was on flickr just copied it from the browser and pasted it into paint.net...

[justanother1]

Then I rotated it and used the square selection tool to find a spot where the image might repeat nicely and used ctrl+shft+x to crop the canvas to the selection, then ctrl+a to select all and ctrl+c to copy, then I made a new file at 800x800 and pasted it in there. Keep your texture square... Wings3D like them square, or try different to see what I mean .... anyway then I used the color pick tool and selected a color from between the treads and used that to draw a circle on the other side for my sidewall .... I also added a thin white circle and some circle- Text Formation for effect, finaly I selected a square at the top and made a sky-blue/light-grey gradient for the chrome ..... Sometimes its easier to make the texture before you make the model !!

[justanother1]

I saved that out as a .jpg then I removed the gradient section and used the Heightfield to normal map Effect to create a normal map .... bring the bumpiness down into the .5 area ...then saved that out closed Paint.net and opened Wing3D. ....
... A little on Wings3D ... I love this program but it can be buggy so I'll try to clue you in to those bugs as we go .... right click on the main window and choose a cylinder and then save the file .... wings auto-saves the file but if you don't give the file a name it can't and then will crash on you .....

[justanother1]

Now working in Wings3d is simple ..... right click for options, left click to select or execute, click on the middle mouse button to move the camera around. Arrow keys will also help with this. Notice the selection modes at the top .... 3d modeling at its simplest!! A vertex is an address in virtual space, two verticies connected is considered an edge, three or more edges connected is considered a polygon. Wings3d is a box-modeler, it builds closed shapes, so an object with only three verticies, three edges, still has two polygons, one on either side, you won't need to worry about this but fyi ....
So in Object mode, select your cylinder, then right click anywhere in the window and choose rotate, then choose Z, then hit (Tab) and enter "90" and then hit (enter), of course you can just rotate with the mouse but for this lets enter a number. ....

[justanother1]

Then with you're cylinder still selected right click again and choose Scale, the wheel will rotate on the X axis and be facing the Z axis Y of course is up and down. Scale down uniform, then scale axis x until its nice and thin .. then hit the (Spacebar) to deselect all .... <-Remember that one ... when you get fast you'll use it constantly. Now click on the Polygon Mode (second from the right) and select one of the circle sides,right click and select Mirror. You'll want to scale down in object mode again then (spacebar) polygon mode .. select 1 polygon this time a square on the outside of the cylinder ....  then press (I) (<-remember this)!! to select all similar ... should have all the outside of the cylinder selected now. I know this is long winded but Once you learn some basic keyboard shortcuts and a few tricks your modeling will just FLY !!!! anyway after both sides are selected we'll choose Extrude - Normal, then drag the mouse out a bit then left click. with the sides still selected, scale x outward, Extrude again, then Extrude one more time and scale inward ... you should see your wheel taking shape now. (Spacebar) Deselect all then select the Circle sides, right click and choose Bridge ....... whoa the middle dissapeared !!!

[justanother1]

Deselect all and then in Edge mode select all of the edges and press C to connect, and our middle set of verticies will appear. then go into object mode and with all selected choose UV Mapping ... This is how we wrap our texture image we made onto our model we made. A new window will open up. Notice in this one you don't have object mode. In here we cut the model into pieces that can be flattened out on the texture. You can either select edges and then choose "Mark edges for cut" or just choose polygons and give them AuvChart colors ... all connected AuvChart colors will appear as a single unit on the UV map. ...

[justanother1]

Once you have your Chart colors choose continue ..... Project Normal. for simple shapes and pre-made textures this works better. The next window will open up with your model on a horrible colorful alphabet background. Close that window for now, from the [File] menu on the top choose import image .... and go the the texture ...... then from the [window] menu open the Outliner and you should see your texture there. In the outliner choose the [m] material- should be cylinder_auv or something, its not the default because we uvmapped already, anyway right click and delete the ugly texture. Now, to add our new texture, select the texture image and choose "Pick up Image", then select the [m]material again and choose "drop Image" and it will give you a choice. Put the texture in the "diffuse" and put the normal in the "Normal". Now select the model and choose UV Mapping and the second window should open again this time with our texture in it !!!!

[justanother1]

With the UV window open were gonna learn some new skills, like jumping back and forth between windows, and jumping back and forth between selection modes. with the UV window in Object mode and the Main window in polygon mode, In the Main window select a polygon from the rim (inside the hole). Notice the whole object will be selected in the UV window. Put your mouse cursor in the UV Window then press I on the keyboard and the other half should be highlighted. now right click and choose "Move to" ..and then "center". Both will end up exactly in the center and should be exactly one on top of the other. However there are the other polys stuck in the middle. Deselect all then you can either select a polygon, press I and scale outward, or in the Main window select a middle vertex (in the hole), press I and scale inward. Then in object mode scale and move both rim pieces to the gradient on top. We'll do the same with the tread pieces and the sidewall pieces.

[justanother1]

by now you should have a good idea about how wings3d works and how to find your way around the interface .... so get the tread right and I'll continue with the tips and tricks ... like jumping between selection modes, try choosing an outside vertex, press I, then jump to edge mode, then polygon mode, notice how your selection keeps adding up ... very useful for uv mapping, and In the main window for modeling as well. Also I should mention the undo ctrl+z, However to undo again its ctrl+alt+z, and thereafter is also ctrl+alt+z. You can also set the amount of Undo's to hold onto in the Interface Menu,
click the little Icon that looks like a little window in the tool bar to open it up.

[justanother1]

also in the Interface Preferences you can set the speed of camera Pan (arrow keys) , I set mine to 100 much better. You can also turn off the Grid and x,y,z guides in the top right corner, turn off workmode (tab) for a better preview, back in the interface window you can set the work window background color... to say bright green, take a screenshot from the tools menu, export that out and say cut out the green and use the screenshot as a .png image for your forum sig...... There's also the View Menu. Try some of the Different Shaders from that menu. Try the (((ENVIRONMENT MAP))) ... and remember that term, it might be useful later....by now you should have finished mapping your wheel!!

[justanother1]

Next we'll use a N-Gon ... whatever that means ... for the spoke. This is a 5 vertex double-sided flat pentagon. You'll need to rotate z 90 ... then select ONE SIDE ONLY... and extrude. But here select "EXTRUDE - then RIGHT CLICK "NORMAL". This will extrude each side separately, but evenly, instead of building another pentagon. In many of the option you can right click and get even more options, some are hard to understand and others quite helpfull, something else to play around with.. Back to our wheel, you should extrude about a third out and then repeat that twice more, playing with the scale in-between, you can also switch to vertex mode and try rotating for a more "Krull-for anyone who's old enough to remember" look. Once you've Extruded out all the way to the rim, Use "Move-X" to shape the wheel, most car wheel spoke inners are rounded. Here's a good place to use the Jumping between selection modes to add the next section.

[justanother1]

Once your spoke is in place, with it selected in object mode Press (S) to smooth. This will sub-divide and try to round out edges, it will help the overall look but will leave some problem areas, for the next step you need to Hide the wheel using an option from the "Select" menu at the top. Either Hide selected or Hide unselected depending on where your at....Now fix the ends of your wheel, they should get bigger not smaller, and finally UV map the spoke. This time try selecting the middle edges that were created when you smoothed, and then use "Mark edges for cut" and Project normal. You can do it the other way, this was just meant for a practice for both.

[justanother1]

From here I'm sure you can Model the Hub and Brake on your own, so continue on. But I should talk about modeling and game modeling. You may have seen software like Zbrush, 3DSMax, and Poser that can go into millions of Polygons, "paint" on your model, use Ray Trace lighting. And you may have watched movies like "Avatar" and seen how much can be done in CGI. And I agree those images ARE fantastic!! But what they didn't show you was the room full of networked computers pumping out render's for about a half a year to make it!!! Game's are made just the opposite. We want to use the least amount of verticies and polygons and rely mostly on out textures to do the magic. Understand when playing a game, your computer is trying to figure for every vertex (address in space) of every frame for 25 fps, 30 fps, 50 fps and make changes according to the camera's position, meanwhile wheels are turning, heads are bobbing, arms are swinging, not to mention the subroutine on contact, additional sound, additional explosion graphics. Try doin the math yourself.......

[justanother1]

This is why you want to keep your models small, believable but small. Instead of adding lug nuts to the mesh, try adding them just to the texture. This is a good place to talk about Normal Mapping. The Normal maps you can make from Paint.net will work for now, but their actually kind of "faux". Switch to the Normals option in the "Views - Shaders" menu from the top toolbar. Your model should have 4 different colors on each side. The idea behind normal mapping is that the model carries its Lighting information with it, rather than having the computer having to figure for Ray Traces. The normal map shows where the model should be highlighted, shaded, recessed and extruded, depending on what direction its facing. This is why the Paint.net normal maps can fail sometimes. Their meant for textures facing straight up, like floor tiles and cobblestone roads. But even those will add quite a bit of detail and by all means, Use them until you can afford better software !!.

[justanother1]

Now, to Export you're model for 3DRad, In object mode, select all objects and choose combine, then do a "flip - x". For some reason Wings3D exports to Directx backwards, that is words on you signs and stuff will be backwards if you don't. It looks wrong in wings3d but will look right in 3drad. I don't have a better explanation .... just do it. Then export your .X model, save your work, and save a screenshot (tools menu) to make a thumbnail with, and exit Wings3D. Open your screenshot in Paint.net select a nice square around your model cutting most of the rest of the image out, and hit ctrl+shft+X to crop to the selection, then resize the image to exactly 128x128 jpg and save it out...