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Post by ayradyss on Apr 16, 2016 11:59:26 GMT -5
So, I think I may be in over my head. Perhaps this was a bit too ambitious for an early project. What I'm trying to do, is to take the 'Swish and Flick' mirror, from the GTW expansion, and mirror it left-to-right. (If you see the thing, I expect you should understand -- I can add a pic here if needed.)
What I've done so far: I cloned the mirror, with meshes. Exported the meshes and textures. Loaded the meshes into Blender, where I used the Mirror function to mirror the mesh groups (surface, frame and shadow) on the X axis. This appeared to do what I desired in Blender. Saved that.
Now I'm kind of stuck as to what I need to do. It seems like I need to remap the textures, but I've little experience with that. I've learned (from trying it) that it definitely is not as simple as mirroring the texture images. I've been searching through some of the tutorials here. Looked at one about UV mapping objects, though I don't even see a 'Shading/UV' tab in Blender to access that sort of thing with the mirror mesh loaded. The reflective surface seems to also need reassignment, and I've no clue how that works.
If anyone can point me toward any appropriate tutorials, let me know what things I need to learn to proceed or guide me along a bit, it would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks much for your time!
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Post by eronoel on Apr 16, 2016 12:26:24 GMT -5
Hi ayradyss Not sure if this is helpful at all since I am not entirely sure what you are talking about...but it sounds like you want it right to left, right? In blender, you should be able to just flip the mesh go into edit mode-select all- and then type "s x - 1" (no spaces), that should flip the object (I think, it might be one of the other axis but you could test it out). You might have to recaculate normals (which is on the uv menu). You shouldn't have to do anything with the UV map at all, since it will stay mapped the way it is and then load the new mesh into Studio, you wouldn't even have to touch the texture. I haven't done it before, but this is how I would approach it. Also, if you don't see the UV menu, make sure you are in edit mode - it doesn't show up in object mode  |
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Post by orangemittens on Apr 16, 2016 14:11:14 GMT -5
Hi ayradyss, here is one way of mirroring a selected mesh or group of meshes on the x axis:  You can select X Global or X Local. Once your mirror is mirrored click the left mouse button to let go of the mirror and stop the mirroring function. If you do the mirroring this way Blender will flip the normals and it will look very odd when you bring the LOD back into Studio. To fix that go into Edit mode, choose Shading/UV's, select all the vertices of the mesh, and click the Flip Direction button. Do this for all 3 mesh groups.  If you do things this way you should not have to do any remapping at all. A second way to do things is doing it the way eronoel said above...if you do it that way, again, you should not have to do any remapping at all. Both ways will work |
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Post by ayradyss on Apr 16, 2016 23:32:03 GMT -5
Thank you both so much, eronoel and orangemittens! That was what I needed. (Just knowing to switch from Object mode into Edit mode was part of my issue. I'm still learning my way around Blender. I did read some of the related tutorials, but I wasn't doing them actively, and I guess it didn't stick in my head. 3D mesh editing has always been a bit intimidating to me.) I did find one little issue, but now I knew enough to figure it out: I only needed to mirror two of the three groups, the mirror surface and frame. Mirroring the shadow plane was actually flipping it so it was on the front of the mirror facing the rear, so I just had to leave that one as it was and it all works! I'd originally wanted to use the mirrors when decorating my sauna, then was disappointed to find there was no mirrored version. Now the place looks like I'd envisioned it:  Very happy to have this done and working! Thank you both again for your time and help. I'm wondering -- is this okay to upload here in my studio, or not, due to the fact that the mesh is part of the package, and it's a variant of an EA expansion-pack item. As long as it's alright, I'd be happy to share it, but I don't want to do anything against any rules/TOU/copyrights, etc. |
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Post by orangemittens on Apr 16, 2016 23:46:11 GMT -5
Hi ayradyss, if you cloned the item using Studio it will require GTW to function in the game and it's completely fine to share an item like that. I'm glad you got it working...it looks great |
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Post by eronoel on Apr 16, 2016 23:54:23 GMT -5
Awesome! I am glad it worked out. I like the mirrored effect (of the mirror...ha..ha...er..). I would download it if you posted it! I figured not seeing the UV option was probably because you were in the object mode; I had that exact problem when I first started learning blender |
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Post by ayradyss on Apr 17, 2016 0:52:45 GMT -5
Hi ayradyss, if you cloned the item using Studio it will require GTW to function in the game and it's completely fine to share an item like that. I'm glad you got it working...it looks great Ah, great! It should be fine then. I'll upload it and hook it up in a bit. I used the 'Create 3D Mesh' option in Studio to clone it, then tweaked the mesh in Blender and put it all back together in Studio. I may have to make a custom catalog pic for it. I noticed that when using the default generated pic, it looks smaller than the EA/Maxis pic for the original mirror. Nah, it'll do as-is. Thanks again, everyone! |
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