I have just created a page called ‘Basic Modelling Techniques‘ that covers the following techniques -

• Edit mode, edge and face selection, loop cuts – by making a simple jet plane
• Extrusion – by making a spoon
• Spinning/Lathe – by making a goblet

Designed for beginners but useful to anyone unfamiliar with the techniques.

The tutorial shows how to make the upper body of a character (torso, arms and neck) using mesh modelling. The tutorial shows how to use a range of mesh modelling tools, techniques and modifiers.

The page gives background information about the tutorial and the files created in the tutorial. The page will be developed in the future with new tutorials on how to make other parts of the body and how to use other techniques.

You can find the page (and the tutorial) in the modelling menu or click the link below -

Creating Character Skins

jumpkick7fps.bvh.zip – File imported at the beginning of the tutorial

LowPolyCoco4.blend – Append the skin from this file

dance.bvh.zip – File used to add another action to the rig

CoCoTut20.blend – File created in the tutorial

Files used in the tutorial -

basicArmatureV1aTutFinal.blend – Append from this file to get the 3D parts to link to the armature

motionTut16.blend – File created in tutorial

rigWithActions3.blend – File with finished rig

Links

Blender Motion Capture Tutorial from 3D Artist magazine

Motion capture data BVH tools and files – Blender Nation post with links to the sites below plus more

http://www.bvhacker.com/ – source and instructions for bvhacker utility software.

https://sites.google.com/a/cgspeed.com/cgspeed/motion-capture – sources of free bvh files

Michael D’Andrea BVH file repository – Michael has imported various bvh files into Blender 2.49, Michael stored the original bvh file scripts with the files and these were the ones used in the tutorial

http://blender.freemovies.co.uk/introduction-to-the-game-engine-making-a-simple-ball-game/

The first part of the tutorial replaces a message sending system to keep the score, with a system that uses the global dictionary object. This has the advantage of not being reset when the level restarts.

Blender 2.5 Tutorial Developing a Simple Ball Game Part 1 Keeping Score Using the Global Dictionary

The second part shows how to restart the level when the ball misses the holes and falls off, in a previous version a timer was used to restart the level, in this version, the height of the ball is used.  Also ‘pressing Q to quit’ is added.

Blender 2.5 Developing a Simple Ball Game Part 2 Detecting the Height of the Ball & Press Q to Quit

The third part of the the tutorial shows how to display the score within the came using a dynamic text display.

Blender 2.5 Developing a Simple Ball Game Part 3 Displaying the Score using a Dynamic Text Display

File needed at the start of the tutorial – rotatingPlanePractice.blend

Finished practice level of game – rotatingPlanePractice13.blend

You can always add text objects to a scene (using the Add menu) but they are static and cannot be changed during the game. The score obviously changes during a game and so you need dynamic text to display it.

Tutorials created recently have been experimenting with the game engine’s input and output facilities for making interactive applications (including games).

The updated version was created because of a comment from dberube4 about setting the transparency to alpha (making the background transparent) which means you do not have to set up materials and so a much shorter tutorial. You can still parent the display to a black background plane if you want to but that is straight forward.

This is the finished file from the tutorial textDisplay9a.blend

You can append the text display object from the file into a game you are developing that needs a display. I show how to do this is the final part of a tutorial on developing a practice level of simple ball game.

Blender 2.5 Developing a Simple Ball Game Part 3 Displaying the Score using a Dynamic Text Display

The tutorial also shows how information can be passed to the new level (in the tutorial a score). To do this the ‘global dictionary’ object is used (in Python bge.logic.globalDict), which is a relatively easy way to pass information between objects (and files) without having to send messages.

The original ideas (and files) were taken from the Blender book ‘the Blender Gamekit 2nd Edition’ which was written for version 2.49 of Blender. The files are adapted to work with 2.5x and are demonstrated in the tutorial, then a simpler version is worked through.

Click the links for the tutorials -

Blender 2.5 Game Engine Tutorial How to Load a Second Level and Pass a Score to it Part 1 & Part 2

The files created in the tutorial – level1.blend ,  level2.blend two levels of a game (dummy game) both must be saved in the same folder.

These are the files adapted from the Gamekit book – GlobalDict_L1b.blend ,  GlobalDict_L2a.blend as above two levels of a game (dummy game) both must be saved in the same folder.

What is Webgl? it is a standard supported by Firefox, Chrome and Safari web browsers that interfaces to the user’s graphics card to give hardware accelerated 3D.

Is Webgl relevant to Blender? Webgl is just one technology enabling 3D on the web (Flash being another) but as these technologies become better supported and mature there will be more and more 3D content. Blender is a Digital Content Creation (DCC) tool and is ideal for creating the 3D models, animations and games to go onto the web.

It is early days yet but Webgl and other technologies are well worth watching.

The game consists of a ball resting on a plane, by pressing the arrow keys the plane rotates and the ball rolls. The object of the game is to get the ball to roll into holes made in the plane.

The tutorial shows how to use the logic editor window, detecting the pressing of the arrow keys and rotating the plane.

The sphere is added to the scene and its physics properties need to be set.

Click here for the tutorial page.

When you work in the 3D view, Blender converts your actions into API (application programming interface) commands. The Info window (Python console in report view in older versions) displays these commands and you can copy and paste them into a Python script.

This tutorial shows how to make a simple model of a monkey man. The commands used are – adding meshes, scaling, moving, rotating duplicating.

Click here for the tutorial page.