Google Sketchup and GMAX -Need Major help

[brandonleo]

I have the free version of sketchup, but I have a converter to .3ds. I made surfliner cars, but I need help on how to create textures and finally, import it into the game. I made the body mest. Thanks!

 

[johnwhelan]

I understand that Sketchup to Blender is the way others have attempted to do this. There should be something in the forum if you have a dig.

Be aware that practically any conversion won't map everything exactly and you might well do better to start again in Blender.

Cheerio John

 

[brandonleo]

I understand that Sketchup to Blender is the way others have attempted to do this. There should be something in the forum if you have a dig.

Be aware that practically any conversion won't map everything exactly and you might well do better to start again in Blender.

Cheerio John

Thanks! Sketchup is SO much easier though. You truly have to be a Genius to actually make something from scrach.

 

[davesnow]

IMHO, G-Max is very easy to learn. I couldn't get a grasp on Blender, but from the various tutorials I learned G-Max quickly.

Just my opinion,

Cheers,

Dave Snow

 

[johnwhelan]

Thanks! Sketchup is SO much easier though. You truly have to be a Genius to actually make something from scrach.

Trouble is to get reasonable performance you need to understand how it goes together.

What are you trying to make? The following tutorial takes you through creating a simple scenery object to making it into a item of rolling stock.

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Trainz/Tutorial_for_Blender#Newcomers_start_here

Some people are happy with GMAX but it has its limitations for some of the newer techniques so since both have a learning curve you might as well start with the more capable one.

Cheerio John

 

[Len12]

I have the free version of sketchup, but I have a converter to .3ds. I made surfliner cars, but I need help on how to create textures and finally, import it into the game. I made the body mest. Thanks!

Sketchup is great. A number of software houses are using it to create objects because it's so intuitive. All objects in Sketchup must have no textures if you are going to import them into something like Blender. Blender like Gmax have learning curves. It would have been nice to have for Sketchup a direct exporter into Trainz but alas there is not. I've used Blender for years. Textures must be in the form (as a bitmap or tga image for example) 64x64, 128x128, 256x256, etc. In Blender you apply a material then a texture on top. Since every object is limited to 16 materials what you can do is make, say a 1024x1024 bmp image, then put all your textures on that image (say 64x64 images) that way you'll have plenty of "room" to texture in terms of the materials.

 

[johnwhelan]

Sketchup is great. A number of software houses are using it to create objects because it's so intuitive. All objects in Sketchup must have no textures if you are going to import them into something like Blender. Blender like Gmax have learning curves. It would have been nice to have for Sketchup a direct exporter into Trainz but alas there is not. I've used Blender for years. Textures must be in the form (as a bitmap or tga image for example) 64x64, 128x128, 256x256, etc. In Blender you apply a material then a texture on top. Since every object is limited to 16 materials what you can do is make, say a 1024x1024 bmp image, then put all your textures on that image (say 64x64 images) that way you'll have plenty of "room" to texture in terms of the materials.

But watch out for the performance penalties, 200 poly equivalent for each material used.

Cheerio John