Blender loft help

[rrchicken]

Hi, I am attempting to duplicate the 3DCanvas loft tutorial in blender.

I created a simple triangular shape by cutting a cube in half and rotating it into position. I placed one end on the origin, and it extends along the [Blender's] Y-axis as shown:



cross-section:



I added a simple texture with a few splotches of paint:



I can render this in the asset editor if I treat it like a piece of scenery:



If I try to create a loft blueprint and export, then it shows up in the listing, but there is no art rendered when I lay it down.



I've tried a few different shapes and orientations, but no luck. Does anyone have any ideas about this?

[Trainguy76]

I'll give it ago and see if I can do anything with it in Blender.

[Trainguy76]

I get the same thing, I don't know how to solve it.

[Acorncomputer]

HI

I know nothing about Blender but I do know that the shader LoftTexDiff.fx has to be applied to the material in 3D Canvas. Perhaps an equivalent application is required in Blender.

In my loft blueprints I do not have the .igs extension typed in and I also have filled out the Provider and Product fields and set the population to 4. I an not sure if any of this would make any difference if omitted, but it is a suggestion.

[Trainguy76]

HI

I know nothing about Blender but I do know that the shader LoftTexDiff.fx has to be applied to the material in 3D Canvas. Perhaps an equivalent application is required in Blender.

Yes it does. There is two slots in Blender where you name the first LoftTexDiff.fx and the second is the link to the texture. That works for TexDiff at least.

[Acorncomputer]

In my loft blueprints I do not have the .igs extension typed in and I also have filled out the Provider and Product fields and set the population to 4. I an not sure if any of this would make any difference if omitted, but it is a suggestion.

Late edit

[hertsbob]

Hi

I had weeks of head-scratching with pretty-much the same problem, although I use Canvas.

The main reason that the loft doesn't appear in RW is that all points of your model need to start at absolute zero on the front-to-back axis, which I presume with Blender is 'y'.

The loft frequency relates to having other assets relating to the loft, for example fence posts where the loft is the horizontal part of the fence.

Hope this helps.

Cheers

Bob

[Acorncomputer]

Hi

I have just remembered that lofted objects cannot be seen in the Asset Viewer. If they can be seen there then they are not lofted assets but normal assets. As Bob says, it is likely that the origin points are not at absolute zero.

Although not for Blender, this might help - http://forums.uktrainsim.com/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=99450

[karma99]

Your object's centre is not at 0,0,0 it's at 0,1,0.
Set the object centre to where the cursor currently is in your image, i.e. dead centre.

The other difference I can see between yours and mine it that that the rotation is not at 0,0,0.
Probably worth rotating the meshes in edit mode to face the way you need and make sure the objects rotation is 0,0,0 as well as the location being 0,0,0.

[rrchicken]

Thanks to all the advice I am making good progress now. The most important thing, I think, is what karma99 suggested: I wasn't being very careful with my object's centre position. I created a new mesh cleanly and I made sure it was at 0,0,0 with rotation 0,0,0 and I did the transforms in edit mode to make it look like this:

and now it renders

Thank you!

[Acorncomputer]

Congratulations

[henningBR218]

Great!

Quick question: What else were required beside the center at 0? The special Loftt shader??

[rrchicken]

I used the LoftTexDiff (which becomes LoftTexDiff.fx after substitution), I don't know if it was required. I'm going to guess that only a single mesh can be used in a loft, so if there are multiple, they must be merged.

[rrchicken]

I just made a new fence, and forgot to use LoftTexDiff instead of TrDiff, and it didn't make a difference. So I guess it isn't required.



The cross section is two small cylinders placed at Z=0.2 and 1.8, both part of the same object which of course must be centered at 0,0,0.

Then I created a 2m vertical pole as a scenery object and added it as the "Middle geometry" blueprint, with a population frequency of 0.15.