Rendering from Qubicle to Blender Chapter 4: Setting up Before Positioning

February 13, 2017 by

SkyTheVirus

Now there's a lot to do before you can start positioning your model!

Step 1: Position the Light Source and Camera

Before you can start, let’s get that camera and light source you moved back into the work plane.

Zoom out and find your camera and light source and press B and select them.

Move the objects using the different colored arrows into the plane. Position the camera in front of the model and the light source in front as well, but position it a little higher. You should have the objects positioned somewhat like this:

Now the camera isn’t facing the right way so let’s rotate it. Select the camera by right-clicking it and press R and then Z. By pressing Z after pressing R, this lets you rotate the object on the Z axis. Move the mouse and make the camera face towards the model.

Now the camera is looking down… so sad… So Press R again but press X this time, rotating the object on the X axis. Now make it face straight at the model. You can make sure the camera is facing correctly by using your number pad. Press 3 and then 6 six times (If you fixed your object to face the right way, you don’t have to press 6) and you can see your camera in a fixed position.

Zooming in, you might notice that your camera isn’t exactly… leveled. So you can rotate the camera on the Y axis (Press R and then Y) to fix it.

Now let’s test to see if the camera is positioned correctly. On the right, go to the render tab decrease the render resolution percent to 30% and then go to Render>Render Image (Or press F12)

Don’t worry about the lighting on the object, but make sure that the camera is positioned so you can see the whole model. If your camera isn’t positioned correctly, go down next to the view button click on the picture and go to 3D View.

Reposition the camera by selecting it and moving it using the different colored arrows. Then try to render it again. This is trial and error until you finally get the camera positioned just right.

First, before we do anything, let’s change the view so we can see the color of the object. On the bottom, Go to the white circle and click on Material.

Yay color!

Step 2: Material Maps!

Now if you have materials, then you’ll want to pay attention here on the settings I pit these in. They’re pretty easy so don’t worry. If you don’t need this step, you can skip to Step 3.

You’ll be working on the Materials tab:

Once you select an object with that certain material, all the objects will have that material. So you only have to do this once for each material.

Glowing Material

Right-Click any part of the object that is glowing and change the Emit to 0.35-0.45 (I find this range perfect for imitating how Trove does glowing blocks)

You can test this by moving the light source and checking if the blocks light up.

Glass Material

Right-Click any part of the object that is Glass and change the Alpha to 0.35-0.45

Now depending on how transparent the glass object is, you are going to have to put it in these certain settings based on the material maps guide:

Now, these are just estimates, you can use whatever you feel is necessary. I’ve rotated the camera so you can see how the glass material works on this sword. If you can see what’s behind, then you’ve done it correctly.

Glowing Glass

Now, this is a combination of both the Glowing and Glass materials so just go back and review the other maps. But I would recommend you keep the Emit to a low level (0.35).

Step 3: Rigging your Model

Now, this is one of the tedious parts of rendering. Once you get the hang of it, it shouldn’t be a problem.

Merging the Material objects

Let me first start with the material map stuff.

Start by selecting the voxels that go with that body part that is the glowing/glass material and then Shift+Right-Click the Solid material, then over on the right, click Join (Or CTRL J)

WARNING! Be careful when selecting and joining the objects. If you accidentally joined two separate body parts, Then you’ll need to undo.

(Selecting the glowing voxels on the helmet)

(Shift+Right-Clicking the helmet)

Repeat this process with all the glowing/glass objects until they’re all joined together with their body part. You can check if each body part is complete by hovering over the object, Hold Right-Click and move it around. Then press Right click again to set it back to its original position.

Setting the origin

You may have noticed that the object’s center isn’t in the center of the object. So we need to fix that.

Select an object, go to the right, click on Set Origin and then Origin to Center of Mass. Do this for ALL OBJECTS!

Setting Parents

Alright, listen carefully… All your body parts need to be rigged in a way that it’s natural. Take a look at this image on how Parents and Childs work:

The Body is ALWAYS the parent and everything else is a child or both. To link body to the shoulders and to the hand, you set the body as parent with the shoulder as child and then set shoulder as the parent to the child hand. You see what I mean when we set parents.

Let’s start by selecting a hand, Shift+Right-Click the shoulder, press CTRL-P, and finally select Object.

You will see a dotted line connecting the hand to the shoulder. By first selecting the hand (the child) then selecting the shoulder (parent) and creating the parent bond, the hand will move with the shoulder if you rotate/move the shoulder. You can check if you rigged it right by Hold Right click and then moving the object around, if the child follows, you’ve done it right. [.gif]

Repeat this process until you have successfully rigged your model. When you’re done, you can check by moving around the main parent (the body) to see if everything is connected with parent bonds. [.gif]

Now you could do this with armatures, but that’s mostly recommended if you like to ANIMATE in Blender.

Scaling the head of your character (Heads and Helmets for Costumes)

I almost forgot! You need to scale that big head! Since you’ve rigged it, you can just scale it down by pressing S and scale it compared to the body. 2 voxels on the head = 1 voxel on the body (or something along those lines…). Be sure to center your head to the neck/body.