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I am interested in creating some early aviation props and costumes for The Movies. I worked through the basic prop tutorial at sexymaria's angelfire site the point where I was able to inject a textured cube into the game. That wasn't too hard, but it was a confidence builder so now I am about to tackle something more ambitious, an airplane prop.
Above is a blender render of a 3d model biplane exported from poser to a 3ds file, then imported into blender 2.49b using the supplied python script. Not too much done so far. I got it scaled up to The Movies game scale which is about 2.5x compared to the poser scale and I reapplied some of the textures. I don't care much for the color scheme, but I'll work on that. I need to figure out how to make the propeller rotate around its center.
I am also going to need an old-time leather aviator hat from the pre WW2 era. The image inserted in the corner of the picture is an example of a german style helmet, I believe. It needs goggles. Guess there will have to be two versions, one with goggles up and one with goggles down.
Here is a low poly poser model of a pilot. I managed to import him into blender, peel off the hat and goggles and
fit them onto "generic_head."
This is the result, without the lenses in the goggles. Haven't applied a texture to it, just a brownish color. A bit crude, but I was really pleased to learn how easy it is to edit a mesh in blender. Much easier than poser.
Above is a blender render of a 3d model biplane exported from poser to a 3ds file, then imported into blender 2.49b using the supplied python script. Not too much done so far. I got it scaled up to The Movies game scale which is about 2.5x compared to the poser scale and I reapplied some of the textures. I don't care much for the color scheme, but I'll work on that. I need to figure out how to make the propeller rotate around its center.
I am also going to need an old-time leather aviator hat from the pre WW2 era. The image inserted in the corner of the picture is an example of a german style helmet, I believe. It needs goggles. Guess there will have to be two versions, one with goggles up and one with goggles down.
Here is a low poly poser model of a pilot. I managed to import him into blender, peel off the hat and goggles and
fit them onto "generic_head."
This is the result, without the lenses in the goggles. Haven't applied a texture to it, just a brownish color. A bit crude, but I was really pleased to learn how easy it is to edit a mesh in blender. Much easier than poser.
Blender and the Unforgiven
It was not until I came in contact with Sexymaria and "The Movies Group" here on Deviant Art that I became interested in blender. It took awhile to get up the courage to tackle blender because I had heard that it was user unfriendly and unforgiving. I would imagine that any persistent user of "The Movies" at some point is tempted to get into modding and with the help of the tutorials on Sexymaria's web-site I was able to learn enough about blender to get hooked. I have learned a lot in the past eight years, but I have not mastered it and I know I never will. One of the most frustrating aspects of Blender is the interface, which always keeps changing, and when you get into the world of materials and textures, there are many traps you can fall into. One reason for this is that this user tends to do things by rote without really understanding what's going on under the hood. If something doesn't work, I just keep trying things until suddenly, miraculously, the thing works and I am
Cartoony Heads in Blender from TM Characters
Cartoonists working in certain genres usually draw their characters with larger than life heads. I was curious to see if there was an easy way to achieve the same effect in Blender using a character imported from "The Movies Game." It turns out that all you have to do is scale up the 'head' bone in the armature and you can get something like the figure above. On the right, the non-scaled figure is included for comparison. Even after re-scaling, the poses and expressions created from regular figures still seem to work. This means that you can still do animations with such a figure and even lip syncing, if you were willing to put in the effort.
Windows XP, The Movies, and Medieval Libraries
I recently reported on a problem I was having with The Movies, i.e., that set mods had mysteriously quit working, first on windows 10, then on my windows 8 machine. IMA-Ouima told me that he had not experienced any problems with running the game on a windows XP machine, so I looked around to see if I could get my hands on a refurbished computer with XP installed. I eventually bought one from an outfit called JSC Computers. The computer was a Dell Optiflex. It came with a new keyboard and mouse, but no video cable. All the video cables I found in my parts drawer were HDMI, so I had to order a VGA video cable before I could try my new acquisition. When I turned it on, it booted up okay and everything seemed to be working. For old times' sake I played a game of freecell, which was a favorite of mine in the XP days (I won!). The next step was to install "The Movies" and the "Stunts and Effects" upgrade from CD. That took awhile, but I eventually got the game running in full screen
Utility Python Scripts for TM Characters
There are certain operations that I find myself performing over and over ad nauseum, so I have started automating these procedures with python scripts. Here is a list of the scripts that I have created so far: left_grasp.py right_grasp.py tm_export_expression.py tm_import_expression.py tm_export_pose.py tm_import_pose.py The first two scripts were written to pose the thumb and fingers of the character to hold a sword or a spear. The data for the pose is embedded in the code. To use these scripts, you simply select the armature object of the character and run the script in a text window. The script does not create key frames, so to make sure the pose sticks, you will need to set a keyframe for it. The only bones affected are the bones in the hand. The next two scripts deal with expressions. Creating an expression in blender takes some work. You need to move the facebones around to pose the lips, teeth, and eyes. The third script in the list, tm_export_expression.py
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The only way i found to simulate the props turning is with a disc with a scroling texture with alpha channel, much like the heli prop.