3DModels:Wings3DTutorial

Prerequisits

Firstly you're going to need a modelling programme, for this tutorial I'll be using Wings3D. Its free and small so go download it now! Also you're going to need UpSpring, so get that aswell.

Making the Model

I'll assume you know how to model in wings and have you're model ready, I'm going to be using a three piece tank, chassis, turret and barrel...

So the next step is to UV map it, this isn't as hard as it has been made out to be. Firstly you'll want to combine it, then UVmap->ForceSegment, this will bring up your unit in the UV mapping window, from there you'll want to Segment->Projection which will leave your model looking something like this...

The different colours show the different pieces you're model will be broken up into when its placed on the texture. Now to get it there you'll want to go Continue->Unfolding which will make the UVmap and leave you with something that looks like this...

Nice pattern, but not very useful for when we want to texture it, so rightclick->CreateTexture, use these parameters for now...

And that will give us this...

Thats what you'll draw your texture onto later, but for now close that window and back to the main view. Now we want to convert the model to a format that UpSpring can use, OBJ suits our purposes.

However to animate we will need to have it in seperate pieces, so seperate it to undo the combine we used to help us UVmap, now select a piece, then go File->ExportSelected->Wavefront (obj)... and repeat for all the other pieces, make sure you ExportSELECTED rather than just exporting.

So now you have 3 obj files called something like chassis.obj, turret.obj and barrel.obj. Now you can close Wings3D and crack open upspring.

Load your base object by going File->LoadModel and choosing your chassis, it should now appear in the views of UpSpring, first thing you want to do with it is give it a name, chassis would be an appropriate one, so go to the Objects tab on your right and you'll see an empty list of pieces, select where it should be and give it a name so you can see it...

Now with that object still selected you'll want to import the piece that will be attached to it, the barrel, to do this we don't want to load a new model because that will delete the one we already have, so instead we go Object->Insert Object from file and select turret.obj.

To Be Continued...