It seems I have a problem with Blender, regarding the sizes of the objects. I imported the player model bounding box, so I can see how big the player is as a reference. However, compared to the normal configuration that blender usually uses, the player is pretty huge. So I have to zoom out quite a lot. And it seems, that at this zoom level, Blender gets problems with the calculations, because I experience all kind of problems that I normall don't have. When I make the objects smaller in scale, then they work fine. For example, it seems to be hard to select individual vertices because as often as not Blender doesn't react to a klick and ignore the vertex. I have to zoom in to the vertex pretty close to actually be able to select it.
Another problem is, that when I move around my object, I noticed that I sometimes can not zoom in anymore, because it seems that Blender has already reached it's zoom limit somehow.
Also I have a problem that sometimes lines are dissappearing. Currently I created a wheel that should be about twice as big as the player. The wheel is a simple 12 sided cylinder. But when I switch to vertex mode, then I see only the front cap vertices of the cylinder. The backside is simply not there. In vertex mode it looks as if there is no cylinder, but instead only a disc, so I can not even select vertices on the backside of the wheel.

I'm using Blender 2.43 on Windows. Any ideas how this can be resolved? Is there a way to make the reference smaller so that I can work with a more suitable scaling, and still make the objects big enough to be usefull? In the beginning the objects were pretty tiny, when I work with the normal default settings, and there are postings here with people who also have an issue with this, but applying the scaling to the view, seems to introduce a host of other problems.

Maybe I'm just doing something wrong, but I fail to see how you can create terrains which will be even bigger then this, when you already have such issues with relatively small objects as player sized?

The easiest way to Model in Blender is to work on your object at a respectable scale, then scale it up for export.

So if your basing your work on a template just create a scaled down version of the template, so when you scale your model to a larger size it will be the exactly what you want it.

However if you want to be in the massive size to begin with, I'm sure theres a button or feature that allows you to change the view distance overall.

http://www.katsbits.com/htm/tutorials/d ... ender_grid

You also want to change 'Clip End' and 'Clip Start'.

And download my reference packs (shame on you for not going to my site for Blender Info, grrrr!)

http://www.katsbits.com/htm/tools_utilities.htm#misc

kit89 wrote:

The easiest way to Model in Blender is to work on your object at a respectable scale, then scale it up for export.

Oh! I didn't know that this would be an acceptable way to do it. I seem to remember that there are sometimes problems, when you scale a model, especially when it consists of multiple individual parts. But I guess I can first model everything as I want it, and then combine all the parts in the single mesh and scale this one upward, This should work, right?

Quote:

So if your basing your work on a template just create a scaled down version of the template, so when you scale your model to a larger size it will be the exactly what you want it.

Thanks! I'm going to try that, as it will make live much easier.

Quote:

However if you want to be in the massive size to begin with, I'm sure theres a button or feature that allows you to change the view distance overall.

Yes, but the problem seems, that Blender has some limits, and when you reach them, it simply stops. Since the sizes, related to Doom, are already pretty big, you are already close to that limits, which normally would be more then sufficient.

kat wrote:

http://www.katsbits.com/htm/tutorials/doom_3_prepping_models.htm#blender_grid

You also want to change 'Clip End' and 'Clip Start'.

I already have done this quite some time ago, and I have seen your site as well. Very helpfull indeed. But my problem is not that I haven't set up everything correct, it was rather that if you use the original Doom 3 sizes, then you are already rather close to the internal limits of Blender. For example, I creaeted this wheel which is a little bit higher then twice the player size. When I try to zoom in rather close to one of the vertices in the center of it, Blender doesn't zoom anymore, because apparently it already reached the zoom limit it can do. If, what kit89 says, works, and I have no reason to not believe him, then I can use the default scale which is much much smaller, and then I wont have these limit problems.

Quote:

And download my reference packs (shame on you for not going to my site for Blender Info, grrrr!)

I also downloaded them as well, before I posted this.

Usually the first thing I do, when I run into a problem, is to check if I can find some information on it, because I know that there are usually enough people who also had similar problems and already solved them. Posting such a question is always a last ressort, because I hate to wait on an answer.

Even before I had your reference blocks downloaded (which are very usefull indeed), I already had exported the playermodel as a reference, which worked quite well to give me an idea of the scale.

If you press Numblock "." or "del", blender will focus the cam on your selection. This should fix the zoom problem.

sparhawk wrote:

...But my problem is not that I haven't set up everything correct, it was rather that if you use the original Doom 3 sizes, then you are already rather close to the internal limits of Blender...

You don't technically need to do what kit said and here's the reason. Blenders limits are based on the setting you use for the grids setup. The default 6400 units for ClipEnd is already quite huge even using D3 grid settings without changing the clipend distance.

Using the Doom 3 settings (as mentioned in the tutorial - '8') will give you a massive zoom level - something like 80000 units if you mousegrab drag the Clip End value to the max for that setting; so make sure you've done that, make sure that you have maxed out the ClipEnd settings.

I can only say you must be doing something odd becasue I can (and have atm) work on complete levels for Quake 4 quite happily using the D3 grid settings whilst leaving the clip end at 6400, which incidently *is* huge in itself, you could work on a rather large terrain object *just* with that setting, so it you maxed it out to the 80000 (eighty thousand) units you can go to using the D3 settings you'll be able to work on a truely collossal object.

Clip start is still relatively close and is again based on unit grid setup, but.... in either case if you want to zoom out or in even you can alway alter and change the settings on the fly; just make sure that if you do that the settings you use are relative to the 'power of 2' rule generally used for asset creation; it maintain scale and size relationship with Radiant etc.

If you're still getting problems with this, send me the file and I'll take a look.

Also use the shortcut goofos mentioned, that zooms in to focus on the selected object. Or you can use 'Home' to zoom into view all objects.

Kat is perfectly right. And heres what you do:

Open up Blender.

In the 3D viewport go to View > View Properties.

A small Window will appear change the grid to "8". Now scale the basic cube to a massive size so you get that weird effect with the Cube point disappearing when you move around.

Now In the same window look at Camera View and scale this to a massive size. Once done you'll notice the cube is perfectly displayed.

Heres a Screenshot for some help:

That should solve your problem.

I think I know now what the real problem is. Usually I create an object with the center point at 0,0,0 and I think this is where that limit is. I was interpreting it wrong.

When I approach that position, then I can not zoom in any longer, but this happens only in the 3D view. In the orthogonal views it looks ok. In the other direction it's fine. But the info about the grid setup is still helpfull, because it was not really clear to me what these numbers actually mean.

I'm not sure the limit is specifically the 0,0,0 reference but rather that point of origin of the object you're looking at, hitting those shortcut keys mentioned above will at least refocus the camera.

It seems I have a problem with Blender, regarding the sizes of the objects. I imported the player model bounding box, so I can see how big the player is as a reference. However, compared to the normal configuration that blender usually uses, the player is pretty huge. So I have to zoom out quite a lot. And it seems, that at this zoom level, Blender gets problems with the calculations, because I experience all kind of problems that I normall don't have. When I make the objects smaller in scale, then they work fine. For example, it seems to be hard to select individual vertices because as often as not Blender doesn't react to a klick and ignore the vertex. I have to zoom in to the vertex pretty close to actually be able to select it.
Another problem is, that when I move around my object, I noticed that I sometimes can not zoom in anymore, because it seems that Blender has already reached it's zoom limit somehow.
Also I have a problem that sometimes lines are dissappearing. Currently I created a wheel that should be about twice as big as the player. The wheel is a simple 12 sided cylinder. But when I switch to vertex mode, then I see only the front cap vertices of the cylinder. The backside is simply not there. In vertex mode it looks as if there is no cylinder, but instead only a disc, so I can not even select vertices on the backside of the wheel.

I'm using Blender 2.43 on Windows. Any ideas how this can be resolved? Is there a way to make the reference smaller so that I can work with a more suitable scaling, and still make the objects big enough to be usefull? In the beginning the objects were pretty tiny, when I work with the normal default settings, and there are postings here with people who also have an issue with this, but applying the scaling to the view, seems to introduce a host of other problems.

Maybe I'm just doing something wrong, but I fail to see how you can create terrains which will be even bigger then this, when you already have such issues with relatively small objects as player sized?

The easiest way to Model in Blender is to work on your object at a respectable scale, then scale it up for export.

So if your basing your work on a template just create a scaled down version of the template, so when you scale your model to a larger size it will be the exactly what you want it.

However if you want to be in the massive size to begin with, I'm sure theres a button or feature that allows you to change the view distance overall.

http://www.katsbits.com/htm/tutorials/d ... ender_grid

You also want to change 'Clip End' and 'Clip Start'.

And download my reference packs (shame on you for not going to my site for Blender Info, grrrr!)

http://www.katsbits.com/htm/tools_utilities.htm#misc

kit89 wrote:

The easiest way to Model in Blender is to work on your object at a respectable scale, then scale it up for export.

Oh! I didn't know that this would be an acceptable way to do it. I seem to remember that there are sometimes problems, when you scale a model, especially when it consists of multiple individual parts. But I guess I can first model everything as I want it, and then combine all the parts in the single mesh and scale this one upward, This should work, right?

Quote:

So if your basing your work on a template just create a scaled down version of the template, so when you scale your model to a larger size it will be the exactly what you want it.

Thanks! I'm going to try that, as it will make live much easier.

Quote:

However if you want to be in the massive size to begin with, I'm sure theres a button or feature that allows you to change the view distance overall.

Yes, but the problem seems, that Blender has some limits, and when you reach them, it simply stops. Since the sizes, related to Doom, are already pretty big, you are already close to that limits, which normally would be more then sufficient.

kat wrote:

http://www.katsbits.com/htm/tutorials/doom_3_prepping_models.htm#blender_grid

You also want to change 'Clip End' and 'Clip Start'.

I already have done this quite some time ago, and I have seen your site as well. Very helpfull indeed. But my problem is not that I haven't set up everything correct, it was rather that if you use the original Doom 3 sizes, then you are already rather close to the internal limits of Blender. For example, I creaeted this wheel which is a little bit higher then twice the player size. When I try to zoom in rather close to one of the vertices in the center of it, Blender doesn't zoom anymore, because apparently it already reached the zoom limit it can do. If, what kit89 says, works, and I have no reason to not believe him, then I can use the default scale which is much much smaller, and then I wont have these limit problems.

Quote:

And download my reference packs (shame on you for not going to my site for Blender Info, grrrr!)

I also downloaded them as well, before I posted this.

Usually the first thing I do, when I run into a problem, is to check if I can find some information on it, because I know that there are usually enough people who also had similar problems and already solved them. Posting such a question is always a last ressort, because I hate to wait on an answer.

Even before I had your reference blocks downloaded (which are very usefull indeed), I already had exported the playermodel as a reference, which worked quite well to give me an idea of the scale.

If you press Numblock "." or "del", blender will focus the cam on your selection. This should fix the zoom problem.

sparhawk wrote:

...But my problem is not that I haven't set up everything correct, it was rather that if you use the original Doom 3 sizes, then you are already rather close to the internal limits of Blender...

You don't technically need to do what kit said and here's the reason. Blenders limits are based on the setting you use for the grids setup. The default 6400 units for ClipEnd is already quite huge even using D3 grid settings without changing the clipend distance.

Using the Doom 3 settings (as mentioned in the tutorial - '8') will give you a massive zoom level - something like 80000 units if you mousegrab drag the Clip End value to the max for that setting; so make sure you've done that, make sure that you have maxed out the ClipEnd settings.

I can only say you must be doing something odd becasue I can (and have atm) work on complete levels for Quake 4 quite happily using the D3 grid settings whilst leaving the clip end at 6400, which incidently *is* huge in itself, you could work on a rather large terrain object *just* with that setting, so it you maxed it out to the 80000 (eighty thousand) units you can go to using the D3 settings you'll be able to work on a truely collossal object.

Clip start is still relatively close and is again based on unit grid setup, but.... in either case if you want to zoom out or in even you can alway alter and change the settings on the fly; just make sure that if you do that the settings you use are relative to the 'power of 2' rule generally used for asset creation; it maintain scale and size relationship with Radiant etc.

If you're still getting problems with this, send me the file and I'll take a look.

Also use the shortcut goofos mentioned, that zooms in to focus on the selected object. Or you can use 'Home' to zoom into view all objects.

Kat is perfectly right. And heres what you do:

Open up Blender.

In the 3D viewport go to View > View Properties.

A small Window will appear change the grid to "8". Now scale the basic cube to a massive size so you get that weird effect with the Cube point disappearing when you move around.

Now In the same window look at Camera View and scale this to a massive size. Once done you'll notice the cube is perfectly displayed.

Heres a Screenshot for some help:

That should solve your problem.

I think I know now what the real problem is. Usually I create an object with the center point at 0,0,0 and I think this is where that limit is. I was interpreting it wrong.

When I approach that position, then I can not zoom in any longer, but this happens only in the 3D view. In the orthogonal views it looks ok. In the other direction it's fine. But the info about the grid setup is still helpfull, because it was not really clear to me what these numbers actually mean.

I'm not sure the limit is specifically the 0,0,0 reference but rather that point of origin of the object you're looking at, hitting those shortcut keys mentioned above will at least refocus the camera.