Milkshape howto
For noobies by a noobie.
I have started to use Milkshape
because of 2 things. It's basic, easy as hell and it's very
cheap. You may have different reasons to use this program but that
doesn't matter. You chose milkshape and that's the end of that.
For starters.
Let's start with the basics. You can
make basic shapes by clicking on the buttons on the right that are
grouped together: Vertex, Face, Sphere, GeoSphere, Box, Cylinder and
Plane. These all are the most basic shapes you have in a 3D
environment. If you have pressed one of these buttons you can drag
your mouse in any of the viewports (besides the 3D view) to draw this
shape in 3D. That wasn't hard, huh?
Next, you want to alter these shapes
by selecting one of the manipulation buttons: Move, Rotate and Scale.
Before you alter your 3D model, you first need to specify what you
want to change. With the Select button you can select what part you
wish to change. Things you can select are Vertex, Face, Group or
Joint. More later on Joints. Now, lets select more than 1 vertex, 1
face or the whole shape and try some of the manipulation buttons.
That was very interesting, wasn't it?
Now, you need to use your creative
mind, because most things can be done with these primitive shapes and
altering them. For example: you can draw a cylinder with more than 1
stack and change every stack seperately. This for example is how I
usually start my 3D weapon model. By selecting the stacks, vertices
and so forth I give my weapon it's basic shape. Later I start to add
more specific details.
Another thing that might come in
handy: Extrude. Sometimes you wish to draw something vertex by
vertex. Make 3 vertices and select them, then press the F button.
This creates a face. If you make 30 vertices and wish to make faces
with these you need to select them 3 at a time and create a face each
time. If you want your model to be 3D instead of flat you then select
all these vertices and faces, using the Select button and then Face,
and click the Extrude button. Now drag your model to 1 side. This
will make the faces 3D. All you need to do is close up 1 side. Faster
than doing everything manually.
Also if you made 1 stack on a
cylinder too short you can Extrude another stack. Handy!
You want to select a certain vertex
but it keeps selecting the one behind it too? Annoying isn't it. The
old method I used was to select them both and then deselect the one I
don't want in a different viewport, but even sometimes this proves to
be a pain in the ass.
I recently found out that you can
select vertices in the 3D view. What a relief that was! Just press
ALT and select the vertex you want or press ALT, click the left
mousebutton and drag the mouse to select multiple vertices. If you
want to select vertices apart from one another you can press ALT +
SHIFT and click with the left mousebutton and/or drag the mouse to
select them. If you want to deselect some of the selected vertices
press ALT+SHIFT and right click the mouse and/or drag over the
vertices you wish to unselect.
Joints
Joints are also called Bones. These
are used to animate your model. You need to select vertices and
assign them to Joints. Then click the Anim button in the lower right
corner to start animating. Moving the bones will move all the
vertices attached to it, thus animating it. Move it, make a frame and
repeat the first step. Afterwards, view your animation. I'm not quite
the animator so you might want to look for a milkshape animation
tutorial somewhere else.
- !nFerNo
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