Creating a playfield mesh with holes tutorial (basic)

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  • #123374
    bord
    Moderator
      @bord

      Here is a quick and dirty rundown of how to make a playfield mesh with physical holes to better improve the physics of your game. This assumes basic Blender 2.79 skills.

      Once your table is in Blender and you’ve assigned your playfield texture to your playfield mesh, select your playfield and stay in object mode.

      Hit / to go to local view.

      Make sure you are in orthographic (not perspective) view mode.

      Hit 7 to get a perfect top down view.

      Screen Shot 2019-04-08 at 11.56.50 AM

      Go to add, mesh, use cube or cylinder depending on the shape you want.

      Screen Shot 2019-04-08 at 11.57.07 AM
      Scale the new mesh to the size of the desired hole making sure it intersects on the z axis.

      Select the playfield.

      Add a boolean modifier.

      Set boolean to Difference, assign Object to your cube or cylinder mesh.

      Screen Shot 2019-04-08 at 11.58.23 AM

      Apply the modifier.

      Get rid of your cube or cylinder mesh and bask in the glory of your new hole.

      Screen Shot 2019-04-08 at 11.58.41 AM

      There is usually some cleanup required to make sure the face of the playfield is fully intact.

      After you’ve punched out your holes go into edit mode (tab), select all vertices (a), and Remove Double Vertices (pictured).

      Screen Shot 2019-04-08 at 12.05.17 PM

      Still in edit mode with everything selected triangulate your faces (ctrl+t) and then turn tris to quads (alt+j).

      Finally, go back to object mode with your PF selected and make sure shading is set to flat (pictured).

      Screen Shot 2019-04-08 at 12.04.33 PM

      Then in edit mode with all vertices selected, export an obj with these settings and a scale of 10.

      Screen Shot 2019-04-08 at 12.09.18 PM

      Import the obj into VPX, placed at 0,0,0 and scaled at 100. Make it not visible or collidable.

      A little more detailed and in Blender 2.8:

      Even more detailed with plywood holes in Blender 2.8:

      https://youtu.be/FTIWXMJyShg

      #123375
      bord
      Moderator
        @bord

        Next @borgdog will provide a testimonial for how well this process works…

        #123377
        BorgDog
        Participant
          @borgdog

          hmmm, maybe.

          so I haven’t been able to compare, but does this give a better look around things like wire triggers and such as opposed to cutting a hole in the playfield image like I normally do?

          ooh, and does it fix the reflection issue over those.. that would be a huge benefit.  so, can I import the obj for say my drop target bank hole and use that to cut the hole in the playfield?  I would think that would work.. maybe.

          #123378
          BorgDog
          Participant
            @borgdog

            or actually I guess if I place all those hole primitives in vpx and export them with the playfield.. do the cut that way?, may have to adjust Z on them to intersect

             

            #123379
            Thalamus
            Moderator
              @thalamus

              Huh. Mind reading going on ? Only yesterday I though to myself that I wish that someone would make a tutorial on this and today I see this. Thank you so much Bord. Now, prepare youself for stupid questions :heart:   :rose:

              #123380
              bord
              Moderator
                @bord

                so I haven’t been able to compare, but does this give a better look around things like wire triggers and such as opposed to cutting a hole in the playfield image like I normally do?

                ooh, and does it fix the reflection issue over those.. that would be a huge benefit. so, can I import the obj for say my drop target bank hole and use that to cut the hole in the playfield? I would think that would work.. maybe.

                Haven’t paid attention to the looks of the hole itself, but it does seem to eliminate reflections, which is a huge plus.

                You can definitely use your PF holes (or even walls) as your mesh for cutting away the PF in Blender. Sometimes the UV that maps the PF image onto the mesh gets messed up when you cut too many holes. I can add to the tutorial eventually to include how to remap the image properly.

                 

                #123383
                BorgDog
                Participant
                  @borgdog

                  hmm, it doesn’t seem to be cutting the hole using the hole meshes, must be missing something

                  #123384
                  BorgDog
                  Participant
                    @borgdog

                    I think my hole not being solid may be the issue?

                    here is my blender file, the playfield mesh already had the tapered kick holes and the shooter lane, I exported with the other holes, raised them up to make sure they intersected.  first tried combining all my holes via ctrl-J to just do the cut once, and also tried individual, but doesn’t seem to work right.

                     

                    #123391
                    cyberpez
                    Participant
                      @cyberpez

                      Thats how I’ve been doing it..  add all my objects in VP that I want to be holes, then export.  Depending on the object,  you may need to “remove doubles” Then you can add a “Boolean” (difference) modifier to the playfield for each object (maybe all combined)..  that could create all the holes..  then just triangulate everything and export it back into VP.   I’ve also had good luck extruding the holes and adding a bevel.  And yeah, it fixes the reflections issue.

                       

                      I’ve been meaning to put together a tutorial too, just been cramped on time to put it all together..

                      #123398
                      BorgDog
                      Participant
                        @borgdog

                        ok, started over, it appears the remove doubles took care of my issue.  thanks!  i did combine all the objects just to simplify it.

                        #123399
                        BorgDog
                        Participant
                          @borgdog

                          i now have a playfield with the holes cut in it, no more cutting holes from the image (trade photoshop work for blender work), I also have a tapered shooter lane and tapered kick holes, but I had done that part in fusion 360 (exported to stl, import to blender to convert to obj, may have to figure out that part in blender as well).  thanks for the great tutorial @bord and the help @cyberpez

                           

                          Capture

                          #123413
                          randr
                          Keymaster
                            @randr

                            Nice tutorial bord??

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                            #123417
                            Thalamus
                            Moderator
                              @thalamus

                              A little more details and maybe I could follow :wacko:

                              Knew a tiny bit of blender a while ago. Guess I have to start all over again :unsure:

                              #123422
                              bord
                              Moderator
                                @bord

                                A little more details and maybe I could follow :wacko:

                                Knew a tiny bit of blender a while ago. Guess I have to start all over again :unsure:

                                Not sure what I can add to this part of the process but I can pad out the front end to include details for importing your table into Blender.

                                Should probably do a version for Blender 2.8 eventually.

                                #128125
                                bord
                                Moderator
                                  @bord

                                  In the interest of further muddying the waters, here is a 6 minute screen capture of doing the same thing but in Blender 2.8. I’ll do one of these with narration at some point to help slow things down a bit.

                                  4 users thanked author for this post.
                                  #128155
                                  Javier
                                  Participant
                                    @javier1515

                                    what I do is create a table in FP and then import that table to blender, that way I can create the holes, playfield and other objects to import into VPX.  B-)

                                     

                                    1

                                    As mentioned above, the bad thing about the playfield is that the other objects do not have reflections.

                                    At the Sonic table until the last moment before releasing it I had primitive playfield but I decided to remove it for that little detail.

                                    "Learning without thought is vain, thought without learning is dangerous." (Confucius)

                                    "Aprender sin pensar es inĂştil, pensar sin aprender es peligroso". (Confucio)

                                    Please, if you can help me with a small contribution to update my work team and continue to make more tables I will be eternally grateful.

                                    https://paypal.me/javier1515?locale.x=es_XC

                                    "Learning without thought is vain, thought without learning is dangerous." (Confucius)

                                    "Aprender sin pensar es inĂştil, pensar sin aprender es peligroso". (Confucio)

                                    Please, if you can help me with a small contribution to update my work team and continue to make more tables I will be eternally grateful.

                                    https://paypal.me/javier1515?locale.x=es_XC

                                    #128156
                                    bord
                                    Moderator
                                      @bord

                                      As mentioned above, the bad thing about the playfield is that the other objects do not have reflections. At the Sonic table until the last moment before releasing it I had primitive playfield but I decided to remove it for that little detail.

                                      With 10.6 you can have a mesh playfield w/ reflections. It has been one of the best recent VP features, IMO.

                                      #128158
                                      Thalamus
                                      Moderator
                                        @thalamus

                                        Thanks you very much @Bord. Currently on a small laptop and it is very hard to follow what you are doing. Expect it to be much easier when I get on a larger screen. If I can’t figure it out, be prepared to get nagged about that promised narrated version. B-) Easy to see that you know your way around this program :yes:

                                        #128178
                                        Javier
                                        Participant
                                          @javier1515

                                          As mentioned above, the bad thing about the playfield is that the other objects do not have reflections. At the Sonic table until the last moment before releasing it I had primitive playfield but I decided to remove it for that little detail.

                                          With 10.6 you can have a mesh playfield w/ reflections. It has been one of the best recent VP features, IMO.

                                          Lol  :wacko:

                                          I have overlooked and I have not seen it jajja

                                          ok i’m going to see that and forget what i said earlier  :whistle:

                                          "Learning without thought is vain, thought without learning is dangerous." (Confucius)

                                          "Aprender sin pensar es inĂştil, pensar sin aprender es peligroso". (Confucio)

                                          Please, if you can help me with a small contribution to update my work team and continue to make more tables I will be eternally grateful.

                                          https://paypal.me/javier1515?locale.x=es_XC

                                          "Learning without thought is vain, thought without learning is dangerous." (Confucius)

                                          "Aprender sin pensar es inĂştil, pensar sin aprender es peligroso". (Confucio)

                                          Please, if you can help me with a small contribution to update my work team and continue to make more tables I will be eternally grateful.

                                          https://paypal.me/javier1515?locale.x=es_XC

                                          #128222
                                          Dark
                                          Moderator
                                            @dark

                                            Nice.  If anyone care’s it’s pretty much the same in 3ds max, except in max it’s the ‘pro boolean’ tool.

                                            3dcreation

                                            3dcreation

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