7 replies to this topic

[KieferSkunk]

Hi there.  I want to do something really simple.  I just want to put a sphere mesh on my table.  That's all.

 

Now, as is usually the case when I want to do something this simple, it looks like I can't actually get a sphere mesh without either signing up for an expensive pay account on some exotic 3D mesh-hosting service, scouring the web for some sort of pirate site where I can download such a mesh for free, or buying an expensive and very huge program like 3D Studio or Maya in order to do this.  (Or, shamelessly steal a mesh from another table where someone has already done this.)

 

So, can someone enlighten me?  Is there a simple way to get a simple 3D sphere into a Visual Pinball table?

 

What I really want to do is to create a high-quality spinning soccer ball for the World Cup Soccer '94 conversion, so we can animate that thing properly.  But I'm not a 3D artist and I don't want to have to become one just to do one simple thing on a hobby table.

 

Thanks for any help you can provide.

 

(BTW, I'm an oldbie, in case anyone cares. )

Edited by KieferSkunk, 13 March 2015 - 05:18 AM.

[Shockman]

Blender

 

And this tutorial,

 

[freneticamnesic]

Making the mesh is easy, making the sphere map is not. Find a globe mesh and try texturing that, since it's already mapped for a looping texture. I had to figure out primitive mesh mapping on sharkey's and it still only looks good from one side. There's lots of Blender tutorials for making a sphere map so you should be able to get something that works for you

Blender

 

And this tutorial,

 

 

daaaamn that's dope

[Shockman]

This guy is the best. I have followed along with his tutorials from the beginning when I could do nothing on my own. He never pauses never stumbles and never go backwards. He never leaves out any detail to perform each step. His teddy bear is my favorite.

[Shockman]

I went ahead an followed along with this and came up with this

 

 

This is the .blend file

https://www.dropbox....Ball.blend?dl=0

 

I don't know how to get a working VP mesh from it. Maybe someone can do that.

Edited by Shockman, 13 March 2015 - 07:17 PM.

[freneticamnesic]

It's definitely too high poly for VP if it's going to move. You can probably try to decimate it or something but it's going to lose detail. I'd probably leave out the stitching and reduce the smoothing steps for a VP object.

[Shockman]

In that case there are quite a few lower quality soccer balls out there. One built with that in mind would probably be better in the end.

[KieferSkunk]

So, I found a different free program, SketchUp, and a plugin to export to OBJ format.  Thinking that might help, I found a simple, low-poly sphere (~360 polygons) and used the plugin to export this to OBJ format.  Here's what it looks like in SketchUp:

 

 

I then imported it into a simple test VP table, and this is what I got:

 

 

This was with a texture applied, too - the texture isn't showing up at all.  If I select "Sphere map the texture", then I can see the texture repeated multiple times around the primitive, but still only on every other triangle.

 

What's going on with that?

Okay, just after I posted that, I tried re-exporting the object with some different settings and ended up with a solid sphere, but still no texture (even though I have one selected in VP).  Getting closer.

 

BTW, just to be clear, I actually don't want a true-to-life soccer ball - I'm trying to re-create the spinning ball in the WCS'94 machine, which is just a simple hemispherical dome with a simple soccer-ball-like texture painted on it.