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Modeling in Hexagon - Fantasy Tower -Thoughts from a Hexagon-Beginner

BeeMKayBeeMKay Posts: 7,017
edited May 2014 in Hexagon Discussion

A couple of weeks ago, I bought "Modeling in Hexagon" by ironman13 and Fugazi1968 (http://www.daz3d.com/modeling-in-hexagon-fantasy-tower ).
But I only found the time to work through it during the past two weekends. Here's the result and my experience&impressions;.
First of all, as a non natrive English speaker, it was important to be able to understand what is said. The language is simple to follow, and pronounced clearly, so that it's easy to follow.
Instructions were given at a pace that was easy to follow, though Mr Stop-Button was my friend. ;-)
The tutorial introduces into the basics of working with Hexagon (for a more thorough introduction, I can recommend http://www.daz3d.com/modeling-the-human-head ).
The tutorial uses only six-or-so of the many tools Hexagon has available, but that is sufficient to get some work done, and achieve a result.
The thing that was a little bit distracting was that the narrator seemed to have no clear plan of how to reach the goal. For example, the tower gets welded together, only to have the previously welded parts split for UV-mapping again. While this was a good excercise, it still was somewhat frustrating, and perhaps the tutorial would have won a bit (from a beginner's point of view) if this had been better handled, planning wise.

The bit about packing your model for DAZ use was very informative, even if you don't want to become a PA and just want to create a properly packed item for your own runtime. :-)

In the end, I was able to create my very first building in Hexagon, and UV-map it. You can easily learn complete your first Hexagon-project in two or three hours with the tutorial, and this was quite rewarding in itself.

What I miss in the tutorial was a module that tells me how to get the UV-mapped templates exported for editing in an image editor, like Gimp, so you can create textures, bump maps, ect.. There's probably a tutorial for that somewhere, I guess, but for completeness reasons, it would have been great if it had been a part of the package. :-)

ironman13 and Fugazi1968, thank you for creating this tutorial. :lol:

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Post edited by BeeMKay on

Comments

  • XoechZXoechZ Posts: 1,102
    edited December 1969

    Congratulations!

    The tower looks nice, especially for a first try :-)
    I also tried to start modeling in Hexagon, but my intention was to create clothes. Unfortunately I had to give it up after a while because Hexagon was too unstable. I had so much hangs and crashes that I have lost my interest and motivation.

    Concerning UV maps for creating textures:
    You have to make a snapshot from the UV map inside Hexagon. There is a small camera icon in the UV editor for this. Then you can save and open it in any image editor software.

  • Wee Dangerous JohnWee Dangerous John Posts: 1,605
    edited December 1969

    There was a great tutorial By Danny (CG-Dreams) on modeling a rabbit which covered UV mapping but I cannot find it on the net. Gary Miller over at GeekAtPlay.com has done a few projects which covers UVmapping as well, this one is 1 3 part tutorial on making a tree trunk -

    http://www.geekatplay.com/hp1.php

    He also did a tutorial on making a hardback book which is good to. To be honest, all his tutorials are worth watching.

  • BeeMKayBeeMKay Posts: 7,017
    edited May 2014

    XoechZ said:
    Congratulations!

    The tower looks nice, especially for a first try :-)
    I also tried to start modeling in Hexagon, but my intention was to create clothes. Unfortunately I had to give it up after a while because Hexagon was too unstable. I had so much hangs and crashes that I have lost my interest and motivation.

    Concerning UV maps for creating textures:
    You have to make a snapshot from the UV map inside Hexagon. There is a small camera icon in the UV editor for this. Then you can save and open it in any image editor software.

    Thanks! UV maps saved, and stored. :-)
    I can understand the frustration about Hexagon crashing. I usually save a lot, under different names, so if I crash during one step, I still have a fairly recent version to re-start from. Still, it's rather annoying, and shouldn't happen. It's a shame.


    There was a great tutorial By Danny (CG-Dreams) on modeling a rabbit which covered UV mapping but I cannot find it on the net. Gary Miller over at GeekAtPlay.com has done a few projects which covers UVmapping as well, this one is 1 3 part tutorial on making a tree trunk -

    http://www.geekatplay.com/hp1.php

    He also did a tutorial on making a hardback book which is good to. To be honest, all his tutorials are worth watching.

    Thanks for the link. I'll chck them out as soon as I find the time. :-)

    Post edited by BeeMKay on
  • XoechZXoechZ Posts: 1,102
    edited May 2014

    lee_lhs said:

    Thanks! UV maps saved, and stored. :-)
    I can understand the frustration about Hexagon crashing. I usually save a lot, under different names, so if I crash during one step, I still have a fairly recent version to re-start from. Still, it's rather annoying, and shouldn't happen. It's a shame.

    Yes, thats true!
    But even worse is that DAZ is not going to do anything about it. I wrote a support ticket some time ago, explaining the situation and asking for bug fixes. They just answered that there are no updates planned in the near future. Seems that DAZ has given up Hexagon.

    Post edited by XoechZ on
  • Wee Dangerous JohnWee Dangerous John Posts: 1,605
    edited December 1969

    Sorry, about the UVmapping - After you have watched the Geek at Play tutorials have a look at a free piece of software (there is also a full version) called UVMapper-Classic

    http://www.uvmapper.com/downloads.html

    After you have unfolded the object, all you do is export the prop you want the texture for as an OBJ, load it into UVmapper, select a scale factor (say 1024*1024) and name the image file.

  • MarkIsSleepyMarkIsSleepy Posts: 1,496
    edited December 1969

    Hi all,

    I am also a beginner to modeling and just tried my hand at this tutorial as well - thought I'd share my attempt. My previous tries at modelling include a ramp which was just a cube with part of it angled and a vial, which started out as an attempt to make a light, which was just a bunch of cylinders grouped together, so this was a big leap forward.

    I had some weird issues come up (your can see how messed up the geometry and UV map on the roof are) but I think it's not too bad for a first try at some real modeling. Despite the issues I had, I think I finally get at least the outline of UV mapping now and I really recommend this tutorial for any other beginners trying to figure it out! Just be prepared to pause and rewind a lot, because it is a fast paced tutorial.

    Thanks,
    Mark

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  • useroperatoruseroperator Posts: 247
    edited October 2014

    I was gonna try my hand at this without the tutorial, but then I got bored.

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    Post edited by useroperator on
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