MM1's glass marbles

One thing I have always thought looked quite cool is small models "encased" in a transparent sphere. There is one obvious use for these types of shapes, and that is marbles. I made these partially to get familiar with Blender and partially because, well, I haven't exactly been active lately and I want to give you guys something, if nothing else to show that I'm not dead.

All marbles up to the Snow Globe in a single download

Note: PQ's marble shaders cause a few of the marbles to render improperly. To fix this, go into the Options menu and disable marble reflections.


Cat's Eye



If you've ever played marbles, or bought a bag of marbles at a toy store, or really interacted with marbles IRL in any way, this style is probably familiar to you, so it came as quite a shock to me that to my knowledge nobody has made one for MB. It consists of a translucent outer sphere and 3 inner ribbons.]
PQ has cat's eye marbles now but this one came first shhhh

Download: www.mediafire.com/download/b7res1x567g1kx2/Cat's_Eye.zip

Gem-in-a-marble



Stuck on Battlecube Finale? Tired of being about to finish with a time of 14:59, only to realize that you missed a single gem? Well now you can carry an extra gem around with you at all times! You can even change the colour by copying another gem skin to the custom marbles folder and renaming it to base.gem!*
*Gem is contained in indestructible marble. Gem has no value and is for imitation only. Texture alignment may vary between marble and real gems. Gem may cause distraction, missed skillshots, failed traplaunches, ice shard collisions, spontaneous OOB, severe lack of WRs, and extreme PQ WHERe. If you experience any of these symptoms, contact your local Matan because the Gem-in-a-marble may not be right for you.

Download: www.mediafire.com/download/ior8g6lyam42w1d/Gem-in-a-marble.zip

Spiky Thing



It's an outer space naval mine! Or a power core! Or a poisonous barb! Or some exotic type of nut! Or... well, I actually don't know what it is, but I would not want to sit on it by accident. Yes, I am aware that you can see the gridlines on the spikey thing, but I will not fix it because I think it makes it look even cooler.

Download: www.mediafire.com/download/wy57grwx7vod282/Spiky_thing.zip

Porygon2



Porygon2 is one of my favourite Pokemon, just because of how easy it is to draw and model. Now you can have your very own mini cyberduck, encased in an indestructible glass marble and doomed to be spun head over... heels? Legs? Rocket propulsion units? Not quite sure.

Download: www.mediafire.com/download/rh7ecihbt6dt2h2/Porygon2.zip

Dragonfly


Easily the most beautiful of all the insects, this frail, ethereal creature has been preserved within a glass marble for eternity, or at least as long as it takes to go Out of Bounds. Still, the dragonfly's wings refract the sunlight and dance in the light and shadow as the marble rolls...

Wait, what's that? It's just an error with the DTS that isn't fixed by recalculating normals or applying scale/rotation to ObjData? have no idea what you're talking about.

Download: www.mediafire.com/download/dnq7y5ltmng8qca/Dragonfly.zip

Snow Globe


For the 2015 Christmas season and as an unofficial contribution to Winterfest, I'm going to try to make a few Winter-themed glass marbles! Kicking it off is a nice snow globe with a snowman.

Download: www.mediafire.com/download/kcec0zjozc6vh12/Snowglobe.zip

Snowflake


On the other hand, if snow globes aren't your thing, perhaps the crystalline beauty of a single snowflake, sealed within impenetrable glass, would be more appropriate. Another winter marble for winterfest! Yes, it looks a bit dark - think of snowflakes swirling around a steely grey sky while a cold wind blows...

Download: www.mediafire.com/download/9p62o9sts6xwc9k/Snowflake.zip

Very very very nice stuff there. Keep up the good work.

I've been messing with blender for a while too, and I still have trouble doing basic things

Get really good at it, and you will be rewarded with a ton of thank yous and omgs.

Also. dat disclaimer. I laughed so hard, that my friends is pure MBG sarcasm at its finest.

Looks very neat! Lol at the gem disclaimer, sounds just like real life™!
The cat's eye... wonder where I've seen something like that before (rustles bag of real-life marbles).

A few tips to make your marbles even better:

• As far as I'm aware, the default marble radius is 0.18975 (this is what we used for MBP, YMMV)
• I noticed you did this with the gem, but if you name your textures "base.<texname like marble or gem>.png", then you can skin them in-game. Just make your skins fall under the same naming scheme (so if you did base.marble.png, you could make a skin1.marble.png).

Nice to see someone new making custom shapes, I look forward to seeing what else you create

-HiGuy

These are looking really neat, was hard to imagine these when I was trying to help you out in the support topic, but the end product looks fantastic. Keep up the great work!

~Aayrl

Looks pretty nice! I might even download them in a while.

Thanks for all the positive feedback guys! I have uploaded a new marble model: the Spiky Thing. Download is in the OP.
Also fixed the Gem marble so the sphere has a rough texture like the other two.

Really impressive work MM1!

So I've run into a bit of a snag making the next marble, which is that some faces just don't render in MB no matter what I do. Does this happen with anyone else?

Are you sure the face normals are facing in the correct way?

Also, this game has issues with Z-axis alpha rendering. Basically that means if you use anything transparent, it might not render in the correct order. See: the gem beams "hide" behind the clouds / glass sometimes. Not sure if there is a way to fix this, but that's what I've observed.

HiGuy wrote: Also, this game has issues with Z-axis alpha rendering. Basically that means if you use anything transparent, it might not render in the correct order. See: the gem beams "hide" behind the clouds / glass sometimes. Not sure if there is a way to fix this, but that's what I've observed.

It's a pretty common problem in a lot of games whose rendering pipelines don't account for alpha transparency. Essentially, the issue is that the Z-buffer doesn't store transparency information (and for good reason), so drawing a transparent object will cause objects drawn behind it to be fully occluded as if the object was fully opaque. The only way to get around the problem is to have the graphics pipeline draw transparent objects last and sort their drawing order based on camera-space Z position, and that's not really something we have control over.

The thing is that I thought that might be the case, so I tried exporting just the model without the transparent sphere, and it still didn't render properly.

amd42 wrote: It's a pretty common problem in a lot of games whose rendering pipelines don't account for alpha transparency. Essentially, the issue is that the Z-buffer doesn't store transparency information (and for good reason), so drawing a transparent object will cause objects drawn behind it to be fully occluded as if the object was fully opaque. The only way to get around the problem is to have the graphics pipeline draw transparent objects last and sort their drawing order based on camera-space Z position, and that's not really something we have control over.

Except the problem seems to be worse than that, where transparent faces don't sort correctly in any case. I made a sphere marked as transparent with a completely opaque texture, and the faces still didn't sort properly. So the engine does treat transparent faces differently, but it does so in a way that causes more problems than it solves.

Some exporters will give you an option to manually sort meshes, but it only helps with that specific shape; other translucent DTSs will conflict with it. For example - clouds and gem lights.

Is it possible to do that with Blender's OBJ exporter? If it is, could you tell me how to do it?

Man, it's been awhile, hasn't it? Glass marbles never died... well, okay. They did. But they have come back to life now, as a new marble is now available! The subject this time is a Pokemon, the adorable cyberduck Porygon2.

Also, I think I've solved the problem of some faces not rendering. What caused it is if you mess up the vertices and create 'illegal' faces (this is similar to red lines appearing on faces in Constructor). Any illegal faces, of course, do not render. The reason I didn't realize it until now is because they work fine in Blender: no red lines, no notice, no nothing, which makes them very easy to miss.

In the spirit of the holidays, I'm working on a snow globe marble. It's technically already done, except that Obj2Dts is refusing to convert it. It gets up to 'Object: SnowGlobe2' and then never goes further. If anyone knows why this happens or how to fix it, help would be greatly appreciated!

Amazing shapes, it's good to see that someone else in community gives a go on this. The cateye marble is certainly thing I got requested to make but never did and it looks amazing in your version, same with spikey thing. As Jeff said with some practice you can some amazing and good looking stuff in blender.

Don't give up default blender dts exporter yet. I certainly believe it has better options that obj2dts has and it's much more flexible since it's made to work with blender together thus you have more power over what you take from blender and what you export.
Anyways here's a list of most common problems and how to fix them. These tips will work with original blender dts exporter, i dont know about any other exporter, it may as well work there but i haven't tested it there since i have resolved all problems on original dts one.
Also as you may know blender heavily relies on shortcuts so I suggest writing those down too, theres a lot but it's worth knowing only most commonly used ones as rest are something that can be used but you can might as well live without them too. It's sortof like they vare usefull in certain situations and sometimes you will end up learning them when you try to do something specific and googling things
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Face appears dark when its towards light/shape is dark/ face is flipped incorrectly.

Select all faces of model and press crtl-N to flip normals outside (or shift-crtl-N to flip them inside). It depends on situation, if you use smooth shading expect to flip some faces inside and some outside due to some odness of blenders normals or MB engine (Im not sure what causes this but for some models I made recently i had this problem a lot, and im not only one so I think it's just some bug)
Model looks very dark ingame even on side which is pointed towards sun.
What causes this: happens when you scale model up or down.
Fix: select the model in object mode and do crtl+A the apply both options . If this doesn't fix it then normals have been flipped incorrectly.
Faces dissapearing.
K so I don't believe theres such thing as illegal faces in blender and dts, since in blender theres triangle mesh, you can stretch faces as much as you like and it shouldn't mess up. What will mess up or make just bunch of faces disappear ingame is when you make them too small. If you make UV sphere with just tons of detail expect some faces to disappear or when you use subsurf. Thats only thing that really has made faces to disappear in past. My only tips for you is use less detail where it's unnecessary (man I tend to hit that point a lot when I made my marbles thus faces disappeared) and also after making the marble do this: select all faces of marble and hit ''remove doubles'' , this will remove all vertices and faces which are ridiculously too close or too small, it's not 100% fix to this issues but it may help you get rid of some rendering problems.

Actually to test my theory scale the model up that you had faces disappearing and export it. I think it should export perfectly fine on bigger scale but im not giving my word
In same object theres 2 transparencies but the thing in back appears in front.
I had this issue once and to solve it selected both objects and hit control-P to parent them. Now if youre lucky, things will be correct ingame. If it isnt simply hit alt-P to unparent them and select them in different order (yes the order you select objects determines to which object things are parented) and then parent again and that should fix it. This will certainly fix it in blender dts exporter, no guarantees for obj2dts and weather or not it actually takes parenting in mind.
This does not fix that problem with 2 separate dts's ingame though as MMS said above.
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Heres few more very useful shortcuts. You propably know some of them but dropping also for anyone else who finds them useful.
shift+c aligns the center point and camera to 0.0.0, saves loads of time and you can add models perfectly in middle just in case you accidentally click somewhere and move it.
alt+c convert to mesh: converts things like paths , nurbs curves and text to mesh so you can edit them forward and make them in dts shape.
W (in edit mode) has tons of great options, but you will propably only need half of this stuff (my favorite being bevel which can make cubes have rounder corners, easy way to add detail).
W (in object mode) This is what in constructor is called ''CSG substract'' Be careful with this though, first of all you must select 2 objects in object mode in correct order then click difference and delete unnecessary ones, second thing is that if you smooth these objects they usually tend to look messy ingame. Tbh it's less stresfull to use this than in constructor, it's just the ascetics that sometimes get damaged with it.
X (in both modes) allows you to not just delete object but delete separate faces or vertices's in edit mode.
shift-D (in both modes) alows to duplicate objects or selected faces/vertices.
B (click twices to get different selection) Allows to switch between selection modes : square selection and circular selection. Use mouse wheel to change size of chricle.
crtl+''+'' crtl+''-'' I can't explain this well so try for yourself. Make a UV sphere and select top vertice. Now click crtl++ multiple times (holding crtl and clicking + also works) and enjoy. I mostly use this when I need to UV map something and have to select faces in really tight spots.
P (edit mode) separates selected faces/vertices into separate object.
crtl+j join selected objects (opposite of P if you can say that)
F Fill: makes 3 or 4 selected vertices into a single face.

This is all that I remember for now. If you have any more questions just ask. Looking forward to more marbles from you!

Thank you so much RDs! The only thing is that I use Blender 2.72, and I don't believe that you can export as a DTS in that version. If I'm wrong, could you please tell me how to install the DTS exporter?

Heres a protip: use latest blender 2.49. Blenders above 2.49 (aka 2.5 2.6) had COMPLETE rewritten UI, it changed loads of shortcuts and just overall working pipeline is different. Everyone on this forums who does dts uses 2.49 because it's last blender that supports dts exporter that was made for blender. I can agree that 2.7 has new features and improvements that i would love to use too but i doubt it's worth having to deal with even more issues that may not even be fixable or that noone has tested. + dts exporter for blender is lot more intuitive. Sure you can use 2.72 but then some of those tips above don't even apply anymore and i can't assist you much. aether. I have played with 2.6 UI but that was for different project that needed obj. Imo the benefits of 2.49 exceeds those of 2.7 when it comes to DTS exporting
Though if you want to use some of plugins on 2.72 what you can do is make objects in 2.72, convert it to obj, import it in blender 2.49 and then export to dts, i used to use this when i was making something similar to 3D P marble but with phils empire logo but wanted to still export it in blender 2.49.
EDIT: forgot to add links to blender 2.49 and dts exporter. Installing should be in folder of exporter
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DTS exporter for 2.49 blender.
mirror.dataorb.net/BlenderDTSExporter_097beta3.zip
Depending on your OS blender 2.49b
download.blender.org/release/Blender2.49b/

enjoy! If you have any other questions just ask.

After a 1.5 month drought (sorry!), another marble is up for grabs! This one reminds me of those lollipops you can get (where I live, anyway) that have a spider or scorpion inside them. You know where to download it.

Also, a question to people downloading the marbles: Do you prefer realistic models such as Porygon2 or the dragonfly, or more abstract ones like the spikey thing?

IMO both styles go well ingame, while i would say that abstract shapes sometimes look better when rolling realistic shapes are usually better eyecandy and I preffer them more. What i would suggest you to try out though is making a new outlining sphere for your object. It can even be something minimalistic like MBAdvanced stock marble or mid P marble. Heres also little example i made that still preserves inside model well while giving marble a bit of outline and gives sense of rolling direcction


This also example how parenting can be useful. First image shows transperent sphere beind rendered over the speaker (thus making it look brighter than it is) In second image speaker is parented to blue sphere (sphere was selected firs then the speaker in blender and then parented) Thus making it seem like speaker is in front of sphere. It's a minor effect but it helps contrast of inside objects.
Due to odd way i made this it doesn't look like sphere

Also another suggestion, make 1 link of all marble in single download too, it will help for those who are interested in trying all your marbles to do it easier.

That looks really cool! I'll definitely experiment with giving more detail to the glass sphere. Also, I actually really like the "washed out" look of the first image in your example because it makes it more convincing that the model is inside it.

On the subject of parenting: Not sure if you have this problem, but for me MB crashes as soon as the marble touches something if the model and the marble are not the same shape - I may be wrong, but wouldn't parenting be undone when I merge the model and sphere into one shape?

Regarding crashing. I suppose it crashes for you when you don't join objects together in blender, which is VERY odd. First thing that comes to my mind is eather sphere has too much detail or one object isn't textured which would screw things over. There could also be just bug regarding rendering since ive had unexplainable crashes of perfectly fine objects too when i get too close. Aether way the marble in each object you see is separate object in blender. The green stripes, speaker and blue sphere. Actually it may have something to do with way parenting works, i have to look into that. If you can send me shape that crashes i could try figuring things out.
Also , yes, when you join 2 objects by clicking J it removes parenting which makes it a single object.

this is how you can tell how which objects are parented (click ''outliner'' in views section below)

...

...

...You know what, I'm just not going to say anything...

Anyway, winter is here (at least for the northern hemisphere), and with it comes another glass marble! This is a nice snow globe, featuring a snowman with a slightly derpy hat! The download link has been added to the first post, as always.

As per request, I have also added a link to download all marbles in a single package.

Glad to hear you're back into this. I'm looking forward for more.

The snow globe marble looks very neat! It goes very well with the Winterfest theme!

A new marble has been added to the first post! Continuing on with the winter theme, this one is a snowflake.

(A snowflake, to be clear. Not a ninja star.)

Bit of a bump much? I was hoping to have a new marble out today, but it seems like PQ has broken a few of the marble renderings. They still look fine in the selection screen, but in-game they look a bit... weird. Only the shapes made in Blender 2.77 and converted via Obj2Dts seem to be affected; the ones made in Blender 2.49 are fine. The effects are as follows:

1: The level does not render behind the sphere as is intended.
2: After playing a level with one of the affected marbles and then attempting to switch to a different affected one, the texture changes but not the model.
3: The marble looks overall darker than it should.

I'll try my best to figure out a workaround, but for now be aware that the Cat's Eye, Gem, and Spiky Thing marbles won't look the way they should.

For number 1. and 2. I would love to see some images

Regarding 3rd point check post No #16 , I wrote some troubleshooting stuff there

Marblemaster1 wrote: Only the shapes made in Blender 2.77 and converted via Obj2Dts seem to be affected; the ones made in Blender 2.49 are fine.

A good way to troubleshoot this would be to export a DTS from 2.49, then open the .blend in 2.77 and export it a second time. If you send me or HiGuy the two DTS files, we might be able to figure out by examining them byte-for-byte if there's any difference causing render issues.

Thanks for helping me figure this out, guys; I do really appreciate it.

@RDs:



On the left is a TSStatic of the Cat's Eye marble, rendering correctly. On the right is the actual marble, opaque and much darker.



Taken after I loaded a level with Cat's Eye, switched to the Spiky Thing, and loaded again. On the left is a Cat's Eye TSStatic, rendered properly. On the right is a Spiky Thing TSStatic, rendered properly. In the middle is the actual marble; you can see how it kept the DTS of the Cat's Eye but is now applying the Spiky Thing texture.



The Snowflake marble (created in Blender 2.49), rendering properly.

@whirligig
It'll be a bit of a challenge to have Blender 2.49 and 2.77 installed concurrently (since I use Blender 2.77 for other projects), but once I get that sorted out I'll definitely try that.

PM'd you the DTS files.