Hard Light Productions Forums
Hosted Projects - Non-FreeSpace => MechCommander OmniTech => Topic started by: Karl on December 13, 2010, 03:04:26 pm
-
I thought I would start a new thread and place it in the public branch of the forum so that I could have as many people look at the problem as possible.
I have a problem with a 3d model I am attempting to add to MC2, the majority of the faces are missing or white...
I am learning 3ds as I go so if you are attempting to help please do not assume I have done anything correctly!
Here is a link to a pic of what my problem is
(http://i1209.photobucket.com/albums/cc384/KarlPav/Untitled-7.jpg)
I am using 3ds max and exporting as a .ase file, the model displays correctly within 3ds
Also for anyone who wants to see the original .max files I can provide these
-
Please send me the ase, max and the texture file. I will take a look :) I can't help you with the mech animations, but at least I learned now a little while adding new buildings. The editor is really *****y if the ase file is not correctly edited.
But maybe people with more experience in 3DS Max can be of more help here than myself.....
-
http://www.mediafire.com/?hcmbdw9ph8jr6a9
http://www.mediafire.com/?a9i1lmoe51byulu
Here are the files, you can download from mediafire?
-
Looks like some/all of the faces have inverted so the outside is facing in, in blender it would be a case of drop the model into mesh editing, select everything and recalculate normals. Don't know how you go about that in max though.
-
Normals have been suggested a couple of times now, I have tried what I can regarding normals with 3ds but I think I will download blender and use the recalculate see what happens.
This may be my ignorance but would inverted faces result in transparent faces in the 3d model in game?
-
Normals have been suggested a couple of times now, I have tried what I can regarding normals with 3ds but I think I will download blender and use the recalculate see what happens.
This may be my ignorance but would inverted faces result in transparent faces in the 3d model in game?
I would say so yes. Has conversion been done before using the method you are using?
Below is first a ship with correct normals and the second one is fully inverted
[attachment deleted by admin]
-
Really hard to say. Flipped normals was also my first idea. But I have converted the model to cob and 3ds, and at least in truespace the normals are fine and texture coordinates preserved. Usually flipped normals are visible there. But I noticed that some of the submodels have incorrectly centered axis. When I open the model, the arms and shoulder launchers are displaced (and that quite a lot actually)
Texture and channels also looked ok on the first view, but my experience in that case is not so big.
@Karl : You still have the material reference "vulture" in the model. According to the viewer, I cannot see it used at all in the model. Maybe remove that entry from the ase file and then check again.
Please try this file, I removed the vulture entry completly.
http://wcsaga.hard-light.net/team/Starman/downloads/lupus2.ASE
PLS NOTE : I changed the filename so you don't accidently overwrite your original. But don't forget to change your ini file, otherwise you will not use it :)
If that doesn't work, try the second issue. Rename my texture below to lupus.tga.
http://wcsaga.hard-light.net/team/Starman/downloads/concrete.tga
This texture is working correctly, so if the faces are closed ingame with that texture (coordinates will be messed up of course), than you can be sure that the texture is your problem, not the mesh.
BTW, I'm going to bed now, and tomorrow I will not be reachable until the evening. I'm in desperate need of a new OS install, the errors are taking overhand. But I should be finish later the day
Take care :)
-
Karl, I'm not sure if you are familiar with these concepts or not, but I'd like you to take a look at posts 216 and 222 on this thread:
http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=72062.200
Hopefully, that will be of some use to you.
:)
-
Thanks all I appreciate the help,
@Thaeris - I am unfamiliar with everything! This is my first ever model. I have read your posts and I am modeling in quads, the point about shaders was alittle beyond me.
@Starman, thanks for the help, I will try with your concrete texture and my original model and if that fails I will move to your vutureless model, and final stab will be recalc normals with blender
Again not doubting that the normals could be the problem but could/would anyone be able to shed some light on why the model looks fine in 3ds if the normals were dodgy?
Cheers all
-
Thanks all I appreciate the help,
@Thaeris - I am unfamiliar with everything! This is my first ever model. I have read your posts and I am modeling in quads, the point about shaders was alittle beyond me.
@Starman, thanks for the help, I will try with your concrete texture and my original model and if that fails I will move to your vutureless model, and final stab will be recalc normals with blender
Again not doubting that the normals could be the problem but could/would anyone be able to shed some light on why the model looks fine in 3ds if the normals were dodgy?
Cheers all
convert tzhe mesh in Max to editable poly. Then select face, check "ignore backfaces" or what ever it's called in english.
The click somewhere on the mesh. If Max doesn't allow you to select the face, it has its normals flipped.
Uncheck the option, click the face again and click on flip. Rinse and repeat.
Edit: just checked the mesh in Max. The normnals seem fine, maybe something went wrong with the conversion?
-
Hi all,
@Angelus thanks for looking at the mesh.
Ok here is where I stand, despite what Angelus said about the normals looking good (not to say he is wrong) I am having some success with flipping the normals (again I think Angelus may have a point about how 3ds is exporting the ase file - there are others online who have had similar normal problems with 3ds 9+ and ase exports), but this success only happened after I applied a reset xform modifer, currently I have everything displaying correctly (though with some of the faces if can be difficult to see) with the exception of the arms and missile racks, the inside face just wont display correctly, I may delete the faces and start a fresh for them.
-
Well, since it didn't happened to my models, and I also export the ase with Max 9 (though I still have to edit texture entries manually), maybe you could try with my way of doing it. Sounds maybe stupid, but it works, and is certainly faster than editing the mesh a few hours.
Export your model to 3ds, then use 3d Explorer to export it to *.cob, then back to 3ds. Import in Max, export as Ase. Watch that the scaling stays correct.
It works for me that way.
-
I think I have it sorted now but I also have the original unedited model, I will attempt your conversion technique with the original file.
by the way I have some ideas about stopping those mechs from being destroyed I will be implementing it this weekend
-
Cool man :)
That will speed up my chapter 2. I just have to add some brains to the big final battles, and have two other missions done. Though I was a little lazy these days, Life is currently really *****ing with me :mad: I hope I can do a little more tomorrow and help with magic's stuff
-
Thanks for the help all here is the finished product
http://i1209.photobucket.com/albums/cc384/KarlPav/Untitled-8.jpg
Now I have another question, it is about UV mapping. What methods do you modellers out there use to create space efficient UV maps?
I am currently using box mapping which basically "photos" the object from all 6 directions and then removes coincidental faces from one of the two "photos" where they occur.
This isn't very space efficient and I have to rearrange the UV's on the map to pack them together leaving a lot of dead space (or deadspace for those out there who are Issac Clarke fans).
I have looked at instructions on pelt mapping and will have a crack at that soon, but I just wanted to survey the wider community for other techniques and ideas
I am using 3ds max
Thanks in advance for any help
Karl
-
I planar map everything. It's probably not very efficient, but there's never any streaking or stretching. Unfolding can also be helpful.
-
Thanks Bobbtmann I will have play with planar, I was using box but havent really experimented (It was working so why fix it)
-
Ok time for Karl to reach out the community for more helpful tips and tricks
I am remodeling the Lupus because I have polycap room and the arms and legs are wonderfully low poly and ugly, not representative of the concept art.
(http://i1209.photobucket.com/albums/cc384/KarlPav/Lupus.jpg)
here is the concept art
The problem I am having is finding an aesthetically pleasing way of terminating the back of the arm gun and beginning the rest of the lower arm to the elbow joint.
From the concept art you can see that the gun is quite large relative to the rest of the arm but another complicating factor is the shape, as you can see it is basically a box rotated 45 intersecting with a hexagon, so quite an odd shape to directly taper into another shape (the rest of the arm I would like to make "round" so 8-10 sided polygon).
So anyone with suggestions or ideas of how to construct a nice "wrist" joint (for lack of a better term)
-
Would you change the feet to something more common ? Pretty puppy-eye please ? :p
-
Once I have the mech working completely in game I will make a custom version just for you Starman, with new feet!
-
No dude, way too much work, don't do that :) I do not have to like everything 100% :)
-
I am currently updating the arms and legs anyway... I have about 500 triangles to play with at the moment, the legs will be easy as they are basically a circle that bevels to a square, but the back of the arms is really getting me down!
-
Hm, in case of the feet, may I suggest that you copy the argus feet ? Either that version, or the one I made on the owens. Both would fit the mech well imo.
-
I remember quite a lot of Mechs but where does this one comes from?
-
I don't think that it was in any of the games, also I cannot really remember read about them in a book. But it's listed under "canon", so well...... :)
Seems to be a Clan mech:
http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Lupus
-
Its a second line mech so not as flash as the front liners, I wanted to add a mech that none else had attempted, and I also wanted something that looked a little different with a few angles
-
It's the 'Mech that the Hellfire (http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Hellfire)(TRO 3067) was supposed to be based off of, a very old design modified as a testbed for the then-new Heavy Lasers.
I wouldn't be surprised at all if the Lupus hadn't even been statted-out until recently(for ED: Golden Century), and thus only "existed" as the footnote in the Hellfire's background text.
-
Thats why I haven't seen it, its not in the TROs.
I have kinda lost the overview since I have stopped active playing the game.
-
(http://i1209.photobucket.com/albums/cc384/KarlPav/Untitled-18.jpg)
Fafnir and Lupus currently
(http://i1209.photobucket.com/albums/cc384/KarlPav/Untitled3-2.jpg)
Hellfire modeled
(http://i1209.photobucket.com/albums/cc384/KarlPav/Untitled-19.jpg)
Revised Lupus
Just a few pics to let everyone who has helped know how I am getting on
-
Like your Fafnir.
-
All of them look pretty good.
-
(http://i1209.photobucket.com/albums/cc384/KarlPav/Untitled-27.jpg)
My mechs so far
-
The Argus looks great! The Mad Cat III, however, looks kind of smaller than I imagined it would be.
Here's the Champion model.
[attachment deleted by ninja]
-
Mk3 is the same height as the bushwacker from memory, but its only 55t but I guess the argus is 60 and bigger hmm...
Thanks for the model
-
maybe this is my BT thing kicking in, but... i would like it if all the DA crap was kept out please
-
Honestly, I'm not even sure what the DA stuff is (dark age ? ) I only know the games, and the books before and while the clan invasion. That's the universe I like, and what I want to see in the game myself. I've taken a look at some of those strange protomechs in the wiki, and to me it completly doesn't fit into what I like in Battletech. But since we are making the game more easily moddable, it's about to the modders in the end. I wont do it :)
-
protomechs when they came out were useful, but when bv 2.0 came around they became useless
and the Dark age stuff was made by wizkids (not exactly sure there) and the mad cat 3 happened to be part of that whole stupid time in the battletech universe.
-
The protomechs were awesome, if you ever played the board game they were like battlearmor but could take as much damage as a light mech as well as being able to swarm heavys. I plan to make them, as well as all the other battlearmor types when i get some more experiance in the 3d modeling department. I really want to make infiltration/recon and assassination missions using only battlearmor. The protomechs were unleashed by clan smoke jaguar during the campaign on huntress, so thats were they fit in to the Battletech Universe. Karl, your Madcat 3 looks really cool. Ever thought about making the Rakshasa? (it's the innersphere version of the madcat)
-
@ThorC yeah I have actually though about the Rakshasa, regarding you models I think you are doing well, I was at the same point as you are about 2-3 months ago and now I feel I have enough skill to at least make a mech (lets be honest they are relatively block like especially on the levels of detail we are after here), so you are well on the way to making Protomechs etc
@Cipher I am not well versed in BT lore (I generally know what is happening in the universe without knowing details about specific story lines), I liked the look of the MkIII so thats why I added it, not because it was a DA mech, though I am interested in knowing why you think the DA time period is stupid? I dont know much about it and I am curious
-
ok, whizkids made a variant of btech called mechwarrior dark age, which was a "ready to play from the box" game, they said it was easy to learn and play, but all you had were the game pieces on circular bases that made no sense, and confused you even more.
and the story behind the dark age (from what i could figure out) is that some group in 3120ish destroyed a lot of HPGs, and the inner sphere is in even more disarray. In a nutshell, the entire story arc has problems, and doesn't make any sense to me at all, and most battletech fans hated MWDA and the story arc with it too.
but im generally a 2750-3067 guy when it comes to the BT story and such, so you could ignore me when it involves the dark age stuff, cause i have nothing nice to say about that.
-
From sarna.net (http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Dark_Age);
The Dark Age began with the blackout (as opposed to the Jihad's whiteout) of 80% the HPG network on August 7th of 3132. Humanity was suddenly thrust back into the early days of space travel where FTL communication was not possible and messages had to be couriered by JumpShips. This made command and control of armed forces and the governing of the Inner Sphere empires very difficult, if not impossible. Just two years earlier, Devlin Stone, founder of the Republic of the Sphere, retired and vanished, promising that he will return when the Republic needs him the most.
...
As for the Mk3; we've already got the classic, and the upcoming Mk2. I don't think we need to muddy the waters with another 'Cat/Wolf, to be honest. Everything else is looking good so far though.
-
I think entire Dark Age story is "ugly".
They put mass murderers, mad dictators, jihad and nuclear weapons in a bag and that suppose to be interesting. :confused:
I dont want to know more about DA and I dont care but I like this "small cat" design.
-
Yeah, the Dark Age does seem to be a bit of a mess. I guess they wanted to spice things up a bit and make it more appealing to younger players.
The MC/TW Mk II seems to be another product of it, alongside the fairly bizarre MC MkIV "Savage Wolf" (http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Savage_Wolf_%28Mad_Cat_Mk_IV%29) and Vulture MkIV (http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Mad_Dog_Mk_IV_%28Vulture_Mk_IV%29).
As long as the Deimos (http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Deimos) shows up at some point though, I'm happy.
-
Demios looks do able... I will add it to my list
The next three mechs I will be adding (I target 3 mechs per release) I think will be Uziel, Hellfire and Naga (thought I may also add the Linebacker and Sunder to the list as I am waiting to get meshes from other people for these mechs)
I guess at some stage I will have to do the savage wolf and my initial plan was to have all the madcats and field mixed class cat armies!
Regarding DA, from what I understand of it now I am beginning to agree that the story line is thin (well at least the over arching story), sounds like "hey we need more battles/conflicts in the universe quick!, hey I know lets effectively start heaps of turf wars by quickly redrawing the boarders by cutting communication to um... everywhere"
-
don't you think that would be a little bit, you know, redundant... you already have the Timber Wolf, Mad Cat MkII, and the Mad Cat 3 (which all are different sizes) the Mad Cat 4 however, is just a straight copy of the Timber Wolf D (Timber Wolf B in MCO), but it just looks different.
this is just me, but i don't think the Mad Cat 4 would add anything
-
Did my Champion make it into the game?
-
don't you think that would be a little bit, you know, redundant... you already have the Timber Wolf, Mad Cat MkII, and the Mad Cat 3 (which all are different sizes) the Mad Cat 4 however, is just a straight copy of the Timber Wolf D (Timber Wolf B in MCO), but it just looks different.
this is just me, but i don't think the Mad Cat 4 would add anything
This is what I was trying to point out regarding the III. Although the MkIV might actually be useful if it's special features like the gun and missile pod rotation could be pulled off. But I doubt the game engine can do that right now.
The Mk II feels like a solid and reasonable upgrade, but the Mk III feels like a cheap attempt to cash in on the Mad Cat/TWolf's popularity. There are other mechs that are surely more deserving of time in the spotlight.
-
There are other mechs that are surely more deserving of time in the spotlight.
*cough*Marauder II :D
-
Cough, (Akuma) Cough Cough(Black Knight), Cough(Guillotine,Grizzly,Piranha,Cerberus,Stooping Hawk) :)
-
I thought we already have a marauder II :) And the Black Knight is definitly on my list. Not that I like the mech that much, but since it has such an appearance in MW4, i think it must be included. ;)
-
I thought we already have a marauder II :)
i think you're talking about the marauder IIC (http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Marauder_IIC) which is the 85 ton clan marauder, the marauder II (http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Marauder_II) is a 100 ton marauder with jumpjets
-
i believe that model cannot be used due to court issue's.
-
i believe that model cannot be used due to court issue's.
In for-profit works, yes. It gets a lot fuzzier (or maybe not) when it comes to not-for-profit works.
I believe the redesigned IIC would be legal in for-profit works - the original Marauder and Marauder II are not. The Marauder IIC currently in OmniTech is an 85t Assault - the normal Marauder is a 75t Heavy, both use the original "Unseen"-style designs.
-
It gets a lot fuzzier (or maybe not) when it comes to not-for-profit works.
take a look at mektek's mekpack for mw4, the marauder and marauder II in it are very similar to the unseen marauder 1 and 2
-
Doesn't MegaMek use Unseen designs as well? It should be okay for you guys, then.
-
The general consensus has been that non-profit works like mods can use the Unseen to their hearts content. Someone already mentioned the Mekpak patches for Mercs - their versions of the Unseen are extremely close to the originals, and they have yet to hit any legal snafus. I think you're safe.
-
@RavenIIC Still got the Champ in the zip file, its in line ;)
More generally... Yeah I guess you (the collective you) are right Mk4 is not necessary, its just a face lift (not a very nice one at that)
-
Thanks for keeping my Champion in line!