deadman on 18/2/2006 at 19:00
No, not Heidi Klum :p Anyone planning on 'improving' any of the female models? Namely, is anyone else annoyed with the artistic direction they went by making them deathly thin? I personally use Maya, so I'll have to look around the forum to see if there's any workable way to convert from 3dsmax to Maya and back.
Also, on a somewhat unrelated note, anyone planning on integrating hair into some of the AI models, or at least improving those butt-ugly toupee looking things (sorry, devs; let's just blame it on the x-box)? Anyone else find it scary looking at an AI's and realizing their hair attachment isn't even casting a shadow (magical hairpieces)? :wot: I suppose the preliminary solution to that would be to find the parent object of all hair in the hierarchy and add the castshadows property... There wasn't a performance reason devs didn't do that, right? I'm thinking they just overlooked it in the rush to get the game out.
Ziemanskye on 18/2/2006 at 20:58
Build the models in whatever you want...
But how to get it (back?) into the game is anyone's guess.
You could try the normal unreal ActorX plugins - there's ones for maya too, and they live somewhere in udn.epicgames.com (amongst other places)
deadman on 18/2/2006 at 22:46
Hmm, I thought we already knew how to modify staticmeshes, so I assumed the same was true for the 3d models...
Am I wrong?
Also, I was obviously goading others with superior modeling skills (i.e., oddity), to bring the models up-to-snuff, and at least in terms of the female human ones, someone making them more lifelike for taffers like me who dislike the artistic direction of only a sticklike variety. Part of it is obviously detesting the inferior quality devs had to put out in order to cater to the x-box, but still, I'm for more traditional interpretations.
You've got to be with me on the hairpiece thing ;)
Gestalt on 19/2/2006 at 00:20
You can tweak the models in Milkshape, I think, but I don't know if anyone's figured out an importer for anything else.
I'm guessing the reason the hairpieces don't cast shadows is because they'd look funny. The lighting engine can't take into account the transparency in the hair textures when calculating shadows, so they'd most likely cast blocky, squarish shadows. If someone remakes the models, it would probably be best to just make the hair part of the models and be done with it.
From his posts in the past, I think Oddity would probably agree to eat a greenhouse before converting his stuff for use in T3. I seem to recall some of the Dark Mod guys mentioning that they'd make some of their assets available to the T3 community, but I don't know if/when that will happen.
New Horizon on 19/2/2006 at 00:43
Quote Posted by Gestalt
I seem to recall some of the Dark Mod guys mentioning that they'd make some of their assets available to the T3 community, but I don't know if/when that will happen.
Yes, we said we would share the assets people skinned for us when our unskinned models were backed up. I think we only had 3 or 4 models skinned by people in the community. It was the only way we could seem to get any help. I'll find out which ones they were and make them available. We would honestly prefer to keep our assets within dark mod however.
Gestalt on 19/2/2006 at 01:01
I was thinking of (
http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=90309) Renzatic's announcement from when the editor was released.
I can certainly understand the desire to keep your assets within TDM, I just thought the announcement that stuff would be released followed by a long silence was sort of weird.
Renzatic on 20/2/2006 at 03:06
I'll be more than happy to package my stuff for people to convert to T3 once I have more to give. But right now I'm spending my free time learning Lightwave, ZBrush, and experimenting with normalmap photography, that I haven't actually done anything directly relating to TDM or T3 recently.
str8g8 on 20/2/2006 at 10:00
There is an Ion Storm version of the unreal ActorX plugin in the editor download, though on my system at least, it gives an error. I'm not sure how different it is, it could be just that they stuck a different logo at the top or something. In this case, Ziemanskye is right, the best bet would be to use the unreal version.
Replacing the mesh might be possible, but I think you would need to create both the mesh and the bones to export (as it's not just a mesh but the weighting of the mesh to the skeleton) and the bone setup would have to match the existing bone data for the animations to work. In short it would be tricky, though I do share your loathing of the T3 female AIs - it's weird really, because I think the males are pretty good.
Replacing hair on the other hand, is just a static mesh, so in theory is much easier. The best way would be to get the 3ds files from the tims (the hairpieces are in a folder called characters I think). I've been meaning to do something myself, but haven't found the time. :(
I use maya mostly too, I've found the best way to move back and forth with max is with the obj export. (You have to load the plugin in maya, you can also get an exporter for max from all the usual places).
OrbWeaver on 20/2/2006 at 10:12
Quote Posted by New Horizon
Yes, we said we would share the assets people skinned for us when our unskinned models were backed up. I think we only had 3 or 4 models skinned by people in the community. It was the only way we could seem to get any help. I'll find out which ones they were and make them available. We would honestly prefer to keep our assets within dark mod however.
The problem is that exporting models to D3 is easy, whereas exporting to T3 is impossible without 3DS Max 5.1, which many of us don't have. As yet there is no conversion tool that I am aware of that would allow D3 models to be converted into T3 format.
Gestalt on 20/2/2006 at 14:17
That would be great Renzatic, thanks. Is normal map photography worth it, or is it simpler to just model the details in a 3d program?
I don't think converting from D3 to T3 would be that difficult, since as far as I know Doom 3 just uses .obj files for models. There's a .obj importer somewhere that works with Max 5.1, so it shouldn't be too much trouble for someone with the program to convert some things and make them available. T3 to D3 would be tricky but could probably be done with Shadowspawn's converter if it were ever necessary.
Does anyone know about any scaling differences between the games? If I ever end up making any worthwhile meshes, it'd be nice to know how to make them available for both.
