Please ask your basic (newbie) questions in here. - by scumble
str8g8 on 10/11/2005 at 17:12
Hi STiFu
There isn't any way to export TIMs at the moment without 3dsmax 5.1. It might be possible for Shadowspawn to make some other software, but for the moment we are stuck with this :(
However I will try to answer your questions:
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I made up a grating. The first thing is: How can i deintersect those spikes there. I would do it with a bool-operator in c4d but how can i do it in 3ds?
I would stay clear of booleans in 3dsmax for the most part - they are evil. Also, it is completely acceptable to have intersecting geometry in smeshes (unlike bsp say), and is almost always cheaper than trying to create a continuous surface (as you observed).
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Second thing: How does the texturing work, while i have not the ion shader running. (probably not) I know how to texture objects but there is some special way to texture smeshes, am i right?
There is nothing special, just unwrap uvs.
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Third thing: Is that mesh ready for .tim export after i applied the asked things or will i have to do anything further?
Depending on your object you would have set up collision volumes (there is a script that came with the editor for this) but also do a search for collision volumes here and you will find a few useful threads.
cheers
str8g8
STiFU on 10/11/2005 at 23:00
There is this collision script which only needs to be run and the collisions are there as far as i know.
I knew that there is no other way for exporting .tims . I was going to send my mesh to someone who has 3ds 5.1 and let him export for me.
This uv unwrapping. Is it done by just adding the "unwrap uvw" modifier or do i have to configure it further on? In the tutorials it is said, that the ionshader is needed for the textures so i dont quite get it right how this should work.
And i have another question. Is there yet another way to use the .psk-model files than by importing them into milkshape with the plugin some nice guy of this community wrote? Because that plugin does not load the textures. I have to texture it myself now, which isnt that bad, but it is not the perfect solution.
Ziemanskye on 11/11/2005 at 07:43
UVW unwrapping.
It starts with adding a UWV Unwrap modifier, but can get a bit messy.
Use the material editor (M) -just play with it a bit if you don't know what you''re doing- to add a bitmap (or dds - it can display the game textures on the model if you want to texture it with the defaults), and make sure you apply it to the model, and that you have the box turned on for viewing in the perspective view.
That'll let you see how a material will get applied to it.
The unwrap modifier has a button (down the right hand side - select the object, then select the modifier on the stack and the buttons below should change) - click the Edit button to open a new window, showing a mass of lines and the texture - if you've used something like Max before (c4d probably does this somewhere) you ought to know what to do next, or at least be able to work it out. You can expand the modifier to get to it's Face Select gizmo, which makes things a lot easier, and I think it's ctrl+b to break vertices that are welded together, and D to detach faces by vertices on edges (so it juts splits the face off from the other uvws). They're in the menus of the sub-window anyway if I got those wrong.
:thumb:
GlasWolf on 12/11/2005 at 12:26
I'm almost embarassed to ask, but I have an extremely basic brush question. What is more important in terms of performance: fewer brushes or tighter player space? Simplistic example would be an area leading up to a tall wall - all other things being equal, one brush (with a lot of wasted world area) or two? I'm finding myself very tightly defining areas when I could inefficiently brute force stuff using maybe half as many brushes.
Ziemanskye on 12/11/2005 at 12:33
I don't understand the question.
A smaller space has less rendering to do, and will portal more out.
A smaller number of brushes reduces the complexity of the scene slightly, but gets cut by portals anyway, so it doesn't affect as much.
As you could probably tell by Townhouse and Schism, I vote small, but people have complained about my levels being too cramped.
Conversely though, I considered Krellick's Labyrinth to be mostly too large (rooms too tall, with the upstairs rooms too vast in general).
GlasWolf on 12/11/2005 at 13:38
I don't mean the size of the map, just how you brush the areas. In the example I'm talking about something like this (with the wall on the left, ground at the bottom):
Inline Image:
http://www.glaswolf.net/images/thief/brushes.gifBear in mind I'm talking about outdoor areas so the brushes could be very big, plus replicate this situation 100x in a map.
Don't tell me - I'm overthinking, right? ;)
Ziemanskye on 12/11/2005 at 14:23
I guess I'm still not understanding the problem...
If you need a corridor, then use both, if it's just to make the wall visible from across the area, the single brush. Perhaps the question ought to be do you need to cut the wall up?
Yes, I'd guess you're overthinking, but that could just be my continuing not to understand. Otherwise, less of anything gives better performance.
Komag on 12/11/2005 at 14:53
I think I get it. If you do the pic on the right, and set the ceiling of the ground area to "fake backdrop", you'll still be able to see the whole wall from far to the right, so the scene rendering will be the same.
Might as well build like the pic on the left since it's simpler construction and will be the same render-wise.
ProjectX on 12/11/2005 at 16:02
I'd do the pic on the right, because then you can zone portal it.
ascottk on 12/11/2005 at 17:38
Quote Posted by Ziemanskye
I considered Krellick's Labyrinth to be mostly too large (rooms too tall, with the upstairs rooms too vast in general).
If you look at the doors I used they are almost as tall as the rooms themselves so there was very little choice. As for the upstairs rooms I wasn't too proud of them but they were rooms none the less, nothing too fancy. I do understand what you mean though. There's a lot of wasted space due to my inexperience of game design (this was my first map with the first editor I used after all).
Architecturally the Labyrinth is a mess. No sane person would actually build such a thing (the first floor layout doesn't match the second) so I justified that by saying it was inspired by Constantine's mansion. When I continue with the mini-campaign idea I may change a few things.
