Reply With QuoteSubjective Effect managed to get it going:Originally Posted by Bardic
http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthrea...57#post1292957
Here's another thread:
http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=97715
I have a question about terrain. If you create a .t3d file using TerraEdit, how do you go about getting that into your level? I can import, and it does some things, but then never shows anything. Or does that not work?
Subjective Effect managed to get it going:
http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthrea...57#post1292957
Here's another thread:
http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=97715
Thank you, that worked. Now just to see how I can make it work as ground without killing framerate for a few areas.
Thanks for this, just got a bit of amoment when I was wandering around in 3d mode and found myself apparently walled in. Sorted now.
I have some questions regarding static mesh creation with 3ds. I have NOT 3ds 5.1 which makes this far more complicated and I am a noob to 3ds also. (Actually i am one of those c4d-ers) I saw the videotutorials from 3dbuzz.com on smesh creation for unrealED. Was pretty helpful, but did not answer all my questions.
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?
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?
Third thing: Is that mesh ready for .tim export after i applied the asked things or will i have to do anything further?
EDIT: Originally I wanted to make those spikes via subdividing the inner surfaces and then extrude, but i could not find a proper subdivide function. Halp on that would be useful also.
EDIT2: I found the Boolean-operation, but after that my polycount was about 60 higher, so i left it as it is on that picture.
Last edited by STiFU; 10th Nov 2005 at 11:11.
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:
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).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?
There is nothing special, just unwrap uvs.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?
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.Third thing: Is that mesh ready for .tim export after i applied the asked things or will i have to do anything further?
cheers
str8g8
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.
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.
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.
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).
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):
Bear 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?
Last edited by GlasWolf; 28th Jan 2006 at 17:08.
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.
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.
The Keep for Thief 1 and 2 FMs, Shadowdark for Thief 3 and Dark Mod FMs
I'd do the pic on the right, because then you can zone portal it.
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.
Now that, I wouldn't've guessed. It was big and complex and cool, and from the feedback in these forums, a lot more like what people wanted than what I've built so far.
Besides, if the main thing I'm complaining about is a few minor things with scale, I think it's safe to say you did a damn good job.
Yes that's it, it just seems wrong to have so much "wasted" in-game space (i.e. the top right of the left hand diagram). I guess I've read so much about performance issues that I'm over-compensating. Build times take a hit with big brushes too, so I'm equating that (probably wrongly) with rendering performance. I think I'll try some benchmarks then re-brush it to see what happens.
The Ionshader does not work...
In which order do you have your plugins loaded? When you add them they can mix up, so it is not quite clear in which order the shall be loaded.
I have the hardwareshaders at first, then the stdplugins and then the plugins folder. Afterwards the matlib folder. Everything like it is said in the tutorial. but it does not work... This sucks!!
Arr... youre waiting so long for 3ds 5.1 and then nothing works...
EDIT: I have reinstalled now and it seems to work... kind of... There are still some things which are just shit. For example when i make an object an editable poly, the texture suddenly is not displayed anymore... When i make it an editable mesh the texture is still there, but then the polyhighlight doesnt work correct anymore. instead of highlighting the polygon completely in red i, just the egdes of the poly turn red. Pressing f2 does not correct this.
When i quickrender a screne the textures arent filtered. Look like pixel graphix. And the normalmaps dont work neither. This probably does not work because i could not initialise DX 9 so i use 8.1 now. Help plz...
Last edited by STiFU; 13th Nov 2005 at 11:56.
Here's the wiki for max setup:
http://www.ttlg.com/wiki/wikka.php?wakka=MaxConfig
I have problems with the ionshader too. It doesn't display well in the viewports but it does render (w/o normal maps).
Yeah i knew that config... But it wont work so cool... I found another feature of the ionshader... The ionshader only saves the textures you want to appy if he wants to...Oh man that sucks so hard!!! :-/
Did you manage it to apply more than ony material to an object? It works on the renderer but not ingame for me...
And this ION_ROOT thing. To which folder did you link it? TO your thief3 installation oder to your editor?
Last edited by STiFU; 13th Nov 2005 at 13:25.
Is there any way to scale the texture when reskinning a smesh?
No, because most of the static meshes are uvw-unwrapped(at least i think so). If you dont know what that is take a look at some tutorials . It would be too much to explain that all here. If you need a tutorial: here is one for 3ds.
There was some thread about texture scaling on static meshes, but i cant find it right now. But if you really need to scale it you could edit the smesh.
BTW I figured out how to get around all those nasty problems in 3ds and added all my knowledge about that to the "custom static meshes" entry at our thief 3 editing wiki. I also added some very useful tutorial links and some closer information about several things. Ascottk, perhaps you would like to check it out and edit it or pm me if something could still be better.
http://www.ttlg.com/wiki/wikka.php?wakka=StaticMeshes
Hehe my first wiki entry... It's my first step on the ladder of pro-FM-authors...
I'll just scale the other surfaces to fit the smesh then - thanks anyway.
Yes i did it that way too. It is not that cool, but it is alright...
How do I add hardpoints to static meshes in 3ds Max for attaching lights and emitters?
Last edited by Gestalt; 16th Nov 2005 at 21:00.
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