What would you like to see...

I am at a loss for words...
I came back in just to see what sort of abuse I had received, because I half expected to be fired back on, and instead, all this.
You're good people, ALL of you. Thank you.(damn it, my eyes are stinging, I should put a filter on this screen)
And Gaear, don't call yourself a nobody, because you are not. It takes balls to say what you did. Spike, Vampiricpuppy and Alaric (for, who can stand against the ire of English teachers?) thank you.

Anyways, to lighten up a little bit. We don't want to get all emotional.
I got 3ds max back in October from a friend of mine, along with a porn DVD. As you might expect, the latter got first priority. When I started fooling about with 3ds max (about November), I was as happy as a puppy (albeit not vampiric) because I had received all sorts of complaints from my mother and father (you know how parents can be) about filling their house with my miniatures (I paint them and make dioramas for a hobby), so I thought I would just make digital stuff and fill the internet with them. When I got complaints from the internet as well, I started feeling like Cacophonix, you know, the bard in the village of Asterix.
So I thought, after all this, I thought I would just fill my own hard disk and never show anyone.
Anyway, Lord Spike and Gaear, just to show you that I have no grudges, I've decided to honour you with a special treat. I will send you .jpg images of my works. I am sure that you feel happy with this great honour, right? Wait guys, no, don't smash your PCs let's talk about this.

THANK YOU ALL!
Looks like I am back, and among friends.

 

Wish you all the best back here at Co8 but who'd listen to me.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
That last part was a pun. Anyone read the book or seen the movie
"Hitchhiking through Space"? (hmm I believe the film was titled
"Hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy")

 

speaking of dragons, did anyone hear about the jesuses of the dragon world being born?

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/...ncouraged-by-Komodo-Dragon-Virgin-Birth.xhtml

 

So it appears that Faluzure (the dragon deity of Energy Draining, Undeath, Decay, and Exhaustion) is walking the earth again.... must be planning on getting his hands on a nuk or somethingoke:

 

Haven't you ever seen Jurassic Park? :blink: This ability is what makes the ressurrected dinosaurs such a threat. Certain species of reptiles & amphibians can do this, and (in the movie) the missing pieces of dino DNA recovered from mosquitos preserved in amber were filled in with the "right pieces" to make them viable...and also for this to occur. It went downhill from there when they started breeding outside of the control of the people who brought them back, and they began escaping into the wild. :yikes:

 

ok, on the mindflayer head front; i've procrastinated for ages, but i've started actually trying to work through it. I know Maggit offered to do this for me but i'm hoping to actually learn how to get this stuff done :nerd: so stay tuned for really stupid questions about protos

Before hitting the protos etc though i'm reaching a stumbling block, which i think might be to do with MDFs.

So i'd like to grill the brains of anyone with the relevant know-how

So far:

Got model into max

Rotated/Scaled so it is of a similar size/orientation to other helms

exported it - now, i can get a working .SKM file from this stage (goes into leksey's meshviewer ok , but is textureless), but the bit where you specify the .mdf path is confusing me a little.

The .mdf file/path you specify doesnt seem to be being created at all... at least nowhere i expect them to, i've checked toee folders and my model working folder where i'm exporting the SKM.

Is this just a 'for future reference' thing so that the game knows where to look for things? If that's the case; how do i create the relevant .mdf?

or i could be just jumping to the wrong conclusions... are the mdfs related to texturing?

Also... is a single bone required or something like that? just want to make sure im covering all bases

 

*purr*



:Crazy_Tig

 

the mdf can be made in notepad and then you rename the txt to mdf, and its what points the game in the direction of the texture

 

well that got the texture working - unfortunately the export seems to have destroyed my uv coordinates >_<

Earlier versions of max are notorious for this kind of crap; so i guess i need to get myself the latest one aranoid:

 

What version are you running? I know that in v8 my UV maps almost always get destroyed with this plugin. Doesn't happen with any other exporter I've tried. It's still very much a WIP and when Leksey has the time we may see some improvements.

Don't know if you can with your model, but it helps a lot if you don't have one vertex in more than one location on the map. In other words anywhere you have a corner try to have the areas adjacent on your texture pic. I've also found that it often helps if you can apply say a planar or cylindrical wrap to an element of your model and then adjust that in the unwrap modifier. Unfortunately no matter how much testing I do it seems to react differently to different models, haven't been able to pick up a concrete pattern yet.

As far as the double sided sections of your model, you might consider making them an addmesh. If you notice things like cloaks that have double-sided texturing use the format

General
Texture 0 "path"
double

single sided either just omit the double or

Textured
Texture "path"

So if you make the spine and other sections as an addmesh you can use a seperate mdf for them. Being unable to import most models I can't say for sure but I assume that the addmesh uses a bone placed in the original model as an attach point. It might just be as simple as prosition relative to 0,0,0, though.

I'll do my best to actualy read this thread more often if you have any questions about getting new items into the game. It looks like Cujo's keeping tabs though, and he taught me most of what I know about this game.

Good Luck,

Cuchulainn.

 

I think it's important for me to get the right version of max before i start listing problems i'm having even the .obj<->max plugins in max (very common) earlier versions lose their UV maps; so the loss of UV coordinates here is no surprise to me.

I dont really do any of my modelling in max at the moment (though i did originally learn modelling basics in max, and my animation experience is in max as well).

basically i use zbrush to model, and maya to polish up the models, connect hands/feet etc, and generally fix normals/antialiasing, then import it into max (currently using version 6; rather out of date, but im sure i can nab a newer version sometime soon).

 

The actual animation for something like that would be quite doable, assuming you're OK with an unpopulated Keep. Building a 3D model of the entire keep first would be a PITA though.

Does anyone know what method Screeg used to generate those awesome maps? If it's a render of a 3D model maybe it's importable, if he uses some form of 2D art program though it wouldn't help.

Cuchulainn.