What would you like to see...

my expertise isnt exactly animation - i havent done any in over a year and my animation experience was totally max-based, so at this stage im a little rusty

Doing a fly-by through an existing model of a keep is relatively simple; but building the architecture and texturing it all nicely could take quite a bit of work - remember that the way that a isometric map is built is in roofless seperate levels also, when constructing a 3d space its more involved than just texturing; theres lighting, atmospherics, particle effects, fog and so on that add to the experience.

Animating a camera along a path (which is all a fly-through is) is easy - animating torches, dust motes picking up as light shines through a window... that kind of thing is where the majority of the effort is

If you guys ever played baldur's gate I, theres a fly-through of the gnoll fortress which is entirely static modelling which might be a more achievable goal...

Gaear i use maya over max at the moment; though most of my initial modeling is done in zbrush, and pretty much ANY industry standard program 2d or 3d is expensive.

free educational versions are a different matter

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=7639525

there's also Gmax (free educational version of max), but i think that might have been discontinued... not sure...

a quick google search found this link - last updated 2002 though

http://games.softpedia.com/get/Tools/gmax.shtml

but if you search around you should be able to find something worthy

I started learning 3d with max; and then switched over to maya (many people regard it as a better program or at least... less of a hodgepodge) max has some very cool features and plugins though so they're both good

 

Yeah, what I was hoping is that there would be a 3D model involved in the process of making the isometric map. I remembered Sgreeg refering to rendering which gave me hope. I know absolutely nothing about the process though, and from what VP says it wouldn't work. There would certainly still be alot of work involved, some of the things that occured to me right off were torches and flags as you mentioned and lighting (handn't thought of particle effects) would have still been a massive effort, but it would have saved many, many hours of redundant work.

The flly-by is a good idea though. Probably in a somewhat scaled back version as VP suggested. If I ever finish the Caves of Chaos (wont be for a while), and no one beter skilled (who shall remain nameless but who's initials ar VP) volunteers, I'd be willing to take a shot at it.

@VP Yeah all the reading I did suggested Maya was the better option. Based on that I started learning on the educational version of it, seemed sweet. But when I got the chance to pick up Max second hand for a (probably suspicios :shrug: ) very good price, the die was cast.

Cuchulainn.

 

I sent a PM to Cuchulainn. Yah, I am doing the Caves of Chaos.

 

cuch you should go for it not saying i wouldnt be willing to lend a hand or anything, but its a mammoth task i'm supposed to be finding myself a job at the moment, so taking on something like that would be a bad move on my part

and gaear i havent really looked into the whole permissions thing - i assume i'd have to nag ted about it?

 

Hmmm I guess the keep as a mod itself will need some sort of "introduction"
for the players to know what they're even doing there... Good idea.

How's that Mindflayer going VP? The mesh is really great and I as well
as the community would love to see it in-game, right community? (No
puns intended, just curiosity)

 

Yeah Krunch is doing the maps, I wouldn't have a clue where to even start for that. I'm populating the caves. Making all the orcs, custom armor (and now weapons ) for them, dialogue, and if I ever get ones I'm happy with portraits. Certainly wasn't trying to make it sound like I'm doing it all, just meant it's a major time commitment I'm having trouble keeping up with. Once I'm done with it though I'll need something else to work on.

My upcoming summer is going to beyond insane busy wise, so I'll have to see how things go. But it sounds like a fun project, and would force me to learn some new stuff which is always good.

Cuchulainn.

 

maggit i'm currently trying to get my UVs exporting to the SKM format correctly.

The problem is that im converting from .OBJ > .3DS > .SKM and i lose a bit of uv info - i've managed to get only partial UV info so far, and im working on getting it all

Once i figure out how to get the model in correctly; ill sit down and teach myself how to get the damn thing into toee

 

just to illustrate what i mean - when i export to .skm, i lose the 'edge' data between the UV 'vertices'.

If the model is cut into pieces before exporting this fixes the problem partially... except near the cuts...

This could be a problem with my version of max as i said, so until i figure out what im doing wrong; or get the latest version of max; im at a standstill

Here is an example of what happens when i export to .skm and then re import that same file back into max.

 

Hmmm, interesting. That's similar but different to the problem I usually have. In my case if I flatten or unfold the map, the edges are kept but repositioned. It would keep the location more or less of the last area I had positined (somethimes the last 2) but all the edges inbetween the 2 locations would get redrawn. If you had for example a cube and you did it in the right order you could often get the front and back mapped correctly, but it was impossible to map the sides as they just showed whatever was between the front an back sections of your texture.

If you post a link to your Max file I'll try exporting it and post before and after shots of the UV map. It will at least let us know if the difference is your version of Max or different mapping styles.

Cuchulainn.

 

here you go cuchu max file + texture

 

OK well first off, it's not your version of Max. I get the same results in 8.

It is actualy the exact same problem I've been having. Since I normaly veiw the map editor with only the current selection showing, I'd never picked up on the vertex layout.

It seems that while all the UVW vertices on the map remain where they should, some of them get associated with the wrong XYZ vertices on the model. On the screenshot below I've selected the vertices in 1 tentacle (left), I then exprted/imported and selected the same vertices again (right). You can see that well there are vertices at all the same points on the map, they dont represent the same locations on the model anymore.

Not exactly a solution, but you don't have to rush out and find a newer version of Max, and we finaly have some usefull troubleshooting info on what goes wrong during export.

Cuchulainn.

 

well thats something at least

Also, so far as i know, SKM import works fine - uv's from existing skm's seem to be maintained, so it seems to just be the export function.

 

Yeah the import always worked for me aswell.

If you want to keep trying to get this ingame this has been working for me lately.

Make each section of the model that you want to Map seperately a diferent object. Map them as individual pieces then attach them to your center piece. For me at least you have to leave the center piece un-mapped untill you attach the mapped pieces. I tried breaking the tentacles away into seperate objects and doing planar maps on them, then planned to re-attach them and do a cylindrical wrap on the main head. Realized I was going to have to alter the texture for it to work though so I left it alone.

Cuchulainn.

 

just for fun, here's some other rather unfinished models that i've been playing round with

extra points if you can identify them