Hey again, it's been a while. I need some texturing help.

[Loserboy]

The last time I was here I was replacing the original rebellion models with some better XWA ones, but then everybody hit a small snag with the texturing of the models. Since I have zero edeting skills I decided to wait till somebody else fixed it.

 

Then I ofcourse forgot all about it for six months due to school, the important buisness of vacation.

 

And Now I see that the texture problem has been solved, kuddos to everybody who worked on that project.

 

Well on to my problem, I've managed to put another test model into the game (carrak-cruiser). And I've managed to put on 10 out of 21 seperate tectures onto that model (got tired). And the textures work fine, they apear in the right place (bridge, engine, etc). But the colors are all screwed up.

 

I've tried pasting the texture bmp onto the template (fighters template 128), But as soon as I convert the colors get al screwed up.

 

Maybe I'm just using the wrong program, mask what program do you use? Oh and also those new models look great!

 

P.S hello to everybody.

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The difference between us and a computer is that, the computer is blindingly stupid, but it is capable of being stupid many, many million times a second

[Loserboy]

Nevermind, I figured it out, D'oh I should have used paint the first try whoops. Ill let you know how it works out. First Ill try to make a complete Carrak cruiser and post a screenshot . (btw how do I take a screen shot in rebellion.)

 

 

 

update: So far so good, I've managed to skin both a stargal, and a carrak cruiser, but for some reason certain parts of the ship are not textured whilst the other 20 odd something textures are, but I'm sure I can fix it.

 

update2: Well I fixed the missing textures part, but sadly the game starts to get unstable after adding the textures, damn I should have checked that sooner. It probably has something to do with the fact that each model (close, medium,far) needs it's own texture. Damn that means about 3 times the work load. hmmm. 29 ships, times 3 times 20 that's about 1740 separate bmp I need to edit. Yarrgg I think I'm gonna spend some time on writing a proggy that can do this in batches.

 

Update3: Yup that fixed it it was indeed the model, separate textures problem. And I've just thought of a bit of a short cut in the edeting part. That means just 560 separate bmp's still alot but do-able. And those fully textured models look great.

 

update4: Things seem to be going fine, I've replaced four models , they work fine. I've cut the time down to half an hour per model, that includes ripping, changing the textures, binning them, placeing them in rebellion, fixing any problems and a small test run. The tactical.dll file is growing fast, it's already 10 mb, I hope this doesn't become a problem. I'm going to add some more ships and do a stress test soon.

 

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love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.

[ricepr2001]

you could always get a screenshot with the "print scrn" button on your keyboard, than paste it into paint or another gfx program

 

the downfall to this is you can only do one at a time

 

im not sure if rebellion has a screenshot button

[Loserboy]

Sadly that doesn't work when you take a screenshot with print screen, you get a dark blob in paint wher your model is supposed to be. I've found one program that takes good screenshots but it's not free and if you use it without a licence it puts some text in the middle of the screen.

 

Mod update: finished 7 imperial ships,all working fine. (eta for the rest, a week? provided the weather stays crappy, and no hangover related incidents ) A new weird thing has popped up the other units in the strikegroup get moved tot the far site of the tactical box.

 

 

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------What human beings are able to do--we arrive in new territories and we colonize this entire world. We can live in the tundra, we can live in the Gobi Desert, we can even contrive to live in New York, for heaven's sake, because what we do is when we arrive somewhere, and let's say, again, we arrive somewhere much colder, instead of having to wait generations or--while our natural selection favors genes that have got a thicker coat, we see an animal that has already got a thicker coat, we say, we'll have it off him!

[Evaders99]

Get Paint Shop Pro, its screen capture utility is good for any situation.

[the_mask]

Hi Loserboy, it's been a while indeed

 

So first of all, the kudos for decoding the textures goes to vakundok. He made our life a

lot happier back then and still does

 

I paint the most with Picture Publisher, although I've seen lately, that Photoshop's

converting abilites are sometimes far better, but that has more to do with the event pics

of the Reloaded TC

Btw, thanks for the thanks, glad you like 'em.

 

As you already found out, each of the three models needs its own texture, otherwise the game

will crash after the battle, if two or models use the same texture. That was also one of the

first problems I faced, when I started with textured models, but with vakundok's help this

was quickly resolved. Most of the times I just vary the name of two textures a little to keep

them all together and distinguishable.

 

For screenshots ? Errm I think I've read somewhere, that an old version of Hypersnap (3.62)

was now free, I hope that info was correct I didn't check it, since I already have the program

myself

 

 

How about, if you could be even faster with converting the models with using only texture for

each of the models and without having to add the parts from the XWA textures yourself ?

I think that should speed up things

 

Well at least this should work for Gmax and 3dsMax. It's something that came to me, after I

converted a model in the same painstakingly way as well.

 

-You first have to select your whole model and convert it to an 'Editable Mesh'

 

-Then select the attach list modifier from the right and use every part of the model,

so that it's one huge block afterwards.

 

-From the dropdown menu on the right select the 'edit mesh' modifier, the value of this will

becomme apparent at the end.

 

-Now you need to select parts of the model, that fit together in a way, like the bridge tower

of an ISD for example. You can use any selection method from the right, polygon will do fine.

Just make sure, that you have the whole part selected.

Check the 'ignore backfacing' box as well.

Now click on the detach button and select 'to element'.

Move your new sub-object away from the model, so that it is still visible in the front viewport.

 

-The following is the part, where you need the most patience, so breathe deeply.

You have to open up your subobject, by moving (and rotating) all the sides around, so that they

are all visible in the front viewport.

You know, like these examples in the math classes, where you have the sides of a dice

painted all side by side and you have to guess, if this many sides can actually be a six-sided

dice. Although this always reminds me more of baking a cake, when the dough is flattened first,

it's pretty much the same work here.

If there are distortions during that process, like the side seeming to explode and all the parts

seem to rotate on their own, then you need to use the vertex mode to select that part and arrange

the side in this mode to the front.

So after you cracked open the structure this way, it's easy to suspect what comes next.

Right, repeat the process for the rest of the model's "parts". You can use parts of varying size

of course, for example the upper hull of a Stardestroyer-like model is one part and the lower is

another.

 

-After you've flattened the whole cake, errm model and arranged all the parts in a way that they

are all visible in the front-view window, you need to tell the program, that you want to have

texture coordinates on the model. Thus apply the UVW-Mapping modifier from the dropdown menu

on the right. Make it planar and arrange and size it, so that it will cover the whole area

of the front window, where your model parts are visible.

 

-Next use the 'Unwrap UVW' modifier.

 

-Now you can do a variety of things to have a picture of your laid-out model. I chose to render

a picture of the front view. This will show you your model with all the 20-odd textures already

added and in the right place as well. Save this picture.

 

-Click on the lamp icon besides the Edit Mesh modifier and the model snaps back into the single-

block mode. It may look like you've done nothing at all, but you'll see the worth of your

hard work soon.

 

-Export the model to .3ds

 

-Now since I couldn't befriend the edit uvw part of 3dsmax, I opened the newly created 3ds model

with LithUnwrap and saved the uvw map there.

 

-Now with a painting program you open the saved uvw map and your rendered pic. Copy the parts from

the render into the uvw map pic, so that the positions of the parts match exactly (important).

 

-Save the modified uvw map pic for instance as name_c.bmp (I use the _c , _m ... for close, medium

and far), copy the image and rename the copies, so that you have a texture file for each model.

 

-Open your 3ds model with 3dsmax and select one the of the textures (the modified uvw pics) in

the materials window. Then select all of your model and drag the material onto it.

A test render should confirm that, well ... it doesn't really look different now than before, but:

it uses now a single texture, instead of 20 or more !

 

-Export your model and use the other texture files the same way and save your models, according

to the name of the texture you used (close.3ds, medium.3ds, far.3ds)

 

 

Pheew, that's it.

 

Btw, I took this way of skinning the models from a good tutorial by a guy called Michael Brempel,

I think http://www.mbrempel.de is his page. If you don't understand what I'm talking about look at the

pics in his original tutorial and it should become clear.

 

 

All I ask from you is, that you stick to the names close.x, medium.x and far.x for your models

(the reason for this will be revealed soon, I hope) and that, after you're satisfied with the

looks of your models you post them in swr's download section and in my thread in the models

section

 

Good luck and may the force be with you

[Loserboy]

Alright thanks for the explanation Mask.

 

That might indeed be a lot shorter, but with me being me and thus being as single minded as a rabid, drug crazed pitbull with dependency issues have already finished the imperial side the old fashioned way.

I'm good with that kind of simple grunt work. I just swich my mind to a some other more entertaining thoughts and my body will just go on typing/writing. (I learned this in classes where I was bored beyond belief but still had to take notes)

 

 

Ill give it a try, providing I can find the programs but that shouldn't be to much of a problem. Could be a while before I figure out how to do all that correctly. (the new school year has started )

 

 

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In fact, no gods anywhere play chess. They prefer simple, vicious games, where you Do Not Achieve Transcendence but Go Straight to Oblivion; a key to the understanding of all religion is that a god's idea of amusement is Snakes and Ladders with greased rungs[/img]