posted 04-28- 09:03 AM               

Could someone please explain to me how texturing in Max works? BTW,is it called texturing or is "assigning material" the proper term in Max?
I have tried to follow the examples in "learning Studio Max" on "assigning materials" and I think I got it right. At least I can see the .tif I assigned as material wrapped onto the rendered object. (Not in the usual wiewports though, is that possible?).
Then Iīve tried to export this in obj. format and imported it into OPS. But the part I just imported hasnīt any texture, only a different colour than the rest of the parts. So somehow the texture (.tif) doesnīt get imported(?). The colour it gets is the colour of the material I used as a "base" in Max.(The material in the material editor to which I assigned my .tif image).Am I perhaps doing something wrong when I export/import? How should it be done?

Ouuhhh(sigh)...alot of questions...

If someone please could take time to explain these things to me, I would be very grateful.

posted 04-28- 09:43 AM               

PLEASE write a small tutorial someone.

posted 04-28- 10:04 AM            

first thing you want to do is get your tif files straight. take your model (aircraft or whatever) and break apart the pieces. then you want to align them in such a way that you can see each piece from the same view. what i mean by this you want a good side view of the fuselage, an top view of the fuselage, a top view of the wings and the tail section. then you can take a rendering of these parts and save it as a file. this allows you to make a proportional template for you skins. its a long process that cannot be described here. point is, make your template first.

when you get ready to texture make sure you can easily find your template. i ussually put them in the textures folder for the aircraft im working on.

you want to select the object to texture. then go into subobject mode and select face. then click on ignore back faces and show normals. lets say are texturing your wing. simply select each face for the top of the wing. you must hold down ctrl key while you do this. and it helps to be in wireframe mode. when you get all the faces selected for the top of the wing, click the material editor button. (this is max 2.5) then after i opens click on the first round ball. then click on the button under it (forgot the shape of it, but it says apply material or something like that - i beleive its a cube). go back and make sure go out of wireframe mode..so you can see the faces and colors of the wing..it should turn the color of the ball.

after that click on the button by diffuse. then under that a little ways you should see a load bitmap button..it should be empty. click it. at the dialoge click on bitmap. then navigate to your template and press ok. then look under the balls in the top (lol) and click on the checkerboard.

close this dialoge. then, at the modify tab, click on uvw map. if everthing is ok, you should the texture appear on the wing. it may be distorted, but thats ok. on the modify tab, go down and set the w value to 0 and click on bitmap fit or something. it should open up another dialoge and you should see your template file listed. click on it. what this does is resize the orange box around the wing to a 256 x 256 proportional square. then you click on the subobject button (should say gizmo). you use the xyz buttons to get the texture mapped to to the correct plane. the orange/yellow ( i forget) box will let you know which direction it needs to go. then you can just use your stretch, move and rotate tools to get the texture to fit right.

after this is done you click on the pizza boxes by the uvw map (in the subobject box on the right) when it opens select collapse all. a warning will come up. ignore it and select ok. your wing should now be tmapped.

posted 04-28- 06:51 PM               

Seems I was on the right path in my attempts atleast, cause thats sort of what Iīve been trying to do. Except for that "collapse" thing, somehow that sounds important.And some other things...
Tomorrow will be learn-how-to-texture-day!I hope...
Spanky and Nat, if I succeed Iīll let you know.

Thanks again DanW!

posted 04-29- 04:07 AM               

Iīve searched the forum for info, and there sure is a lot. My HD is full of forum pages
I didnīt find anything about what items to have checked in the export dialogs though. So if anyone could tell me. And also, do I export a textured object as a Obj. file or as a Mtl. file? What Iīve tried so far is exporting as Obj. since OPS doesnīt import Mtl. files, does it? Or have I missed a plugin?
Also, does the tif. I use for texturing have to be in any special folder for the texture to show in OPS? Do I have to specify a path for it in any way?
/Robert

[This message has been edited by Robert (edited 04-29-2000).]

[This message has been edited by Robert (edited 04-29-2000).]

posted 04-29- 07:53 AM               

I followed DanWīs instructions and I now see the textures in OPS and in game as well. Great.
But, unfortunately something seems to happen during exp/imp, cause the object isnīt textured in the same way in OPS as it is in Max. Iīve tried to fit it so it looks good in Max but in OPS itīs distorted. Any idea why?
Also, my plane has no shadow, I mean on the aircraft itself. On the other planes you see that the lighting on the surfaces change as the plane rolls for example. On my plane I see nothing of that. Everything has the same lighting to it, which makes it hard for me to see what my plane really looks like, the "structure" of it. Is that set somewhere? In OPS or in Max or...?

posted 04-29- 10:12 AM               

You lost normals somehow. Make sure that on the Max2Obj export dialogue you have "normals" and "texture coordinates" checked. You don't need "smoothing groups" checked, however.
Before you texture an object in Max, you should always export it out as .obj and then import it back in. That way the vertex order-- I'm guessing here-- gets locked in and the texture coordinates and shading won't get screwed up when you export out. I don't know how it works exactly, but it does.
If shading problems persist, try this...

1. Export to .obj, but with "normals" unchecked in the export dialogue.

2. Import back in making sure "normals" is unchecked in the import dialogue.

3. Export out again, but make sure "normals" is checked this time.

Follow the same 3 steps if your texture coordinates are messed up, but replace "normals" with "texture coordinates" in the above steps. If your textures are still messed up after doing that, then you probably have messed up texture references in the LOD file. All polygons have a number that tells them what texture file to use. If this number is wrong, it will, of course, display the wrong texture.

This has a way of, in essence, cleansing or sanctifying the object so that it will be acceptable to the all-seeing, all-knowing Max2Obj plugin :-)

Search this forum for topics on normals, shading, export, Max, etc. There was a ton of dialogue about this stuff a while back. Make sure to also search the "Old Tech Info" section.

[This message has been edited by JT (edited 04-29-2000).]

posted 04-29- 12:30 PM               

Thanks JT!

Another thing I encountered was that the wing I had textured looked alright in OPS. I had textured the upper side (followed Danīs example) and left the underside untextured. That looked OK in OPS but in the game...
The underside looked normal, but the upper side was now totally transparent except for a red zigzag pattern running along the wing! Whare did that come from!?

Oh, well...

I guess I basically will start all over again, exporting/importing pieces and follow your advice JT, I know Iīve left "normals" unchecked during my work, since I didnīt know what that meant and everything worked OK.(Well sort of)

/Robert

posted 04-29- 04:37 PM               

Thanks Dan

And good luck Robert

posted 04-30- 04:21 AM               

Iīd be getting nowhere without your help.

posted 04-30- 10:15 AM               

JT Iīve tried your tips and still no joy. I tried export, import and then export again. But I still donīt see any shading
Do I need to smooth the objects in Max for them to be shaded in OPS/SDOE? It struck me while I was reading all the posts about shading/smoothing that I hadnīt used "smooth" in Max. So I tried that, exported, imported back but then the smoothing is gone. I exported it anyway just to check, imported in OPS...No shading. So that wasnīt it(?)
Just to make clear, right now I donīt have any textures on my objects, but they should be able to be shaded anyway, right?

This is very frustrating, it feels like I must have missed something very basic.I will keep searching for answers in the forum. But ofcourse Iīd be very glad if someone who think they know what Iīm doing wrong could tell me.

posted 04-30- 10:32 AM               

Send me your .sm file and I will look at it, if you like. I'm sure I can find whatever is causing the problem.

posted 04-30- 03:10 PM               

"Just to make clear, right now I donīt have any textures on my objects, but they should be able to be shaded anyway, right? "

Iīm not 100% sure but as far I know an untextured part will not get shaded in any way, just try it with textures !

"That looked OK in OPS but in the game...
The underside looked normal, but the upper side was now totally transparent except for a red zigzag pattern running along the wing! Whare did that come from!?"

I see similar things when I did the I16: new texture (I mean completly new imported to OPS)was fine in OPS - odd transparent appearance in SDOE. The reason: wrong texture flag in the .asc file (something like aa660..). Somehow OPS doesnīt like the tiff format I used. I fixed this by changing the texture flag manually to the right value (see SVīs docs or look at a "good" texture in the asc file). (BUT you wrote the bottom of the wing is fine - are the 2 textures in different tif files ? If so thats no good, "standart" is one tif for the fuse/stabs and one for the wings (256x256), not sure if the "standart" is really a standart, so I might be wrong.)

posted 04-30- 04:50 PM               

I will send you a copy of my .sm file.

Laika!

Iīll try and texture it again and see what happens. The reason the underside looked OK was that it wasnīt textured at all So it just looked like I was used to.

posted 05-01- 02:50 AM               

Iīve sent the files to you, but I received a return message that said your address had "fatal errors".Perhaps youīve received them anyway? Let me know if you havenīt.

086151156@telia.com

/Robert

posted 05-01- 08:10 PM               

My left wing is now shaded...!

Iīm very excited, but unfortunately when I imported the right wing it wonīt get shaded. I had to change the size of the texture in OPS like DanW said. Which wasnīt easy, OPS wouldnīt save these changes somehow until (I think), I changed the numbers, pressed reload, clicked OK, saved the .sm, exited OPS, did something else for a few minutes, then started OPS, looked and it had changed! Something like that, it seemed like a coincidence that it was saved at just that try. Then I started SDOE and flew around for a few minutes, admiring my beutiful, sunlit wing.
But as I wrote above, the right wing wonīt get shaded.
Laika, my texture also has what i guess is a faulty flag, it says "0x000aa623". And that can only be changed using Hippieīs tools or?
BTW, both wings use this same texture, so I think itīs strange that only the left wing gets shaded, but maybe itīs not.
Also, the texture still isnīt wrapped around the wing in OPS as I placed it in Max. But as JT pointed out, maybe Iīve messed up the texture references?

Thanks/Robert

Since I wrote the above post Iīve managed to get the right wing shaded aswell, I retextured it, exported and imported in OPS. Somehow that did it. But it seems hard for me to get this going right, cause now when I continue on the next object, the fuse, THAT wonīt get shaded. Well, I guess Iīll just keep trying.
Also, I used extractor/builder, to change the texture flag to something that seemed right (0x00802223), but I saw no difference.

[This message has been edited by Robert (edited 05-01-2000).]

posted 05-04- 05:56 PM               

Yes, perhaps...

I think Iīve come to grips with the texture/shading problems now. I had to change those values (flags, size) in the .asc file like you advised me too.
Everything looks OK now