posted 06-07- 12:19 PM               

Still having troubles though. Using 3D Studio R2 I've made a hull but when importing to OPStudio it's way to big (about 10 to 15 times). In 3DStudio it measures 436'4,221 feet (see picture) which was the correct length of the SS Amasis. I'm using 3DStudios 'Units Setup' -> 'US Standard; Feet w Dec inches' so it seems I'm working to scale there, but as mentioned the output of the Max2Obj plugin when using Normals and Vertex scale 1,0 results in the wrong scale. VRML2.0 leads to the wrong scale too...

Any tips?

posted 06-08- 01:39 PM               

Soo... the next problems; Can anyone tell me how to build quads and NGons? Right now everything is built with triangles. Something with hide edges?

Is it possible to make doublesided polygons in 3DStudio? I think I can build them doing clockwize and anticlockwize clicks on the vertexes but is this the right way to do it? In AC3D, if I remember right, you just choose if you want them to be double sided or not and don't actually have to build the polygon two times.
The end result I want is polygons that the textures can 'shine through' so both the outside and the inside uses the same texture. Like for example how the fuselage of Sv's Albatros is.

Thanks in advance! //Aui

posted 06-08- 07:55 PM               

You can only export to quads using the .obj plugin but the VRML features of OPStudio will soon let us do N-gons.

TS

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Patch It!

TS Aircombat

posted 06-09- 09:05 AM               

...anyone know about the 'shine through' issue? I'm now reading through all the tutorials on texturing and I don't want to do my texturing all over again because I did my polys wrong =)

posted 06-09- 12:46 PM               

[A] Could anyone state their opinions on this old thread below. Is it still up to date? Any new finds? Regarding the 'not-necessary-to-detach' issue, does it work?

[B] And regarding the material editor (JT's remark just below) I may need some help with that one; In the 'Maps' rollout I can press the 'None' button next to Specular, then in the 'Material/Map Browser' double click 'Bitmap' and thereafter click the blank button next to Bitmap to select the file I want. Then use 'back to parent' to return. Now I think I have a texture to use as material. Is this how one begin the texturing stuff? Is specular the one to use? If so - are some of the other ones (shininess, ambient etc) useful outside 3DStudio?

[C] "Remember... if you break an object into separate parts, you will also be interupting the smoothing along the seams where the parts meet. I have a workaround for this, but it's complicated. "
Any new finds regarding this? When one has broken them into seperate parts and textured them does one re-attach them again or does this destroy the mapping?

[D] I summize just to see if I've got this texturing stuff right...
1) First get renderings or plan views of your objects and place them cleverly on a 256x256 tif bitmap.
2) Load the bitmap as a material
3) Map the different parts of the bitmap onto respective object using 'Assign material', UVW modifier and the gizmo.
4) See question above. Do I re-attach them before exporting?
5) Export
6) LOD editing...?

Old thread:

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JT woodpanel
(11/4/99 7:19:01 pm)
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Texturing for Openplane using 3DS Max...
What follows assumes the user knows how to use and navigate the material editor in Max. If not, I will supply details on that upon request.

Let's say you have a wing and you want to texture the top and bottom sides of the wing with two different textures from the same .tif file. Here's what you do....

1. Select the wing and click the modify tab. Make sure the wing is an editable mesh. Next, turn on the "sub-object" button and select "faces" from the roll out menu (to do this, your wing must be an editable mesh).

2. Select all the faces of the either the top or the bottom of the wing, depending on which side you want to do first.

3. Scroll down the edit mesh panel a bit and press the "detach" button. This will turn the selected faces into a new object.

4. Apply the texture to whatever side of the wing you want to work on first. Let's say the top....

5. Call up the material editor and apply the .tif to the shape.

6. Apply a UVW modifier. Also, make sure you press the little checkerboard button in the mat editor so that your texture displays on the object in the viewport. Your viewport must also be in "shaded" mode to see the texture on the object.

7. Now you need to fit the texture to the wing. Begin by activating the "sub-object" button in the UVW panel. A yellow frame around the texture will light up. This is the "gizmo". You can manipulate the texture by scaling, rotating, or moving the gizmo around using the transform tools at the top. Before you do this, however, make sure the texture is orientated along the correct axis. If it's not, scroll down to the bottom of the UVW panel to where you see some check boxes labeled x,y, and z.

8. Make sure the texure is square. Here's how... At about the middle of the UVW panel you will see some values for U and V. Make sure these values are the same, or your texture will be stretched in one direction.

9. Using the transform tools to manipulate the gizmo, scale and move the texture around. You may also need to rotate the gizmo around to do this. There is a bit of trial and error involved at this stage, so don't get discouraged if it seems difficult.

10. The UV coordinates are now in place. Repeat this procedure for any other part you need to map. Once you've mapped all the objects in your scene, you're ready to export it.

11. Export to .OBJ.

There are some things to watch out for when you texture object, though....
1. Remember... if you break an object into separate parts, you will also be interupting the smoothing along the seams where the parts meet. I have a workaround for this, but it's complicated.
2. Whenever possible, make sure your shape only takes it's textures from one .tif file. You can map multiple .tifs to an object, but it makes LOD editing very difficult (entering the texture references, that is).

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Bryan Russell
(11/4/99 10:13:41 pm)
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Just a couple of extras to JT's excellent Max texturing instructions:

1. To select only the upper faces of the wing there is an option to not select backfaces on the mapping panel. Using this means that you can drag the selection box around the whole object and only the facing polygons will get selected. You have to make sure that the object is squared in the viewport, so for a wing you could select the Top or Bottom viewports to achieve this.

2. I've found that you don't need to detach the faces to map onto them. I think you have to do this for the 3DS format because the UV's are referenced to actual vertices. The UV's in the OBJ file aren't tied to vertices so this is not necessary. It really doesn't matter anyway as OpenPlane Studio breaks them down into individual polygons, but it might help the shading thing.

3. Make sure that the 'W' part of the UVW parameters are set to '0.0'. OpenPlane doesn't use the W and it could cause the texture to looked stretched if it is not set to 0.0.

4. To get the aspect ratio right for your texture you can use the size to bitmap function. This is more useful for non-square textures but I always use it for square ones anyway.

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JT woodpanel
(11/4/99 11:34:36 pm)
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>2. I've found that you don't need to detach the faces to map onto them. I think you have to do this for the 3DS format because the UV's are referenced to actual vertices. The UV's in the OBJ file aren't tied to vertices so this is not necessary. It really doesn't matter anyway as OpenPlane Studio breaks them down into individual polygons, but it might help the shading thing.

Are you sure about this? I tried mapping different areas without detaching them (using multi/sub-object UVW mapping to just map selected polygons in a mesh) and it didn't seem to work. Then again, that was a long time ago and maybe I did something wrong.

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Bryan Russell
(11/5/99 12:51:03 am)
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I'm sure you don't need to. I remember having to in 3DS 1.x but I haven't needed to in MAX, in any of the mapping I've done so far.

If you want I can list out the steps I use.

Bryan

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JT woodpanel
(11/5/99 1:24:08 am)
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So, let me get this straight... If I have a mesh, I can select faces, apply mapping via UVW modifier... then collapse stack to make it an editable mesh again.... select more faces, apply mapping... collapse, rinse, repeat... and so on? And the mapping and smoothing will all translate into the .obj when I export?
That's a little easier than the way I was doing it and it doesn't cause problems with smoothing... thanks, I will try it.

posted 06-10- 04:56 PM               

That thread is still valid.

Re the shine through textures. There is a option in Max to make polys two sided, but it doesn't translate to OPS or SDOE at the moment. To make 2-sided in SDOE you need to setup the polygon flags so that the 2-sided bit is set.

To do this you can either manually edit a LOD file and use extractor etc or you can use the OBJ importer for OPS and set up the MAX material names as I have described in the OPS readme. BTW the 2-sided bit is the first bit of the flag so you need OR E0 (hex) with your current value.

It is quite likeley that MAX exports the 2-sided option to the VRML file so I will check this out, and add support if it is.

Bryan

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posted 06-12- 05:28 PM               

I think I've learned to do the basics now but I still haven't succeeded in mapping an object from two sides. My left side of the object always get the same mapping as the right side unless I detach the faces into two different parts. But then my mapping always get destroyed when I try to re-attach them - they're again getting the same mapping. And I don't want to import them to OPS as different objects. What option should I choose when I try to reattach them?
'Match material IDs to Material'
'Match Material to Material IDs'
'Do Not Modify Material and IDs'
'Condense Material and IDs'
Or am I doing the wrong attachment method?

> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Bryan Russell
> (11/5/99 12:51:03 am)
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> I'm sure you don't need to. I remember having to in 3DS 1.x
> but I haven't needed to in MAX, >in any of the mapping I've done so far.
>
> If you want I can list out the steps I use.
>

Please do!

Sorry for all these questions =) //Aui