32 réponses à ce sujet

[Calvinthesneak]

Alright, I'm probably a little dense and given the fact I've never really worked with desktop publishing or 3d modelling, I have little background to go on.  I'm programmer by training so I'm not completely retarded.

I read through Waylin's tutorial: http://waylon-art.co.../uvwtut_01.html in an attempt to help me remap a piece of clothing and failed utterly.  My texture never showed up and the object was simply shiny silver.

What I'm working on are these models, and attempting to convert the textures from a TGA into a PLT so that they conform properly and can be better utilized.  http://nwvault.ign.c....Detail&id=6493

Maybe I'm making things way too complicated.  I took the existing texture, converted it to a 10 layer grayscale, and then cut and paste various sections of the texture to appropriate layers.

I suppose more or less I'm trying to learn the art of texturing, as there's a few more pieces I'd like to play with including some stuff done by Whatbrick, and just wondering if anyone can help me understand the process better.  I do not have photoshop unfortunately, but I do have 3dsMax 7, and GIMP.  I don't mind having to work at it, but I'd like to know the steps.

[Jez_fr]

If you tried to apply a plt texture to a weapon, the shiny silver result is normal. Weapons needs TGA (or .dds)

The variouses colored variants, are actually model copies with differently colored versions. They are not working like armor parts, which use .plt.



Does it help?

[Calvinthesneak]

No I'm not doing weapons. I am trying to learn armour. I know about weapons and using tga or dds texturing.

[Jez_fr]

hmm sorry, but since you're mixing uvw mapping and texture convertion, its not extremely clear where you're having problems.



Taking your issue is with converting a tga to a .plt, maybe that's because the TGA is compressed (GIMP save TGA as RLE compressed by default). Those used by NWN should be UNcompressed.



Note its not entirely true, compressed TGA tend to work ingame, but tools made for NWN (as plt exporter I guess) don't, like dds converters usually scramble the texture.



Anyway I would retry with an uncompressed TGA.



hope it helps this time ^^

[Calvinthesneak]

If you look at the link to the fable armour, you'll see that it's dynamic models for males of standard races (human, halfling, dwarf, elf, gnome, half-orc).



The problem is the textures for all the parts are TGA files, not PLT. What I want to do is take a shot at taking those TGA files, and flip them into greyscale and then convert them to a PLT.



So really what I need is a tutorial on creating a PLT for a MDL file.

[The Amethyst Dragon]

Part of the problem/hassle with PLTs is the fact that for them to show up in-game, your plt image and model file need to have the same exact name (except for file extension). So, if your model file is "armorpart_01a.mdl", your image file needs to be named "armorpart_01a.plt", and it needs to be correctly referenced within the model file. Yes, this does mean that you'll need multiple plt files for every armor part, since every armor part has multiple models for the different races+phenotypes.



Good luck!

[Calvinthesneak]

Yeah I'm aware. I've made quite a number of clothing haks for servers, I'm good at that part. I'm not so good with 3ds max, and I've no experience to speak of with photoshop. Thus my looking for help in getting this all set up.

[Jez_fr]

Ok I see what you want now. Amethyst Dragon is right, textures must have the same name as the mdl.
(I was really confused by the texturing and 3dmax blah... there isn't any texturing or max issue here).
Here's how to make functionnal .plt for your mdl:
- open the TGA in Gimp
- go to menu Image, select Mode, choose "level of grey"
- now add 9 alpha layers (transparent)
- rename them like this, in same order:
Tattoo2
Tattoo1
Leather2
Leather1
Cloth2
Cloth1
Metal2
Metal1
Hair
Skin (this one is Background that you rename Skin)
- Now you can copy paste the part of the texture you want to be as cloth, tatoo etc...
- Once finished, save as .plt with the same name as the armor part or helm number
for exemple if you do helm_044.mdl, rename the plt the same.
- just to avoid other problem, but its optionnal, open the mdl, and rename the bitmap to the texture name (its mostly to avoid issue with nwnExplorer)
Now that should work ingame (I just didi it, and it work fine)


If a model part use several textures, that's another story..
- Make a new texture and copy paste all textures in this one.
- After that you need to open the model in max, apply a "Unwrap UVW" modifier
- select Edit (that will open the UVW mapping window), select all, copy the selction, close the window and delete the uvw modifier from the stack (at this stage you may want to take a screenshot of the mapping window to remember the mapping position)
- apply the newer texture (which include all textures) on the model (you can drag and drop, dirty way but works fine).
- Now, apply again an Unwrap UVW modifier on the model
- Edit, that open again the mapping window, paste the selection, and now reposition it over the texture part that represent the old texture (that's where the screenshot taken above can help).
- Once done, close the mapping window, and export the model.
I realize that's a bit complex if you have no idea how max works, so if this is needed I could do a tutorial with pictures. Im not an expert though, so maybe someone else have a more appropriate way to do this.

Modifié par Jez_fr, 19 juillet 2010 - 04:10 .

[Estelindis]

A quick and dirty way of converting a TGA image to PLT is simply to open an existing PLT, paste down your TGA image into the top layer (Tattoo 2), and save it as [TGA texture name].plt   (This assumes your TGA and PLT have the same dimensions; if not, scale the PLT to match the TGA before pasting.)

Close the saved file and reopen it. Now cut out portions of the image and re-paste them into whatever layers you wish. NB: do not use fuzzy selections; always "sharpen" your selection before cutting (as PLTs don't handle fuzzy selections well, and you'll end up with ugly layer border).

By the way, I made a post at RPGmodding which explains a number of things about the PLT format which may be puzzling to PLT beginners: http://www.rpgmoddin...-texture-format  If you have any other questions, please feel free to ask.  :-)

Modifié par Estelindis, 19 juillet 2010 - 05:51 .

[Calvinthesneak]

Thanks both of you, I'll go through and see what I can come up with.

[Calvinthesneak]

Alright, so I starting with something simpler first, shoulder models, there's a left and a right, however the textures for both are in the same TGA texture.

The model for the left shoulder is this.



The texture looks like this



So it's the two bottom pieces on the picture that actually make up the texture I need.

I've easily converted it to greyscale, cut parts and pieces out and put on the right layers, intelligent scissors are useful.

It looks right in NWNExplorer:

Modifié par Calvinthesneak, 20 juillet 2010 - 02:51 .

[Calvinthesneak]

Alright, so my MDL looks like this.

# Exported from NWmax 0.8 b61 at 7/19/2010 8:13:29 PM
# mdl file
#
#NWmax MODEL ASCII
# model: pmh0_shor251
#local file: Unknown
filedependancy Unknown
newmodel pmh0_shor251
setsupermodel pmh0_shor251 NULL
classification Character
setanimationscale 1.0
#NWmax GEOM  ASCII
beginmodelgeom pmh0_shor251
node dummy pmh0_shor251
  parent NULL
endnode
node trimesh pmh0_shor251g
  parent pmh0_shor251
  position 0.0 0.0 0.0
  orientation 1.0 0.0 0.0 0.0
  wirecolor 0.690196 0.690196 0.690196 
  tilefade 0
  scale 1.0
  render 1
  Shadow 1
  beaming 0
  inheritcolor 0
  rotatetexture 0
  alpha 1.0
  transparencyhint 0
  selfillumcolor 0.0 0.0 0.0 
  ambient 0.588235 0.588235 0.588235 
  Diffuse 0.588235 0.588235 0.588235 
  Specular 0.0 0.0 0.0 
  shininess 10
  center 8.02435 0.249649 12.2846 
  bitmap pmh0_shor251
  verts 246
    -0.0432963 -0.118362 0.143776
    0.00361168 0.14138 0.062686

.........................
lots of numbers blah blah
....................
endnode
endmodelgeom pmh0_shor251
donemodel pmh0_shor251

And I found my problem, the base was running a name of pmh0_shoulder251t

I imported, changed name in max and exported and it works like a charm now.

Thank you both for your help.  It's not real texturing or anything, but baby steps.

Tada, both left and right shoulders with PLT colouring now.

Modifié par Calvinthesneak, 20 juillet 2010 - 04:37 .

[Estelindis]

That looks amazing! Congratulations. :-)



The red / purple (depending on which image you look at - of course, in our PLT, it's greyscale) section of the PLT could probably do with a bit more contrast, but that's about it. If you decide to give it a bit more contrast, my personal advice is to select about ten pixels away from the layer edge, feather the selection by 10 or so, and then increase the brightness and contrast at the same time (usually by similar degrees of magnitude). I find that the more overall contrast a PLT has, the better it tends to look in-game (details are more easily seen). But it varies from texture to texture, and a single filter shouldn't be applied wholesale.

[Jez_fr]

Looks excellent (maybe a tad big).



@Este: thanks for tips! ^^

[Calvinthesneak]

I've made some progress.....



Cause I'm making progress, however slow it may be.







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[Estelindis]

WOW! That looks amazing! It's great to see some big, chunky armour in the game. :-D

[Jez_fr]

ditto



That really looks good =)

[Calvinthesneak]

They aren't my models as I said, I pulled them off the vault, I belive they are inspired from Fable, just whoever created them never had put the textures into a PLT format, which caused a number of issues for PC's, the most noticible, is that the image "stuck" to the PC even when the item was removed. Not sure if the textures could be made more detailed as they were in TGA format, for now I'm just trying to get them converted. Graphical editing is not my cup of tea.

[Estelindis]

They may not be your models, but believe me, I know there is a fair bit of work involved in making TGA textures look good as PLTs. ;-) In terms of making them look more detailed, did you try the brightness/contrast edit? The trick to it is generally to raise both factors to such a degree that the brightness of the light parts stays as it was (no brighter, no darker) while the darker parts are made a significant degree darker. Then you see a decent range of colour without making the transition between light and dark too sudden or extreme.

[Calvinthesneak]

nope, I've not even any ideas on how to go about that in fact. The most complicated work I've ever done with graphical editing to this point has been touch up of PLT's or creating portraits. The trouble with being a code monkey.

[Calvinthesneak]

Right... did the bottom half this evening....

[Estelindis]

Beautiful! If you want me to take a go at improving the contrasts, I'd be happy to do so, though I must say it looks pretty good as it is. :-)



By the way, I realise you're just converting another game's models, but I think the "boot" section might be a little large by comparison to the thighs.

[Calvinthesneak]

Yeah I agree, if you want to fiddle for the weekend be my guest, I'll email you the hak, I have a couple helmets in there I've not quite figured out yet, I think I'm doing my alpha channels wrong.



I'm off camping so I'll email it to you now before I leave. Thanks!

[Calvinthesneak]

Estelindis, you have mail!

[Estelindis]

Exxxxxcellent...