23 réponses à ce sujet

[errant_knight]

I figured I could just edit the textures, but all that's in the armor stand texture files is the actual stand. What do I need to edit to change the arnor that's displayed (which I want to be one that I recolored)--is that possible?

Edit: I found mention of this BlendTree in placeables.xls:






prb_wpnstd.anb
but I don't know if that's something that's editable, or where to find it....

Modifié par errant_knight, 25 août 2010 - 02:27 .

[DarthParametric]

The armour stands are all unique models I think, so you can't interchange armour types without creating a whole new model. The armour meshes themselves are just derived from the actual wearable meshes, so they should use the same base textures. You should be able to see that in the MMH. You should see references to two MAOs.

[errant_knight]

Thanks!
Edit: Okay, my head is now going to explode. I found the mao data and realized that I'm not just going to be able to change it to the model I want because it uses a tint override. I'm guessing I'll have to recreate the armor as a custom armor. I tried to get a handle on that, but the tutorial
http://social.biowar...e-320619-1.html

lost me on editing the GDA.... Ack. Okay, that's not the only place it lost me.....

Modifié par errant_knight, 25 août 2010 - 06:07 .

[DarthParametric]

If you explain more clearly what you are trying to achieve I'll try and point you in the right direction.

There is just the one placeable armour stand:



This uses separate textures for the armour and boots, as I suggested above. They are just low res copies of the medium armour C variant textures.

There are four prop armour stands:



Each of these have their own separate texture with the armour and stand together.

I'm assuming that you want a lootable stand, and thus want a placeable. If you are happy to stick with the existing model and just want to retexture it, that is fairly straight forward. Just make a custom named copy and edit the textures as appropriate. Look for plc_medarmor01.mao and plc_medboo01.mao to get you heading in the right direction.

If you want a different model placeable, that involves a little more effort. There are two options. The first is to turn one of the 3 different prop models into a placeable and use that. The second is to create a new one by combining the armour of your choice with the wooden stand. Either one would require the use of Max/GMax and Eshme's script.

A new placeable will require a GDA override as you said. It's not terribly complex though if that is indeed the route you want to take.

Modifié par DarthParametric, 25 août 2010 - 11:30 .

[errant_knight]

Because it's for use illustrating a story, it has to be Cailan's armor with the edited texture maps, and override tint that I've applied to it in a variation I made, but I just tinted and overrode the maps of the existing masb, and haven't created a unique model. It doesn't matter if it functions or not, but I think a placeable would be the way to go. That way, I'll know how to do it when I need to in a different project. Thanks for your help!

[DarthParametric]

Ah yes, a machinima thing or some such isn't it? One you are using all in the toolset - not exporting to the game? In that case a prop would be the most expedient method. In fact for just the toolset you could conceivably get away with just loading the armour model up directly, as you don't need any in-game functionality or interaction.

Modifié par DarthParametric, 25 août 2010 - 04:15 .

[errant_knight]

DarthParametric wrote...

Ah yes, a machinima thing or some such isn't it? One you are using all in the toolset - not exporting to the game? In that case a prop would be the most expedient method. In fact for just the toolset you could conceivably get away with just loading the armour model up directly, as you don't need any in-game functionality or interaction.

I'm actually in the process of writing a rather long story (I'm at almost 100,000 wds now, and this is part one, nearly completed. I decided that I wanted to illustrate it, so I'm animating particular moments from the story, and taking toolset shots for the illustrations. Eventually, I'll be using the levels, and animations for a quest mod, if things go according to plan. But yeah, it can be just in the toolset, so easy is good.

[Proleric]

If you only need a prop, in the level editor you can use the empty stand prp_armorstand_01_0, then place the armour models of your choice on it. No need for custom models.

[errant_knight]

Proleric1 wrote...

If you only need a prop, in the level editor you can use the empty stand prp_armorstand_01_0, then place the armour models of your choice on it. No need for custom models.

That would be cool, but how do I get it to use the tint override?

[DarthParametric]

Probably easier to just make a custom named copy of the model and retexture it to be gold. Should be easy enough using the tint map as a placement guide and the TNT file for the RGB values of the colours.

[Proleric]

If you can get the custom armour model into the toolset's model list, with the required retexture, you could simply place that model on the empty armour stand prop in the level editor.

[errant_knight]

Thanks guys, I'll have a go at that. One good thing about this is that once I'm ready to make a quest mod, I'll be pretty much up to speed on everything but scripting....

Modifié par errant_knight, 26 août 2010 - 04:57 .

[errant_knight]

Okay, I guess I need some help with this.... This isn't going too well.

Edited for update and to make sense. Okay, I have my prop model. It was supposed to create a mao, but it doesn't seem to have done that. Not sure which I should edit to add it....

Looking in the mmh, I found these lines, and I'm wondering if I can change the tint there:
(name)MMH_MESH_MATERIAL_COLOR    (type)COLOR4    (value)-1.#R, -1.#R, -1.#R, -1.#R
and
(name)MMH_USE_VARIATION_TINT      (type)UINT8     (value)0

Modifié par errant_knight, 27 août 2010 - 03:22 .

[errant_knight]

I've got the armor, boots and gloves placed on my level. Is there no way to apply the tint override to this? I opened up my texture files in photoshop, and recoloring the dds is going to be brutal.

[DarthParametric]

Nah, the texture is the easiest part:



The game gives you everything you need - you just have to comp it together in PS.

EDIT: Here you go, try this:



Download it here - DP_ArmorStand_Cailan.zip Just extract into your Override folder and then start the toolset. It should appear in your model list.

Modifié par DarthParametric, 27 août 2010 - 11:24 .

[errant_knight]

Thanks for the examples! The color of my armor is a little more complicated (sorry for the image size, I didn't have anything smaller uploaded):
 


but I can see from the example you provided that I made the diffuse map much too saturated. How did you do that, flood fill and an opacity change? What opacity did you use? Or was it an overlay?

Also, I made an mao, but it's not showing up. Is renaming it an mao enough, or do I have to compile it somehow? Does it go in my module's core override, or in the data? EDIT: tried both those places, so I'm guessing that I need to tell it the name of the mao file some where (duh--what did I think? It was going to read my mind?  ) Where do I put that?

Thanks so much!
P.S. Boy, I like the way you arranged the armor better! I brought mine in as a separate object from the stand and just kind of placed it on it, so it's in a 'standing' position. Did you have to take it off the male bones to do that?

Modifié par errant_knight, 27 août 2010 - 04:00 .

[DarthParametric]

Ah, I thought you just wanted Cailan's gold armour. I didn't realise what you actually meant was that you just wanted the same armour model variation (hm_arm_masb) with a different texture. You can still use the model I made as a base - just change the textures as appropriate. Assuming that is the sort of prop you are after of course.



Concerning your MAO issues, make sure your MMH actually references it. Open it in the toolset or standalone GFF editor, right click and choose Expand All, then scroll down to the bottom and look for a field that says MMH_MATERIAL_OBJECT. That's the MAO the model will use (although there can be more than one MAO sometimes - as you will see in the model I uploaded). You'll want to edit that to reflect the name of your custom MAO.



For the Cailan texture I just did what I suggested above in an earlier post. You have the tint map which gives you alpha masks for the RGB channels and the TNT file which gives you the colour values for those channels. It's just a simple case of dumping that over the original diffuse as a series of layer masks, like so:

[errant_knight]

I'm going to use your model, because it's better. Ah, this is what you were talking about! Heh, I completely forgot I could use channels this way. It's not something I've ever really had call to do until now....
What do I do about the specular colors from the tint map? I'm guessing I'll have to change my diffuse colors to reflect their absence?

Heh, there's a reason I haven't done this. Apparently I have no idea how, so I'm afraid I'll need some more explicit instructions.... Not to worry, I'm photoshop literate, I just haven't used maskes except to use gradients to reveal underlying images.

I selected the channel I wanted, and changed the RGB value for it, but I have no idea how to do the rest. Everything is still all black and grey, and I don't know how to make it a mask or overlay it. Picking 'layer mask' doesn't seem to be doing what I expected.

Edit: I've created layers of the individual channels. Will now mess around and try and get them to do something.

Uh.... Well, that's not working.

Modifié par errant_knight, 28 août 2010 - 04:53 .

[DarthParametric]

It's very straightforward. Import the original diffuse and make it your base layer. Make three new layers above it, one for each colour channel. Fill each layer with the appropriate solid colour. In the Cailan example above, I used the RGB values from the tint file. Now select each layer one at a time and click on the Vector Mask button at the bottom of the layer palette. If you go into the channels tab, you'll see there is now a new channel between the RGB and alpha channels called <Layer Name> Mask. Load up the tint file. Change to the channels tab and select a single channel like R. Select everything and copy. Now back in your diffuse, paste that into the corresponding mask channel (you may need to activate it first - deactivate it after pasting). Repeat for the other two channels, flatten your image and you're done.

For the specular, you are right that it is not going to be quite the same as the tint file. Possibly there is a facility to specify something similar in the MAO, but if so I'm not aware of it. Perhaps someone more knowledgeable on them could provide an answer.

Modifié par DarthParametric, 28 août 2010 - 05:16 .

[errant_knight]

DarthParametric wrote...

It's very straightforward. Import the original diffuse and make it your base layer. Make three new layers above it, one for each colour channel. Fill each layer with the appropriate solid colour. In the Cailan example above, I used the RGB values from the tint file. Now select each layer one at a time and click on the Vector Mask button at the bottom of the layer palette. If you go into the channels tab, you'll see there is now a new channel between the RGB and alpha channels called Mask. Load up the tint file. Change to the channels tab and select a single channel like R. Select everything and copy. Now back in your diffuse, paste that into the corresponding mask channel (you may need to activate it first - deactivate it after pasting). Repeat for the other two channels, flatten your image and you're done.

For the specular, you are right that it is not going to be quite the same as the tint file. Possibly there is a facility to specify something similar in the MAO, but if so I'm not aware of it. Perhaps someone more knowledgeable on them could provide an answer.

Fantastic! Thanks. Boy, this little project has gotten me to learn to import and export from 3dmax, how to use channels as masks and to edit all the files pertaining to object. How awesome is that? Thanks so much for all the help!

[errant_knight]

Another question... What do you mean load up the tint file? Photoshop doesn't seem to recognize it. Note: I figured that it must mean to paste the tint map into a new layer, copy the individual channel info, and paste it into the mask, but I can't make that happen. It keeps creating a new layer when I paste....

I didn't figure out the masks, but I used the individual chanels to create selections to delete the bits I didn't want and came up with this:



The thing is, when I rename my diffuse map to fit your mod and try to spawn the object, it crashes the toolset. Your unaltered prop does not. The same thing was happening with my prop, and I thought that it was something I was doing wrong in the mao or mmh, but since that was unaltered here, that narrows the problem to my dds. It's the same size as yours, so that's not it. Any ideas?

EDIT: Okay, solved the crashing issue. Apparently, if you don't merge the layers before saving as a dds, it's a very bad thing, indeed. On the other hand, get a load of the texture wackiness! How unexpected. The boots are still your texture. The armor is mine--er, sort of. Edit: It's the wood texture from the armor stand. Huh.... :



Heh, I'll be working on that lovely piece of handiwork.

Modifié par errant_knight, 29 août 2010 - 01:47 .

[errant_knight]

It's better now.... The colors are still a bit weird, but this isn't the cutscene lighting, so it may be closer than I think.



It's not very shiny, though. Can I adjust the values in the mao to change that?
Edit: Heh, any changes I make to the mao seem to leave it a lovely matte pea soup green.... Maybe I'm good with this as it is.

Modifié par errant_knight, 29 août 2010 - 01:05 .

[DarthParametric]

Wow, some interesting experimentation there.



I'm not sure that I can explain it better in text, so the easiest thing is just to give you the PSDs so you can see how they go together - DP_Cailan_Tex_Source.zip



As I've said to you before, the toolset is never going to be reflective of the in-game quality, so there's not going to be much you can do with it as far as improving the lighting quality. Your best bet would really be to export the module to the game.

[errant_knight]

DarthParametric wrote...

Wow, some interesting experimentation there.

I'm not sure that I can explain it better in text, so the easiest thing is just to give you the PSDs so you can see how they go together - DP_Cailan_Tex_Source.zip

As I've said to you before, the toolset is never going to be reflective of the in-game quality, so there's not going to be much you can do with it as far as improving the lighting quality. Your best bet would really be to export the module to the game.

Thanks! I'll be very interested in seeing just how that works. There's a whole bunch of stuff about masks that I need to learn, clearly! I'm rendering the lightmaps in my new version of Cousland castle (wow, there's some major time), then I can see what it looks like in a cutscene. Things look very different there, too, so I'll be interested to see the difference. Thanks again for all your help!