55 réponses à ce sujet

[Happycrow]

Afternoon, folks.
I'm almost hesitant to post this, because Hellfire was once very generous with his time with me, and I utterly failed at uvmapping an ettercap figure... but I have a problem I can't solve.  I'm working on a PW that's doing a TON of custom systems, and we need to alter gloves and boots. 

Here's the problem:  texturing I can do, no problem.  But when you put on bracers, the game doesn't render them, they just sit in your glove slot.  Similarly, greaves and boots conflict in the Armor Set entries.  I need to figure out
how to model a set of gloves and boots to that it's enlonged like a greave would be, and gloves that are lengthend so that they have an "integral bracer."  The rest I can do with textures.

Problem is, I am UTTERLY failing, in spite of the various tutorials out there, to get the model in game.  Altering the vertices is cake (I have both 3dsMax 9 (2009 student) and Blender), but from there to having it actually show up in system, I'm failing utterly.

Would anybody who is clueful be willing to create "long boots/gloves" or be willing to take some time to walk me through what the hell I'm not doing right?  In either case, I have a wife who's a baking FIEND and would be more than willing to "compensate with cookies" for somebody's time.

(or, on the very off chance that there's some bizarre 2da fix that would handle this, which I don't think there is, BUT, if folks could let me know what it might be?)

Thanks for reading this, and thanks in advance for any help y'all could give.

[Happycrow]

Found Barrel of Monkey's Knee-high Boots (Yeomen of the Greenwood), so that solves that one.
So it's just "Breakfast at Tiffany's elbow gloves" at this point. Between the custom content tuts and lynda.com, I sure wish I knew what I was borking up.

[Elysius]

 I've never done wearable armor/clothing before, but I can take a look at your Max file to see if anything is amiss. I don't like posting my email address where pesky web bots can access it, so to email me, go to my profile on the Vault and click on "Send email to Elysius." Please send me your Max file and associated texture files. If you're having trouble emailing me, PM me here.

You can email me those cookies later. 

Modifié par Elysius, 24 avril 2012 - 12:36 .

[Happycrow]

Email sent; thanks in advance.  I just know it's some total newbie thing you're going to spot in ten seconds flat....

Modifié par Happycrow, 24 avril 2012 - 03:26 .

[Elysius]

I haven't received it yet. Please check your PM.

[Happycrow]

Sent, and thank you.

[Elysius]

 Looks like you still have quite a bit of work to do. Let's start with the easy steps and gradually move on to the more difficult steps.

• Rename your models -- the main one and its lower level-of-detail meshes -- to correspond to the NWN2 naming convention. Your main mesh, for instance, should be named P_HHM_CL_Gloves01.
• Drop an STL Check modifier on each of your meshes and tick the "Check" box. You need to correct all the errors before proceeding. When you have no more errors, you may collapse or delete the STL check modifier.
• Armor and clothing are skin meshes. You need to import the appropriate skeleton for your gloves and drop a Skin modifier on each of your meshes then weight all vertices to the bones. It's essentially the same as rigging a creature, but at least you'll have fewer vertices to work with.

When you're done, export your meshes as an MDB file called P_HHM_CL_Gloves01.MDB, fire up the toolset, and pray to all the gods of Toril that your new item will appear.

If your item is intended for NPCs only and will never be worn by player characters, you're done. If you intend this item to be wearable by PCs, however, you'll need to make versions of this item for each playable race and gender and repeat steps 1 to 3 above.

[Happycrow]

Apparently armor's WAY further down the rabbit hole than I thought it was. 1 and 2 are simple enough; 3 is new territory for me. I'll crack open my 3dsBible and start working on it tomorrow night.

Thanks, Elysius.

[-Semper-]

just one lil' tip: if you don't want to override vanilla gloves, then you should check what names are already used. imo you can add items from gloves01 - gloves255

and better read about the naming conventions and check nwn2's files. nothing stops you from importing meshes into max to look what exactly is going on.

Modifié par -Semper-, 25 avril 2012 - 05:49 .

[Happycrow]

Thanks, Semper -- I've got naming conventions down for files (I do a lot of texture work for my PW)...but it stupidly hadn't occurred to me that the model mesh itself needed them.

Thanks again: it's always "the one thing you don't know." Now at least I know why my tuskless half-orcs became HEADLESS half-orcs, heh.

[Elysius]

Happycrow, I encourage you to use the gloves to learn how to weight vertices because they have so few of them. Vertices, I mean. That said, if you want a quick and dirty way to go about it, you can "copy/paste" vertex weights from some other glove model to the one you're working on. If you really want to know how, the procedure is in this sticky post. It works not only with head meshes but also with other meshes whose geometry is similar to something else that's already been rigged with the same skeleton. It's not guaranteed to work, but at least it will take some of the pain out of rigging meshes.

[Happycrow]

Yeah, I've looked that post over but am not far along along to comprehend it. Yet. Also not getting how I can have 336 errors on a mesh simply because I grabbed some vertices and moved them. Since, unfortunately, it doesn't indicate the errors, I'm going to restart this with the STL mod running, and then STOP the minute it indicates an error, retry, etcetera, until I figure out what I'm doing wrong with said vertices.

[Morbane]

Check out the RWS Site - Hellfire has a few tutorials there somewhere...

[Happycrow]

Thanks. I'm SLOWLY but surely coming along.

My "boss" at the PW asked me a side question about how to do this whole thing that I don't think will work (besides that I need to learn to rig if I'm going to be useful, and especially if I'm eventually going to hit my ultimate dream, which is applying my RL knowledge to combat animations), but am floating here for feedback anyway.

Cloaks are assigned models/textures. Are bracers? For instance, is there a reason that nw_it_mbracer002 (stock +1 bracers) can't be assigned a model/texture so that they render visibly on the character?

My gut is that this tack won't work b/c rendered bracers are controlled via Armor Set, unlike cloaks (or, for that matter, gloves/boots, which thanks to Elysius I now understand to be a skin mesh). But if that WOULD work and there's a way to do it, then I'd be a fool not to have him simply go for it so I can lose the "project time pressure" from my plate and focus on, as the better programmers say, learning to rig "the hard way."

[Elysius]

I never really thought about it until you asked, but it looks like you are correct in all counts. There are no separate bracer models, and the appearance of a character's arm accessories is controlled by the armor set. Apparently, bracers are just a bunch of stats and an icon.

[Happycrow]

Trying to import the skeleton... "cannot locate granny2.dll" ...which is weird, since I have nwn2utils already installed. Is this a typical problem with a known workaround?

Edit:  just imported the Aldanon figure, since it's supposed to contain a skeleton (does in the ccc_guide, anyway), but when I import it, all I have is the geometry.  I start to think that I've got some kind of importer issue).

Modifié par Happycrow, 27 avril 2012 - 01:46 .

[Happycrow]

Oh, holy cow. I set up with Blender, and yeah, there's skeleton there. Don't know what the BLAZES I'm looking at in the interface, but it's got a skeleton. Weird.

[Happycrow]

Okay, apparently I have a broken Expotron install of one sort or another. In terms of simply moving vertices around meshes, etcetera, is there any reason Blender can't be used in the short term while I try to fix the problem and get back to 3ds Max (which I greatly prefer)?

[-Semper-]

you are right that neither belts, gloves and rings will be shown if you equip the appropriate items. different bracer models are controlled with the armor set tab. if you like, you can create custom models for that. they even need no rigging, because they are simply attached to the skeleton through special helpers called "ap_..."

when you import models into max, are all the options checked within the window which pops up? does this windown appear anyway?

depends on wether blender's plugin exports skinned meshes or rather meshes with user defined properties. if it does without errors, nothing should stop you

Modifié par -Semper-, 27 avril 2012 - 08:33 .

[Happycrow]

Thanks, Semper.

Unfortunately, the armor-set-controlled bracers don't work for what we're trying to do -- we'd need something that was either built off the glove, or a bracer that rendered when equipped into the "glove slot." (We have a custom armor system that's evolved until it's basically unrecognizable as DnD). When I import models into max, I have all the options checked, and the window does appear -- but on double-checking under "Hide by Name," the only thing that actually seems to show up is the geometry.

I'll work Jester's tutorial tonight -- that was stupid on my part, I should have simply tried it yesterday and then I'd know if all was well. Note to self: post when awake, not when sleepy. ::facepalm::

[Happycrow]

That DOES give me a follow-up question about rigging, though. Is it a problem if the main armor set is rigged to a number of bones including the forearm bone, and the "elbow glove" also weights to the same bone? Or is "rigging overlap" bad?

[Happycrow]

@Semper: Blender's a no-go. Easy as pie to model in, but the import scripts destroy the mesh. However, I found Ancient and Decrepit laptop (thought lost and stumbled on by accident) from the dark days when Windows XP was made of win, and Tazpn's is working on the install there. So.... back in business.

[-Semper-]

Happycrow wrote...

we'd need something that was either built off the glove, or a bracer that rendered when equipped into the "glove slot."

then why not combining the glove and the bracer? just rig your new glove with an attached bracer. this way you can create different bracers which can be changed through equipping slots. shouldn't be too disturbing that the actual glove model's changed too.

Happycrow wrote...

Is it a
problem if the main armor set is rigged to a number of bones including
the forearm bone, and the "elbow glove" also weights to the same bone?
Or is "rigging overlap" bad?

as long as there are no vertices rigged to more than 3 bones and the whole skin of the model part ain't containing more than 54 bones, there should be no problem.

[Happycrow]

If I understand your reply right, Semper, that's basically what I'm doing: I've taken a glove from the Vault that already has a cuff, and am extending that out into a vambrace up to the elbow, with the inner cut-out. Then the final product can be textured out as a glove with vambrace, a fully-armored gauntlet, mail or scale up to the sleeve, Bobs-your-uncle. Could get fancier than that but would be afraid of the polycount climbing.

If that's NOT what you mean, pls let me know. I am definitely the newbie in the house.

3 bones max per vert, 54 bones per model, got it. I'm not at the stage where I'll be making custom skeletons yet (but if I can figure out this rigging business, I'm revisiting Mister Ettercap, heh).

[-Semper-]

no, it's as you said. is simply misunderstodd what you were about
for custom skeletons you need max 7 or 8. the expotron plugin won't work with another version. it's also the only plugin out there which is able to export skeletons and animations.