Doom3world

Yeah that tutorial was written for the early version of the USM exporter (before Googos wrote the better ASE exporter).

You'd probably want to split the bottom of the object to get a clean line there. The size issue is easy to solve, Blender is 10x *smaller* than Q4 so just select the object in object mode and scale it up by 10x. Once done Ctrl+A to 'fix' it's size before export.

The bottom of the tutorial is valid in terms of setting up the material / testure paths to get the model textured in game.

again thanks for the help (and speedy too!)

resizing brings up another question, which i think i know the answer to, but it could have been a coincedence.

does the camera position determine the "size" of the end product?

when I first made stuff in blender, and hit f12, parts were cut off or the object wasn't centered. So I played with the camera position and got it to look the way I wanted to (in the f12 window).

is that right? or does the ase contain the whole object regardless of camera position?

No, the camera only determines the size of a rendered images realtive to the physical sizes of objects in a scene; tow objects of differing sizes will render differently.

It's not related to model size in game engines which is why you need to Ctrl+A to 'fix' their size.

If you look at the tool bar just under (or above) the 3D window you'll see a series of icons, one of those looks like a little picture (on the far right) click that and you get a better idea of what the base mesh will look like 'as is'.

The material that I'm applying to my pieces, I made right in blender, simply choosing the marble texture and modifying the colors....

how do I export THAT material to an external file? (tga)........I see no way to do it, other than screen capping the blender window and cropping everything but the material preview window out.

is there another way?

Sort of... I've not tried this myself yet but Blender does have a 'render to texture' feature (you'll need to look this up) that should allow you to render out the material based on the UVWmaps layout.

Otherwise yes, you have to screen capture or render a series of images and fiddle around with them.

thanks...........i did that..........then i tried to import the tga as my material (doing all this so I can reference the texture in q4 for both these models and the rooks I'm doing q4 so they look the same) but I can't figure out where you import a pic for use as the texture now.

good grief

You now need to change the way the object is being textured, so duplicate it and it's material and then change that from the proceedural image you've used to a 'bitmap', asign that to the material.

Go into UVW editing mode and then asign the image texture.

You should then find that the object uses the image instead after doing this

I hate to be a pain in the ars here, but i cant find "uvw editing mode".

the modes I see are:

Weight Paint
Vertex Paint
Texture Paint
UV Face Select
Edit
Object

oh and while I'm here...the bishop model in q4 as is, is only 9 high by 3 wide..........i need it to be like 100 times that, not 10.

UV Face select ('F').

Scale the model by '100'. Open up the object properties panel by hitting 'N' in the 3D window and then type in values where you see 'Size X' (Y and Z). Don't forget to Ctrl+A before export.

ready to shoot me yet?

ok, pressing N DOES give me xyz values, but those are the coordinates on the plane and changing those MOVES the object, as opposed to scaling it........i found where to scale it before but when I scaled by 100, it went off the grid so far as I couldn't pull the camera back far enough to get it in frame again.

As far as assigning the external texture? I found uv face select (f doesnt work, but i can easily call it up in the drop down menus).........but I see nothing to click on that opens up a window and allows me to import an external texture.

While I was waiting for your reply earlier, I went to that one tutorial and tried uvunwrapping it and saving the layout.......then I opened that with photoshop, applied my texture to it, saved it under another name and then in blender, did that open new image thing and replaced the plain white unwrap with my altered one..........this altered one DOES show up in the ase file after compile, however, hitting f12 in blender, it shows the model untextured unless i have the built in one (non external texture) turned on..........is there a place in the buttons window (materials panels) where you can import a graphic???

I then re compiled it as ase and it listed my altered texture file as the material. I edited the bmap line concerning q4 paths and although the model does show up different from the first one I imported into q4 (with no texture), it doesn't show the texture.

and I still haven't split the damn thing or "mapped it" ... the tutorial for prepping for d3/q4 says it assumes u unwrapped and mapped.....think i did unwrap...but sure i didnt map.

head spinning............think I'll fall down now.

I'm not surprised, like most people new to this you've tried to do too much in too short a time and you've over complicated what should relatively simple process.

If you're in 'object' mode hitting 'F' *does* put Blender into Faces select mode but in doing that you have to open the UVWtexture mapping (image) window (split the interface so you have a 3D and image veiwport open), you then assign the image itself from there.

Make sure you're 'Draw Type' is set to 'shaded' view as well otherwise you'll just see white in the main 3D window.

Read my tutorial again as it tells you about the scaling issue.

again, THANKS!

just so we're on the same page, WHICH tutorial are you talking about? lol, i've been reading a bunch of them. could u post the link to that specific one?

and you're right, i have been doing a crash course on this and i certainly HOPE it's easier than this has been taking!

This one; prepping models for D3 games

Scaling: After changing all axis from 1 to 100, the object gets bigger. I then try to move the camera out so it will all be in the frame, and every time...the camera disappears and I can't get it back.

Applying texture: I take it this means, while in uvwface select mode, in the window set as uvwimage editor, u click on image, then load? this certainly works and if my draw mode is set to textured (not shaded) I DO see the texture on the other three screens ( i have top, front and side, and swap the camera window with the uvwimage edit).

However, when I hit F12, the original texture, made internally in blender, shows up on the model, not my externally imported one. Is that supposed to happen?

and oh yeah.......although i had no problem finding the unwrap menu selection, i see no selection to MAP............so I still havent done that either.

Read this (in particular the 'addendum') until it's burnt into the back of your retina!



In the 'Shader' buttons windows (F5 - the little shaded sphere) directly under the material name block (MA:'name') is a set of button, click the one marked TexFace.

What do you mean by that? Describe what you're trying to do here...

Hi, trying to use teh exporter, I have one frame of animation on the ipo curve with only locand rot keys for the bone and the bone is linked to all the verticies in the model. I export the md5mesh and then a 1 frame md5anim, however when I try to use testModel on the md5mesh it says

"NULL joints on renderEntity"

Try keyframing at 1 and 5 so it covers a couple of frames and then see what happens. Also check the mesh and anim in the model viewer for problems... you should always use that as a 1st port of call to check the basic integraty of the mesh before doing anything engine side.

the mesh shows up fine in gtkradiant, I can't run the model viewer because I don't have windows and it doesnt run through wine. but I did try it with a couple frames animation with no change. Heres some links to the file I'm trying to work on, please tell me if you can't download them, means i messed up the permissions again, always get wier permission problems with sym links.

here's the .blend a really bad texture i used just so i coul have uv coordinates to export and the md5mesh and md5anim files i'm trying to use.

http://fuag.is-a-geek.com/filez/Marine

EDIT: thats odd, if use the mdel def for testModel it loads it up fine although the smoothgroups are off and it doesnt get lit, but if it ry to load it up in the game as an item its a black box and if I try to view the md5mesh file it give sthe NULL joint error.. well, at least i have a model loaded now

That testmodel problem means there's probably a problem in the def file somewhere. I'll take a look at the files when I can.

cool, thnx, fixed the lighting problem, for somereason i had a random normal and spec map declaired in the material that didnt go with the model..