Redoran Buildings Progress Thread (3)

[Razorwing]

Originally posted by Zarf
It's nearing completion... what did you call the border that I made?

Cool, I can't wait to see it

I think the three I listed were the ones that didn't replace an existing MVP texture. So your "RedoranBorderMVP01.dds" is named the same on my end for instance.

[Zarf]

It's done, but for some reason I can't group the mesh and collision mesh.

Take a look if you want.

[Razorwing]

Originally posted by Zarf
It's done, but for some reason I can't group the mesh and collision mesh.

Take a look if you want.

I think grouping meshes is just a way of organizing them in Max. It isn't carried over into the nif file. If you've grouped say fifty meshes there's an equal chance the nif will have misaligned pieces as if you didn't group them. Don't worry about that. Attaching meshes on the other hand is always a good idea, but as you know not in this case.

There's a multitide of "Bone" meshes in the scene. I counted almost twenty of them. They are most likely responsible for the problems you encountered, and would be responsible for a lot more problems if exported with the model.

I'm curious, how come you set up opacity maps?

[Zarf]

I don't have the slightest clue where those bones came from! That's the strangest thing ever.

Razorwing: I'm curious, how come you set up opacity maps?

Back in the days before Gundalf's amazing importer/exporter, the Civilization 4 exporter told me I had to. I had to set up the opacity, and I had to set it so the opacity was gathered from the textures alpha instead of the RGB intensity. Is it extraneous with Gundalf's exporter?

Finally, I thought grouping was essential to the exportation process. I must have read Gundalf's tutorial incorrectly or something. If you notice, everything I've released up untill now has been grouped.

I'm going to go through my other models, remove the opcaity maps, and make sure there's no hidden junk.

Edit: Oh yeah, thanks ImperialDragon! The old thread was cluttered.

Edit again: Here's a link to all of the latest downloads. I finished another hut (One that looks exactly like Hut S2, only longer), and I went through the Grand Hall, House, and Hut S2 to remove the opacity settings, find hidden objects, ungroup stuff, and set all of the transform gizmos up correctly. A lot of them were rotated and really high up. Furthermore, the textures, if you have them, should work out of the box, and I *think* I named the buildings themselves right.

House - 98 KB
Grand Hall - 119 KB
Hut S1 - 43.6 KB
Hut S2 - 37 KB

[Razorwing]

Very early on, like at the end of April, I was told the same thing - that I needed to set up an opacity map to get the Civ4 exporter to function properly, even if the material wasn't supposed to have any transparancy. I don't know why that person (I forgot his name) told me that. Perhaps he had picked up the advice from information geared to Civ4 modders, who knows. I never had any problems with skipping the opacity maps. When you do want opacity with the Civ4 exporter it's true that in the material editor, the color map should have the Mono Channel Output be "RGB Intensity" and the opacity map's be "Alpha", with both maps having "Image Alpha" as the Alpha Source.

I can't recall gundalf saying anything about grouping meshes in Max. Could you point me to where you read it? On the other hand it doesn't do any harm at all either, at least not that I know of. It's just not information that's kept in the nif file.

[Zarf]

He says in his newer thread that you don't have to group them, right here:

See this thread for info on how to create them. You don't need to group them, though.

This is because in his old thread he actually says to do it.

Merge your objects into a single mesh and group it with the collision object.

I simply didn't see his "don't need to group them" bit. I know better now.

[Zarf]

Work on the tower is going well. I figured out where those wierd bones came from. It's the import process... if I import something from a .Nif, I get weird bones. These bones are usually named things that the building mesh itself should have been named, which is odd.

For instance, I have a bone called "collision", but no actual collision mesh. Do you happen to have that in .Max form?

Anyway. Here's a screenshot with some info for the tower:



A render is on it's way... I'm rendering it on my laptop while still working on it on my desktop.

EDIT: Image of the Mini-council




I have GOT to figure out how to get collision meshes from .NIFs.

[TheImperialDragon]

Is that based off an Emperor Crab shell?

[Zarf]

I'm not sure what it's supposed to be. I found it in the models folder.

Desktop of the tower:

Download - 1600x1200

[noremorse]

Very nice Zarf. Looks great! :goodjob: