Basic Modding Questions
Talk about anything related to old versions of Armada.
posted on May 7th, 2010, 6:15 am
right if were still tlking bout 3dmax then
1 - Is a hardpoint called "root" required? No
2 - Do the hull, engine, shield generators, life support, crew, and sensor hardpoints need to be rotated to face in the same direction as the polygon that it's near?those joints arnt attached to polygons only other joints that link to mesh groups, emitters, sprites they are perfectly acceptable to b in the centre (in 3dmax dnt need to make mesh joints either) the emmitter and sprite joints need to be placed were u want them to show
3 - Does the crew hardpoint need to be on the surface of the ship? only the crew sprites, emitter joints need to be at surface
4 - Will I need to retexture the model in milkshape before doing the final export? if ur using 3dmax u dnt need milkshape but if u import into milkshape then yh the texture dse need to be attached before exporting
5 - Where do I put the GUI textures? in fo they just go in ur texture flder in a1/2 they go in the rgb folder inside the texture folder
6 - Where do I put the ship thumbnails that turn red when a system is disabled? the wire frame gose in the same place as q 5
7 - Where do I put the race insignia? same as q5 + 6
8 - What do I do to model an assimilated ship? they go on the main model but attached to the joint named borg
9 - Are there some weapons that fire in the exact heading of the hard-point? yes specified i the odfs
10 - For the hardpoints where the weapons are fired, would I have to rotate the hard points so it won't look like it's going through the ship instead of away from it? if u specify in the odf they have a retricted fire arc then yh
NOTE: in 3dmax joints like hp joints that have the h_ prefix do not need the h_ prefix thats for milkshape only. these answers are for 3dmax 1337_64M3R shud b fine for milkshape
1 - Is a hardpoint called "root" required? No
2 - Do the hull, engine, shield generators, life support, crew, and sensor hardpoints need to be rotated to face in the same direction as the polygon that it's near?those joints arnt attached to polygons only other joints that link to mesh groups, emitters, sprites they are perfectly acceptable to b in the centre (in 3dmax dnt need to make mesh joints either) the emmitter and sprite joints need to be placed were u want them to show
3 - Does the crew hardpoint need to be on the surface of the ship? only the crew sprites, emitter joints need to be at surface
4 - Will I need to retexture the model in milkshape before doing the final export? if ur using 3dmax u dnt need milkshape but if u import into milkshape then yh the texture dse need to be attached before exporting
5 - Where do I put the GUI textures? in fo they just go in ur texture flder in a1/2 they go in the rgb folder inside the texture folder
6 - Where do I put the ship thumbnails that turn red when a system is disabled? the wire frame gose in the same place as q 5
7 - Where do I put the race insignia? same as q5 + 6
8 - What do I do to model an assimilated ship? they go on the main model but attached to the joint named borg
9 - Are there some weapons that fire in the exact heading of the hard-point? yes specified i the odfs
10 - For the hardpoints where the weapons are fired, would I have to rotate the hard points so it won't look like it's going through the ship instead of away from it? if u specify in the odf they have a retricted fire arc then yh
NOTE: in 3dmax joints like hp joints that have the h_ prefix do not need the h_ prefix thats for milkshape only. these answers are for 3dmax 1337_64M3R shud b fine for milkshape
posted on May 7th, 2010, 1:50 pm
@10 It is recommended that you do so anyway. Because if someone was to try having your ship with a weapon of restricted arc (such as me, sometimes I like arc specific armaments) would then get irritated from the fact it isn't rotated. But you should also rotate the emitter points so it doesn't steam through the ship.
hard points are also used for targeting areas of weapons fire. It is recommended that the weapon hard points you pay critical attention to the distance between the joint and the part that represents the weapon, this is in case someone were to scale it up for whatever reason, so that it'd still look good. I of course am often irritated when I see weapon shots starting from off of the hull, and I'm sure I'm not the only perfectionist in the universe.
Oh, and if you plan on having multiple emitter or sprite nodes of the same kind then an underscore at the end followed by a number will help so that there isn't any node editing problems.
hard points are also used for targeting areas of weapons fire. It is recommended that the weapon hard points you pay critical attention to the distance between the joint and the part that represents the weapon, this is in case someone were to scale it up for whatever reason, so that it'd still look good. I of course am often irritated when I see weapon shots starting from off of the hull, and I'm sure I'm not the only perfectionist in the universe.
Oh, and if you plan on having multiple emitter or sprite nodes of the same kind then an underscore at the end followed by a number will help so that there isn't any node editing problems.
posted on May 7th, 2010, 8:38 pm
Speaking of which, how would I get a single vessel to fire standard weapons at more than one vessel at once? I've tried everything I can think of but nothing seems to work. And what do you mean by "underscore?"
posted on May 9th, 2010, 12:54 pm
uderscore is "_"
and the code maxTargets = n were n is the number of targets needs toi be added to the weapon odf. not sure if it needs a specific classlabel tho
and the code maxTargets = n were n is the number of targets needs toi be added to the weapon odf. not sure if it needs a specific classlabel tho
posted on May 11th, 2010, 11:44 pm
Last edited by TChapman500 on May 11th, 2010, 11:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Blade wrote:uderscore is "_"
I guessed that much.
1337_64M3R, can you clarify the final paragraph of you last post on this thread and give me a couple examples of what you're trying to say?
By the way, I've scaled down some models in tactical view and they look pretty good, but in the default overhead view, the ships appear to be a bit bigger that I thought I made them. What happened? What can I do about it?
PS: The animation components are not scaled down with the model, what can I do to fix this?
posted on May 12th, 2010, 7:46 pm
TCR_500 wrote:
By the way, I've scaled down some models in tactical view and they look pretty good, but in the default overhead view, the ships appear to be a bit bigger that I thought I made them. What happened? What can I do about it?
PS: The animation components are not scaled down with the model, what can I do to fix this?
1. If you are refering to In game I belive there is a scaling bug where the tactical view and the overhead view do not match up in scale. I belive there are some values though that can help compensate for this in the art.cfg file but Im not entirely sure it can be corected.
2. As far as I know if you use the scalesod command it messes up animations sometimes. You may have to rescale the model in whatever program you created it in then re-export it.
posted on May 12th, 2010, 9:28 pm
1 - I'll check the art.cfg file and see what I can do.
2 - I haven't exported any models yet. I just rescaled the stock models.
2 - I haven't exported any models yet. I just rescaled the stock models.
posted on May 12th, 2010, 9:48 pm
TCR_500 wrote:1337_64M3R, can you clarify the final paragraph of you last post on this thread and give me a couple examples of what you're trying to say?
I was saying that if you were to have multiple emitter nodes (like engine plasma or air vent) that is of the same name/size. You should use underscores followed by a number. Some modeling programs do not like multiple nodes having the same name. The underscore followed by a number will not affect which emitter it refers to, but rather it allows you to have multiple emitters without much trouble.
posted on May 12th, 2010, 10:01 pm
Last edited by TChapman500 on May 12th, 2010, 10:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Okay, that went over my head. I have absolutely no clue on what these "emitters" are except I know that I'm not going to see a weapon spawn from it.
Okay, I fixed the scaling problem in the two views.
I'm now starting on work with the new Borg vessels for my mod pack. Just one question. How would I implement say a crew transfer? Which needs to be done with my enhanced Borg. The Unimatrix (Nexus) would be able to assign (designate) say 10,000 drones to the drone pool to be able to construct a new vessel.
Okay, I fixed the scaling problem in the two views.
I'm now starting on work with the new Borg vessels for my mod pack. Just one question. How would I implement say a crew transfer? Which needs to be done with my enhanced Borg. The Unimatrix (Nexus) would be able to assign (designate) say 10,000 drones to the drone pool to be able to construct a new vessel.
posted on May 12th, 2010, 11:05 pm
to help clarify further on emitters and this applys to lights as well since technicly I belive they are emitters as well....
I will use running lights as example as this is the most common.
Say you want 4 red strobe running lights on your model.
Under the lights node you would put.
redstrobe
redstrobe_1
redstrobe_2
redstrobe_3
Now what this does is enable you to put 4 seperate red strobes on your model yet they will all use the same sprite.
The same can be done for emmiters weather it be plasma vents or steam vents or engine glows etc.....
Also fancier weapons use sods as a base which allows you to attach emmiters. A good example of such a weapon is what zaxxon did with draconious's missile by adding a contrail to it.
Hope that clears it up for you.
I will use running lights as example as this is the most common.
Say you want 4 red strobe running lights on your model.
Under the lights node you would put.
redstrobe
redstrobe_1
redstrobe_2
redstrobe_3
Now what this does is enable you to put 4 seperate red strobes on your model yet they will all use the same sprite.
The same can be done for emmiters weather it be plasma vents or steam vents or engine glows etc.....
Also fancier weapons use sods as a base which allows you to attach emmiters. A good example of such a weapon is what zaxxon did with draconious's missile by adding a contrail to it.
Hope that clears it up for you.
posted on May 12th, 2010, 11:24 pm
What deturmines where the emitters are? Hardpoints?
posted on May 13th, 2010, 8:35 pm
Yeap the actual location u place the node or hardpoint will be the location the sprite orginates from. And keep in mind that for certain emmiters the hardpoint needs to be properly orientated or else it will look like poo.
posted on May 13th, 2010, 10:13 pm
Okay. What exactly do I have to do to get those emitters to work? I know that they are positioned by hardpoints and that they are some sort of sprite, but that's all.
By the way, I'm wanting to build a missile that when detonated, causes a temporal inversion field that destroys everything near it. And I do mean EVERYTHING.
By the way, I'm wanting to build a missile that when detonated, causes a temporal inversion field that destroys everything near it. And I do mean EVERYTHING.
posted on May 14th, 2010, 9:13 pm
lights and glows as well as strobes have an s_ preceeding it. But emitters (like engine plasma vents) have an e_ preceeding it
posted on May 14th, 2010, 10:01 pm
So I should name a hardpoint say "e_engine" or "e_lifeSupport?" Will I have to put an "h_" prefix ahead of that to compensate for the way milkshape operates?
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