Some Advice For First Vehicle

[HarryO)))]

I use 3ds max, i have the PoE2 tools. They seem to work but i can't seem to open up and apply textures in the editor.

I'm trying to follow the "airplane" tutorial on these forums but it glosses over a lot of things which i have no clue on. Is anyone willing to give me some guidance on exactly what to do?

model:

in editor so far:

[Cassio]

This white uncle sam texture you see there means that the editor could not find the texture.

Have you placed your .dds textures somewhere in your mods directory? For example ../Battlefield 2/mods/mymod/objects/vehicles/air/myplane/textures/ ?

If so are the paths in your 3ds max material setup pointing to these files?

[HarryO)))]

This white uncle sam texture you see there means that the editor could not find the texture.

Yeah, I've read that, but in the "airplane tut" it seems you can search for textures in some kind of menu, i dont see how to get to that menu.

Have you placed your .dds textures somewhere in your mods directory? For example ../Battlefield 2/mods/mymod/objects/vehicles/air/myplane/textures/ ?

I haven't, but I can. Is there any naming convention for folders? And, where do i store specular etc. In the alpha of the normalmap?

If so are the paths in your 3ds max material setup pointing to these files?

How, precisely, should the paths be set in max? i see some bundletexture stuff in the poe2 tools but no tutorials refer to that apart from the tutorials included with those tools.

[Cassio]

Yeah, I've read that, but in the "airplane tut" it seems you can search for textures in some kind of menu, i dont see how to get to that menu.

If you refer to that menu:

This is the material editor from max. You can access it with "M". Then you need to change the material type by clicking on the "standard" button and selecting the "BundledMesh" material.

However it's recommended to have one "multi/sub-object" material holding all your "BundledMesh" materials when you need more than one. (this is shown on the left pic)

I haven't, but I can. Is there any naming convention for folders? And, where do i store specular etc. In the alpha of the normalmap?

Don't use spaces in the folder/object names.

The specular goes into the colormap alpha when you use the ColorMapGloss shader.

An advice:

You should learn exporting a simple object like a box with textures and everything before trying a full airplane!

http://www.bfeditor.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=12770

Also read the "exporting a car" tutorial.

3ds max export tools setup:

http://www.bfeditor.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=9648

Edited August 7, 2011 by Cassio

[HarryO)))]

If you refer to that menu:

This is the material editor from max. You can access it with "M". Then you need to change the material type by clicking on the "standard" button and selecting the "BundledMesh" material.

However it's recommended to have one "multi/sub-object" material holding all your "BundledMesh" materials when you need more than one. (this is shown on the left pic)

Hmm, i knew this, i modelled and textured this plane after all... but what i mean is that i am not sure exactly what the bundlemesh materials do. Is this the way i can embed texture names into the exported files? It's not possible to point the mesh to the correct materials from within the bf editor?

Don't use spaces in the folder/object names.

The specular goes into the colormap alpha when you use the ColorMapGloss shader.

Is there a kind of list of shaders we can use and how they're structured?

Also, with the poe2 tools and bundledmesh materials, will i still rename with the name||shader scheme as seen in the airplane tut?

An advice:

You should learn exporting a simple object like a box with textures and everything before trying a full airplane!

http://www.bfeditor.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=12770

Also read the "exporting a car" tutorial.

I found the official dice tutorials on the forgotten hope site... but the link to the "exporting a car" tutorial is dead, lol. The rest worked fine... But theyre for maya.

3ds max export tools setup:

http://www.bfeditor.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=9648

This thread is new to me, i'll read it.

[HarryO)))]

ok i've now got this... I think i'm headed in the right direction

Normalmaps dont seem to be showing up though

[HarryO)))]

I continued the tutorial on the airplane, and ran into a new issue after renaming parts of the heirarchy as the tutorial advised...

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11806970/4ueo/fuck.jpg

EDIT:

ok got the texture working by changing _N.dds to _B.dds

Is there a way to change the gloss level? I know we can control the specular mask by the alphamap in the diffuse, right? But what about the gloss or "sharpness" of the highlight?

It's currently fallen through the floor apart from the wheels, because i'm halfway through the plane tut...

EDIT2: I've managed to get it to rest on the ground... But about 1ft above the ground. I have no idea what's causing this.

Edited August 8, 2011 by HarryO)))

[Cassio]

Is this the way i can embed texture names into the exported files? It's not possible to point the mesh to the correct materials from within the bf editor?

Yes that's right unfortunately the textures are written into the mesh file and are not linked in the con or tweak.

Is there a kind of list of shaders we can use and how they're structured?

Also, with the poe2 tools and bundledmesh materials, will i still rename with the name||shader scheme as seen in the airplane tut?

The naming of the bundledmesh shaders is the same in all exporters.

"name||shadername" is only useful for the material name within 3ds max.

just "shadername" as materialname works as good EXCEPT when you need transparency:

--> "Alpha||shadername" or "Alpha_name||shadername"

A list of shaders can be found in the poe2 tools documentation or here :

BundledMesh Shaders:

Alpha_One

Alpha

ColormapGloss

Alpha_Test

Alpha_TestColormapGloss

AlphaEnvMap

Cockpit

CockpitNoHemiLight

EnvMapColormapGloss

EnvMap

AnimatedUVColormapGloss

AlphaNoHemiLight

AnimatedUVAlpha_TestColormapGloss

Alpha_TestEnvMapColormapGloss

StaticMesh Shaders:

BaseDetailNDetail

BaseDetailDirtNDetail

Base

BaseDetailDirt

BaseDetail

alpha_one

BaseNDetail

BaseDetailCrackNDetailNCrack

BaseDetailNDetailparallaxdetail

BaseDetailDirtCrackNDetailNCrack

SkinnedMesh Shaders:

Alpha_Test

Oil_pump_Texture_Tangent

tangent

ghillie_tangent_alpha_testAlpha_Test

Pilot_tangent

dropkit_tangent

Mec_tangent

ghillielod_ghillie_tangent_alpha_testAlpha_Test

uskits_tangent

tangent_alpha_test1Alpha_Test

US_pilot_tangent

dropkit_dropkit_tangent

I found the official dice tutorials on the forgotten hope site... but the link to the "exporting a car" tutorial is dead, lol. The rest worked fine... But theyre for maya.

http://ganicoga.de/BuildingTheCarMax.zip

[mschoeldgen[Xww2]]

EDIT2: I've managed to get it to rest on the ground... But about 1ft above the ground. I have no idea what's causing this.

You can render collisionmeshes in the editor. In your case render the physics mesh and check that the wheels' collisionmeshes are located as desired. Often resetting the scale of all meshes in 3DS will help. All meshes need to be scaled to 100% before exporting. If you forgot that, the BF2 engine will do the rescaling with probably undesired results

Is there any naming convention for folders?

BF2 expects the textures to be in the /objects subfolder of the mod. Anything else will confuse the texture path trimming within the export tools.

To examine the texture pathes and shader propertiesd of your model, use BF2Materials.EXE which was originally a CLI helper tool from Rexman with GUI wrappers made by other friendly ppl in the meantime. The tool shows texture pathes and shader techniques for all geoms and lods in your model.