Help Ns Modeling/animation
Jonacrab
Join Date: 2003-08-02 Member: 18705Members, NS2 Playtester, NS2 Map Tester
Join Date: 2003-08-02 Member: 18705Members, NS2 Playtester, NS2 Map Tester
<div class="IPBDescription">Need insight on starting a model</div> First off, i am very experienced in maya and can do most anything in it. My question is for someone ( if anyone) has ever used the SMD exporter for maya 4, and knows how to set up a model to export right. ( and i have other questions too)
Mostly the questions are geared towards what differences there are in making a model for NS and following the valve tutorial to make a half-life model. Sorry about the length, but i dont want to go through the process of making the model only to find that what i made was wrong from the get-go.
Note that i am making a model to replace the marine model, so answer accordingly.
I Started with the stickies, and then searched through some of the posts, but never really found any answers or perhaps links to tutorials, If i missed something that goes into detail about these questions, feel free to let me know where.
(Although my goal is to do it all in maya, the questions arent necesarily biased only for maya, some questions could still be answered by a max user, and if it comes down to it, i may just have to teach myself max in order to make this char, so any and all info is help)
Ive read through most of the valve tutorial, and have not seen any similar tutorials specifically made for NS, so my first question is, are custom skeletons possible? the valve tutorial says that it uses the Biped skeleton ( im assuming this is some kind of prebuilt skeleton in max) of course my questions are specifically geared toward exporting from Maya, so, if custom skeletons are not possible, how would i go about getting the biped skeleton, into Maya. Now if custom skeletons ARE possible, heres the next question-
Of the 106 animations for half life, do i need all of them? meaning, does natural selection not use certain animations, therefore i dont have to go to the trouble of making them, or is it required to have all 106 anims in the SMD format in order to make a successful MDL file.
Secondly are there differences in naming schemes, or different animations that NS adds to the 106 half life anims.
Also, are there animations from half life that are unused in NS and dont need to be included in the MDL file, or do you need to include all of the animations (even if it isnt meant to match the half life animation, just something to take its place) and if you do need all of the files would sticking any old SMD ( even if it doesnt match the model or skeleton) work as the replacement, since it is unused
Next comes custom animations. For this model im working on i think i want to make custom animations, so my question is, do my walk cycle or run cycle (or any standard animation) have to be the same number of frames as the ones already there? also, if they can be longer or shorter, will the timing be off, IE will an animation with more frames than the normal animation, be squished into a specifically chosen time frame and thus appear faster than i intended?
The next one is about models, im curious if there is a limit to the number of polygons you can use for a model, i understand that the a higher poly model will require a good vid card im just wondering if there is an actual limit that the game engine sets. Also, i have the same question about texture resolutions, whether there is a limit.
Also about textures, can you use more than 1 file for textures, like one 128x128 for the head, and one 256x256 for the body? or does it have to be all in one file?
(this one is for someone who has successfully used the maya 4 SMD exporter)
If you can use 2 files, how do they have to be set up to export correctly, IE, do you just create 2 material nodes, and assign one to the head and one to the body or does it have to be done some other way.
Finally, i know Max and Maya tend to scale things differently, so im wondering if i was using the maya SMD exporter, would i need to scale my model accordingly or is there something that automatically makes it the correct scale? ( I know that if you exported a file from max into a file maya can read, the models usually come out ridiculously larger than they were in the max viewports, enough that if you tried to zoom out, the clipping in the maya viewports would prevent you from viewing the model)
That seems to be all the questions i have right now, any help is appreciated.
Im making a female marine model for any and all who are interested <!--emo&::marine::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/marine.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='marine.gif' /><!--endemo-->
Mostly the questions are geared towards what differences there are in making a model for NS and following the valve tutorial to make a half-life model. Sorry about the length, but i dont want to go through the process of making the model only to find that what i made was wrong from the get-go.
Note that i am making a model to replace the marine model, so answer accordingly.
I Started with the stickies, and then searched through some of the posts, but never really found any answers or perhaps links to tutorials, If i missed something that goes into detail about these questions, feel free to let me know where.
(Although my goal is to do it all in maya, the questions arent necesarily biased only for maya, some questions could still be answered by a max user, and if it comes down to it, i may just have to teach myself max in order to make this char, so any and all info is help)
Ive read through most of the valve tutorial, and have not seen any similar tutorials specifically made for NS, so my first question is, are custom skeletons possible? the valve tutorial says that it uses the Biped skeleton ( im assuming this is some kind of prebuilt skeleton in max) of course my questions are specifically geared toward exporting from Maya, so, if custom skeletons are not possible, how would i go about getting the biped skeleton, into Maya. Now if custom skeletons ARE possible, heres the next question-
Of the 106 animations for half life, do i need all of them? meaning, does natural selection not use certain animations, therefore i dont have to go to the trouble of making them, or is it required to have all 106 anims in the SMD format in order to make a successful MDL file.
Secondly are there differences in naming schemes, or different animations that NS adds to the 106 half life anims.
Also, are there animations from half life that are unused in NS and dont need to be included in the MDL file, or do you need to include all of the animations (even if it isnt meant to match the half life animation, just something to take its place) and if you do need all of the files would sticking any old SMD ( even if it doesnt match the model or skeleton) work as the replacement, since it is unused
Next comes custom animations. For this model im working on i think i want to make custom animations, so my question is, do my walk cycle or run cycle (or any standard animation) have to be the same number of frames as the ones already there? also, if they can be longer or shorter, will the timing be off, IE will an animation with more frames than the normal animation, be squished into a specifically chosen time frame and thus appear faster than i intended?
The next one is about models, im curious if there is a limit to the number of polygons you can use for a model, i understand that the a higher poly model will require a good vid card im just wondering if there is an actual limit that the game engine sets. Also, i have the same question about texture resolutions, whether there is a limit.
Also about textures, can you use more than 1 file for textures, like one 128x128 for the head, and one 256x256 for the body? or does it have to be all in one file?
(this one is for someone who has successfully used the maya 4 SMD exporter)
If you can use 2 files, how do they have to be set up to export correctly, IE, do you just create 2 material nodes, and assign one to the head and one to the body or does it have to be done some other way.
Finally, i know Max and Maya tend to scale things differently, so im wondering if i was using the maya SMD exporter, would i need to scale my model accordingly or is there something that automatically makes it the correct scale? ( I know that if you exported a file from max into a file maya can read, the models usually come out ridiculously larger than they were in the max viewports, enough that if you tried to zoom out, the clipping in the maya viewports would prevent you from viewing the model)
That seems to be all the questions i have right now, any help is appreciated.
Im making a female marine model for any and all who are interested <!--emo&::marine::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/marine.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='marine.gif' /><!--endemo-->
Comments
sorry i cant answer your questions but make sure you post us some progress when you get working on it
and welcome to the forums
To everyone: notice our brand spanking new "help & troubleshooting" forum! If you've got a general question about any aspect of customization, especially questions about learning to model, post 'em in this forum!
Perfectly possible; just keep in mind the top-half/bottom-half limitation of HL models. Anything below the center gets used in the run animations, anything above center will override run animations. For example, you can't make a hydralisk crawl with its front legs *and* attack with them -- any bone that is used in the walking animation can't be used in the attack animation. There are a few exceptions - the skulk's Leap attack, for instance.
<i>2) Of the 106 animations for half life, do I need all of them? ...are there differences in naming schemes?</i>
The animations list is model-specific! Open up the model you intend to replace (standard LA marine, I assume) in HLMV and check out what animations it has. If it has them, you need them in your model. Anything it doesn't have, you don't need and shouldn't have.
Regarding naming schemes, you'll need to name your animations in your QC file as they are named in the original model's QC file. The SMD file used for the animation can be called whatever you like, as long as it is applied to the correct animation in the QC.
One last important note: to my knowledge, you *cannot* add or subtract animations from the QC file, nor can you change their order. If the marine has two idle animations, you can only have two as well - you can't make a third and stick it in.
<i>3) Can my animations be longer or shorter than the original?</i>
To my knowledge, they can be longer or shorter. However, some will look screwy or not work well if you change the length. For instance, if you were to make a very long reload animation for the LMG, the gun would finish reloading (in the code) before the animation had played all the way through. Similarly, if you made a very short animation for the HMG reload, the gun would appear to be ready (done with its reload animation) before it had *actually* reloaded.
There is an "FPS" variable that can be applied to each animation in the QC file. This variable allows you to determine the fps of the animation, so you can create a complex animation and simply have it sped up to match the required time, or a slower animation and slow down the FPS so it fits. This is key to avoiding "skating" walk/run animations. I'm not sure exactly how it's employed nor what the precise syntax is, but I'm sure it's explained in the HL modeling doc.
<i>4) Is there a limit to the number of polygons you can use for a model?</i>
There's no hard limit, but the HL engine *will* crash & burn if you push it too hard, no matter how good your system may be. My personal opinion is that models should stay under ~2500 polys.
<i>5) What about textures?</i>
Again, no hard limit, but be as frugal as you can. Two 512x512 textures should be plenty for any model. As implied in the previous sentence, you can use multiple texture files; simply indicate as much when you compile it. I'm not familiar with maya, so I can't tell you how you should set them up for export, but I think the standard materials application should do it (that's how it works in 3dsmax).
[i]6) I've found that the easiest way to figure scale is to import the reference SMD of whatever model you're copying, and use it to properly scale your own model. This is especially good when you're trying to approximate the hit-ability of the model (same size/shape). Worst comes to worst, there's a "scale" variable that you can use in the QC file.
Hope that helped! Good luck!
About qc sequence names: What Coil said is only partly true. It doesn't depend on the sequence's name. It depends on its <i>position</i> in the .qc
<!--c1--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>CODE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='CODE'><!--ec1-->$sequence "idle" "idle" fps 12
$sequence "idle1" "idle1" fps 12
$sequence "draw" "draw" fps 15
$sequence "activate" "activate" fps 20
$sequence "plant" "plant" fps 30 origin 0 3 -2 { event 5004 0 "weapons/mine_plant.wav" }
<!--c2--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--ec2-->
This is the v_mine.mdl's sequence list. It might also look like
<!--c1--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>CODE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='CODE'><!--ec1-->$sequence "1" "idle" fps 12
$sequence "2" "idle1" fps 12
$sequence "3" "draw" fps 15
$sequence "4" "activate" fps 20
$sequence "5" "plant" fps 30 origin 0 3 -2 { event 5004 0 "weapons/mine_plant.wav" }
<!--c2--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--ec2-->
but it would still work ingame. This can be used to name the sequences as you want them so you can identify a special sequence more easily:P
gj <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo-->