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Topic: Texture question  (Read 2197 times)

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Offline markyd

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Texture question
« on: October 31, 2004, 03:42:20 am »
I normally use the one 1024 x 1024 bmp... I have been playing with using 3 or 4 and saw the huge increase in quality when you do so... I have 1 little issue..

My model is broken up into four parts.. 1. The saucer, 2. the neck and struts, 3. the necelles and small detail, 4. main hull. Each seperate part has a UVW mapping modifier on it and has a seperate 1024 x 1024 texture sheets assigned, It is all mapped out and looks good.. in my materials diag it shows my four textures applied to seperate spheres 4 in all...

I now want to convert the model to .mod, so I attach the four piece of the model together no problems... however when I convert to .mod It will only wrap one of the textures to the model.. and will not show the other three... so i.e the saucer is mapped out great, the other three pices for some reason show the saucer on them unmapped. This is my first time using seperate texture sheets and wondered if anyone could please help me out here... This will only help my ships look sharper, cleaner and more crisp  ;)
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Offline FoaS_XC

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Re: Texture question
« Reply #1 on: October 31, 2004, 08:55:45 am »
Could you post a picture of your work in 3ds Max and then post exporting?
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Offline Lord Schtupp

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Re: Texture question
« Reply #2 on: October 31, 2004, 11:18:16 am »
Sounds to me like a path problem. Insure that all textures are in the same folder as your max file before exporting to *.MOD, then insure that the textures stay with the *.MOD file when playtesting in SFC. Byt hte way there is no need to "Attach" all the parts together before exporting.

Hope this helps - LS
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Offline markyd

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Re: Texture question
« Reply #3 on: October 31, 2004, 12:57:35 pm »
Splendid.. thanks guys i'll give it a shot...  ;) (when she gets home with the lappy!)
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Offline FoaS_XC

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Re: Texture question
« Reply #4 on: October 31, 2004, 01:04:57 pm »
Quote from: Lord Schtupp on October 31, 2004, 11:18:16 am
Byt hte way there is no need to "Attach" all the parts together before exporting.

Hope this helps - LS

This might even be the problem, if he didnt do the whole inherit material thing right.
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Offline markyd

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Re: Texture question
« Reply #5 on: October 31, 2004, 01:19:24 pm »
Hmmmm Nope same problem....  ???

Even with out attatching the mesh.. having all the texture files in the folder with the model, as soon as I convert the textures dissaper... they are still mapped cos when i apply them to the model they appear... but like I said b4.. if i apply the saucer... the saucer maps out 100% but the resot of the model is the saucer steched and wrapped!  ???

Do I need to name the textures accordingly... at the moment they are named hull, saucer etc... do they need to be the same filename as the model and folder but numbered?
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Offline Lord Schtupp

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Re: Texture question
« Reply #6 on: October 31, 2004, 02:05:31 pm »
Quote from: MarkyD on October 31, 2004, 01:19:24 pm

Do I need to name the textures accordingly... at the moment they are named hull, saucer etc... do they need to be the same filename as the model and folder but numbered?

Nope. Hmmm... They need to be in the same folder, each texture needs to be a seperate material, the filename of each texture map needs to be unique (not numbered, but I do).

My example:

3d studio Material Name - Texture Name - Illumination Texture name:

phulltop1 - phulltop1.bmp - phulltop1i.bmp
shull1 - shull1.bmo - shull1i.bmp

etc.

So the saucer texture appears mapped around all parts when you re-import the MOD file?
Are you sure you have 4 different materials defined in 3d studio, one for each texture map? And there are no parts attached to other parts that have different materials?

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Offline markyd

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Re: Texture question
« Reply #7 on: October 31, 2004, 02:29:09 pm »
Nope.... 4 seperate textures on four spheres.... when I convert to .mod... the model appears with no textures..... when I then Re-apply them.... it will map the texture i select to the correct part of the ship and then the rest of the model with be that same texture not mapped out... if i then apply a second texture it will get rid of the first and map that texture accordingly  ???

Thanks for your help  ;)
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Offline Lord Schtupp

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Re: Texture question
« Reply #8 on: October 31, 2004, 04:03:30 pm »
Sounds like it should work. Would you like to email me the MAX file only? Id like to help you figure it out.

lschtupp@aol.com
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Offline Tus-XC

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Re: Texture question
« Reply #9 on: October 31, 2004, 07:21:29 pm »
make sure you attaching parts correctly, some times it will take the uvw map of the one they are being attached to...
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Offline markyd

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Re: Texture question
« Reply #10 on: November 01, 2004, 01:32:41 am »
Yeah.. it does it even if the parts are not attatched and I convert it....  :'(

LS im off to work now is it ok if I email it to you 2nite when I get back? ;)
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Offline Lord Schtupp

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Re: Texture question
« Reply #11 on: November 01, 2004, 02:18:07 am »
U bet. I'll be looking for it...




« Last Edit: November 01, 2004, 02:39:34 am by Lord Schtupp »
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Offline manitoba1073

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Re: Texture question
« Reply #12 on: November 01, 2004, 02:19:48 am »
if not catch me on msn too i can try to talk u through it also. if all else fails i can do it for u.  leave ur msn name here
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Offline wulf111

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Re: Texture question
« Reply #13 on: November 01, 2004, 07:46:00 am »
i know when i attach a textured part to another a question box pops up and asks me weather i want to keep the material id or combine it with the others. i just choose the keep material ids wich is the first choice on the list
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Offline markyd

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Re: Texture question
« Reply #14 on: November 01, 2004, 11:49:09 am »
Yeah.... I slelect the first one too... but like I said b4 even if i dont attatch the parts I still get the problem..... thanks Wulf... Im at a loss here.... LS sent email... and Ive added you Manitoba to msn... Thanks guys  ;D
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Offline Lord Schtupp

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Re: Texture question
« Reply #15 on: November 01, 2004, 01:14:18 pm »
Yay! I figured it out - a very tricksy little problem too, I'll write it up in a couple of hours.


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Offline markyd

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Re: Texture question
« Reply #16 on: November 01, 2004, 01:17:46 pm »
 :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :dance:

WOOOT!!! Thanks man... look forward to reading it....  ;D
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Offline Lord Schtupp

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Re: Texture question
« Reply #17 on: November 01, 2004, 03:07:30 pm »
Ok Marky - First of all nice model bro.

Now here's the scoop:

When exporting to MOD, the xporter takes all materials defined in the max file and automatically makes a single "Multi/Sub-Object" material named after the export file name, in this case "Commodore_Material". Import your MOD file that you sent me into MAX, then open the MAterial Editor. IGNORE ANY EXISTING MATERIALS CURRENTLY DISPLAYED IN THE MATERIAL EDITOR. Select "Get Material" button. Material Map Browser window appears. Select "Scene" radio button from the "Browse from" section. In the list display there should be "Commodore_Material" listed. Click and Drag that into a spot in the Material Editor window. A window will appear asking to instance or copy. Select instance, click ok. Select that Material. This is the model's material, not hte other individual materials that you were re-assigning to the model. Thats why the Saucer texture was mapped over the entire model.

Alrighty then, as you can see, the Multi/Sub Obect Material type is basically just a group of the materials that you defined in the MAX file, in this case 6 materials are in your group. Click on the first "Sub-Material", saucer top. This opens the suacer material, exactly like a regular material. Now open the Maps listing. See how the MOD Exporter has changed your maps from saucer top.jpg to saucer top.pcx?

I discovered two important things while experimenting:

1. All Material (Texture) Maps MUST be BMPs otherwise the MOD exporter plugin renames them to *.PCXs
2. YOU MUST export the MOD file into the same folder as your texture maps, otherwise the MOD exporter plugin renames them to *.PCXs, regardless if they are BMPs or not.

Now the SFC game engine will only accept BMPs or PCX texture maps, so JPGs wont work as far as I know. 3D studio does not seem to display PCXs so your pretty much stuck with BMP's. Of course, saving your textures as bmps will greatly increase the file size of the textures, but I think that you have enough room on your textures to get down to 3-4 texture/materials instead of 6. For instance, reduce the bridge texture and put it in the nacelle texture, or simply reduce its size to 256 or 512. Its a small part relative to the rest of the model, so quality will be unaffected. You could also reduce the BMP to 256 colors, Im very sure that would work though I have not experimented with this. Your illumination maps DEFINATELY need to be saved as 256 greyscale BMPS, color is not used in illumination maps so there is some savings in file size.

Anyway, in short It seems that you need to convert your maps to BMPs, change the materials in the material editor to use the BMPs, and export the MOD into the same folder. I converted your jpgs to bmps and exported into the same folder, and that worked.

Let me know if this works for you, it should - GOOD LUCK!
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Offline markyd

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Re: Texture question
« Reply #18 on: November 01, 2004, 03:20:03 pm »
WOW thanks for taking so mutch time to go into great detail here....

Yeah I was planning on converting all textures into 8 bit and bmp and also reducing the size of each image and placing parts in other sheets to reduce the total amount of texture sheets... but I thought I would try to get on top of this little problem first before I got stuck into the tyding up phase as I call it...  ;D

Again.. thank you for the detailed explanation.... I will be trying this as soon as I get home tommorow night... Very appreciated...  ;)
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Offline Lord Schtupp

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Re: Texture question
« Reply #19 on: November 01, 2004, 03:26:26 pm »
Very cool marky - funny thing is that I had exported the model into another folder (which I never do) after converting the jpgs to bmps, and stiil there was the same problem. I could not figure that one out! Thats when I looked into the Multi/Sub Material and made the discovery of the MOD exporter plug in chnging the name of the maps to PCXs.

Coolness - LS
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