UV coordinate problems

[Pao Hang]

UV coordinate problems. Anyone getting model problems with the UV coordinates. objects I export from my 3d program are jacked when they are imported into the Serious modeler. The geometry is fine, it's just the UV's that get jacked. I'm using Maya and 3dMax. The results are the same with both. Also, MD2 files will import also but the MD2's UV coordinates are jacked also.

[Michael Harris]

This is a topic that I know absolutely nothing about.  There are some folks around who are experienced and can help, so hang in there, you should hear from them.

You might check the modeler help, to see what modeling, texturing discussions/tutorials are present.  

[Admir Elezovic]

Hello Pao, did you read Tools Help, part that deals with Serious Modeler ? In Player creation section, proper uv mapping and materials assigment is described. If you still have porblems, email me the model so i can take a look.

Admir Elezovic, 3d Artist
admir@croteam.com

[forager]

Pao, I have had exactly this problem and continue to have it. Admir may be able to help you, I hope so, if, you
manage to solve your problem regarding UV mapping co ords,
please can you tell me about it.
thanx.

[Payback]

Forager, so you're still having UV problems then. I think its because your using multi-sub object maps, which at presant, arent supported by the engine.
Try remapping the models, or using the attachment function of the engine.

[forager]

At least you care mr moderator!

I dunno, I've been around the loop with the modeller and
it keeps throwing me off.
I dig/understand the theory of no sub_objects, but like I mentioned before, I have trouble even getting different materials onto different faces of a simple model like a cube within 3dmax, and my other 3d proggies don't do mapping coordinates properly.
At this point, the Serious modeller requires preproduced
content of a character and type I am unable to give it.

Propaganda sux!
regards
forager

[Payback]

A multi-sub object material is basically 2 separate materials that are applied to 1 model, the information for each material is contained within the model as object IDs. Serious Modeler, unfortunately cant tell thing information just yet. So the maps simpley wont work.
What you need to do is recreate the models as 2 separate models, then map then and then in Serious modeler attach one model to the other.
Serious Modeler may have this feature in later releases. But for now you either have to map 2 models as 1, or use the attach facility in Serious Modeler.

Admir - at least this is what I can simmise, if any part is incorrect the please atler.

[Admir Elezovic]

Last time i checked models people have potential problems was because there were single material/surface in object (.3ds). It couses problems with mapping being invalid. I cant say i know 3ds Max or Maya, but both .3ds and .obj files CAN have single object with multiple materials/surfaces with single UV map.
We put online special help describing what must be done in Max in order to import objects properly. Link is:
www.croteam.com/help/helpmax.zip

Admir, 3d artist
admir@croteam.com

[forager]

Thanx for the info Payback and Admir.

I'll check that link out for sure,
but I can't help dreaming about a
Serious Modeller that can make models from the ground up.
Sure there must be good reasons why this is not the way things are, however, I'm still sure it makes sense.

cheers
forager

[Admir Elezovic]

Maybe Serious Modeler isnt good name, better would be Serious Model compiler. I hope this would help you, tho knowing your 3d program and its limitations/features is very important.

Admir

[forager]

Admir, I had a look at the helpmax.zip, it surely is well
written, and people with 3dmax3 are going to be able to follow it for sure.

My robot on the other hand is doomed for the
junkyard! And my maps I will now fill with anti models composed of thoughtwaves tuned to various sub frequencies of the biotronic spectra, interspersed with non discreet particle magnaplasm which I shall sequencially render to destroy all UV data bytes determined to be owned or be eminating from any player wearing an  
"I can model, no problems" T-Shirt!    
in other words, the wearing of such a T-Shirt will result in immediate fragulation.
_----__||||||--_--

[Admir Elezovic]

Forager, get 2d artist to UV map your model, thats what i am trying to do (without luck) with our 2d guys :)

Admir

[forager]

If they wear the T-shirt they are fragulated no exceptions, no excuses!

[Phantomas]

why to use multiple objects If you can get a whole bitmap for your model with chilli and texporter?
It´s really better and you have no problems with uvw-coordinates cuz you have non really.........you only have one bitmap for a whole model!

greets
Phantomas

[Admir Elezovic]

I never thought mapping object could produce that many problems. I dont know if you read Player modeling tutorial in Tools help, it have indepth explanation on mapping, potential problems, tricks and rules to obey in order to properly import models in Modeler. If thats not enough, let me know what problmes you encounter so i can make another one focusing on those problems.

Admir

[Payback]

Dont worry Admir, the tutorials are fine. Its just people are probably juming in head first. I know I did, because I thought the engine supported something it didnt and hence I had problems.

[Admir Elezovic]

Weapons models shuld be online soon and Weapons tutorials on STP's site. If you need more tuts just scream like Kamikaze:)

Admir

[Phantomas]

THE biggest KAMIKAZE you ever hear Admir

I will be so glad to read more tut´s about the weaponprogress for SS!. I readed your first and it´s great,
thanx a lot for it but Admir......dont stop :cool:

[Phantomas]

Hy,

could be that I´m too stupid to import my models with the right "UV mappingsets" but if I "I read seriously the helpmax" attach some faces to id1 and some to id2 with different colors.
In serious modeler I make now the "m"tab and get a wicked crossed lineskin where I never can begin to draw???

Is there no way to make "from ground on" a skin for the models in seriousmodeler???

thanx in advance :cool:

[Admir Elezovic]

From ground up meaning remap models ? If you have sources (either .3ds, .lwo or .obj) you can UV map objects and reimport them in Modeler.

Admir

[Phantomas]

I hope I understand you right, You mean that I first import my model into Seriousmodeler and then back to 3Dmax, then another time back to seriousMD. And The skinmesh I make in 3Dmax?

Hope your not disapointed if I´m wrong, but I think so cuz you wrote "and reimport them in modeler"

I try all out and post you my succes!

thanx Admir

[Admir Elezovic]

From what i understood in your previous post, you wanted to change mapping of model. To do that you need to adjust mapping in max and import model again in Serious Modeler.
By reimport i meant: if you have model with animations, LOD... you can change its mapping and recreate (reimport) model in Serious Modeler to match changes, thats what from ground up means to me, correct me if i am wrong.


Admir

[Phantomas]

Yo admir,

It´s the point I meant in previous post. I know my fault in my mapping the UV. to the model cuz I dont notice the nessesary things with "vertexes" in the helptutorial. But its really hard to make the uv-maps cuz I always uses chilliskinner to do that work for me and now I must do this by myself.

Youre serious a real great help but now I think I understand all things to bring it to work and just do it in a way so the faces are good grouped together!

Thanx a lot admir

[Admir Elezovic]

You can use chilliskiner or UView or whatever.. important it assigment of materials, once you mapped model using chilli you can adjust materials names and polygons they occupie right ?

Admir

[Phantomas]

If this is true (and I SERIOUSLY believe you Admir) I..LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE YA!

thanx again.....I think I thank you in the future more as 500 times.....hehehe! I love this game! I love this forum! and I stay here.......stay..stay...stay here!

[forager]

Does anyone have a link to UVview?

[Michael Harris]

Fired up google search engine and came up with these.


UVIEW

* *http://www.cinegraphics.net/


CHILLISKINNER

   http://www.chilliweb.co.uk/chilliskinner/

(Edited by Michael Harris at 9:42 pm on April 3, 2001)

[forager]

Ok, I'm back for more. I found Chilliskinner, and with
3dmax 3, it's a fantastic piece of software/ scriptware.
It automates a huge number of the needed tasks in order,
and it basically is a miracle, as are the fine tutorials available on the Chilliskinner website.

Unfortunately, even after Chilliskinner has done it's work,
the models still do not have UV mapping that is correct for
Serious Modeller.
So, I went back and re tried the helpmax.zip,
it did not seem to help. One thing I noticed was that the original models reffered to in helpmax.zip, were in fact
actually "surfaced" in lightwave, I don't know but that seems scary.`
I might try to contact the Chilliskinner author Chilli,
and ask him for advice, it seems that his program is a totally awesome tool for modellers, as it automates almost the entire process, he may be able advise us or whatever on how to trash this problem once and for all.
I almost thought I'd nailed this UV thing this morning when I ran the Chilli script and used his tutorials, it
all went great, but when it finally got put into Serious Modeller, the skinning pic still looked way ugly.
Almost but not quite, I learned alot from doing the tutorials on that site, and it demystified what it means to prepare a model for mapping very much, so the only mystery is, why does the Chilli automation routine still not turn out the correct content/UV map for Serious Editor.

Anyway,
I have to admit, I do want to model, and I hope
somehow or other an answer to this problem is found.
Admir, perhaps Chilli could be worth talking to ?
His utility is fantastic
regards
forager

[Admir Elezovic]

Ok then, ill take serious look on Max these days and write big, indepth tutorial on mapping in max and importing in Modeler, also will take a look on chilliskinner.

Admir

[forager]

Admir that's good news.
Perhaps it would be possible for Serious Modeller
to do it's own UV mapping? I must admit, initially I presumed this would be so. Then, everyone could bring in models in 3ds format and be happy! The worlds we make could be alot more cluttered with model madness, which would be fun...

Chilliskinner is an awesome thing, I really hope you
can look into it, and maybe contact Chilli, I have a good feeling about such a meeting of the minds.
Then again I remain a complete idiot regarding
such issues within the broader scheme of things,
I may just be talking pipe dreams, if so, I'm sorry.

regards
forager

[Admir Elezovic]

I doubt Modeler will have that options soon (or ever), i know it sounds lame but i never thought anyone can have problems with uv mapping importing in Modeler.
Another tutorial then, hope it will be over by weekend.

Admir

[Chilli]

lo all!

Forager emailed me about the problems he's been having getting models into serious modeler. *He's been saying such nice things about my script :) that I thought it was the least I could do to drop by and see if I could help out in any way.

First though let me say that Serious Sam is a really AWESOME game!! * I LOVE it!! Multiplayer coop really rocks /me visualises rockets winging their way towards the lava golem from all directions * Thank you Croteam!!

So to the UV mapping issue....

Sadly I don't have my Sam CD with me here at work so I can't test this out until tonight however... from reading this thread and the maxhelp tutorial it seems to me that the process you need to go through is as follows (maybe someone from Croteam could confirm if this makes any sense?)

1) break your model up into the various poly groupings

2) assign material ids to the poly groups making sure that no polys within the same group will share the same UV vertices (tverts in max)

3) apply the UV mapping coords to each poly group

4) maybe generate the texture bitmaps in texporter or equivalent by material ID (maybe SS modeler does this?)

5) import in serious modeler

Example
A model of a dice (di) would be a good example:

1) your poly groups would be 1 & 6, 2 & 5, 3 & 4 i.e. the opposing faces of the dice because they wont share matching UV coords

2) 1 & 6 group gets mat ID 1, 2 & 5 grouping gets mat ID 2, 3 & 4 grouping gets mat ID 3

3) lay each poly group flat and apply planar mapping coords

4) generate texture bitmaps using texporter e.g. you're going to end up with three texures each with two squares on it.

5) import to SS modeler

Croteam?

PS if anyone wants to test this and has the SS modeler working now, I'll happily knock up a cube (dice) with the above UVs in place for them to test?  

(Edited by Chilli at 1:08 pm on April 4, 2001)


(Edited by Chilli at 1:10 pm on April 4, 2001)

[Chilli]

me again...

just re-read this thread and spotted something...

Maybe the three texture thing is incorrect (though maybe SS modeller can support this?)..

Admir is correct when he says that a .3DS can be multi/subobject but still only have one UV map...  this is I guess what SS modeller really needs...

ChilliSkinner can handle this no problems...  basically ChilliSkinner just does the same stuff as you'd do manually but it automates and speeds it up.

[forager]

Hey Chilli, welcome to the forum.
Send me the cube an i 'll check it out straight away no problems!

I may be wrong, but, I think that from 3dmax, Serious modeler wants only a single mesh, with multiple assigned materials to various faces/or polys...
Sub objects must be dealt with by being attached to the main model/mesh from within
Serious Modeler. (which works real nicely)


forager


(Edited by forager at 1:45 pm on April 4, 2001)

[Phantomas]

hehehe..now I notice it´s not only me who isnt be able to do this uv-mapping correct. It´s great that you admir and chilli now too, wanna help us out to finally got that thing working :coo:

regards

[forager]

Hey Phantomas was it not you who first mentioned Chilliskinner in this thread? It's you who deserves
full marks for loving stuff hot!
Now we have a new friend, I have a great feeling we will soon all be able to model:)

Admir, ok maybe the modeler is not going to incorporate UV or whatever as I wrote,
but at least if we can find a way to
solve / automate the  problem of the model preparation from 3dmax, you won't have to
write  many more help files about it?

regards


(Edited by forager at 1:56 pm on April 4, 2001)

[Admir Elezovic]

Looks like chilli understands what is needed in order to import object properly, glad to see its script supports materials assigment and stuff , i dont know much about max so its hard for me to get clear picture what is he talking about, but his example on cube is what is it all about.
If those 3 material ids (similar to surfaces in Lightwave ?) have same UV map, there wont be problems when importing, and there can be only 1 texture per model.
The way i do mapping in lightwave is to assign surfaces on parts of object (arm, torso, leg...), uv mapp them and then reassign surfaces to follow rule of not sharing vertices in uv data.

Big thanks to Chilli, forager and Phantomas for your effort and time.


Admir

[forager]

Admir, Chilli sent me a test cube, and it's perfect.
I am sure he can perhaps clarify the issue for us would be modelers. Obviously it's about the material assignments on a single mesh within max.

You are deserving the thanx Admir, for at least being patient with the floundering moves of would be model makers like me:)

[Phantomas]

Oh yeah forager, I cant wait to import my finished weaponmodels into SSam-modeler. In few days were finally ready to make it! Cuz the next step is to match all the animtions and attaching them together!

forager: can you also please..please sent me dat cube that chilli have shiped to you for a better look how it works with his great script?

props out to the great ADMIR

*

(Edited by Phantomas at 3:42 pm on April 4, 2001)

[forager]

I hope your weapons turn out brilliantly.
Here is the link to the file chilli sent me of the mapped cube.
http://www.ozemail.com.au/~forager/ssi/archive.zip

Chilli is great, he's going to help us, we must just be patient for a little while longer, like hours or days, not weeks or months.

[Chilli]

Here's how I did the cube.... *see (far) below for complications with more complex models

this is the key line from the max help tutorial:

"You still need to keep in mind the prime rule of importing in Serious Modeler: Vertex cannot have 2 UV coordinates. "


So basically what you need to do is this:

1) Go through with ChilliSkinner exactly as with any other model. *When you've hit the last step 'weld all verts' you're back with your 3D model but each face now has UV coords.

2) Now go into MAX material editor, pick a material and make it into a multi/subobject. *Set the number of materials to the number you need e.g. 3 for the cube (though I could've used two for this in the first instance). *Optional: change the diffuse colour for each material to a different colour to make things easier to follow. Drag the material onto your model.

3) On your model in MAX go into modify tab and select polygon sub object level or whatever you prefer for selecting *polys & faces... *so for our cube we follow Croteam's rule and select two opposing faces (say 1 & 6 on the di) now scroll down in MAX on the right hand side and change the material ID in the surface properties rollout to '2'. *Pick another pair of opposing faces of the cube and change their mat id to '3'. *You now have three pairs of opposing faces with mat IDs 1,2 and 3. *if you change diffuse colour in the prev step you should see each pair as a different colour. *The real important thing is that no poly groups can share vertices. *This is a simple concept to understand but hard to explain. *It's like the head and torso on a character model can be in the same poly group but the neck can't be because it would share vertices with the head and the torso.

4) export as 3DS.

The cube works nicely because ChilliSkinner detaches the same poly groups as you assign material IDs to for SS Modeler.. other models won't be the same. Bottom line is that the groups of polys you detach from your model to lay flat and planar map at the ChilliSkinner stage MUST correspond to the groups of polys you assign material IDs to for SS Modeler.

In ChilliSkinner it would be VERY simple to auto assign a new mat ID to each detached poly group at the point where they are assigned UV coords... one mat ID per poly group *However, one comment in the Maxhelp tut suggested that the more mat IDs assigned (in Lightwavespeak 'surfaces') then the more work for the game engine and potentially performance issues. So we need to minimise the number of mat IDs we use..*Therefore this auto assignment of mat IDs would have to be intelligent.. it would have to try to identify poly groups that didn't share UV verts and group them... *Without giving it too much thought... *this would be a complex alorithm (though not impossible).. because there are so many ways to 'group' the poly groups... *finding the 'optimum' would be time consuming and hard...

I will have a go at modifying ChilliSkinner to a) auto assign mat IDs  b)(possibly) optimise that mat ID allocation to reduce the number of poly groups.


(Edited by Chilli at 4:11 pm on April 4, 2001)

[Phantomas]

thanx Forager for the file and also Chilli for that good tutorial for making it detailed to me what must be assigned to which ID. So I try and try and only trys are making the succes!!! :cool:

greets :!

[forager]

It's all great reading! I'm happy as a dog in butchery.
:), I'm gonna spend this morning drooling over these
new perspectives,and re read them a thousand times, and then, I'm gonna daydream about extracting perfect skinning maps from Serious Modeler, whilst doodling with Chilliskinner just for the heck of watching polys getting ordered around!

[Phantomas]

Same feeling I got too when I fist start using chilliskinner :cool:.

regards

[Michael Harris]

Admir, forager and Chilli,

Thanks for your advice, persistance and assistance in working to make modeling for Serious accessible not only to accomplished modelers but also to us total novices. *It is definitely a markedly different discipline, every bit or more as difficult and challenging as editing, art and music.  Your efforts will benefit Croteam, Serious and the entire Serious community.

I'm going to take a week or two away from the Serious world and the Internet, in order to finish up some documentation, spend more time with my wife, try to break my Serious/Internet addiction and actually get some work done at work. *With the materials already in hand, this ongoing discussion/collaboration and additional materials forthcoming from Croteam and others in the near future.....I anticipate that even little old me will find that I can begin to learn to model for Serious when I get back.

Group hug! *Be patient with each other.  That's an order!  :-)

Take care. *Talk at you in a week or two.

(Edited by Michael Harris at 9:02 pm on April 4, 2001)

[Admir Elezovic]

Michael, thnx for your support and help in forums. Enjoy your vaccations, you really deserved them !

Admir

[Oyster]

Well, Chilli is off and making modifications to Chilliskinner already to make it work with Serious Sam. *He must really like this game. *Anyway, since I always get involved with Chilliskinner developments, I thought I was entitled to post my opinions here while he gets on with it.

The problem with Material IDs and shared UV co-ordinates is obviously a "feature" of the Serious engine that is not there in other 3D game engines, and it results in the modeller searching for non-adjacent polys (regions?) that can share the same Material Id. * This is basically a variation on the Four Color Theorem (4CT) that is a well-known, and seriously non-trivial mathematical exercise. *In fact, it was first discussed in 1852, and not solved until 1976!!! *That's 124 years of the finest mathemetician's effort!! *And the proof is now so complicated that not even graduate mathemeticians ever bother to read it. *Further information is available here (http://www.math.gatech.edu/~thomas/FC/fourcolor.html) for those interested.

I don't think that modellers really want to get involved in this level of mathematics, so... *Croteam - redesign the engine quick! * OK, OK, OK. *Calm down, Croatia!!! I didn't expect you to be pleased.

As an alternative to a redesigned engine, Chilli now has three options.
1. Make every region a separate material id. *(Croteam: are there efficiency issues with this approach?)
2. Encorporate the 4CT algrithm to provide an optimum solution to minimising the required material ids (not an option - he'd get bored well before the 124 years required)
3. Bodge it, and make a stab at generating as few material id's as can sensibly be automated.

I have advised him that he should go for option 1, and get back to the day job!!!

Anyone who already has a well-coded 4CT algorithm is welcome to mail it to Chilli though :)

(Edited by Oyster at 3:31 pm on April 5, 2001)


(Edited by Oyster at 3:35 pm on April 5, 2001)


(Edited by Oyster at 3:36 pm on April 5, 2001)

[forager]

Oyster how are you going. Welcome to this thread!
How about, option one regarding every region gets a material id number but it's a determinable sliding scale in terms of the resolution? IE, each surface gets it's own id, or, x surfaces get id's, or 2x surfaces get id's etc.
That way, the modeler person can decide which number of surfaces suits best. This rather than making Chilliskinner
need to pinpoint some theoretically perfect number of id's per model?
It seems like it would be faster to build in that sort of flexiblility?

I'm going to read more about that math problem now...
regards
forager

[Admir Elezovic]

AFAIK, other engines have models organise like this: geometry vertices/polygons, mapping vertices/polygons... now mapping data can have more vertices than geometry (sharing vertices in mapping rule). This sounds "mistake" in Serious Engine but its more efficient due how engine handles LOD, vertex packing and other things that are unseen to user. Another thing... we use custom library for importing 3d objects, it does handles UV data in similar maner as we and finally, we plan to licence engine which means it must be open to all possible formats in use without much hassling and hardcoding.
As said before, i never could imagine that mapping could be biggest problem when importing in Serious Modeler.

Solution 1 with modifications like Chilli explained on dice does have advantage, becouse Opengl tends to expirience slowdowns on some graphic cards when you have large material count (it process every material independent). Having as less as possible DIFFERENT material ids guarantie faster performance.

Admir

[forager]

So is it correct to say that the minimum safe number of
different material id's is 4? To avoid T-vert /shared vertices problems?

[Phantomas]

wow.......you guys here are talking about mathematic things
I would never understand???

hmmmmm....but I hope that you can point that out for me a bit easier so I can understand that too with my little (english experience) I notice now :cool:

Please.................I have good models right now and I cant wait to see it in that great SSam game!!!

thanx for all your response
regards

[Oyster]

Quote: from forager on 4:11 pm on April 5, 2001
So is it correct to say that the minimum safe number of
different material id's is 4? To avoid T-vert /shared vertices problems?


Unfortunately not  :(   The 4CT as usually described (as for example in the reference posted earlier), only applies to planar geometry.   With 3 dimensions things get more complicated (you knew they weren't going to get simpler, right?).   In 3D space each object has it's own minimum number of colours (material IDs).  As a generalisation, a 3D shape of N faces may need up to N colours minimum, although that would be quite a complicated 3D object!!

I'm not really helping, am I?

[Chilli]

Admir:

Apologies if you're already tired of this thread ;)

Sometimes it's the things that seem simple that are actually the hardest to get across to others.. *especially when you've been dealing with them for a long time and to an extent take them for granted. *No-one's dissing the Sam engine, it's an awesome piece of work that I hope to see used in many other games and mods... *

Is it true to say that the Serious engine doesn't like a geometry vertex that shares multiple mapping vertices unless those mapping vertices are set to different material IDs?

If so then I think Oyster's point is rather that the fact that the Serious engine seems to handle this slightly differently than say the UT engine which DOES allow a geometry vertex to share multiple mappaing vertices regardless of material ID. *Then that difference means that the modeler has in fact to give quite a bit of thought to how he breaks up his model... and following on from that, that it is actually a little more complex to prepare a model for use in the Sam engine. *(you don't have to answer this one ;)



(Edited by Chilli at 4:29 pm on April 5, 2001)

[Oyster]

Quote: from Admir Elezovic on 3:58 pm on April 5, 2001
...we plan to licence engine which means it must be open to all possible formats in use without much hassling and hardcoding.

That was exactly my point, Admir.   In the Unreal engine, you can have multiple vertices in the texture map per vertex in the model, and you don't have to worry about shared vertex/material ID problems on import.  

If you're going to licence the engine and get a big community of modellers working with the product, then the Serious engine really needs to be as simple to work with as Unreal and the like, and this issue is already causing problems (until Chilli delivers the tweaked Chilliskinner, anyway).   You probably want to buy poor old Chilli a drink, you know.  

When you off to Croatia, Chilli? ;)

[forager]

"Is it true to say that the Serious engine doesn't like a geometry vertex that shares multiple mapping vertices unless those mapping vertices are set to different material IDs?"
That seems to me to be an important question.

[Phantomas]

Ok,

first I will thanx again for all explanations that are added here but it seems anyway that we have an import problem where we "cant" go around???
It´s really bad Admir....i dont mean the engine or anything that have todo with SSam.really...I LOVE THAT GAME :cool:

only the thing that I´m not able to get into the modeler how I wish I could. But I know you find a way to solve that.

regards

[Admir Elezovic]

Like i said in early posts, it does handle mapping differently than other engines. It has its reasons, some are how engine handles models, some are performance related, some are importer/formats disadvantages/advantages.
For example: Md3 (quake3) have one material/surface for whole object, it have shaders to add cool effects like transparency/procedural textures... in Serious Engine you need surfaces/materials to handle different rendering parameters, some might consider it as disadvantage(you need to deal with bunch of surfaces, keep track of parameters...), its not perfect solution but it gives you much more freedom and takes more time, we think it was worth it for our game. Point of forums beside giving support for community is to track what problems people might have with our tools and fix/upgrade tools in next release.  

Now for mapping, you have arm that you basically unwrapped like cylindar with seam somewhere in back or inside arm. When you place arm's mapping in UV map you either adjust it to touch mapping of torso (if you dont want seam) or somewhere isolated in mapping. If you planing to make model for Q3/UT you would select all polygons in mapping (or before mapping) and apply SINGLE material/surfaces. For Serious Engine you need to select arm and apply to surfaces, one for polygons on seam (no matter what side) and one for rest of arm. If you planning to make mod/game with SEngine where you want body parts to dissaperar/appear it comes handy (just control surface's visibility or tell Opengl to ignore them). I know assigining materials involves more work (it takes some time to get used), it has its dissadvantages/advantages.

Admir

[Phantomas]

Hy admir,

GREAT news- I had my first succes with the importing progress in SSam :cool: :cool: :cool:

I´m so happpppppppppppppyyyyyyy!!!......hehehe :cool:
First I have tried out the box of chilli/forager and then I made my own......not a real model but a test for making the right surface-attachments for the material ID! :cool:
and it works now finally :coo:

thanx a lot to all here who helps me and I´m out now off this topic

regards

[Admir Elezovic]

Glad to hear it, hope it will go well on more comples models.

Big thanks to Chilli and Oyster.


Admir

[Chilli]

I just finished a slightly modified version of ChilliSkinner to help out with this... if anyone wants to give it a try they can get it from here (http://www.chilliweb.co.uk/chilliskinner/Files/csv2-8-4.zip)

note. this is work in progress and not really a supported release of CS ;)

It should work under MAX 3.x and 4... *not sure bout 2.x.

Under the Config rollout there's an option called Serious Engine Output, you need to check this. *

Now when you go through the CS steps it will assign a unique MAT ID (surface) to each group of detached polys. *So to use our current favourite example, a cube split into six squares, you'll end up with 6 MAT IDs (1-6).

At this point the model should import into Serious modeler without problems, however, noting Admir's comments about optimising the number of MAT IDs to improve engine performance you can now manually optimise these MAT IDs.

The best way to do this is to go to the MAX modify panel, sub object polygon selection, scroll down to where you set MAT IDs, then use Select By ID, it'll show you the various groupings of faces that share MAT IDs, you can then manually merge MAT ID groupings that don't share geometry vertices.

I probably haven't explained this very well... *if you need more help please mail me... maybe we can discuss it in IRC.

See how you get on with this... *I might try to encorporate the optimisation of MAT IDs within CS in the next few days.

Chilli


(Edited by Chilli at 12:14 pm on April 6, 2001)

[forager]

Alright, CHilli you are da man!
I am available to test etc.

[Chilli]

Test away! :)

(Edited by Chilli at 12:16 pm on April 6, 2001)

[forager]

Ok I got file will start!
Thanks CHilli for such fantastic efforts.

[Phantomas]

I´m not surely out guys.hehe :cool:

I have just a question: I make my AK47 and I have 5 modelparts that makes the whole model. I want to export them all separately as an 3Ds file for betting UV-navigation. So I go on with my next step: I use chilliskiner for flatten the first modelpart and add my planar mapping onto!

Then I make ready the surfaces and material Id´s.

Now comes the point, I load up the next part of model into *a newfile and make the same for it, for 3, for 4 and 5! after I finsh this work have the model a chance to get serious into modeler with right UV mappings what they have if I only add the parts separately into SSam modeler? :cool:

regards

P.S. Chilli, without your great help here I seriously have died with my modeling experience for SSam

(Edited by Phantomas at 1:30 pm on April 6, 2001)

[Chilli]

Guys an addendum to my above post:

In MAX, after you have set appropriate Mat IDs on the various faces (either manually or with CS) you need to actually apply a Muli SubObject material to the mesh before exporting it as a .3DS or it will lose it's Mat ID settings.

[forager]

Hey, thanx to CHilli I can announce the birth of a perfect
skin map made in Serious Modeller.
please look here.
http://www.ozemail.com.au/~forager/ssi/index.html
The techniques described above when used with Chilliskinner the latest version with serious engine output selected,
Made this map happen and it's a great relief.

Thank you CHilli for spending your time and coming over to help us out.

I have yet to try a very complicated model but
it works is all I can say at this moment.
And that is a great thrill.
Apparently some more automation nad optimisation is still to come, so I look forward to helping further, in order that we can  make modeling accessable to one and all Serious Engine
content designers.

Thanks again CHilli.

[Phantomas]

Ok, forget it :cool:

regards

[forager]

Phantomas, if you sequencially create your seperate model parts as mdl's in Serious Modeller, then you restart modeller, bring in your main model first, and use attachment theory to bring in the secondary model parts.

I think there will be no UV conflicts at all if you use this method. IE, sperate model parts each have on UV map?

I am unsure if this is what your question asks, so if you
need to ask the question again, just go for it.
cheers

[Phantomas]

thanx forager,

in basic the questin was: If I import all my finshed done parts with UV´s as 3Ds into my mainfile of the weapon and then add all of them as one whole model into modeler what conflicts I get!

But I think that you have answered my question good forager, thanx for it. I´m nor really down with these all attachment stuff cuz all things in the days before are down with the UV-problem I had.

But I learn real fast and get it to work soon I think....I´m fanatic and I´m working for a great great mod!

CU all

[forager]

I have no experience regarding low poly/game modellimg except for what I have gained since using serious modeller.
I'm way behind you, because you actually have already created new weapon models etc. However again like yourself,
now thanx to all the help and advice from Admir and CHilli,
I can start to progress towards new horizons/ problems.

The CHilliskinner still has work to be done to optimize
surface counts etc, but, at least we can now get skin maps
out. Which for me is a major achievment/breakthrough.
My first models I will make A/ a statue, B/ a new plant/tree, after that, I'm making models for my new project which is called "the cottage project" as a working title at least.

No doubt we will have plenty more problems still to solve!

regards
forager

[Phantomas]

hehe,

your right forager!
Surely we have many problems to solve in the future for our own mods or just the modeling stuff here. And it´s great that we are going to be a great strong community that helps each other in the best way it could be:)

regards

[Admir Elezovic]

Sorry i havent replied earlier, flu kicked me in the back :(
On attachment models, they dont share UV mapping, but can share textures, if you map gun and then break it in few models, there wont be conflict in mapping (tho you will have empty spaces in each UV map where geometry you cut is missing), you can use same texture for all models (to save on memory).

Admir

[Phantomas]

Hy admir,

this is a good news because it´s very difficult to make a complex machine gun with right UV-mappings on the whole model. But I have done it well. :cool:
It takes a long time and many try´s for correct UV´s in the beginner time...but experience is the way to succes and the Samengine is it serious worse :) :).

Also I like how SSam-modeler unwrap the models again...it´s different to chilliskinner but really good..congrats :) :)

regards

[Admir Elezovic]

Biggest question when mapping models is to have balance between seams and texture stretching. Less seams you have, less pain for 2d artists to draw textures. Sometimes you can have texture streching in places where it wont bee seen (like under shoulders, pelvis...) to eliminate seams.

Admir