TPDC! AHHHHH!!!!!!

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TPDC! AHHHHH!!!!!!

Post by Draconisaurus »

OK if you remember, I pretty much finished the Dimetrodon mesh a few days ago. Today (well last night....) I finished his shadow mesh and textured him with a temp. texture straight from the toy.

Image

It worked out pretty well! Then I exported him as TPM, exported his shadow mesh as TPM, and went to TPDC for the first time since 0.2 came out. I selected the "Trike" preset, and browsed for "Dimetrodon.tpm". Then I had to select Dimetrodon.tpm again from a list of objects... Anyway he was WAAAYY too big, so I went back and shrunk him down to size, using a velociraptor 3ds as reference. So then I did that again and he looked awesome!! 8) (even though for some reason his texture failed to appear...)

Image

Then I went to Editing, and the first real problem came up.

Image

He was 90 degrees off!! :oops: How lame! So I went into Max and rotated Dimetro & his shadow 90 degrees CW, reexported them, and started all over. Still 90 degrees off? WTF!!! Then I did 2 things: this time I had come to the realization that it would be better to get the size of Dimetro as close to the Trike as possible, so I imported a Trike and scaled Dimetro accordingly. Then I realized that TPDC might be automatically resetting his rotation to 0, so I went to Hierarchy and aligned both their pivot points to world (thus rotating their pivot points so that they now were said to be rotated 0 degrees, though in the same position). So I took him back into TPDC.... no luck. Though his size was better.

Image

So, unsure how to fix the rotation problem, I supposed that perhaps I could assign the bones to Dimetro's verts reguardless, so I went and did it.

Image

After taking a long time to assign them all and saving the settings, I saved the file as a .TPM (DimetroTest.tpm). Then I imported him into the Demo, and... he looked odd. Also I had forgotten to give him any script, so his subobjects didn't behave right. But anyway, I moved him to the basement, copied him and placed the copy on the road. Ingame....

Image

.....yeah. Something's not quite right. The next thing I tried was making values for him, using Trike script and changing one or two things (hit points, etc):

Code: Select all

group Dimetrodon = {
    int ext_GeometryType = 1
    int Archetype = 1
    int Team = 16
    bool ActApproach = true
    bool ActRam = true
    bool ActEat = true
    bool ActNothing = true
    bool ActLookAround = true
    float Width = 3.000000
    float HeadReach = 3.500000
    float TailReach = 5.300000
    float JumpDistance = 0.500000
    float JumpUp = 0.500000
    float JumpDown = 0.500000
    float WalkUnder = 4.000000
    float WalkOver = -0.900000
    float JumpOver = 0.500000
    float CrouchUnder = 4.000000
    float MoveableMass = 0.600000
    float UpAngle = 20.000000
    float DownAngle = 30.000000
    string Class = "CAnimal"
    int NumJoints = 31
    int NumDoubleJoints = 4
    int PVA = -2
    int Dinosaur = 3
    string Type = "Trike"
    string Head = "$Trike_Head-00"
    string Body = "$Trike_Body-00"
    string Tail = "$Trike_Tail-00"
    float Bumpiness = 0.075000
    string SoundMaterial = "TRIC-FOOT"
    bool Curved = true
    float Diffuse = 0.900000
    float Specular = 1.250000
    float SpecularAngle = 16.000000
    float HitPoints = 220.000000
    float ReallyDie = -70.000000
    float Regeneration = 2.000000
    float DieRate = 2.000000
    float CriticalHit = 100.000000
    float Anger = 0.500000
    float Bravery = 0.500000
    float Hunger = 0.500000
    bool ActOuch = true
    bool ActSnarl = true
    bool ActCroon = true
    bool ActDie = true
    float WakeUp = 80.000000
} 
When imported, this time his main subobjects would move with him when he was moved, but the small joint ones ($JTrike00, etc.) still didn't move. I just kept him in the same spot at 0,0,0, copied him, and moved him into the playing area like before.... this time there was that good ol' pal o mine, "Fatal Error".

Does anyone know how to go about fixing any of these problems????? :?: :|
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Post by mega raptor »

Sorry I can't help you, but your dimetroddon is looking good! :yes: I would just make his eyes bigger, its hard to see them.
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Post by Remdul »

Nice model! I got that toy too btw. 8)

To fix the rotation you can either import the original trike .3ds model, like I explained in my tutorial (http://home.planet.nl/~buijs512/), or draw a new box in your scene (in the perspective viewport, not the 2d views), and attach the model to the box* (not the other way around!). Then select the vertices of the box, delete them and all should work.

There's a small bug in MAX that doesn't update the rotation and scale for MaxScript, so the export script uses the old rotation. I fixed this with a workaround once but that caused other stuff to mess up.

Also, what kind of material do you have on your dino in MAX? Standard Material? Seems it is not exported properly. Also, the textures are required to have power of two dimension (e.g. 16,32,64,128,256). Can be 24-bit in TPDC but needs to be 8-bit of cource when you import it.

I should also note that the trike bone system might be a bit awkward. You may have noticed that the trike model and ingame trike look a lot different (shorter legs, no neck), thats because the bones pull some parts inward. Maybe the stego might be more easier to work with but I don't think it'll fit your model closer than the trike does.

* Fixed to avoid confusion, thanks for pointing out that typo.
Last edited by Remdul on Sat Nov 12, 2005 11:14 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by Asjad »

Remdul i wanted to ask you, what method of texture mapping did you use on your new raptor's model? unwrap UVW, UVW map or UVW Xform?

btw really cool dimetrodon you got there! 8) hope to see it in the downloads section when its done! :) good luck! :D
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Post by Asjad »

Remdul i wanted to ask you, what method of texture mapping did you use on your new raptor's model? unwrap UVW, UVW map or UVW Xform?

btw really cool dimetrodon you got there! 8) hope to see it in the downloads section when its done! :) good luck! :D

Remdul:and how do you convert textures to 8 bit in 3ds max?
thanks.
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Post by Draconisaurus »

Remdul wrote:Nice model! I got that toy too btw. 8)
Thanks! Yup he is a cool toy. 8)
Remdul wrote:To fix the rotation you can either import the original trike .3ds model, like I explained in my tutorial (http://home.planet.nl/~buijs512/), or draw a new box in your scene (in the perspective viewport, not the 2d views), and attach the box to the model (not the other way around!). Then select the vertices of the box, delete them and all should work.
Not the other way around?? Hehe I think you mixed it up. I just spent a while doing that, and it didn't work... So instead I attached Dimetro to the box and its rotation was right! YAY!!!

Image

(BTW if what you say about the Trike verts pulling the mesh inwards is true, I think I should stick with the Trike preset for now because Stego's legs are really tall, you know... I may try later though)

OK after that, I saw that Dimetro was infact too big, for whatever reason... as well as being a bit too forward. I'll try and fix that on him later. The next thing I did was to make sure the texture was right. I've made textures that work in Tres before, using the Max renderer, but this time I had used Photoshop... so I went in and rerendered it as an 8-bit bmp with Max. I had to give it a different name to do this, and when I went to delete the old one afterwords it said it was being used by another program... bah. So instead I went in and changed the texture material to use the new image.... and I lost the mapping coords on Dimetro!! :oops: So I restarted, changed the name yadda yadda yadda, of course by then I had saved (to save other changes that had been made), so the texture still didn't work.. Anyway I had to redo the procedure in a previous save, maybe I fiddled with the texture too I can't remember. Then once I exported and imported, TPDC said this:
LoadTexture
Subscript out of range
Filename: "C:\blahblah"

........meh who knows! It didn't work before anyway... no idea what that means. He still worked the same in TPDC...except that somehow when I redid the whole box-verticy thing, he got messed up...

Image

As far as I know I did the same thing that time. Honestly how many different things can go wrong here??!?!?!!! :no:


Stopped dead and nothing better to do, I started following some stuff from your tutorial Remdul and tried matching Dimetro as close as I could to the Trike... Quite honestly, it looks horrible and I really hope I don't have to do any such thing, but the result of the attempt came out to be what I call Dimetrotops. :lol:

Image

But when imported, it has the same problem as in the previous DC screen (thus I didn't take the time to try and assign bones all over again). Somehow, even though as far as I can tell it and its pivot point are at (0,0,0), it is offcentered in DC. No idea how to fix that now... I may try some wacky backwards things tomorrow to try and fix it. Any ideas on these problems would be greatly appreciated...

Remdul wrote:Also, what kind of material do you have on your dino in MAX? Standard Material? Seems it is not exported properly. Also, the textures are required to have power of two dimension (e.g. 16,32,64,128,256).
Hmmmm that is nice to know.... heh. Well actually I always make the max dimension on new Tres textures 256 anyway, does this rule apply to both dimensions? That would be kinda limiting... And yes I'm using a Standard material in Max, I've never really been able to use the others before.

Asjad wrote:Remdul i wanted to ask you, what method of texture mapping did you use on your new raptor's model? unwrap UVW, UVW map or UVW Xform?

btw really cool dimetrodon you got there! 8) hope to see it in the downloads section when its done! :) good luck! :D
Thanks! I could possibly put it up in the DL section... it's supposed to be for JPDS obviously but he's not that big of a deal in it, so that shouldn't be a problem. And as for UVWs, I'd like to know too!! Actually I'd like to know WHAT "Unwrap UVW" is, I think it might help a lot with texturing dino maps like the Spino one we have, but I have no idea how to use that modifier! F1 wasn't that helpful either IIRC...
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Post by Draconisaurus »

OK I am resurrecting this thread, as today I had virtually no HW and took the time once again to *attempt* to use TPDC, that infamous dino-making program that no one but TC ops seems to really know how to use properly. :)

Dimetro is currently on the backburner... my new attempt is the converted low-detail Ceratosaurus mesh from JPOG. Fairly high-poly compared to the other Tres dinos but still well under the accepted limit (he's around 800 or more). Soooo I'll go over this step-by-step. I imported Cerato using the maxscript from the OG file:

Image

Then I proceeded to match the scale of the model to that of Albertosaurus (who I imported to the same scene), which if memory serves was 633. Also both models were located at 0,0,0, with 0,0,0 orientation as well. At this point the Cerato was some bit larger than Alberta so I went into vertex sub-o mode and scaled him down to the right size, also I may have rotated the verticies I forget. Then I went and began altering the mesh of Cerato to fit the positions of Alberta:

Image

(seen here I was still working on it)
Now to show for absolute certain their pivots were matched, and at 0,0,0, here you can see it in Max. Note that at no point did I rotate or move either mesh or their pivots.
http://img151.imageshack.us/my.php?imag ... n009av.jpg
http://img151.imageshack.us/my.php?imag ... n011xw.jpg

OK and finally, here was the result in TPDC:

Image

The scale is correct (thank god) but the Y and Z positions of the Alberta rig stored in TPDC do not appear to be correct. One thing I tried was making sure the Alberta mesh's pivot from Tres was centered, and it was. Basically the only thing I haven't tried is centering the pivot of Cerato but it seems to me that would only make it worse. Soooooo guys what is going on wrong here? :?:
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Post by The Hunted »

That cerato is so freakin' badass looking.
ImageImageImage
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Post by chronzerg »

i know.....hunted....
@dracon

that dino is so sweat man.....
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Post by Slugger »

A litte off topic (I've been doing this today...you should have seen me in AP English) but can we view animations with TPDC? I mean, one the pane to the right, there is that start/stop animations thing? Can we script dinos?
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Post by Hilwo »

Looking good, can't wait for it to chase me :wink:
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Post by MikeTheRaptor »

Slugger wrote:A litte off topic (I've been doing this today...you should have seen me in AP English) but can we view animations with TPDC? I mean, one the pane to the right, there is that start/stop animations thing? Can we script dinos?
I believe Remdul had mentioned that he intended to include a way to view the animations in TPDC, however creating new ones was impossible.

Unfortunately, my guess would be that he has had very little time for TPDC.
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Post by Remdul »

Nice work Draconisaurus! 8)

Did you try attaching the new model to the old one, and then deleting the old models polygons? That's the only way I've been able to get it to work flawlessly. I must admit that my MaxScript is picky, it doesn't handle all scene data properly (allthough 3dsmax is internally a bit of a mess, so its very hard to get it right).

I have a tutorial (Creating skins with MAX) on my personal site that explains it a bit:

http://home.planet.nl/~buijs512/

On a side note, I've nailed a few bugs and added some features for TPDC 0.2.2, though I'm still left with a single problem that's been preventing the release. I still can't say when I may release it, but its probably not soon...

* Oh, I already posted a link to that tutorial. Still, it should work, I can't think of anything that could cause the skin to be offset...
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Post by Draconisaurus »

Ahh thank you Remdul! 8) I will look into attaching the cerato mesh to the alberta and deleting alberta from it, that could just do the trick. :) Also if there are any other probs I'll look into that tutorial, which you might noticed I have looked into a little bit already ;)
Currently I need to work on finalizing the terrain of JPDS so I can hand it over to the foliagers (Mickey.. ;)), so expect an update on this guy soon but not right away. :)
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Post by Mickey »

Draconisaurus wrote:Ahh thank you Remdul! 8) I will look into attaching the cerato mesh to the alberta and deleting alberta from it, that could just do the trick. :) Also if there are any other probs I'll look into that tutorial, which you might noticed I have looked into a little bit already ;)
Currently I need to work on finalizing the terrain of JPDS so I can hand it over to the foliagers (Mickey.. ;)), so expect an update on this guy soon but not right away. :)
Get ready 8)
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