Archangel35757

Welcome! Mappers are desperately needed here.

It's already done... just use one of these and give them credit: http://www.scifi3d.com/details.asp?intGenreID=10&intCatID=10&key=141 or this one: http://www.scifi3d.com/details.asp?intGenreID=10&intCatID=10&key=579 Sentinnel Class Shuttle: http://www.scifi3d.com/details.asp?intGenreID=10&intCatID=8&key=423 http://www.scifi3d.com/details.asp?intGenreID=10&intCatID=8&key=152

@@Bek -- yes, I've seen that and others... the eye rig will not capture that sloshing effect; but it will have controls for pupil contraction/dilation, single/pair eye rotations, gazing, and saccades motion. I also plan to have a few skins with increasing eye blood vessel redness.

As I study about texturing eyes in 3ds Max and Photoshop... I find these images to be insightful and amazing! https://www.behance.net/gallery/428809/Your-beautiful-eyes

You're somewhat correct... but it uses the tag's edge lengths to determine the origin and orientation, which results in a specific vertex order in the GLM file. Basically, it finds the hypotenuse first, and depending on what edge number the hypotenuse is... it sets the vertex opposite the hypotenuse edge as the origin; then it throws out the hypotenuse from comparisons and then finds which of the two side legs is longest (the longer one is assigned +X and the shorter +Y); and they determine the remaining vertex numbers. See pretty picture below courtesy of @@Xycaleth: EDIT: The cross product (X x Y) becomes the +Z axis. The tag's face normal should face in the +Z direction. It's the same process for both MD3 tags and GLM bolts. Note: The tag must be a right triangle, else it will throw an error; and one side leg must be longer than the other-- creating an equilateral right triangle will cause Carcass to crap itself.

I guess they thought as you do about Softimage as the modeling software

@@minilogoguy18 -- I was not talking about tags... I'm the one (and Xycaleth) who told you it uses the edges to determine the tag's matrix (see pretty picture in past posts). I was talking about meshes and bones. EDIT: I'm a little confused by your axis comparsions... MDX = Ghoul2 (...which ModView displays; and the Ghoul2 coordinate system matches 3dsMax-- +Z up, +Y into screen, +X right). The dotXSI coordinate system matches Softimage (+Y up, +Z out of screen, +X right). ...more Carcass functionality? Do tell... (in a new thread). I'm glad you sorted it out.

@@JAWSFreelao -- GtkRadiant is still being developed. Feel free to drop into their IRC channel and make recommendations.

Interesting, could we bolt on another GLM model (say a cloak) and put it in "Ragdoll" mode for cheap clothFX? I digress...

When? For ragdoll only? @@minilogoguy18 -- see the readme file distributed with Carcass v2.2.

@@Xycaleth-- does the engine do IK on skeletons? I didn't think so... Perhaps another way of explaining is that it bakes the transforms into, e.g. the fingers, and then removes intermediate bones-- such as those X-rotation bones (lower fore-arm, etc)? Here is the actual #jacoders conversation with the meister himself:

@@minilogoguy18 -- I meant that you should check the foot & tag's ancestors' transforms since it would inherit parent transforms. Do you have anything in their hierarchy that was mirrored? etc. Maybe you need to re-export all your animations with fixed tags now? Fixing only the root.xsi may not be sufficient...

...but will you explain it in layman's terms, please?

The Carcass v2.2 help command at DOS prompt tells you what each command does. I did dig around and I also talked with @@Xycaleth and another Russian coder who developed a valid MD3 exporter. Consensus: The compiler is using the tag's edge lengths to determine the orientation matrix (exactly as the last image I posted above). You need the motion bone. The game engine uses it to manipulate the model. I'll have to dig up my notes for more details. @@DT85 also has great knowledge of the motion bone. @@Xycaleth, me, and Rich Whitehouse had a great discussion of PCJ joints awhile back-- iirc, it stands for Programmable Control Joints. They allow manipulation/compressing of the hierarchy for interpolation purposes-- @@Xycaleth? Does the stock AT-ST behave like this? Are the tranforms for the foot bolt's parent objects correct? Maybe you need to reset transforms on some of the objects? @@Psyk0Sith - not sure how to do this in ModTool.

So, it's been awhile... my apologies. I've gotten sidetracked with Arduino micro-controllers. I've also been researching human eyes-- what an awesome creation they are! Anyways... I've modelled what will be cinematic eyes (they will be exported as MD3 models and bolted onto the Ghoul2 skeleton eye bones-- with @@redsaurus' coding help (he's probably already forgotten he agreed to do this once I had something exported). I've modeled the cinematic eye in 4 parts: Sclera (the white ball) Cornea Iris Pupil The Iris/Pupil contraction/dilation will be animatable using an FFD (Free Form Deformation) Space Warp and controller set-up. The dilation value will be written out per frame to the .VCD file that will be used for all of the facial expressions/lip-syncing. You may or may not see a difference from the standard 3dsMax Shader Eye model... but I do. Now I just need to polish my Photoshop skills for texturing the eye. I've scoured the internet for great tutorials. I apologize for my slow progress.

@@minilogoguy18 - How about an update? Issue now resolved?

can you show a video of the flaw?

I have many Jedi Knight tutorials archived... but I can only find one of her Gmax UVmapping tutorials (it's a silent movie...)-- I thought I had more from her; I will check my old XP PC.

@Langard -- "...The standing stance and walking is my favourite part.. but there is some issue.. for example when i turn off the saber everything works fine.. but when i am going forward and while moving i will turn off the saber ... Vader for some reason is 90 degree with his head towards the legs... i dont know why." Hmm... not sure-- maybe that is some conflict you have with upper torso and lower leg animations not having proper tag alignments? (Torso and leg animations can be mixed & matched)... Instructions:

@@minilogoguy18 -- Ok... so after further research, I believe that it uses the tag geometry itself and not the tag's node transform matrix (as you have come to find thru trial and error). The long edge (not the hypotenuse) represents the +X axis, the short edge represents the +Y axis. The cross product of these two edges produces the +Z axis and I believe the face normal should point along the +Z axis. In this regard, they are similar to bones-- which use +X along the bone's length... ...Before you start rotating your tag geometry, I would like you to simply try flipping the face normal and see if that corrects your opposite foot rotations. If flipping the normal fails then you'll have to rotate the tag geometry itself to sort it out. I would not rely on how the tag geometry was imported by Softimage or any other 3D package-- because they could be wrong (meaning they used the local transform and disregarded the tag geometry layout-- which may not correspond to the local transform).

create a section of the helix, then copy, rotate, and change vertical position to build the spiral. Using 3ds Max and the GameLevelBuilder (or Convexity) plugin from www.maple3d.com it creates helical-style stairs.

@@minilogoguy18 - Your local pivot is wrong. I imported the AT-ST in 3ds Max using the Softimage dotXSI4Max import plugin (which keeps all pivots in XSI coordinate system) and also imported it using ModTool... both results show that the local pivot for the tag should have +Y forward (pointing at toe), +X (left, when looking forward from behind), and +Z down. See screenshots: In 3ds Max: In ModTool:

it would be cool if the Yavin temple had a lot of secret rooms & traps similar to the Egyptian pyramid in Lara Croft Tomb Raider.

@@minilogoguy18 - would you please show a screenshot of your bolt's pivot in relation to the pivots of the foot and lower leg bone?