maya import tutorial thread amoung other things

[evillejedi]

maya tutorial thread

I'm going to write up some tutorials for doing ship import in maya 5 (3 is pretty much similar)

unfortunately acquiring and setting up maya to work with the RDN tools is hard, I will try to make up a installtion tutorial, but for now this is assuming that you can export the RDN sample ships correctly.

DO NOT discuss how to acquire maya

I expect to take a few days to get everything together, however here is some simple things

a ship file template (THIS WILL NOT WORK AS A SHIPYARD)
it is more organized than the relic files and you will have to change a lot of the references. I am providing this out of goodwill and will not be supporting it unless I find an error in my own files

http://warlords.swrebellion.com/files/template.ship

and a maya template that I use for the warlords mod.

http://warlords.swrebellion.com/files/template.zip

TUTORIALS
NEW! http://warlords.swrebellion.com/tuto...IAL_SHIELD.php
shield tutorial!

NEW! http://www.star-fleet.org/tutorials/texture.rar
stafleets video tutorial!

maya setup

quick and dirty importing
this is the first tutorial it is about getting a ship exported once you get the maya tools up and running (I'm doing this first because I don't want to screw up my install)


it has 50 weapon hard points a shield hard point, 12 repair points, 6 capture points and around 50 navlights and 50 effects points, it does not support graphically animated turrets nativly (more on this later)

I just delete what I don't need.


my method for ship import

1. export each mesh independantly as an OBJ file from 3ds (this avoids most mesh smoothing issues)

2. import OBJ files into the template maya file

3. go into hypergraph and be VERY specific about the naming of the objects

3a. name the lods HULL_LODx for each lod level

3b. collision mesh! CM_HULL (multiple collision meshes seem to break, need a single unified mesh, I usually duplicate the LOD0, it doesn't seem to hurt performance and it gives better effects)

3c. goblins call GOBLINS (make one goblin object, it is cleaner)

3d. engine meshes call ENGINEGLOW0 (this will be the smallest part of the glow, usually make ENGINEGLOW1 and ENGINEGLOW2 to complete the effect, make sure each level of the mesh is one object IE 5 engines make the inner glows all one object the mid glows one object etc)

4. drag the meshes underneath the root node, the engine glows under the engine hardpoint

5. open the layers dialogue and assign each thing to its place

lod0 -> ship
lod1 -> lod1
engineglow -> engine
goblins _>goblins
paths -> paths
etc

6. go into hyper graph and (hopefully a single texture) change the HW2 shaders diffuse map to the new one.

at this point the engine glows and collision mesh should be hidden (the layers do this)
7. select each object and do assign material _> HW2SHADER

everything should be parented to the root and have a shader applied

8. move the hardpoints and effect markers to where you want them and delete unused ones

9. you should be able to export now with no errors.



some of the errors I have eno****************ered and their causes


improper import of models into maya smoothing groups get corrupted, error occurs on file reload sayign the file is corrupted occasionally have to reimport collison mesh.

collison mesh has bad UV coords failure on export of collison mesh (bounding box only)

sub-object missing UVs, crash on load into HW2

psd texture not trimmed correctly maya crashes

shader not applied properly ship has a chameleon effect in game

crash on load universe, lua file specifies hardpoint hard point was misnamed, check again

undetermined errors

could not extrat collision mesh, multiple collison groups

failure of seperate subsytem hardpoint (not found even though name is correct)











I plan on having a graphical tutorials on:

simple importing
lods
engine glows
shield mesh generation
subsystems

other features like

innate subsytems
turrets
animations

will come as I discover the methods that work.

this will take some time so don't expect a lot for the next two weeks (though I will try to get a better import tutorial going)

[Mikali]

Wrong forum. This should be posted in Archive Dump.

[evillejedi]

you sure that archive dump is the best place? I tend not to check it because it was set aside for archiving, not for in progress stuff (maybe we need a tutorials section)

[Crook]

Here seems perfect.

[Mikali]

Well the description says "Useful threads, older information and general Good Ideas". This thread passes the first and third conditions.

[Spooky]

It will stay here for now - as for most people this IS Advanced Modding...

[evillejedi]

quick and dirty importing


first one up, be reminded this is somewhere in the middle of the process and I may have missed stuff cause I did it quick. nice to see it added to the wiki also.

the formatting is horrendous I know, but I didn't have the time, hopefully soon I can make it look better

[zol]

hi,

evillejedi, your tutorial is great : congratulations and many thanks cause it allowed me to find some errors i made !!!
And also thanks for the communauty...yep definitivly we need a tutorial section and this one is a masterpiece (to my opinion).
Thanks to those who share their knowledge.

[Skeeter]

There aint no tutorial section cos delphy told me when i asked about it he said there are too many sub forums at the mo and adding another will just be overkill.

Still u could use the 'Archive Dump' forum..

[evillejedi]

going to be adding a maya setup and some other quick tutorials in the next few days, the setup tutorial just needs to be uploaded,

some of the smaller tutorials will be
A quick and dirty PSD texture editing tutorial , without using relic plugins
a shielding tutorial
turret tutorial
subsystem tutorial.

[fearing]

Can you add a small turorial regarding how to set up engine meshes (glow,burn,shape) , and about badges positioning (maya crashes when i try to add badge material to models).

Thanks for your tutorials , they have made possible for me to create ship for the pirates mod !!

[thegoatman]

Well, as for the badge materials, i noticed that you have to edit the extended properties of the materials, not hte shader attributes.

As for hte engine meshes, I just steal them from the example files.

[evillejedi]

the process for adding engine meshes is included in the maya import tutorial

as for actually creating them, I make 3 different sized 10 sided spheres for each engine and then add spherical mapping to them. (everything must have mapping coords otherwise maya crashes) You will want to make sure that the edges of the spheres line up otherwise you will get blocky effects so I just make one and then make two smaller copies inside of it. after I do this for all of the engines I make all of the outer, middle and inner ones into 3 objects by attaching the meshes and name them according to the maya import tut (EngineGlow0, EngineGlow1... etC)

as for badges, I can try, I still don't have them working properly though(battleship was the first working example), same with hull colors and stripes (anyone can help me on this please do so I can add it to the tuts, I can't get it to export correctly)

[fearing]

i'm speaking of fighter engine meshes: "EngineShape", "EngineBurn" and the trail nurbscurve "Burn" , i cannot make them point the right direction!

[evillejedi]

hmm, I didn't need fighter glows and trails for the SW mod so I never played with that , I'll look into it and see if I cand get it to work. at very least you need to make multiple engine bones (just hit duplicate) and then rename them. also don't move the engine node once you parent the engine glows, this will cause them to be off center.

[evillejedi]

added the maya installation tutorial.

since I haven't written it up, the requirements for making a shield are the following

1.copy the ships Collision mesh and scale it by 101%, adjust to make sure the new mesh covers the underlying mesh.

2.all you need is two copies of this new larger mesh, name one SHIELD_LOD0 and the other CM_SHIELD, assign a 1x1 pixel texture to the LOD0 (to save file space)

3. follow the import tutorial, but you can ignore all of the steps for unecessary stuff (you simply need to exprt a hod with the LOD0 and collision mesh, delete everything else )

4. you should export when you have the following

ROOT
+----SHIELD_LOD0
+----CM_SHIELD

export this to a directory in the subsytems folder
====================================================
the lines of interest in a .subs

NewSubSystemType.maxhealth = 350000
total shield hitpoints

NewSubSystemType.regentime = 240
how many seconds does it take to fully recharge

NewSubSystemType.selectionLimit = 20000
this determines how far away the healthbar will be visible

NewSubSystemType.inactiveTimeAfterDamage = 100
how long the shield will be down once its hitpoints are deplated

NewSubSystemType.activateHealthPercentage = 0.1
what percentage it has to recharge before it begins shielding again

NewSubSystemType.visible = 0
this line must be set unless you have a transparent texture

NewSubSystemType.innate = 1
also must be set, unless shields are an upgade

=================================================
to get this working on your ship

add this line AFTER THE loadmodel() is called

 
LoadModel(NewShipType,1)
StartShipHardPointConfig (NewShipType,"Bridge","Hardpoint_Shield","System","Innate","Damageable","Imp_Imperator_II_Destroyer_Shields","","","","","","","","")

the first field is just an identifier (it may have a purpose but nearly anything seems to work)
second field is the hard point the shield will be attached to make sure it is 0,0,0 with 0 rotation unless you really know what you are doing)
third field identifies it as a ship system
fourth is if it exists when the ship is built or has to be built later
damagable or destroyable, is it a one time use shield
the last field must match exactly the name of the sub you created earlier

[Solaufein]

Good info, Big thanks to Evillejedi. Lets hope that one day I might contribute some tutorial.

[thegoatman]

fearing: it is easiest to simply export the reigging for fighter engines from hte sample interceptor and just import it into your new file., rename what needs at and re-attatch the mesh to your Root.

[evillejedi]

added a tutorials section to my website

http://www.swrebellion.com/evillejedi/

[Solaufein]

On the topic of engineGlows. I made my own, named them, attached a joint etc. Exporting results in a few errors which have to do with the fact that it doesn't have any textures. Since it loaded up fine in HW2 without the engineglows I thought it should work with them. However it crashes at the moment all the content is loaded.
Looking at the log file the following seems to be the cause:

Unable to find joint (EngineNozzle1) in sob (HGN_LIGHTCRUISER) to attach battle scar ref mesh to -- FATAL EXIT --

I compared my model to that of the sample Hig Carrier and found but a tiny difference I cant correct. Instead of linking the EngineNozzle1 joint directly to the root(as it should) maya adds a little thingy called "transform1" in between the root and the joint. My guess is that thingy is the cause for the failure, ofcourse I might be wrong.

Can anyone shed any light on this?

Regards,
Solaufein

ps. the exporting error message from maya:

error : Shader hw2Shader has no HW2 script attached, using default shader script
error : **ERROR** Don't use the lambert shader for renderable objects.
warning : failed on MFnMesh
warning : Failed on getConnectedShaders
warning : No shaders attached to shape transform1
warning : No texture on shader hw2Shader
hgn_lightcruiser - 2 error(s), 4 warning(s)

[evillejedi]

error : **ERROR** Don't use the lambert shader for renderable objects.


that is your problem, not the transform

maya puts a helper object on each mesh automatically and this is normal, it allows the mesh to recieve transforms like rotation and positioning.

make sure you have the shaders http://www.swrebellion.com/evillejedi/junk/shaders.zip directory from the HW2 big extracted into your homeworld2/data directory, I think this will fix your problem (the shaders directory is linked from the tutorials and tutorial webpage, it should have a bunch of .st files in it)

make sure that all of your meshes have UVW coordinates, even the engine glows. (you can do any type of mapping on the engine meshes, so far I found a that it doesn't make a difference in visual quality, but I haven't experimented that much)

you shouldn't have to assign a shader to collision meshes or engine glows, they should default to lambert or another default imported shader.

[Solaufein]

I do have the shaders, in the proper directory. I tried UVW mapping but that didn't make any difference exporting wise, so I haven't even tried putting it in HW2 itself.

I resorted to just importing the sample carriers engineglow, seems to have done the trick

[Solaufein]

Alright, another question and a comment about your tutorial.

As I am now trying to texture my model I ran into something I can't seem to work around. The tutorial states pretty obviously how to attach a texture to a shader. Would it not that the button indicated to switch to the "File63" tab in the attributes editor of the shader, does not appear in my instance. Well, there is a button present but it looks like those below. Nor does any other named tab excist at the indicated editor. Now have I been looking around to find other ways to stick my texture to my model but I haven't been able to find one.

Now I installed all the stuff I needed as per Evillejedi's install tutorial so I am pretty sure I am not missing something. Also I did UV map the model prior to even making the texture. I followed every guidline the the Art_Pipeline pdf concerning textures so I pretty sure I didn't err on that part either.

Does anyone have a clue about what might work, or things I might have missed?

Regards, Solaufein

[evillejedi]

the "file63" name is irrelevant as long as you have a valid HW2 shader assigned to it, you could call it whatever you want (right click to rename)

[Solaufein]

That the name is irrelevant is apparent, The problem I have is that the entire tab is missing. I.e. I can't browse to get the intended texture. Secondly part of the HW2shaders attributes seem to differ from those displayed in your screens.

[evillejedi]

hmmm, can you post a screen shot or two?

also starfleet and I have noticed that the maya 5 plugins don't properly export docking paths... more on this later

[Solaufein]

Took a fair bit of time but yeah, and here they are (for ease of use I included the relevant pic from the guide).




Well it should be clear what the difference is that I tried to point out.

[evillejedi]

make sure that the circled section shows up. If you add a new hw2 shader to hypershade you need to make sure you specify which shader type it is going to use. the shaders directoroy it refers to should be in your hw2/data/ directory

[Solaufein]

Does it have to show up when you create a new hw2 material or are you supposed to not forget to add the shader attributes? Simply adding the script and (re)loading attributes does not make a difference. I tried replacing the HW2 shader, that did not help either. The shaders dir is placed in %HW2_ROOT%\Data. I can export the sample ships without error.

[starfleet]

I'll do a visual tutorial on just this section (adding textures to an object) in Maya 5 (shudders cause he'd much rather do it in maya 3) By visual I mean I'll do a .mov File that shows you exactly how to do it.

[evillejedi]

heh, also write up a little about fixing the shader attributes post UI

[starfleet]

ohh who needs writing

http://www.star-fleet.org/tutorials/texture.rar
4.30mb Download
60mb Uncompressed
Format: Quicktime 4.0Pro Movie File.

[Solaufein]

Doh, I feel so silly I missed that bit. Well thanks for the movie, its very helpfull indeed. I'll bugger you guys again if I get stuck once more

[starfleet]

your welcome and besides it might get EJ off my back

[evillejedi]

will post turret and shield tutorial later tonight, the VLO tutorial is pretty complex so that might not be for a few days

[Solaufein]

Evillejedi, your shield,turret and VLO tutorials links don't seem to be working:

Not Found
The requested document was not found on this server.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Web Server at swrebellion.com

[Delphy]

Any idea when the Shield tutorial will be up?

[Solaufein]

not a clue, I already mailed Evil too, so he wouldn't be able to miss it.

[evillejedi]

sorry about that I was out of town

here's the link to the shield tutorial

http://warlords.swrebellion.com/tuto...IAL_SHIELD.php

[Zatch]

Hey evillejedi a better method for expanding the original model's mesh is to use the "Push" modifier because it pushes out along the vertex normals instead of just scaling the mesh. It even works if you have intrusions on the mesh, and it's how I make all of my caged meshes for previewing (solid mesh on the inside, slightly pushed mesh w/ wireframe material applied surrounds it.)

[Solaufein]

No worries Evil.

I was wondering if some of you have knowledge on creating custom turrets, because I just found out mine doesn't animate propperly:

When it should turn left, it turns right.
When it should raise its barrel, it turns the barrel around its lenght axis.

Obviously something is wrong with the axis. The thing is I don't have a clue why, I thought I had set all the Nodes correctly.

[Archanon]

No worries Evil.

I was wondering if some of you have knowledge on creating custom turrets, because I just found out mine doesn't animate propperly:

When it should turn left, it turns right.
When it should raise its barrel, it turns the barrel around its lenght axis.

Obviously something is wrong with the axis. The thing is I don't have a clue why, I thought I had set all the Nodes correctly.

Hehe... know that problem.. I bet the turret is not facing in the direction of the ship....

[Solaufein]

Well, suprise suprise, it is. On top, facing foward. One barrel only. No rotate modifiers on the joints.

[evillejedi]

thanks zatch, I thought that was only in max 6, but it does happen to be in 5


as for turrets, it will be a bit before I can get the turret tutorial up, but all I do it taek an existing ship delete everythign except the root and one weapon and then 0 all of the transforms (scale leave at 1) hen make your turret off that (turret body gets parented under the weapon_position, barrel gets parented under the muzzle)

also adjust your bones before you parent stuff otherwise it will get all out of wack

[sanityflare]

man that movie just saved me a few more days figuring out the texture probs i was having.

Great Job man and Im looking forward to your next mod for the star wars universe ( would be handy if you timed it for the release of the next movie :bandit: )

Anyhow for anyone else out there beginning to mod, I started a few weeks ago and was using the basic obj inporter and etc till I got my hands on maya and without jedis fantastic turtorials id be non the wiser in many areas. While I wasnt to far off in the texturing, it still would have taken me at least a few more days to a week to find out the rest. Where as his movie basically shows you everything that I have been trying to do for the last 2 weeks in maya lol Nevermind actually setting the bugger up which I wouldnt have figured out without his turtorial at the star of this thread.

[Dron01]

Heh, so here are my questions again, now and 4ever!
I see nobody says about engine nozzzzzlezzzz...how to do it?
evillejedi just says that engineglows have the engine joint as a parent, und I want to know, what iz zis? I understood that engineglows are meshes of engines und enginenozzles are just joints to Root. Am I right?