TreemagikPLUS

#1 Most popular 3D apps support B3D and X these days. My favourite tool for file translation Ultimate unwrap also supports DTS.

#2 Ultimate unwrap is 49.95, which is a bit too much for me at the moment.

#3 Milkshape3d free 30 day trial 25.00 registration

#4 Will Milkshape3d import .B3D or .x?

#5 Yes, the new versions come with b3d and x inport standard.

never messed with them tho.

#6 Ummmmm.....I see b3d and x EXPORTERS in the latest Milkshape, but I cannot seem to find importers. Sure about that?

#7 A little searching of the forums for milkshape and you will find this post.

http://www.swissquake.ch/chumbalum-soft/forum/showthread.php3?s=1cbc680a8df0ed10bbe66d9a58fe875e&threadid=12972&highlight=import+.B3D

There is a 3rd party importer for the .x and .b3d formats.

#8 Ahhh, thank you very much. I was misguided by the poster that stated they were standard.

#9 You can import .x into Gamespace and export as .dts files.

#10 David: That post at the chUmbaLum sOft Forum links to a completely different product (LightRay3D) that is being used as an example of the feature the poster is asking for. In other words, that product can import .b3d and .x files, not MilkShape.

It would be possible to import them into LightRay3D and then export them as MilkShape files, but the license is almost 70 euros. It would be cheaper to buy TreeMagik Pro at $34.95 which exports in more formats.

#11 In MilkShape 3D, goto Tools, DirectX Mesh Tools and click on the open file icon.

#12 The problem with treemajik isnt in import and exporting, the problem is in leaf transpaency,s, according to alien web page thay were working with gg to fix this problem.

you can make many trees without leaf,s nicely.


Mikeg

#13 Nice tool :-)

Image from www.aliencodec.com (Screenshot of the moment)

#14 I see what you mean, someone got it to work with torque, now we just need to find the person and shake
the ans out of him :)



mikeg

#15 This is just some quick instructions. I will probably change these after work.

Getting TreemagikPLUS:
1) Download the full install and the update (1.0b at time of writing)
2) Install both as they describe.

Create the tree. Some basic instructions are found on their product page here about half-way down.

Saving:
1) Click on Access then Save.
2) Type the name of the tree.
3) Make sure the 'Export as .X' is checked then press yes.
4) Choose Option 1.
5) Choose Option 1.

Converting using ms3d:
1) Start MilkShape 3D.
2) Click on Tools then DirectX Mesh Tools.
3) Click on the open icon (far left) and open up your saved tree.
4) Click on the save icon (2nd from left) to save it to ms3d.
5) Click on the Materials tab and for each of the materials that should have transparency:
5a) Select the material.
5b) Make sure the right slider is not all the way to the right. (it is right underneath Emissive) This will tell the exporter to use transparency on the material.
6) Click on File, Export, Torque Game Engine DTS.
7) Make sure Export material information is clicked.

Getting the images to show up:
1) Resize them to 256x256 (or something that is a power of 2 on each side).
2) Convert the bmp file to a png file with transparency.


Issues:
1) The leaves will not show up quite right because you need to actually split up those polygons more. (I might create a plugin to do so...)
2) The skin might be a little off depending on if you resized the skin or actually redid it.
3) You still need to create a collision mesh and a LOD mesh.

#16 Cool resource, thanks for the share.

#17 Sigh, I did not get to it tonight and probably won't be able to get to it tomorrow. On the other hand, I believe I gave enough information to get most people through it (I hope). If not, then say so.

#18 I messed with this a little last night and couldn't get the leaf background to ever be transparent. The foiliage files are bmp's so I converted them to png's and set the background to transparent using the Gimp. I then removed all materials from milkshape and reassigned my new png versions. This seemed to work while in milkshape but after the export the leaves are invisable on one side, makes for a strange effect.

#19 Sounds like you made the dts correctly (made sure to move the slider on each one.) You should not need to remove the materials. I am pretty sure the dts just stores the file name without the extension. So if you name the png file the same as the bitmap then it would work.

I am guessing that somehow you removed the double-sided polys and ended up with single sided ones. (They just create triangles on both sides.)

In other words, try again except don't remove the materials. (I regrouped them as one and it worked for me.)

#20 I tried your suggestion but had the same results. I looked at the .x file exported by TreeMagik and each Mesh Object associated with a leaf group has 32 verticies, 2 sets of 16 unique points (double the visible veticies in milkshape) which I assume is to create the double-sided polys. However the .x file only exports 16 faces this is the part that dosn't seem right.