Skinning/Lightwave specific
by Media @ KrabbitSoft Studios Inc. · in Artist Corner · 06/16/2002 (8:22 am) · 5 replies
#2
EDIT: Teri, you posted just before I did, so perhaps what is below is not as useful to you after all...
Yes, the Simple UV Mapping for Games tutorial at www.lightwave3d.com/tutorials/ is a great example of skinning an object. All of the steps presented there can be applied to more complex objects, such as in the Max tutorial you referenced.
The only thing you'll not want to do in the LightWave tutorial is the second last step: joining back together the surfaces by pressing the 'm' key.
There is currently a limitation in the LightWave to DTS exporter that all vertices should only belong to a single surface (this is found in the Limitations section of the exporter docs). Joining the surfaces back together (or merging the points, which is what is actually occurring when you press the 'm' key) causes the vertices to belong to multiple surfaces. If you were to export your model with the vertices merged, the results would be undefined as only the first surface's UV coordinates for each vertex is actually used.
However, don't forget to finish with the last step of tripling the polygons, as Torque also needs all polygons to be triangles.
Hope that helps you out. And thanks for the first LightWave related question!
- LightWave Dave
06/16/2002 (10:14 am)
Greetings!EDIT: Teri, you posted just before I did, so perhaps what is below is not as useful to you after all...
Yes, the Simple UV Mapping for Games tutorial at www.lightwave3d.com/tutorials/ is a great example of skinning an object. All of the steps presented there can be applied to more complex objects, such as in the Max tutorial you referenced.
The only thing you'll not want to do in the LightWave tutorial is the second last step: joining back together the surfaces by pressing the 'm' key.
There is currently a limitation in the LightWave to DTS exporter that all vertices should only belong to a single surface (this is found in the Limitations section of the exporter docs). Joining the surfaces back together (or merging the points, which is what is actually occurring when you press the 'm' key) causes the vertices to belong to multiple surfaces. If you were to export your model with the vertices merged, the results would be undefined as only the first surface's UV coordinates for each vertex is actually used.
However, don't forget to finish with the last step of tripling the polygons, as Torque also needs all polygons to be triangles.
Hope that helps you out. And thanks for the first LightWave related question!
- LightWave Dave
#3
OK, here's another location you could try. I knew I had it in my archives somewhere:
www.planetquake.com/modeling
I learned how to do low-poly modeling waaayy back using this site. I see there's a section on skinning and some example objects, so hopefully it'll help out. It hasn't been updated for quite a while, but the techniques should still be valid.
Enjoy!
- LightWave Dave
06/16/2002 (10:34 am)
Greetings Teri!OK, here's another location you could try. I knew I had it in my archives somewhere:
www.planetquake.com/modeling
I learned how to do low-poly modeling waaayy back using this site. I see there's a section on skinning and some example objects, so hopefully it'll help out. It hasn't been updated for quite a while, but the techniques should still be valid.
Enjoy!
- LightWave Dave
#4
Here's one more:
www.borderequals0.org/articles/uv_intro.cfm
It shows how to do UV mapping using two approaches in LightWave 7 for Serious Sam models. Serious Sam uses LW for all models, so it may be worthwhile to search for tutorials for that game. I'd originally found this tutorial on www.flay.com
Enjoy!
- LightWave Dave
06/16/2002 (10:45 am)
Greetings again Teri!Here's one more:
www.borderequals0.org/articles/uv_intro.cfm
It shows how to do UV mapping using two approaches in LightWave 7 for Serious Sam models. Serious Sam uses LW for all models, so it may be worthwhile to search for tutorials for that game. I'd originally found this tutorial on www.flay.com
Enjoy!
- LightWave Dave
#5
1. how to bake a texture, with the cow as an example.
if you follow this exactly you will end up with a model and texture that is ready for the dts exporter for exporting to dts as long as the model conforms to the limitations of the exporter that are documented with the exporter.
then follow the great instructions dave provided with the exporter.
no need to jump thru all the hoops that that max tutrorial lists. It took about 3 tries for me to export the cow to torque, mainly because I did not see the "limitations" part of the docs until I went and re-read them COMPLETELY.
PS: yes all that open an new browswer window, copy / paste crap is a pain and extra effort that you should not have to go thru to try and help someone.
06/16/2002 (3:15 pm)
everything you need to know is on the link I posted.1. how to bake a texture, with the cow as an example.
if you follow this exactly you will end up with a model and texture that is ready for the dts exporter for exporting to dts as long as the model conforms to the limitations of the exporter that are documented with the exporter.
then follow the great instructions dave provided with the exporter.
no need to jump thru all the hoops that that max tutrorial lists. It took about 3 tries for me to export the cow to torque, mainly because I did not see the "limitations" part of the docs until I went and re-read them COMPLETELY.
PS: yes all that open an new browswer window, copy / paste crap is a pain and extra effort that you should not have to go thru to try and help someone.
Torque Owner Jarrod Roberson
This was really hard to find :)