3DS Max Texture Issue

[polyphemus]

So I'm rigging my textures to fit right, but for some reason, one side is always darker than the other. I can't find any illumination options in the material editor either...

 

[polyphemus]

once i put a map on the object, the self illumintation goes away????

 

[tom2050]

There should be a self-illumination map IIRC, perhaps not on all the types of shaders (Blinn has it, etc, whereas some like Strauss I don't see it). You might need to add a S-I map... not sure what one would/should look like though.

Do you render the unit with a Magenta Background in 3ds? I had to figure out how to do it all initially when I was clueless, so am still using mostly the same way today, I went ahead and made a .max file with lights and background setup. The spots and omni's provide all illumination and shadows and can be adjusted in strength. Only thing with this setup is, dark shadows are only cast on the ground, and not on the unit itself. Speeds up rendering though, and most of the time, doesn't make much of a difference.

 

[polyphemus]

so i dont know if you or anyone remembers, but level made a unit tutorial in 3ds max...and so i used that setup file. apparently one of the omni lights in the setup made it dark, so i just deleted all that until i get the texturing done. Also, how do you render through the setup camera? You can add cameras to the scene, but how do you "look" through them?

 

[polyphemus]

Do you render the unit with a Magenta Background in 3ds?

Yeah i finally figured it out too, took me forever though...and for some reason, the site i uploaded the png file to, set the magenta to transparent

 

[tom2050]

so i dont know if you or anyone remembers, but level made a unit tutorial in 3ds max...and so i used that setup file. apparently one of the omni lights in the setup made it dark, so i just deleted all that until i get the texturing done. Also, how do you render through the setup camera? You can add cameras to the scene, but how do you "look" through them?

This was the biggest pain, and I spent many weeks (or mo's?) in-fact on this one trying to figure out how to 'spin around' the center object (which I found out you really can't do easily). Someone did make a plug-in to do it that is free, but I couldn't get it to work.

So, finally with the help of Atlantica Online imports (yes, the imports helped me a bit), I use a Bone structure and tie it to the unit. This can be done in the Schematic View (Graph Editors -> New Schemeatic View); or I right click the Perspectic Window on the Perspectic text -> Views -> Schematic -> New (or choose one you have made).

Then you can 'Put your object together'. Top object should be the ROOT Bone that controls it all, and the ROOT should be dead center at 0, 0 (z I sometimes set at 0 or even lower at -1 or something).

Then once everything is Connected to the ROOT... you use the ROOT to spin your object. You can Rotate the ROOT z axis at 0, 45, 90, 135, 180, -135, -90, -45 to get all the views.

I'm not even that familiar with the whole bone structure thingies... I only know that a bone can be used for controlling objects very well for animation purposes, and I've finally gotten a better grasp on them while making the Steampunk Island.

It's a pain to actually do this and render each one while sitting there, and since Batch Render is only useful to an extent... I ended up making a MAXScript which renders and then rotates (the Root 45 deg) and renders again.

Sounds complicated, but I can send you a sample MAX file (or one with one of the AO units in it) and the MAXscript file so you can see what I'm talking about, it's pretty easy. I even made a windows batch file to copy all the rendered files to their correct direction folders, so I can use Stephs SBB program to then make the Storyboards in the most efficient way I could. Alot of this was from info I found online also when I was trying to figure stuff out long myself long, long, ago (a yr I think). But it has worked pretty well for me so far.

I think I even posted everything I use somewhere, but can't remember where it is

 

[polyphemus]

could you just parent everything to say an invisible sphere? then just rotate the sphere?

 

[polyphemus]

or is that essentially what you did?

 

[tom2050]

pretty much... you could just create 1 single 'anything' really.. doesn't have to be a bone object. you could make an invisible sphere, and then attach everything else to the inv sphere (in the schematic view) and then rotate that.

I would make the sphere super small though and place it right in the center 0x0 and then place the object over it to how you want it to rotate. Will do the same thing.

 

[polyphemus]

k, yeah this is very similar to how i did it in poser

im still confused on how i can get a good camera view...is it just trial and error then (the perspective view is different than the render view)? cuz i want a static camera that i can just rotate around the unit. Oh, and is there a way to specify exactly the size of the perspective view?

the camera views are just really throwing me off...so do you recommend manualy adjusting the view to 0 degrees, the rotating the object from there?

 

[tom2050]

I go to View -> Create Camera from view. It will be called something like Camera01. You can put this camera into the position you want. You can then switch to perspective to zoom in and around your object so you can see them or while you continue to build it.

Often from the Camera view I just eye it to center it. And I test the render size (e.g. 200x200) to get the unit to right size it should be. I made and use this image which is setup to know where the offsets are supposed to be.

It is the max image size of 240x240. The circle in the image is exactly where the circle is in game. So you can line up your unit inside the circle and then know the offsets to set it to.

The Camera has alot of options. But most of the time, I don't change any of the default settings.

The thing is, the camera is static, no easy way to rotate it, which is why you have the sphere or Root object created before with the unit attached to it (connect everything to it in the schematic view). Then you just rotate the sphere (z axis) to spin the object.

 

[polyphemus]

i think if you chose target cam, you can then set the pivot point to the center of the object, and rotate from there

 

[tom2050]

I think the problem is specifying the number of degrees to pivot it though. I can't remember though. If it allows that, then you could do so.... you have to keep it level and at same distance also. Also the pivot object has to be dead center, so in essence it is the same as rotating the object using the rotate and changing the z axis to 0, 45, 90, 135... etc.

 

[polyphemus]

yeah pretty much the same, i went with the rotate ball prop method...man this program is powerful learned how to use motors, reactors, particle systems, and ripples all within a few hours

 

[polyphemus]

yeah rendering all this is a pain...i might be interested in that script you have....hehe