Create units with OpenFX

[Tzar Sasha]

Well, I gave it a try anyway.
It seems to work. It makes the ship image a little smaller, but for what I'm doing that is okay. I suppose that the model could be scaled larger prior to rendering to compensate for this. I've been at it for maybe half an hour and I've rendered as FLC, wrote to GIF, applied pallete, converted to PCX while overwriting individual PCX cells from flicster for both the SW and S directions. Quicker than I thought it would take.

I'm sure though that someday I may have a unit that this method won't work on.....

 

[Neomega]

I played with 3dfx for a while..... any way to add textures to a model?.... I really could not find it. I just uninstalled it, but now I may re-install it.

re: shades of magenta... put them in your alpha blend palette slots in your PCX storyboards.

Rhinoceros evaluation can do quite a few conversions of models to various formats.

 

[Supa]

Can we hope a following to this great tutorial ?

 

[TheMorpheus]

Yes, if I find the time I will continue with the tutorial. I will demonstrate the creation of a attack animation and a death animation.

 

[Kenta'arka]

Yes, if I find the time I will continue with the tutorial. I will demonstrate the creation of a attack animation and a death animation.

Cool, can't wait to try a hand on an attack anim

 

[Kenta'arka]

Heh, I tried it on my own. Wasn't easy to figure it out (and I bet I made some serious mistakes ) but I got a death and an attack anim done:

 

[Neomega]

Nice.... I need to learn how to use this.

 

[Adler17]

Nice job! Can you explain, how you managed that, since Morpheus doesn´t seem to have time? I´m a bit unpatient.

Adler

 

[Kenta'arka]

Nice job! Can you explain, how you managed that, since Morpheus doesn´t seem to have time? I´m a bit unpatient.
Adler

k, it's quite easy
for the death anim, I splitted the mesh in two parts in the designer, and saved both parts as models. In animator I removed the full mesh, and instead put the two parts in. Make the first and the last frame keyframes, for the first move the two parts together that they look like the complete mesh, in the last frame move them apart from each other. Then insert a new light at the center of the meshs (0/0/1), flag it as dummy light and check the "attenuate" box. Last insert a postpro "fireball", set specified light to the dummy light you just created. Now there should be a nice explosion when you render the anim.

for teh attack anim, I set 2 new dummy lights. one at the position of the mesh where the laser beams should start, and one for the target. (for the target, don't forget to set it attenuate) Morpheus told me he uses 0.00/-2.00/1.00 as target location. Then insert a postpro "Lasers", set it to originate from the light you put next to the mesh, and to travel to the target light. Last insert a postpro "Fireball" and assign it to the target light.

I bet Morpheus will explain that much better when he continues the tutorial, and I bet I also made some silly mistakes

 

[Adler17]

Thanks.

Adler

 

[Adler17]

I made a default flic out of a Runabout model. Then I tried to implement the flc into a game to test the original, but whenever I started the game the program hung up. What did I wromg?

Adler

 

[Kenta'arka]

OpenFX renders standard flc files. Civ3 can't read those. You have to use Flicster to generate the flc file, Flicster is the only program to make civ3 compatible flc files.

 

[Adler17]

Again: Thanks.

Adler

 

[Adler17]

Okay, I´ve downloaded Flicster and now I have much more problems than I thought. How can I change my flics into civ flics. I do not have much time to read 200+ posts. Is there a short way to explain?

Adler

 

[Kenta'arka]

Yeah, it's simple. Let's say your animation got 20 Frames with a resolution of 240x180.
Now you open flicster, load any unit animation, doesn't matter which. Go to export, set it to Storyboard, set frame size to 240x180, frame count to 20, set the folder where you want ti, and hit the export button. Now you import the SBB created Storyboard into the storyboard glicster just created (keep an eye on the pallet, the first 64 colros of the pallet are civ-specifics, the next 80 colors usable, the next 111 for shadows and the last (magenta usually) is transparent(I think the position of the transparent depends on your program, for Corel Photopaint it's the last, in PSP it's the first (not sure))) after saving the Storyboard you open the .mfx file (flicster created it together with the storyboard, and 2 pallet files) check if everything looks correct (check alpha blend to see if magenta is transparent). If everything is file, go to export, set the name and hit export button

 

[Adler17]

Thanks again. I never did something like this.

Adler

 

[Kenta'arka]

Me neither, and I got a serious pallet problem, i was working on the attack anim for a ship, but the red parts of the cloud mix with the magenta background. The result is, that the explo is pink in game, looks not like star trek, more like a bully film

 

[Adler17]

DELETED

Adler

 

[Adler17]

Sorry. I though I got something. How can I make a bmp out of a flic or giv?

Adler

 

[Kenta'arka]

Just render it as single bmps