Create units with OpenFX

[Smoking mirror]

You can set a texture as reflection, (Such as the sky reflected in a window) but I've not looked in to it yet.

Its also good for leaderheads and tech icons etc...

 

[muffins]

Can raytracing help with making units at all? Or is it just for making pretty pictures (which is a good enough reason)? I had a go with reflection, but I got too much pink reflected from the ground.

Also what exactly is raytracing, is it just a more accurate way of doing reflections and transparency?

Ray-tracing works out the paths of light-rays so that you get really good shadows, reflections, glass and better pic quality. If you turn on ray-tracing then you tank's gun barrel will cast a shadow on the tank's hull instead of only on the ground.

It also allows objects that have been given reflective attributes to actually be reflective.

It's probably only really useful for pedia-pics, leaderheads, wonder splashes and title screans though. Ray-tracing takes much longer than the explosion post-pro to render.

I might experiment with the shadow ray-tracing in unit animations though

 

[Neomega]

I might experiment with the shadow ray-tracing in unit animations though

Do you mean your units did not have shadow ray-tracing on? I didn't even notice, but now to think about it, they did seem kind of bright....

edit: I looked at the screnshots, and sure enough, no ray-tracing... amazing they came out looking so good still. I noticed actually the camoflauge helped hide the lacjk of object shadows.

BTW, raytracing shadows takes up hardly any extra time at all. I only use one light, and this may be why it seems very simple to turn on ray-tracing shadows.

 

[Mackel-Loos]

I've done a Macedonian Foot Companion model.
I want to add differents objects into one (for exemple, the helmet is composed of 14 differents objects).
How can I do that ?

 

[Dease]

I've done a Macedonian Foot Companion model.
I want to add differents objects into one (for exemple, the helmet is composed of 14 differents objects).
How can I do that ?

^not a stupid question ^

as for the answer, it is possible to wled all those objects together, just have all the objects selected and go to actions-->weld and insert 0.01 in the little box(that's the smallest # I can get to work). The problem with this is that, depending on the objects it may mess it up so save before you try. Ususally I only use that method after using the boolean action.
for your helmet, if the above messes it up just make it all the same colour and just use the select by colour command

 

[The Great Apple]

as for the answer, it is possible to wled all those objects together, just have all the objects selected and go to actions-->weld and insert 0.01 in the little box(that's the smallest # I can get to work). The problem with this is that, depending on the objects it may mess it up so save before you try. Ususally I only use that method after using the boolean action.
for your helmet, if the above messes it up just make it all the same colour and just use the select by colour command

A few things about welding:
1) It messes up smoothing, you'll have to fiddle witht the material setting to get it back on (it can look dodgy). It also retets the welded faces to the default colour.
2) For the distance it depends on the size of your model - the default is the distance your curser is from the nearest selected vertex (this can help alot)
3) AWAYS SAVE. Undoing weld operations is one thing I have found will consistantly crash the program.

 

[Dease]

Finally... Blender has no vertice limit.

OpenFX has a vertex limit what is it???

also, if any one's interested PSP 9! beta has been release you can get a 86 day ( ) free trial! yay!

 

[Tzar Sasha]

OpenFX has a vertex limit what is it???

65535 vertices. Anything above that you've got to break it down into seperate models....

also, if any one's interested PSP 9! beta has been release you can get a 86 day ( ) free trial! yay!

I know but my system isn't powerful enough for it.... Well, I've got the system, but with Windows running there wouldn't be enough RAM leftover to do anything usefull.

 

[Mackel-Loos]

Thanks for your answers, I will try them... and save my model before.

 

[Nice Guy_4000]

Okay, I've animated my unit, and rendered as a FLC, but flicster crashes when I try to open it.What for the love of Rudy am I missing?

 

[Neomega]

Okay, I've animated my unit, and rendered as a FLC, but flicster crashes when I try to open it.What for the love of Rudy am I missing?

Flcister can only open .fxm or civ III .flc's.... in other words, you need to make a stroyboard, and then convert the unit to a .pcx storyboard, which Flicster can read through it's corresponding .fxm file.

Or to be more precise.... you should thoroughly read the FLICster thread.

 

[Nice Guy_4000]

Ah, I see. Thanks Neomega. That helps. Although, this seems to be the least of my unit creating problems at the moment. Personally I find OpenFX rather user unfriendly. I've been making models in Anim8or to make my models. I wish OpenFX's skeleton building was easier.

 

[Dease]

65535 vertices. Anything above that you've got to break it down into seperate models....

I see, for some reason that number reminds me of somthing, i just can't think of what....

also for texture starved models I just found an amazing site with over 5000 tileable textures ,although some are useless for civ purposes
link

 

[The Great Apple]

I see, for some reason that number reminds me of somthing, i just can't think of what....

http://www.mjwall.com/node/view/156

Good olde google!

TBH, if you hit that amount of verticies your model is probably too detailed for civ anyway, probably about 30,000 faces I'd guess... I've yet to make a model over 15,000!

 

[Dease]

Ah yes it is the # of ports

All my human models have been less than 10k although my next one will be much more if I have my way with openfx

 

[Mackel-Loos]

Where can I found some (free) human and horse models for open FX ?

 

[Dease]

IIRC 3dcafe.com has lots

 

[pesoloco]

Is there a program that will convert the output of OpenFX (AVI,FLI,or GIF) to a storyboard? (Even if it is just a single direction, like north)

I've been using OpenFX for over a year now and have been exporting to GIF. Then using GIF Constrruction set to copy each frame
and paste it into a FLICster storyboard. It's rather time consuming but gets the job done.

If anyone could tell me an easier way to turn the animations from OpenFX into a storyboard, I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Neomega]

Is there a program that will convert the output of OpenFX (AVI,FLI,or GIF) to a storyboard? (Even if it is just a single direction, like north)

I've been using OpenFX for over a year now and have been exporting to GIF. Then using GIF Constrruction set to copy each frame
and paste it into a FLICster storyboard. It's rather time consuming but gets the job done.

If anyone could tell me an easier way to turn the animations from OpenFX into a storyboard, I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks in advance.

Get Stephs storyboard version 1.04, write an animation to bmps, and say (no you do not want to change it when prompted). It is the fastest way, once you figure out Steph's tool.... (it has some idiosyncrasies)

 

[pesoloco]

OK. I did get the storyboard builder. I've been trying to find a feature in openfx to export multiple frames to a series of bmps all at once but haven't had any luck

I did manually render each frame as a bmp and that worked fine.

Thanks.


EDIT: I got it - Thanks again