I'm On A Mission...
Serge_THE_GREAT
Join Date: 2005-02-15 Member: 41322Members
Join Date: 2005-02-15 Member: 41322Members
So, I was playing at my favorite server yesterday and the admin wants me to make a model for them. This model is suppose to be a glass cube that can hold some marines to act as a ready room (on maps that don't actually have built-in ready rooms). However, I have no idea where to start. I got Milkshape but this thing makes no sense and isn't helping me whatsoever. Could someone please tell me what I need to do? I have always wanted to learn how to make some models for games, and this would be a decent way to start. Please help, I would appreciate it very, very much.
Side Note: I want to physically make this model myself but some guidelines would be good.
Side Note: I want to physically make this model myself but some guidelines would be good.
Comments
EDIT: Also, I am really shocked at the lack of help on this section of the forums. There are other threads here too that haven't even recieved a single reply.
1) Add a bone to the model, most likely in the lower middle
2) Assign all vertexes to that bone
3) Get a "blank" .qc file and modify it to fit your desires
4) Compile
@3) If you want it simple, go to your model's directory and create a new .txt file. Now copy and paste
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->$modelname "box.mdl"
$cd ".\"
$cdtexture ".\"
$scale 1.0
$cliptotextures
$bbox 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000
$cbox 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000
$eyeposition 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000
$body "studio" "ref"
$sequence "idle" "idle" fps 30 <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
into it, save it, now rename the .txt to .qc .
Then make sure that your reference smd is called "ref.smd" and the sequence "idle.smd". Then you can compile it via the .qc you created (if everything is in the same directory, that is.
Problems compiling? Here are some of the most common errors:
1) You didn't assign a material/ a blank material with no bmp to one of the groups, or at worse to all of them. Always apply materials on all groups or it can't be compiled.
2) The .bmp isn't in 256 colour mode. You can change that via a picture editing program, like GIMP.
3) .smd's named falsely
4) You messed up teh reference/sequence .smd's. To create working ref/seq smd's follow this:
a) Create a Joint in the lower side of the box, in the middle of the side.
b) Go to the Joints tab, select the joint, select all vertices, hit Assign
c) Go to animation mode and limit the animation cycle to 1 or 2 frames (You won't need more as long as there is no movement in the model)
d) Go to File/export/half life smd , name it "ref.smd", compile as reference.
e) Go to File/export/half life smd , name it "idle.smd", compile as sequence.
<!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile-fix.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile-fix.gif' /><!--endemo-->
+"A glass cube used as ready room"?
WTH? If you talk about it being used in a ready room it is OK, but AS a ready room would much more demand a mapper, not a modeller O_o
EDIT: Oh yeah. the admin has that ent mod on the server, he wants to use that entitiy for something. I asked him if he wanted it for a ready room (just to make sure) a few days ago and he said no. I was confused, because I was positive he wanted it for that. However, I hope it can fit at least two or three marines at it's current size.
EDIT2: I can't believe I forgot to say this, thanks for the help!
Oh, and I'd like to help you more, but unfortunately you seem to use ms3d 1.7.x because I cannot open it. Could you please zip up the reference smd and attach it so I can have a look?
Oh, and for glass cubes I suggest to make the walls thinner.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->the texture isn't showing up though for some reason<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Right click into the 3D window, select "Textured"
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> I'd also like to ask how I can get rid of the seperate blocks from showing in the glass. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
You created the cubes in a wrong way. Have a look at this sketch:
<img src='http://mitglied.lycos.de/adolfkrug/serge_sketch1.jpg' border='0' alt='user posted image' />
And now here I got a step-by-step instruction on how to create that structure.
1) Create a box
2) Select that box (the faces of it, not only the vertexes!), and hit CTRL+D. You won't see a difference but you just dublicated that box!
3) Do not unselect it! Instead, just switch to the "Scale" option and change all 3 axis' values to about 0.95. Then hit the "Scale" button right next to these boxes again and again until the inner box has the correct size.
4) While still having the faces selected, hit "CTRL+SHIFT+F", followed by a "CTRL+M". The first command turned the faces around, so that the inner box' walls face inwards and are visible from the inside. The second command updated the smoothing according to welded vertexes and the smoothing groups, but that is not important right now, as you only have 2 boxes.
5) After the "CTRL+M", if the smoothing gets somehow corrupted (you will notice strange "shadows" on the formerly bald faces in the 3D window) just select all vertexes of both boxes and hit "CTRL+SHIFT+W". This unwelds the vertexes, and another "CTRL+M" will show the bald sides again.
This is only a quick fix and not suitable for more complex models. As a start, you may try to assign the boxes' sides that are connected to DIFFERENT smoothing groups, this will fix the smoothing as well.
Don't forget "CTRL+M" when assigning faces to a new group. here are plenty of smoothing group tutorials out there which are easy to understand, so you better try to read them because even thes best model can be ruined by miserable smoothing.
6) Now you have 2 boxes inside each other, and the visable edges are reduces to a minimum. If you want the model to be open to one side, do the following:
7) Select all faces on one side of the 2 boxes, let's say the faces facing upwards on the upper ends of the boxes. To select only them, just select all faces but then deselect all the other faces by doing a "Shift+R-Click" select on the vertexes on the other end.
8) Delete those faces! Now the 2 boxes will be open to one end, but you can see into the gap between the walls! Oh noes! So let's hurry to
9) The creation of a good looking opening.
10) First off, select the vertexes of the inner box that are closest to the opening. Now, go to the "Move" tab and deselect the X and the Z axis. This requires that you created the opening at the top of the boxes!
Having only the Y axis selected will elimate any strange placement of vertexes because you can only move them into one direction. This is a very important element of ms3d! Get used to it <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile-fix.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile-fix.gif' /><!--endemo-->
11) Pull the vertexes you selected up, until they are at the height of the outer box' top vertexes. Make sure that the gap is as small as possible, or you will lose the square-sided character of teh outer box!
12) Now select the outer box' top vertexes AS WELL and hit "CTRL+SHIFT-Y", which will equal those vertexes' Y level and create a 100% perfect plaing surface.
13) Not select the box' LOWER vertexes and hit "CTRL+H", which will hide the, ("CTRL+SHIFT-H" unhides everything btw). Being unable to select thos vertexes is important for the next step.
14) Go to a 2D window with "Top View". Now, use the "Face" tool to select those vertexes and to close the "gap" between the boxes.
15) You create faces by clicking on 3 vertexes after each other. The face created will face TOWARDS the point of view you created them in when you selected them in COUNTER-CLOCKWISE order. Backwards=Clockwise. Keep that in mind!
16) Fill up the gaps. Done!
Steps 7) - 12)
<img src='http://mitglied.lycos.de/adolfkrug/serge_sketch2.jpg' border='0' alt='user posted image' />
Steps 13) - 16)
<img src='http://mitglied.lycos.de/adolfkrug/serge_sketch3.jpg' border='0' alt='user posted image' />
Attachment: Example model created this way. Be sure to check out the smoothing groups!
EDIT: By the way, this is the one that I made earlier, I haven't made the one from your instructions just yet.
EDIT2: Oh yeah, I don't need an opening for the box by the way. I'm starting to wonder if the admin want's it as a jail cell!
Here, try this. And try to use sketch1 to rebuild teh cube (Just create 2 boxes inside each other, reverse the inner one's faces.
Oh yeah, whenever I try to load my cube model it says "Error loading texture ".\Glass Test2.JPG": could not open file [1290].
Error downloading material: "Material01"
" on the message window. Then I have to put the texture on again to see how it looks. Am I forgetting something?
And it is looking much better now.
If you want to find out how big it is compared to a rine, then decompile the soldier.mdl and import the marine_ref.smd (But WITHOUT the skeleton/Bones!) and then scale the boxes to your desire ^^
Oh, btw, where did you get that texture you use for the glass effect? Could you post please post it? <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile-fix.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile-fix.gif' /><!--endemo-->
Thank you <i>so</i> much for the help and I hope you will be able to continue helping me with this if I need it!
EDIT: The glass effect shown in the picture above me is the normal texture with the Emissive value set all the way to the left. However, the glass I am currently using (but may change) is this file.
Ingame it will most likely be look-throug, but I think some strange smoothing error bugs will occur because the HL enginge still has troubles with transparency on models <!--emo&:(--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/sad-fix.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad-fix.gif' /><!--endemo-->
$modelname "Cube11.mdl"
$cd ".\"
$cdtexture ".\"
$scale 1.0
$cliptotextures
$bbox 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000
$cbox 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000
$eyeposition 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000
$body "studio" "ref"
$sequence "idle" "idle" fps 30
Now, after this I saved it. I renamed it to Cube11.qc, opened up Milkshape and went to Tools/Half-Life/Compile QC File... and it didn't show up on the Open screen. What the heck did I do wrong? Could someone please assist me here?
Speaking of that, I zipped up the tools I use for you, the names should be self explanatory. I also added an icon you can use for the .qc filetype, so it is easier to spot in between the other files.
About the skeleton, well, just don't import a skeleton. Have one single bone in the middle of the boxes which all vertexes are assigned to. Then decompile the soldier.mdl and import the marine_ref.smd WITHOUT the skeleton (you can select that when importing the .smd) and scale the boxes appropriately.
One more note about the compiler/decompiler:
You have to associate them to the respective file types (compiler to .qc , decompiler to .mdl), but do not make the the primary program to open them with. For .mdls set it up like this:
1) OPEN -> jHLMV
2 Decompile -> Decompiler.exe
For .qcs:
1) EDIT -> Notepad ot Wordpad or any other simply text editor.
2) Compile -> Compiler.exe
And yet another note:
I'd suggest creating .bat files for each .exe and to add a "pause" command to them, so it looks like this:
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->(Path to the folder you have the .exe's in)\Compiler.exe %1
pause<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This will leave the window open which the .exe's open up, even after the compiling/decompiling process is done. This way you can check for errors which you otherwise wouldn't notice because of the short time they are displayed.
Then you have to edit the .qc to manually include the hitbox coordinates, which is kinda trial&error, but if you got one side right you have the right co-ords for the other sides as well because you can just switch the axis.
:EDIT: rofl, just noticed with all teh crap I wrote in here this thead might be good for almost every beginning modeller o_O