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Area Modeling Effects


harIII

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Hey guys, I know it's been a while but I do in fact still toy around with this stuff. Right now I'm working on a more "vivid" void world like the one we saw in KOTOR with the mystery box you pick up on the Ebon Hawk.

 

It's supposed to be something that looks like it's way on out in space on a very small asteroid. Something barely the size of a typical lot. I'm at having a few other asteroids floating around but I do have a few questions as far as adding in some nifty effects.

 

 

 

1. Pool of Water - How do I go about creating a nicely animated pool of water? There is a small platform which will be accessed by a bridge going across a small trench. I would like that trench to be filled with water.

 

2. Waterfall - How do I create a waterfall? I want a stationary asteroid which will be very close but above main asteroid you are standing on. I would like to have the waterfall come out of the asteroid above you and land in the pool of water.

 

3. Water Crest - How do I create a water crest as though water is beginning to rush off the edge of the asteroid you are currently standing on? I'd like to create the illusion that the water will overflow and fall right out into space.

 

4. Moving Models - How do I make models follow a certain path as well as rotate? I'd like to have other asteroids rotating on their axis as well as following a path as though they are in orbit around the main asteroid you are standing on.

 

 

 

Any help is greatly appreciated.

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1. Pool of Water - How do I go about creating a nicely animated pool of water? There is a small platform which will be accessed by a bridge going across a small trench. I would like that trench to be filled with water.

 

2. Waterfall - How do I create a waterfall? I want a stationary asteroid which will be very close but above main asteroid you are standing on. I would like to have the waterfall come out of the asteroid above you and land in the pool of water.

 

3. Water Crest - How do I create a water crest as though water is beginning to rush off the edge of the asteroid you are currently standing on? I'd like to create the illusion that the water will overflow and fall right out into space.

 

4. Moving Models - How do I make models follow a certain path as well as rotate? I'd like to have other asteroids rotating on their axis as well as following a path as though they are in orbit around the main asteroid you are standing on.

 

Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

1. Probably doable with textures like the water texture on Manaan or the Unknown world. A plane or other flat surface would probably work for this.

 

2. Again, probably doable by using the waterfall texture from Dantooine. I'd advise importing the Dantooine area models and having a look at the geometry for them. Additionally, placing an emitter at the base and maybe to top would help too. You can reference the ones from Dantooine in KAurora.

 

3 and 4. I'm fairly certain you won't be able to do either of these. 3 sounds out of the Odyssey engine's league. I don't even know how you'd go about doing that. 4 should technically be feasible, but for some reason I cannot get area models to animate at all. I've tried a number of times, but I have yet to export an area model with animations. But, to animate that, you'd basically set up the path of the asteroids, and then add the rotation as part of the animation. Then, theoretically you'd use MDLOps to compile it. However, as I said, may or may not work for you. I've tried this before and it hasn't worked for me yet.

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Animated Placeables will be the easiest to implement.

 

The problem that I've encountered when trying to do this is that the placeable (or door for that matter) disappears in game when the camera rotates very far past one of the visual hooks or dummies. If you have a placeable or door larger than a few meters wide, this is an incredibly annoying problem.

 

But if anyone knows the solution, please inform me by all means, I'd really like to hear it.

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Actually, today, I was doing some testing on the Sleheyron door. By adding two additional "lookathook" dummies 10 meters on either side of the door in the ASCII file, I was able to rectify this problem. It still registers the original dummy as the one that gets highlighted for selection and all, but the camera/field of view responds to all three. So no more disappearing door, which was highly distracting in my opinion.

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When I was trying to create a Mos Eisley for K2

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The ships I created were 'creatures'. I clipped a ship from an existing module and gave it a take off or landing animation in gmax. it would successfully loop during gameplay. Similar idea to creating a placeable. I just had to create the animation within the context of the new area.

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The ships I created were 'creatures'. I clipped a ship from an existing module and gave it a take off or landing animation in gmax. it would successfully loop during gameplay. Similar idea to creating a placeable. I just had to create the animation within the context of the new area.

 

Interesting, I wasn't aware that making an animation as a creature rather than a placeable would work. I will have to try this out. That will definitely work for any area animations.

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