Triumvirate Lords Of The Third Dimension

[disbeliever]

i emailed you back

[Quanon]

Got them, mailed back

 

I wonder where all the other people around here went to... its so quite...

[disbeliever]

replied to you once again. Still a bit confused

[disbeliever]

And I know, its quiet. Maybe SS will shock us with an update

[Sithspecter]

Sorry, no updates. Still very busy. But just you wait till this summer.

[Quanon]

Back to the Grand Canyon SS

 

To go Jawa hunting !

[disbeliever]

I emaile dyou Q, having issues

 

What does it mean when I am trying to fastlink all to the aurorabase, and i get a message saying "more than one aurorabase found in selection" even though i only have one aororabase?

 

I am making cut ups, and only have 4 buildings in this cut, i add the aurorabase name it set it to other (you cant click center in my verison of max). I set the aurorabase to coords 0,0,0, I set my pivot points for all the buildings to pivot 0,0,0, try, select all objects using select by name, including the auroabase and whatever the "ignore NGon01" is, hit fast link and get that error

 

this is the second cut file im trying to make. I made the first one with just the platform and the walkmesh, and had no problems exporting or fastlinking it

[Quanon]

Seen your mails

[disbeliever]

I sent ya 2 more emails Sorry to be such a bother for you. This just isnt my thing.

 

I "cheated" as you would say in your tutorials, and made the walkmesh its own cut, 01a. The rest of the city is 01b-i and all exported fine. I imported into kaurora and saved as binary, all without any issues or errors. So I emailed you all of my ascii files and BIN files.

 

The part you mention about creating the mod file thats empty, and the 3 other files, I need help on. Not getting it at all. Thanks, its all in the last 2 emails I sent

[Sithspecter]

@Q: No more Grand Canyon for me.

 

Man, last summber seems like so long ago. Back then I was just a little newb with too much to do. Well, some things never change.

[Quanon]

Your no noob anymore SS !

 

You've actually done more expirements then me and found some awesome new stuff we can actaully do

 

Its kinda cool our group as grown a bit, 2 new members, to have fun and

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torture

with

[disbeliever]

in reference in the .lyt file for file dependancy, what is that about? Does that reference my mother max file before I made any cutups? Do I upload my 3dsm file to my kotor folders as well?

[disbeliever]

Failure!'

 

 

 

 

What could have gone wrong? Is this a lost cause?

[disbeliever]

I decided to go back to basics and start simple.

 

Instead of trying to have 9 peices I decided to only put 2 into the mod file for now, the walkmesh, and the platform. I recompiled everything, moved all files over. When I warped to my area, the platform shows up, however I cannot move.

 

What is going on?

 

See screenshot

 

[Quanon]

Hey Dis, got your mails on the subjects above.

 

Replied

 

And this is not failure, its your first humble steps into getting

your OWN new build area in the game, its a big undertaking.

[TriggerGod]

I've been gone because...

We'll, the saying "Life is a beach" is taking effect in my life. Haven't been able to get on this computer (or any computer for that matter) since Sunday.

 

I sure hope that when I finish my area, I will luck out and not hit into so many problems. But pessimism is saying that it will happen to me, and I will be a helpless noob again.

 

go away pessimism i want optimism

[disbeliever]

My ascii code for the walkmesh file has a section under "aabb" like you mentioned Q, that has hundreds and hundreds of entries with weird coords. Should they all be 0.0.0 etc?

[disbeliever]

Think im about to give up on this mess. I decided to just make one big area to test things out.

 

I selected all meshes, and affected pivot point only, and centered all meshes to object center. I then clicked on resetxform for everything. Then I added in the aurorabase, centered it and put it to x=0y=0z=0. I then linked everything to the aurorabase. All went fine. I did not even include a walkmesh with this, I just wanted to see the model in game and aligned properly. So all of this is just models/meshes.

 

I then exported the aurorabase geom only. All went well.

 

I then opened the ascii file in notepad, and saw that all of the orientations were jacked up. So I search and replaced everything, setting all mesh prientations to 1.0.0 etc as Q suggested.

 

I modified the are file, the git file and the lyt file. In the lyt file the area is set to 0,0,0,0,0,. I created a mod file for my huge area. After i finished everything, i put all the files in the proper folders under KOTOR.

 

I started a game and warped to my area. and I get this:

 

 

I have no idea why everything is jacked up, and it is beyond frusrating. I am sure you all have delt with this before, but I have no clue what i am doing. I downloaded marius's tutorials as Q suggested, and I have no idea what other orientations i could be missing. Everything I was told to do I did.

[Quanon]

wow, looks cool

 

I feel your pain Dis, but like you mentioned its part of the game.

I indeed fear, you might have to restart all over....

 

Looks like you did most of things actually right,but this is all "wonky" stuff at best.

So you can get bad and broken things whatever you do.

 

All I can say perhaps, is to indeed switch to another idea, something less big and try that out first.

 

Then pick up your grand idea again. You've climbed the steep learning curve quite well.

But its still all new to you

 

Letting loose of a nice 3D model can be hard; but sometimes thats all you can do :'(

Don't give it all up though, look back at what your learned.

[disbeliever]

I dont get this. Do you have any ideas?

 

I am now only using 2 cuts, the platform and the support collumns for the platform.

 

 

In 3dsm the orientation is the same in both files. I set all pivot poiints to center of object. I export both cuts.

 

I open both acii files, and make all orientations for all meshes in both ascii files 1.0.0.0.0. etc etc.

 

In the lyt file I make the area orientation 0.0.0.0.

 

So why are they rotated??? Why does the platform show up in the correct orientation, but the pillars do not???

[disbeliever]

Can you or someone please tell me why the orientation of the platform and pillars is off in game despite the prientations in the ascii files being identical as well as in the lyt file?

 

Even if i decide to scrap this and begin again, without knowing wtf went wrong, I am destined to fail over and over. There has to be a reason.

 

In 3dsm all is identical and fine.

 

In ascii files all is identical and fine.

 

In lyt file all is identical and fine

 

In game, not so much.

 

I can send someone the mdl files for the 2 cuts of the platform and pillar, but i really want to know what the hell is going wrong so I can learn to correct it

 

I realize everyone likes to take the "learn it for yourself" approach and let noobs stumble through things themselves, but if someone could figure this out for me, it would be appriciated

[Quanon]

To be honest Dis, I can't tell you why this goes wrong.

 

Now and then I just run into a wall just like you...god knows why the game turns it all around x(

 

Remember this is all done by tools written by fans, most tools still have "blanks" in what certain data does for the 3D meshes and stuff.

 

And saddly I suck noodles at the technical side (Maxscript and code stuff) of 3D.

 

Whenever I start to go and test an area in the game I need to hold a piece of wood and pray it comes out OK. Every time.

[disbeliever]

What other variables in whatever files control orientation? Is there anywhere else besides the orientation tags in the ascii files and the lyt file?

 

I just dont get it.

 

So if I redo from scratch a platform and pillars, I could go through all of the steps, and it could possibly work next time, but then not work another time?

 

Is the steps I did the correct steps? Can you review my methods?

 

1. Create 3d objects

2. Convert all objects to mesh

3. texture, resetxform on all objects

4. create auroradlights

5. select all meshes and lights, and affect pivot points and align to center of objects for all. resetxform again.

6. create an aurorabase, name it, and set it to x=0y=0z=0 DO NOT affect pivot points of the aurorbase

7. resetxform on everything one last time

8. fast link it all to AB

9. export ascii file

10. use KA to convert ascii to binary

11. create the mod file by modifying the .git file, the .are file and the module.ifo file.

12. create the .lyt file and name all area cuts in it.

13. move everything over to the kotor directories

14. warp to area.

 

Did i miss anything? Nevermind any steps for the actual modeling, I have that down. But the steps after it is what i am a horrible noob at. If i missed anything, or you missed anything in your "export large area" tute, can you please fill me in the steps?

 

This is frustrating.

[Quanon]

Okay I see about one fault in your order of things, I think this might be why things get rotated around.

 

I'll give my list of steps.

 

1) Create my 3d objects, the model in general really.

 

2) Convert to Mesh

 

3) Break / detach my larger models in smaller parts for the texturing job

 

4) After all the detaching I first put the pivotpoint to the center of all the new objects.

This is what I believe you did wrong.

 

5) Resetxform ( put off Save pivots points) and start texturing.

 

6) Add extra things like the AuroraLights and the walkmesh ( Resetxform them)

 

7) Before adding the AuroraBase, I often select it all and resetxform for a last time.

Then add the AuroraBase and Fast link it all.

 

8) Export it out.

 

9) Check the newly created ASCII for faults, correct them where needed.

 

10) Start KAE, pray the walkmesh doesn't crash the program. Compile to Binary code.

 

11) Create the mod file.

 

12) Create the .lyt file.

 

13) Move mod file to modules and models+ lyt file to Override.

 

14) Start the game and test.

 

 

So the "biggest" mistake I could find is that you need to set the Pivotpoints to the center of objects very soon, BEFORE you start texturing.

 

If you do this step as the last, near the end, it often goes all wrong... it took me awhile to find this out to. I wasted countless hours on trying to get certain models good in the game.

 

And now I'm in doubt if I actually mentioned this in my tutorials

[TriggerGod]

Great. Just what I need. 3dsMax decided to stop working. Anyone here had this error before?