newbie modeler

[SaRGoNNaS]

Hello everyone!

 

Well..i see that there are alot of you seasoned modelers out there....and i see that my idea for a clonetrooper is goin right out the window...but ill try to work on it all the same as id like to do soemthing without a mouth and eyes as my first....

 

Ive gotten 3dstudiomax recently and have learned quite a bit about it...from playin with shapes and such...ive even imported the root.xsi file from the raven sdk they sent out. So i guess its a good start to work from teh stormtrooper for teh clone trooper...the armor is and helmet is kinda differnet from what ive seen amd needs a full body work.

 

However...i must say from the import ive started up..there are some things on it that are confusing me. First off...i thought that when we make a model there is only one mesh layer...it seems that there are multiple colored meshes underneathe each part.

 

Second i see these lil colored triangle thingies stickin out of its face...i had thought from the kyle root.xsi that these were for mouth and eye placement or whatever...but i know the trooper has no eyes or mouth.

 

Ive probably got a billion questions right now...and ive read thru lots a few tutorials now...but i find that playin around with 3ds is a bit of a faster way to learn.....

 

I eventlually would like to model some of my characters for JKII that i created and actually sculpted with super sculpey into the game and let everyone see my characters...course theyre not star wars characters...but my own original stories that i could adapt to fit the star wars universe (ok rambling!)

 

So back to the modeling....anyway...im confused on those 2 items previously...and i think if i could figure out where to start on the stormtrooper i could start my clonetrooper model (even though someone else has already ...i need practice)

 

thanks!

 

~the SaRG

[Ragnar]

Yeah, im new to it all, and i was wondering what the several extruding parts coming out of the root.xsi models are.

 

Second the other thing that is bothering me is, why is there a second torso underneath the main model??

[SaRGoNNaS]

yes...this confused me also...but this was only in the kyle one i think...the trooper did not have this second torso... i was hoping for some consistencey to figure it out by trial and error...but this is proving difficult on the complexity of 3ds max

[DarthCobra]

Those are the other lod meshes. The things comming outta his face are bones. I dont know if ppl will get to making other lods with their models or not. And ppl dont seem to be really useing the facial bones for facial animations, and im not sure if the game uses them other than for cutscenes.

[SaRGoNNaS]

ah ok...so it is not necessary to make those lods...or any of those other meshes underneath the outter mesh. But what of the other torso underneath the main in the kyle root.xsi?

[Anavel Gato]

When I imported Kyle's root.xsi I had those parts too that are sticking out oif the model too. In my case they were the leg bones that were rotated forward. Those I could rotate back down and that wasn't really a problem.

As for the facial bones...I am not planning to use them in my model and I think they aren't really used in the game besides the cutscenes. And if they are used you'll hardly see them because of the fast paced action. You can simply hide them when you're alligning your model to the bones (or the bones to your model). When you don't assign model parts to these bones the just won't get used.

[Ragnar]

Question about LOD's

 

It seems to me that the LOD's are within each other?

How does that work?

 

And if that's the case, it still doesnt explain what that second torse/legs are underneath the main one.