Quick LOD tutorial

[Edward Peretti]

I planned on writting this when I finished my model. I sent it off to JKII.net incase they wanted it to go in the tutorials section. I thought it might be useful to all those work in progress models.

 

This tutorial is intended for people who have already experienced building a player model for jk2 (basicaly common knowledge of 3dsmax).

I noticed that alot of the player models don't have LODs. I guess there is a feeling of dread when it comes to this stage. Though it isn't as hellish a task as you may think. Here is a brief explination on the stages I took:

 

First you'll need to download and install this plugin:

 

http://www.melax.com/polychop/plugin/index.html you need polychop42.zip

 

And this script:

 

http://www.chuggnut.com/scripts/re-namer2.zip

 

Ok, now you'll have to start naming selections.

 

Select all model parts, including caps, and name this selection in the selection dropdown list "model". Select all tags and name the selection "tags". Select all the bones and name the selection to...guess what..."bones"! It's also a good idea to select all the facial bones and make a seperate selection "facial bones".

 

Now hide everything and select from the selection dropdown list "mesh" and "tags". Once you unhide them, select them all and make a copy (shift+click using the move tool).

 

Now select "mesh" and hide, select "tags" and hide. You are left with a weighted copy of the mesh and tags. Now run the script "re-namer2.ms" I won't explain how to use it because it's such a simple script! The script lets you add the essential _1, _2, _3 extensions for the LODs. At the same time it also alows you you erase duplicate auto naming, eg. arm01, get rid of the 01 and add _1, catch my drift? You will when you learn how to use this script. It's a real work saver! Select all your duplicate mesh/tags at once and use the script to sort out the rest.

 

1 second later everything is re-named

 

Now you want to start with the level of detail for the mesh. The way I do it is to preserve the caps (all the border vertices of each segmented part)

 

Now we use polychop!

 

Basicaly add this modifier above edit mesh and below skin. You may need to select the border/cap vertices in subobject mode and go up the stack to polychop and select "lockdown selected vertices". Polychop has a "lockdown border vertices" selection, but I find manually selecting the vertices is best. This plugin does a great job, but can be a little sloppy in areas, so you may want to add an edit mesh modifier abouve that to fix up areas. It preserves the mapping co-ordinates, but if you edit the model manualy after polychop, you may need to sort them out with uvw unwrap. Remember to keep everything below the skin modifier. This stage takes alot of getting used to the plugin and the technique, so I'm being real brief on the explination here.

 

Once you have your lowered model, the only concern is to whether the skin settings have been messed a little. I found that animating the pelvis bone far left or right, vertices and even bodyparts would stick. If this is the case try this:

 

for parts that remain stationary when the skeleton moves left or right in your simple animation, collapse to the stack of the part under skin modifier so you get editmesh and skin in the stack. Turn on sub-object/vertice mode, click off any selected vertices and turn off sub-object mode. Your part should snap into animated position.

 

For stray vertices, this is usually a skin problem. Just go into skin > sub-object mode and select the vertices and re-weight them. They should also snap back into position.

 

Remember to check the skining on the border vertices making sure they are at 1.0. Any face weights can kiss it goodbye! They will most likely be messed up and if like me they were to much of a pain to weight in the first place, they're not worth re-weighting for LODs. So just 1.0 the face weights to the cranium.

 

Repeat the stages for the other LODs. Remember to use name the selections with each one "mesh1" "tags1" etc. and make each LOD down from the previouse once.

 

This is all roughly out of my head so please don't email me any problem questions. It's all trial and error with the stages. If something's wrong in carcass than it could mean you've missed somthing out. If you're precise with everything then it should all be dandy!

 

Good Luck!