Character: My first model(Jedi Academy)

[TychoCelchuuu]

If this is for Jedi Academy then it has waaaaaaaay too many polygons. I have no idea how many polys are in a Jedi Academy character but my guess is that it's less than 2,000 (that is a wild guess). Right now the head's shaping up to be too many polys for a <2k character. In any case you won't be smoothing your model when it goes into the game; you can only soften the normals and let the game engine smooth it. Don't worry about how your model looks smooth because it won't be smoothed when you export it to the game.

[Swift3D]

Some tips from a fellow learner slightly further down the road:
Avoid N-gons and concave quads at all cost also try not to get too many long 'kite' shaped quads if possible aswell as small long triangles as they don't always play nicely.

When you model organics you want you edge loops to have a nice flow and you want to be able to follow the edge loop around the model, yours are lookin ga bit scattered.

I'm not sure which tutorial you're using but here are two that I found usefull:
http://www.3dtotal.com/team/Tutorials/benmathis/benmathis_1.asp
http://www.silo3d.com/Tutorials/User_Tutorials/tony_jung/HTML_files/

good luck.

[Psyk0]

JA player models are between 3000 and 4000 triangles (4000 being an exception for a few characters such as Luke at least from what i recall).

Also, with max 9 you wont be able to export a valid .XSI file for the compiler. So unless you know someone with a big heart and free time to do the rigging, you wont be able to compile the .glm. Max 4 to max 8 will work / or XSI.

[DarkTyreal]

Oh my god, thank you guys so much. I was amazed at what good advice I've been given. The places I normally go anytime you post something it's always just going to be a lengthy comment about how terrible it is.


Anyway on to those suggestions.

I've been using a Ben Mathis tutorial though I skimmed forward and I don't think it's going to be as useful as I had hoped.

I'm going to have to go read up on what most of you are talking about because I don't know what they are just yet, such as "normals".

As for max 9 not beinga ble to export a valid .xsi file, I had noticed it didn't seem to work well with .xsi files even with the importer installed. I didn't realize I'd have to export one thanks. I'm getting a copy of max 8 right now to start working in that.

Anyway off to read up on these great suggestions while I wait for a copy of max 8 thanks so much guys.



Edit:

Also how do the rest of you texture your models? I saw ben mathis in the one video using a program called body paint I believe where he painted it in 3d it looked like.

[Swift3D]

The most common way for low poly texturing as far as I know is to Uv unwrap the model and then take it into PS and paint the texture.

I'm a blender user so I don't know of any tutroials on how to cut up the UV map in max but i'm sure they won't be hard to find.

good luck learning your 3D terminology. :)

[DarkTyreal]

The most common way for low poly texturing as far as I know is to Uv unwrap the model and then take it into PS and paint the texture.

I'm a blender user so I don't know of any tutroials on how to cut up the UV map in max but i'm sure they won't be hard to find.

good luck learning your 3D terminology. :)


Thanks heh, I read up on the mentioned things. And I went around the board looking at tutorials but most of them were dead. At least as far as texture ones go. It gets a bit frustrating since I don't have a good idea of what I'm doing.

When you're making a model for a game what are all the steps? For me to look up a tutorial for each seperate part.

I'm sure it's different each game but basically..

1- Model
2- Uv wrap
3- Paint the skin
4- Rig(This controls how the model is animated I assume?)
5- Compile it for the game?

Are those all the steps involved basically? Anyway off to search for more tutorials and try not to tear my eyes out over this heh.

[PadleSneg]

1- Model
2- Uv wrap
3- Paint the skin
4- Rig(This controls how the model is animated I assume?)
5- Compile it for the game?



You r right, but may be there are more items I can add, it's High poly model and baking Normal Maps (for neaxt gen games).

[DarkTyreal]

You r right, but may be there are more items I can add, it's High poly model and baking Normal Maps (for neaxt gen games).


I don't know if this is part of one of those, animating facial expressions. Anyway I think I found exactly what I needed for now to get me over the speed bump I hit. I had gone and decided to make a basic model and try and just get something into the game and actually complete a model so I made a clock head that's floating around google. It reminded me of a black humor picture heh(which I then based it off of and actually used in it's skinning).

Here's the websites that I believe will take me a long way.

http://www3.sympatico.ca/psykopat/

http://forums.filefront.com/sw-jk3-modding-editing/333326-jka-modding-tutorials-tools-updated-may-25th-2008-a.html


Hope that helps someone else of course I'm sure I'm the only one that didn't know about them heh.

And that simple model.

Just gonna play it safe and use a url instead of making it an image here. Might offend someone, and I've gotten a lot of help from you guys:P
http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d122/Dark_Tyreal/3d/Clock.jpg

[Psyk0]

Hehe i see you found my website, i didnt think you'd need the rigging tutorials right away but it's good to get started early on that whole rigging process.

If you have some rig problems/questions i'll be happy to help :).

[DarkTyreal]

Hehe i see you found my website, i didnt think you'd need the rigging tutorials right away but it's good to get started early on that whole rigging process.

If you have some rig problems/questions i'll be happy to help :).



Haha wow.. if only I had checked your signature links earlier.

Well I got 3ds max 8 now, and I'm going through the tutorials on your page, I started a new head and got some better reference models. The one page in your tutorials says that you need 3ds max 4, 5, or 6 to be able to rig a model for Jedi Academy, based on your first post in your thread I'm assuming that's outdated and 3ds max 8 works fine?


And the reason I was looking up rigging was for the more basic model I went ahead and just finished to get at least one completed model under my belt and get used to 3ds max 8.



Edit: Dumped the head I had posted in this thread, I started a new one just not and it already looks a ton better with the new reference model. Just need to remember to keep number of polygons low

[DarkTyreal]

I'm getting ready to start the body I think. picture of the new head posted any suggestions would be great. Right now I have a seperate object forming the hair like in the ben mathis tutorial video. The eyes are attached to the head and I imported the ears from my first face in this thread and altered it into an elf style(might as well had just made a new one with the amount of changes I had to make to make it fit).

http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d122/Dark_Tyreal/3d/Elfgirl.png



As far putting a skin on it I'm still trying to figure that out really so gonna start on the body. Do I need to weld the hair object to the head? And if so do I delete the vertices it covers up? Or is it fine for them to just float like that?

I need to figure out which program to use for the texturing, I tried downloading a trial of, I think it was Body Paint, or Cinema 4d but the program crashes anytime I try and open up something.

[Swift3D]

wow, you've progressed SOmuch since the first model under a weak ago.

yeah, you shouldn't really have the head and hair seperate like that, remove double should stick the two meshes together if they're in the same object group. if they aren't perfectly lined up select to verts and scale them to 0 to weld them toegether.

for texturing I suggest you UV unwrap it in 3ds and then do a mixture of photo textures and painting in photoshop.

[Psyk0]

Well I got 3ds max 8 now, and I'm going through the tutorials on your page, I started a new head and got some better reference models. The one page in your tutorials says that you need 3ds max 4, 5, or 6 to be able to rig a model for Jedi Academy, based on your first post in your thread I'm assuming that's outdated and 3ds max 8 works fine?

That's correct, max 4 up to 8 works.

For hair it depends, if you plan on having multiple hairstyles, you can leave it as 2 objects, it's a common thing in JA for "species" to have separate objects. In fact all of the characters are split in 9 basic parts for dismemberment. I'd probably merge them together anyway, any extra shape (pony tail or different styling) i would add as a seperate object.

For texturing i use photoshop, i know 3D painting might sound the best (well it's sorta true) but photoshop is just as good.

The new head is much better, the flow could be improved and use less geometry but it's on the right track. Don't keep your edges too close together (i.e:the 3 edges right in the center of the forehead). When you position your verts, make sure they are defining as much form as possible and dont sit too close together or else they dont contribute anything to the silhouette. The ear is a bit complex for JA resolution...of course hardware of 2008 wont mind having a few extra polys ;).

Here's another head modeling tut that can be useful for edgeloops (just dont make it too high res!)
http://www.3dtotal.com/team/Tutorials_3/head_modeling_3dsmax/head_modeling_3dsmax_01.asp

[DarkTyreal]

That's correct, max 4 up to 8 works.

For hair it depends, if you plan on having multiple hairstyles, you can leave it as 2 objects, it's a common thing in JA for "species" to have separate objects. In fact all of the characters are split in 9 basic parts for dismemberment. I'd probably merge them together anyway, any extra shape (pony tail or different styling) i would add as a seperate object.

For texturing i use photoshop, i know 3D painting might sound the best (well it's sorta true) but photoshop is just as good.

The new head is much better, the flow could be improved and use less geometry but it's on the right track. Don't keep your edges too close together (i.e:the 3 edges right in the center of the forehead). When you position your verts, make sure they are defining as much form as possible and dont sit too close together or else they dont contribute anything to the silhouette. The ear is a bit complex for JA resolution...of course hardware of 2008 wont mind having a few extra polys ;).

Here's another head modeling tut that can be useful for edgeloops (just dont make it too high res!)
http://www.3dtotal.com/team/Tutorials_3/head_modeling_3dsmax/head_modeling_3dsmax_01.asp


Ah man you're too awesome for words. I'll merge them together then and thanks for the tip on the ear. Though like you said this is my new computer which has a 8800 gts and quad core phenom.


Hmm well Photoshop isn't as bad now that I know how to export a image with the object lines on it. Though I am getting better at that the image always seems to come up with a few dark stretched spots, but I'll figure it out. Alright I'll come back in a few days after I finish the body I guess heh, thanks a lot man.

[Swift3D]

heh, use a UV test grid to search for any stretcing or werirdness 1st, the one I use hasn't been uploaded on photoshop but i'm sure you could find a good one just off of google images.

It's basicaly multi coloured checker with numbers, on the model you have to shuffle the UV's around so that all the sqaures are actualy square and not stretched at all and are all roughly the same size.

[DarkTyreal]

Ok finally got back into it, I got part of the torso done. I kept getting drug away from it but cause of a sleep mishap today I won't be working tomorrow heh.. so got this to work on I suppose.

http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d122/Dark_Tyreal/3d/Body2-1.png

I'm not sure about connecting the head to the neck, since it's being a bit difficult to line it up perfectly. Though as I finished that sentence I just realized the outfit I have in my head will fix the problem heh. It has a sort of turtle neck look so it can help connect to the head.


I'm considering taking some classes at http://www.gnomononline.com/
I couldn't find a 3d class near me, I live NEAR the Houston, Texas area. (Two hour drive to houston near the east state line to Louisi).


Edit: The body went quicker, hands took a bit but eventually made em into some futuristic gloves just to finish the model up for my first time. It's going to be a tight outfit, my next one will probably be much more baggy, and I gave her a sort of plumbers crack with the shorts but it's very small to notice (bottom right in picture)

http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d122/Dark_Tyreal/Girly2.png

Edit2: Trying to figure out where to go from here now that the modeling part is done (I think). Checking out some of your tutorials Psyk0, and just downloaded the one that's an hour long length of footage on rigging.

I am trying to rotate my arms to match the skeleton but it messed my hands up and knocked some poly's off.. So going around welding everything into place right now.

[Psyk0]

It was quite common for the character modders to re-use the hands from Raven. We didnt have to position each finger in the relaxed hand pose, and when you have the right tools, you can reload the vertex weights so no need to redo the rig on hands every time...yes being lazy pays off! ;)

You can merge the hands from this file:
http://www3.sympatico.ca/psykopat/downloads/kyle_no_lods.zip

Also, a good way of making sure your model is lined up properly is to use kyle as a guide.

About the rig tutorial, if you find the quality is too crappy, i have a higher res version available here:
http://www.box.net/shared/6yyscho088

(Just dont pay attention to the crap model ive used lol).

[DarkTyreal]

It was quite common for the character modders to re-use the hands from Raven. We didnt have to position each finger in the relaxed hand pose, and when you have the right tools, you can reload the vertex weights so no need to redo the rig on hands every time...yes being lazy pays off! ;)

You can merge the hands from this file:
http://www3.sympatico.ca/psykopat/downloads/kyle_no_lods.zip

Also, a good way of making sure your model is lined up properly is to use kyle as a guide.

About the rig tutorial, if you find the quality is too crappy, i have a higher res version available here:
http://www.box.net/shared/6yyscho088

(Just dont pay attention to the crap model ive used lol).




Once again you're too awesome for words man, this will make it much easier to jump in on it.



Edit: Ah, that file you said I could merge hands from. I'm just seeing the skelton in it and no hands. I imagine I'm probably being an idiot heh but could you point out the problem for me?

[Psyk0]

Oops my mistake, i'll see if i can find the real file!

[DarkTyreal]

Oops my mistake, i'll see if i can find the real file!

Ok heh thanks man, I'm glad I wasn't going insane over that. I just got back from burning papers all day no rush.



Edit: Well I just checked my model for the first time, it comes to just about 1700 Vertices.

[Psyk0]

I managed to find Kyle (without his accessories) and Jan so you can have both male and female proportions they're basically the same height anyway because of the skeleton.

http://www3.sympatico.ca/psykopat/tools/Kyle&Jan.rar

[DarkTyreal]

I managed to find Kyle (without his accessories) and Jan so you can have both male and female proportions they're basically the same height anyway because of the skeleton.

http://www3.sympatico.ca/psykopat/tools/Kyle&Jan.rar


Awesome thanks a lot man.

[DarkTyreal]

GAH, I'm finishing up adding the hand onto the model but now I keep getting a application error and the program shuts down....


Edit: Well went back to an earlier file. I think that may fix the problem, few things I'm worried about but I'll see if they are a problem later, time to start rigging finally!:P



Edit2: Trying to figure out how you could set up multiple textures, say so I have one just for the arms, one just for the head, etc.

[Psyk0]

Yeah max has a bad habit of crashing when you dont want it to (well actually no one wants that ever!)...if you keep crashing, export your mesh to .obj, exit max, create a new scene and import your .obj.

Textures: If you unwrapped each limb as a separate texture (something i dont recommend doing) then you simply create a new material for each texture and assign to its corresponding body part. The hands are already mapped so you can pick the texture from JA and apply. Do the same for other objects.

Of course you could cram it all into 1 sheet too...Raven split some of theirs into multiple for interchangeability.

[DarkTyreal]

Yeah max has a bad habit of crashing when you dont want it to (well actually no one wants that ever!)...if you keep crashing, export your mesh to .obj, exit max, create a new scene and import your .obj.

Textures: If you unwrapped each limb as a separate texture (something i dont recommend doing) then you simply create a new material for each texture and assign to its corresponding body part. The hands are already mapped so you can pick the texture from JA and apply. Do the same for other objects.

Of course you could cram it all into 1 sheet too...Raven split some of theirs into multiple for interchangeability.

Alright thanks man, I already figured that might help to make a new scene and I think it has so far. As for the textures what do you suggest then? Cramming it all onto one sheet? I'm a bit confused about unwrapping it since the tutorials suggest to do that before segmenting, but then they don't go into that, and go straight to how to segment. Should I just add the UVW map modifier, set up the gizmo then collapse it and begin segmenting?

[Psyk0]

You could put the torso and arms together on the same sheet and do the same for lower body, keep the head and hands separate. Similar to what raven did.

What i meant is do not create a single texture for EVERY part that is detached (maybe that's not what you implied), it's a pain in the butt to texture that way, obvioulsy, and also it's not efficient, too many calls to vid card's ram, when you could have put most of the stuff on the same sheet.

Take a look at raven's models and you'll get a good idea how to split them up.

[DarkTyreal]

You could put the torso and arms together on the same sheet and do the same for lower body, keep the head and hands separate. Similar to what raven did.

What i meant is do not create a single texture for EVERY part that is detached (maybe that's not what you implied), it's a pain in the butt to texture that way, obvioulsy, and also it's not efficient, too many calls to vid card's ram, when you could have put most of the stuff on the same sheet.

Take a look at raven's models and you'll get a good idea how to split them up.


Alright thanks man I'll do that.


I just went to check my vertices and it about doubled heh.. I figured out that some of the vertices are 4 different ones or so in the same spot that became unconnected, does that happen a lot when exporting?

[Psyk0]

Vert count will change as you detach objects from the main mesh. There's no way around it, you cannot have a triangle without having 3 verts, resulting in increased vert count with each new object detached.

You should always calculate your budget as triangles anyway, not as verts.

[DarkTyreal]

Vert count will change as you detach objects from the main mesh. There's no way around it, you cannot have a triangle without having 3 verts, resulting in increased vert count with each new object detached.

You should always calculate your budget as triangles anyway, not as verts.

Well I hadn't really detached anything yet, what it was was a bunch of verts split into 4 in the same spot in random areas. Having to collapse those spots to fix it.

[Psyk0]

Oh ok, it's probably because of the export/import then :D. Usually i'll just select all the verts and do a weld with 0,01 strength so all the ones that are on top of each other will weld.

[DarkTyreal]

Oh ok, it's probably because of the export/import then :D. Usually i'll just select all the verts and do a weld with 0,01 strength so all the ones that are on top of each other will weld.

Oh wow ok thanks man that'll help a lot, I was going around and collapsing all those spots but that'll be much better.

[DarkTyreal]

I need to finish this model bleh, I ended up doing some more 2d works and frankly the segmenting and rigging scares me a bit heh.

[Psyk0]

I understand how you feel, the first rig i did was a huge task, don't let that discourage you!. There's no consequences to failing, you can start over as many times you want.

Keep things simple, you could even make a character with cylinders and rig it for JA, see how things turn out. I'll be here to walk you through it anyway.

[DarkTyreal]

I understand how you feel, the first rig i did was a huge task, don't let that discourage you!. There's no consequences to failing, you can start over as many times you want.

Keep things simple, you could even make a character with cylinders and rig it for JA, see how things turn out. I'll be here to walk you through it anyway.


Thanks man, really can't thank you enough.. Mm right now it wants me to UVW map it before I segment it on the one tutorial?.. Do I just throw on a UVW map modifier and then go straight to segmenting?

Edit: Eh well I decided to just jump in and hope the car going off the cliff lands safely heh. I don't think I put on a uvw map modifier with this current file but I just went ahead and segmented and kept following the tutorial and did the caps.

[Psyk0]

The point of doing the uv maps BEFORE the segmentation is to keep what belongs together as one piece of UV set. If not you'll have body parts UV mapped with broken chunks.

If i segment the arm roughly in the middle of the bicep and havent uv mapped anything before, then i'll have to UV map 2 objects and sort of guess where they will connect...if i really wanted to UV weld the two chunks together, guess how i would do it?...that's right, by re attaching both meshes together.

It's just a more efficient way of working. So you'd actually want to UV map your character as if it was final.

Doing caps isnt mandatory at this stage, i know i put it in that order tho, but in the last ones i rigged, i prefered to wait until the character was all weighted. The reason is because the caps will share the same weights as their parent object so that means if you tweak the main meshes for deformation you'll have to go back and tweak the caps too...it's that lazy thing again.

They need to be done anyway, so you can leave them alone and not worry about weighting them for now. Focus on the main meshes and temporarily delete the caps (always save before!) from the scene when you want to attempt compiling a .glm. When you are satisfied with the deformations you go ahead and throw the caps into the mix.

I hope it doesnt sound like giberish...:curious:

[DarkTyreal]

The point of doing the uv maps BEFORE the segmentation is to keep what belongs together as one piece of UV set. If not you'll have body parts UV mapped with broken chunks.

If i segment the arm roughly in the middle of the bicep and havent uv mapped anything before, then i'll have to UV map 2 objects and sort of guess where they will connect...if i really wanted to UV weld the two chunks together, guess how i would do it?...that's right, by re attaching both meshes together.

It's just a more efficient way of working. So you'd actually want to UV map your character as if it was final.

Doing caps isnt mandatory at this stage, i know i put it in that order tho, but in the last ones i rigged, i prefered to wait until the character was all weighted. The reason is because the caps will share the same weights as their parent object so that means if you tweak the main meshes for deformation you'll have to go back and tweak the caps too...it's that lazy thing again.

They need to be done anyway, so you can leave them alone and not worry about weighting them for now. Focus on the main meshes and temporarily delete the caps (always save before!) from the scene when you want to attempt compiling a .glm. When you are satisfied with the deformations you go ahead and throw the caps into the mix.

I hope it doesnt sound like giberish...:curious:

Real slow on the reply, continued that break of I mentioned heh.. Doing some more 2d stuff and stopped just working on these for a while to read some stories and the like. No what you said doesn't sound like gibberish though I don't fully understand some things like compile a .glm, partially I don't know why to do it and secondly don't know how I'd do it heh. Also UV mapping is me shooting randomly in the dark still right now, I think you said you use photoshop but so far I've not done so well with it.


Do you have an updated tutorial or anything concerning uv mapping? I haven't seen 100% of your things yet so I'll go look through them again though not sure when I'll have time and the mood to finish this up though might have some time soon.

[Psyk0]

Compiling a .glm is when you are ready to export your character to .XSI and feed it to carcass.exe and get a working player model for JA. So basically it's taking your max scene and converting it to game format.

Photoshop is used for texturing not UV's! ;)

Max 8 has new tools that'll help with UV mapping your mesh:
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/item?siteID=123112&id=5903856

watch the 2nd video called pelt mapping, it should get you started on the process.

[DarkTyreal]

Compiling a .glm is when you are ready to export your character to .XSI and feed it to carcass.exe and get a working player model for JA. So basically it's taking your max scene and converting it to game format.

Photoshop is used for texturing not UV's! ;)

Max 8 has new tools that'll help with UV mapping your mesh:
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/item?siteID=123112&id=5903856

watch the 2nd video called pelt mapping, it should get you started on the process.


Alright thanks man, this video is making me less scared of it heh. Anyway will post again later after I've worked on it some.

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