Modelling/texturing issues

[Red Spot]

Have spend the last few days trying to do a bit of modelling of myself, wich by itself isnt the real issue .. however now it comes down to texturing the model.

Wich in Max goes great ... it seems, but after I export to .cas I have that the, say piece of cloth around the soldiers waste that somehow seems to rather become a sort of link between other pieces of texture.
What I mean is that the breast, head and limbs are textured ok, but the texture of the cloth is mangled and crosses the entire texture .. except there where it should be ...

Does anyone have a clue whats up here, have been re-UV-mapping the creature all night but cant get my head around what I might be doing wrong ..
(I can post a screeny if it helps, though I guess you've seen a badly aplied texture before ..:D)

Thanks


G

[satanea juda]

Odds are you attached a new part of the model to an existing part (head perhaps) and the Uv map is trying to jump back causing it to become twisted, there isn't a way to fix that that I know of, unless you seperate all the sections by selecting the poly's and detaching them eg; head, arms, torso, legs, cloak, ect...then you can skin (UV) each part separately, It's probably easier to call it quits and start again.

Try not to use attach new parts when in edit Poly mode, most things can be attached via the graph editor directly to the bones, then they don't need a skin modifier either.

Is that to complicated?, sorry if it is, it's late.

[Red Spot]

Thanks for the answer .. er .. SJ .. ;)

I've been reading up on some tutorials and I guess I somehow didnt understand, when I asked I had been modding a bit too long so I basicly just read over the answer I was looking for without noticing it ...

edit;
original legionare;


my legions ....;


with thanks to the Roma Surrectum .. ;)
(its their helmet and shoulderpads)

G

[Red Spot]

does anyone know how much impact the size of the model and size of the texture influence performance ...??

I've ran a few tests to see if a much much more detailed model causes lag (or ones with much bigger textures) but cant get any really conclusive results, I actually have the impression that the 80kb model doesnt cause any negative effect on performance ...
I've set my sight at < 50kb high-detail model wich I than use for the 2 highest lods (or adjust the lods and just include 3), but I'd like to know/find out if thats "small enough" to prevent any sort of lag ...


G

[Red Spot]

why you should not add smoothing groups before you rescale ...

original sword before exporting, but with smoothing groups to the handle;


once exported, than again imported;

(look at the tip of the sword, its most obvious over there)


G

[Red Spot]

scrap the last post, in that it isnt cause of rescaling ..

somehow the importer/exporter always seems to aply smoothing-groups and I cant seem to get rid of them nor aply them ..

does anyone know how I could get smoothing groups to stick while exporting/importing??


edit;
after a few tests the inconclusive search results become clear ...
the game (or exporter) gives models some sort of base smoothing but doesnt actually care about how smoothed (or not) you tried to export ..
(I made several units from the same model, 1 without any smoothing, 1 with some smoothing, etc etc ... all models looked exactly the same as each other, smoothing or not, the models re-imported also always have the same smoothing groups aplied to each face, wether exported with or without smoothing..)
so now I now how to aply smoothing-groups and such .... :o

edit2;
smoothing is in the game ... in an ugly way .. the games uses smoothing as a way to augment reflection, when I face my sword generals new sword with the sun in my back it looks like a toy-sword like if its made from rubber with child-proof edges, when facing the other side I see a pretty heavy sword, something you'd almost want to carry 2-handed..
start a custom-game and turn units around on a sunny map, you'll see that units get smoothed on the side thats reflecting sun, with mixed results ....


G

[Red Spot]

I've adapted something I read about to, wich was in an effort to remove similair like white spots from strat-map models .. wich was to break stuff up, or better said "detach to element" ..

when I use the first sword I get this;

(just the officer in front .. quick-and-dirty copy-and-paste job in BI :))

so I detached the actual blade and detached both sides from the blade from each other, basicly making the sword into 3 elements (and a bunch more vertexes!!);

with a much improved look ... now you can actually make a distinction between blade and handle(?) and also can distincly see the sharp tip of the sword ... as it should imo!!

so I tried to continue on this path and each side of the blade got detached into a right and left part .. but the results where minimamal if any at all;

so I decided it wasnt worth the vertexes to split the blade into 4 elements but the addintional cost of vertexes with 2 elements imo clearly shows that those are worth it ... on a high-lod at least ...

for refrence, the sword from the other side;



ps; it seems the game *prefers* swords in form of a 1/2 square stick, make it remotly flat and you'll have to deal with the above .. at least it seems to become much more obvious at that point ..
also wether I used a gloss-map or not didnt seem to matter ..


G