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#1 Not sure I follow your problem with MS3d.
I have always found MS3D very good at creating weapon mounts.

If you give some more detail as to what your trying to do maybe I can help.

#2 Hehe, I didn't want to double post (posted in the MS3D forums), but I've modeled, textured and animated a character. However the mount0 joint I have made is not oriented correctly. The cyan and magenta lines when it is selected are not pointing in the right direction, so the weapons mount incorrectly.

My attempts at rotating the joint to get the cyan/magenta/yellow lines oriented properly have failed. First of all, MS3D does not let you rotate a child joint with no children of its own. So to fix this I add a dummy child to the mount joint. Then I can rotate the mount joint and see the orientation lines update. The problem is they won't orient how I need them.

Like say the cyan line is pointing up towards the top of the model. Well this node is on the hand, and I need it pointing to the front of the model so the weapon mounts correctly in the hand. Ideally I'd rotate the joint on the Z-axis so the cyan line spins around and points in the correct direction. But this isn't possible short of going into animation mode. The cyan line goes from 180 degrees to -180 degrees - but nothing in between. Good grief it has been frustrating! The animations are done and I don't want to edit dozens of keyframes and poses to properly orient the mount0 node if it is possible to do it in the base editor.

If you can give me some help on this I'd be very appreciative. I'll try to post some pictures if they'll help.

#3 @Jason....here's a Ms3d Joint 'hack' to get a 'leaf' node/bone/joint oriented:

Create another Joint beyond the 'mountN' node, IE, a child of the Parent Mount0. Now rotate the mount Joint to the orientation you desire. In Ms3d, it would be with Y_UP. Once the mount node is reoriented. Select and Delete the Child Joint, or leave it in and Cull it out with the .CFG file.

The Parent Joint[mountN], 'should' hold it's last orientation if deleted within the Ms3d Scene......try both methods to see what fits within your workflow.

Good luck. Animating without a 'complete' rig and then adding the Joints for mounts is a very bad idea...complete your deforming rig FIRST, then animate; in Milkshape3D. There are ways to add nodes without destroying existing transforms, but it is a complicated process....and some interesting math needs to be understood.

Houdini does vastly more than Ms3D...too much to begin a listing....

#4

Quote:
Create another Joint beyond the 'mountN' node, IE, a child of the Parent Mount0. Now rotate the mount Joint to the orientation you desire. In Ms3d, it would be with Y_UP. Once the mount node is reoriented. Select and Delete the Child Joint, or leave it in and Cull it out with the .CFG file.

Hmm, that sounds like the process I'd described myself already using.

The problem is that the mount parent does not allow many facings. ie, the cyan blue line will either be pointing up, or down, but NEVER to the side no matter how I rotate it and/or move its attached child.

Quote:
Good luck. Animating without a 'complete' rig and then adding the Joints for mounts is a very bad idea...complete your deforming rig FIRST, then animate;

Yeah I can see how it is a pain to add mount nodes later. A few months ago I spent about 20 hours trying to get the mount points oriented correctly, got totally fed up, and ended up animating and moving on. Now I'm revisiting the issue and after oh... another 40 hours or so I'm still unable to rotate the bloody things where I want them :/



In this pic you can see the colored orientation lines. This node is for attaching particle emitters. Particle emitters eject from the top - so the cyan line is their "forward". In this case I want the cyan line pointing out from the hand, and the magenta line pointing to the right, not up like it is here. I am entirely unable to rotate along the cyan axis to get the magenta line pointing to the right. This is with using both local, and global rotates, around user point and origin and using the drag function or the X, Y, Z boxes.

If Houdini does more than MS3D without losing any functionality - AND the nodes can be fully rotated without issue sign me up :P I just can't afford to waste any more time trying to fix what should be a trivial problem... Does Houdini have a demo I could use to get familiar with it?

I asked about the features because the devil is in the details :P Several blog posts and forum posts indicate Houdini has the best DTS exporter - but what does that mean? Blend, Morph, IFL support? Detail maps? How's the toolchain with Houdini? Does it do UV Mapping or would I still use UUW3D?

Thanks again for taking the time to post on this!

#5 Yes, Houdini HD has a 'demo' version, but it will not 'Render'/export to a DTS/DSQ file...but to get an idea of the native Bones and IK constraints, it's more than enough. It's entry point is only $99...so, it's hard to beat the opportunity to become exposed to a very professional 3D tool that will generate content assets for Torque.

Being professional level tool, it[HD] will have a learning curve; as any program does... How well/fast you are able to manipulate the program to produce meaningful results will vary on each user's skill level. I've been hacking around the DTS/DSQ formats for about 5 years now; so I know more or less, how I want to set something up to produce the results I need...it didn't take me long to get HD producing some very fine DTS objects.

I believe there is 'full' support of the DTS/DSQ format features; even viewable within the UI. Something which not all the current DCC applications supporting Torque do....

#6 Rex, could you help a guy out?

I can't seem to find much on these two questions:

Billboarding...
In MS3D, you can't make "Groups" or a poly billboard individually...that is, say I wanted to make trees similar to Oblivion, I setup five groups of polys representing each set of leaves. Then I want it to z-billboard each set of leaves individually...when you export, it rotates them all together and looks like crap...is this unique/individual billboarding supported with Houdini?

Poly Texturing...
In MS3D, your polys only show a texture on one side. If you select View Backfaces, it shows up on both sides. But when you export it...you can only see one side again...so for the sake of making trees...you have to double the amount of polys you use for your leaves...does Houdini support texturing on both sides of a poly and does it show up in Torque?

If you could answer these two questions, I would be very grateful...

Thank you,
J

#7 Billboarding...:

I am really not certain if Houdini will handle this feature any better? I really have no extended experience with Zbillboards... I want to say, 'no', that this is how the dts format handles 'billboards'; we'll need a more 'official' answer to clear this up.

PolyTexturing...:

A little more 'official' answer here. The DTSPlus! exporter build 2.8.1, now supports 'Double Sided' materials. True, Milkshape3D does not currently construct a backside to a poly[to render in UI/ change your shading 'colors' and render Backsides!], and thus; will not export a 'face'/'primitive'/'poly' that will render at runtime. With specifying a material applied to a polygon as 'double sided'[in the exporter Material section], this will force the material to render as a 'backside' inside the engine. It will be a 'mirrored' image, and text will be visually backwards, but for a symmetrical or non directional image[as a leaf??], this should not pose an issue visually.

good luck, hope this helped a bit...:)

#8 @J:

Billboarding...
You can do individual billboards in milkshape (and Houdini of course). All you need to do is attach all of the verts in each billboard to a milkshape joint (or Houdini node). The billboard's center of rotation then becomes the joint/node position. Although this functionality has always been present, the latest version of the milkshape DTS exporter (see the resource page, or the Milkshape forum here on GG) includes an example of this very feature.

Poly Texturing...
As Rex has pointed out, the latest version (v2.8.1) of the milkshape DTS exporter allows you to specify a material as 'Double Sided'. Since the DTS format does not support true double-sided materials, the exporter actually just duplicates the faces that use this material (with reversed vertex order). I believe TGEA has a material flag for true double-sided materials, but I'm not sure if it is exposed to script.

The Houdini DTS exporter has the same double-sided feature as the milkshape exporter. ie. faces with a material marked as double-sided are duplicated (with reversed vertex order).

#9 Rex said:

Quote:this will force the material to render as a 'backside' inside the engine. It will be a 'mirrored' image, and text will be visually backwards, but for a symmetrical or non directional image[as a leaf??], this should not pose an issue visually.

Can you think of a nice way to avoid this? At the moment, double-sided materials cause the face to be duplicated with reversed vertex order (which effectively flips the face normal so it is rendered when viewed from the other side). Is there something I could do with the UV coords to (optionally) flip the texture as well?

I could add an option to flip the U (or V) coordinate (ie. 1-U or 1-V) of the duplicated face which would work for certain configurations (eg. the texture stretched fully over a quad).

#10 Not really any way to avoid it, is there...the 'result' of a single side to a material?

The option to adjust the 'second' side would go a long way towards keeping things visually 'straight'; and this flipping feature, is not present in a 'highEnd' program? I say Press On! Additional 'tweeking' features are welcome anywhere!

#11 Hey, thanks a bunch guys for the information...

I really appreciate it...