3ds Max help, anyone?

[Hegemege]

Hello!

I need some help with modeling

I watched a tutorial about how to make my own gladius weapon. I made the mesh for it but it includes only the mesh, no collision or stuff.

So what are the things that must be done that the weapon can be used in Oblivion (Help only in 3ds Max, nn for CS)

And if someone could also explain every step by detail.

TIA

[nick_op]

I'd recommend NifSkope for the collision model, you just need to pull capsules and boxes from existing weapons. There is a tutorial somewhere on the CS wiki for doing this.

This page has the 3ds max NifTools plugin that you'll need for importing/exporting .nif files.

[Razorwing]

Here's a good tutorial, not sure if it's the same one as nick_op was thinking about but it seems like a good one. The only thing I can really add, since I haven't worked a lot with weapons, is to reinforce the same thing nick_op said (but maybe paraphrase a bit): weapons won't really work unless they're piggybacked on a Bethesda weapon, i.e. you need to delete the visible model of a Bethesda sword and then import your visible model onto that nif through nifskope.

[Hegemege]

Just few questions

someone plz explain that someone who is not speaking English as native language can understand

1. what the heck is UV map and UVW??

2. What is term "block" used in NifSkope??

3. How to make collision with NifSkope( or is it easier with Blender or 3ds Max )?

4. How to make your own weapon usable in-game throught CS?

TIA

[nick_op]

Originally posted by Hegemege
Just few questions

someone plz explain that someone who is not speaking English as native language can understand

1. what the heck is UV map and UVW??

The UV map is essentially a flat version of your model that you use to get the texture in the right places. There are a couple of modifiers in Max for this.

The first is UVW map. This has different ways to map different parts of your model. You generally can't do it all at once with this.

The second is Unwrap UVW, this is a lot more powerful, yet a lot more complex. You really have to think of UV mapping as unfolding your model so it becomes a 2d shape that textures can be painted on to in Photoshop or a similar program.

2. What is term "block" used in NifSkope??

On the left in NifSkope is your 'Block List'. If not, press F2 to bring it up. A block is a bit of data about your mesh. If multiple of these are linked to each other it forms a branch.

3. How to make collision with NifSkope( or is it easier with Blender or 3ds Max )?

This tutorial explains it better than I can. You will always want to do your collision for simple models such as weapons in NifSkope as the collision meshes you can make in 3ds max generally put a lot more strain on the game engine.

4. How to make your own weapon usable in-game throught CS?

TIA

You need to have your meshes and textures in the right places e.g. Data/Meshes/YourName and Data/Textures/YourName.

This should help you with using the CS to place your weapon in game. I'd recommend looking round the CS Wiki and following the tutorials in the 'Getting Started' area.

Edit: I just spotted this tutorial by Razorwing for collision modelling in Max. It seems collision in Max has come on quite a bit since I last tried it.

[BusterWolF]

we cannot use the directional terms "X,Y,Z" so they substitute them with "U,V and W"

[Hegemege]

Originally posted by BusterWolF
we cannot use the directional terms "X,Y,Z" so they substitute them with "U,V and W"

Thanks a lot...

I haven't had enough time to even try collision(I tried t first time and It looked like the the weapon, but it didn't have colours and it was full of yellow lines(I suppose thats not the collision =))

Now I really want to make new meshes but I've got school test and projects. I'll use my time to ST 24/7 during the summer vacation...

[nick_op]

You'll almost never likely to use the 'W' in UVW. It's only used for procedural maps, which aren't, as far as I know, used in games. So your UV relate to XY, as your UV map is two dimensional.