IMPORTANT: Before you start make sure your texture image is to the power of 2, this is important as Equity won’t accept it otherwise.
1. Create your model and group it so that it is one object, making sure that that it is level with the grid (for example if it is above the grid when you import it into RF it will be hovering).
2. Go to the ‘Create’ menu and click on the ‘Systems’ button. In the ‘Object Type’ rollout click the button that says ‘Bones.’ Even if it is a static model with no animations you still need at least to joined bones as part of the model. Make 2 small bones that are attached and hid them in your model somewhere out of sight.
3. Group it again and call it something like ‘group with bones.’
4. Make sure you group is selected and go File- Export Selected- and export it as a .3DS file to the location of you choice. Press OK with the tick box ticked to the message box that says ‘Preserve MAX’s Texture Coordinates.’
5. Start up Equity 6.
6. Go Import- Autodesk- Model *.3ds and choose the .3ds file you just imported.
7. You should see your model there but for some reason the texture might not come up. If this happens look to your left of the Equity screen and you should see a folder tree. Look for the folder that’s says ‘Textures,’ click this and then the sub folder ’Mapped’ and then click on the image that says something on it like ’Equity Dummy Texture.’ With this still selected in the folder tree look to your bottom right and you should see a rollout that is titled ’Stored.’ Click on the button that says ’Replace’ and then choose the texture that you used.
8. Now go File- Build Actor As and save it to your ’Actors’ folder which is in the ’Media’ folder of your ‘Reality Factory’ folder. It is really important you save it here or wherever your ‘Actors’ folder is because RF won’t recognize it anywhere else (by default its in the ‘Reality Factory’ folder).
9. Start up RFEditPro and open up whatever level is relevant.
10. Insert a StaticEntityProxy.
11. In the ‘szActorFile’ put in the name of your file, for example for me it was ‘jarrah_desk_and_table.act.’ Make sure you put in the .act extension. Now for some reason when I put in this model it came out completely black, go to the ‘FillColor’ and make it 255, 255, 255 ( ie white). This will take some of the black off so you can see it your texture worked. To get the rest back you need to put in a Light Entity.
You may also need to fiddle with the ActorRotation and the ScaleFactor so you can get you model just the way you want it. Also set SubjectToGravity to False as this can save a few headaches.
Hopefully this will work as well for you as it did you me. Also please note that I haven’t tried this method with animations yet, because to tell the truth I haven’t learnt how to animate yet.
