Questions RE RF Edit Pro - grid (long winded)

[Humpty]

G'day again guys,

Yes I have googled and searched the forums.

Question 1; If i wish to utilise it for purposes of creating textures and things can a texel be cpmverted to another measuremtn, eg. Pixel or millimeter?

Grid: I've been using the grid, and altering the snap size as appropriate, turning snap to grid on (off if required), but I have had some issues with alignment.

Scenario: Making a chest of draws (dresser or tallboy if you will). Snap to grid set to 1 texel (I also tried 2 texel).
I will create a draw with solid brushes, front, back, sides and base. I'll resize it snaping it to the 1 or 2 texels. The front of the draw (face of it) overlaps higher, lower and wider than the draw (like a lot of real draws).

Then I'll copy and paste (the group of solid brushes) to make 3 more draws, but can NEVER get them to line up correctly.

Zooming right in so that I can see exactly what I am doing, so that the 1 texel grid can't be confused in any way shape or manner and it just doesn't sit right.

Any suggestions? Need an example 3dt file?

Any different suggetions (intent is to make each draw a model and be able to move in and out)

Thanks in advance, please ask for clarification if you are unsure with something.

[Gamemaker]

I'm not sure about your first question, but I think they are not convertable...
But about the second question I would say that, no, you can't scale many objects together. Sometimes you can, but sometimes you can't.

It's like, I had four colums in my level and I tried to scale them all down, but when I tried to scale them, I had to:
1) Move my cursor very very far from that object in eg. side view, and when I moved that cursor just a little, then the columns got actually too big.
2)Second time I tried to scale them, they got too small, smaller than 1texel and the editor crashed.

Those are the things you just have to agree with

- Gamemaker.

[Humpty]

thankyou gamemaker. Yes I have already found that and agree with it.

But i'm not scalling them together as a group. I am moving them as a group.

The scaling occurs on each individual piece (due to the issue you mentioned).

We will go with my most recent attempt:
Textel Grid Snap = 2

I would scale all the items with snap on, piece them together and then just copy and paste them. Having issues with this I then re-scaled all individual items (snaped them of place then back into place).

But when I move them (as a group) I can't line them up. And then on top of that if I try individually (after doing this snapping) then I can't line them up, If I try then to resnap they do not snap to the dots (grid)

[Gamemaker]

Yea, another thing, you can't place them in one line together, but sometimes you can. Same thing happens with any models (pawns, staticmeshes, staticentityproxies). That's very weird system, I don't understand it either.

[QuestOfDreams]

Indeed, the snap-to-grid feature of the editor is not that great. I recommend using actors instead of level geometry for more complicated shapes.

[Humpty]

Actors: There goes more of time trying to do something I don't understand

The intent was to make the chest of draws all cupboards, closets, man holes and doors functional. I might have at some stage placed something in the draws, like a power up. ATM NFI if even possible but step 1 was to make the item

I did think of actors and I am sure I can trigger a certain play which would open a certain draw etc but didn't think I could place something in it (being an actor) and on top of that I already knew how to do it in RF Edit Pro (As opposed to milkshape or similar, not even touched that yet).

So do I have other options? Perhaps a diff editor for design of intricate items?

One thought was to make it much larger scaled in a seperate file and then scale the world and then copy and paste (Not that I know what scale the world will do yet, but I was gonna try it).

[Gamemaker]

No, actors are REALLY more useful. Later you'll need them anyway to make enemies and guns and such things. Read the E-book, it's all written there. I can teach you modelling also, if you want. It's quite simple.

[Humpty]

...Read the E-book, it's all written there. I can teach you modelling also, if you want. It's quite simple.

ATM I'll pass on all that. Making a toilet is proving to be a prick (pun intended).

I have read the manual (well bits of it).

I will go through the milkshape part again and see what I can do along the lines of a toilet. I have done some work already with actors including making one walk around, moan, and get shot. Was good, he walked around the house as if he were looking for something (in and out of each room, in circles and back to the start to loop). I did have him attacking (zombie) but no damage caused. ATM that is further down the track.

It appears that milkshape will be my next step with all of this. I already have plans for later on for hitting you up for some assistance in obtaining or creating textures, as I liked the look of your demo. Step 1 now is to get benches, sinks, toilets, taps and similar in place then I will upload my level for viewing, criticism and guidance.

So far I haven't seen much that other people have made but I have seen yours and believe it good enough that you couldn't possibly say anything BAD to me about mine. Coz you did such a cool job with yours. So your feedback will most awaited. (everyones will be welcomed).

[bernie]

Milkshape is definitely the way to go its very simple to use. Build and texture your models in Milkshape and use Equity to convert them to act files. Equity will load your ms3d files directly.

[Gamemaker]

I would recommend GMax which is a free version of 3DSMax and is more professional, even has easy step-by-step tutorials .

[bernie]

Gmax would be good if it didn't have such a big learning curve and you could export your models easily. You are very limited to what you can export or import for that matter. And getting stuff from gmax to ogre format is a virtual non starter especially if you use vertex weighting (by the way don't use vertex weighting if your model is to be used by RF1 its not supported). Don't forget that RF2 & Game Director use the ogre format. Milkshape will export directly to Ogre format so anything you build can be used in RF1, RF2 or GameDirector and a load of other game engines.

[Jay]

One Texel is one pixel in a texture at texture scale 1. This means if you have a 128x128 texture and build a 128x128x128 block, the texture will cover each side fully.

As far as conversion goes, it really depends on how big everything is in relation. The most important thing for the relation is the player. If the player is big in comparison, everything else will seem small, and vice versa.

I hope this helped.

[Humpty]

Thanks Jay. (This particular post is for anyone else who may search for this.

Texal Conversion is a 1 to 1 for a pixel measurement.

1 texel = 1 pixel

(that was all I was after RE the 'conversion' I just needed to get a rough grasp for if I had to make some custom textures and possibly anything else. Texel I have only seen as a measurement here in relation to this.

Thankyou Jay for the clarification

Milkshape Vs. Gmax:
Although I don't doubt any proffessional aspect of Gmax and I love the fact that it is free, I beleive milkshape will be the way to go so that if I need assistance I can get it. Most people seem to use it.

[Veleran]

I usually copy by shift with click and drag (to the same spot) or else the snaps are gone for the model copy.

You asked so ,now an important thing is the vertex weights.I am not sure milkshape has models animating with more than 1 bone assigned to a vertex.I tried to import a model from max to milkshape and got a warning about not being able to use multiple bones per vertex.
You dont need this multiple bone links blending in RF1,but in rf2 or other engines you ll want to use even 2-4 bones per vertex.

Although i know any rf users used milkshape,i suggest gmax,it is better.

[bernie]

@ veleran
As I have already pointed out there is no way of getting an animated model from gmax into ogre mesh/skeleton formats not even via the ogre xml route so gmax is a total non starter. Milkshape does support vertex weighting however and exports to ogre mesh/skeleton format. Bear in mind Equity and RF1 do not support vertex weighting as they use the unmodified genesis engine, so any model that you wish to run in RF1 should not have vertex weighting.

I tried to import a model from max to milkshape and got a warning about not being able to use multiple bones per vertex.

I would be interested to know how you did that because milkshape does not load animated max files directly. Neither does it load ogre mesh/skeleton files directly nor does it load ogre xml files.