Changing an actors material without .........

Larryboy · Post by **Larryboy** » Sun Sep 23, 2007 1:34 am

I have searched about and although this question is very similar to those that have been answered, it is different (I hope) and worthy of the community's time...

I want to edit the material of an actor (say virgil, I just want to edit the bitmap and put it back again).

I can do this, but I then have to add loads of .mot files and know what their motion is called. This takes loads of time and I want to create maybe 20 new actors.

Is there anyway I can swap the material bitmap without changing all the other stuff... would be most useful..

scott · Post by **scott** » Sun Sep 23, 2007 2:12 am

my guess is to make a project in astudio, and just replace the model every time, saving the project before you close it, i belive this is probably the best way if it works.

steven8 · Post by **steven8** » Sun Sep 23, 2007 3:43 am

scott wrote:my guess is to make a project in astudio, and just replace the model every time, saving the project before you close it, i belive this is probably the best way if it works.

That exactly right. Keep your files in the same spot, the astudio project will find them for you. Replace you bitmap, rebuild the actor, and you're off!

scott · Post by **scott** » Sun Sep 23, 2007 4:38 am

i wasnt too sure as i had never done it myself and havnt used astudion in some time, but glad could help

Post by **bernie** » Sun Sep 23, 2007 11:04 am

The way around the mot files is:
In astudio ... add motion *.* and then browse for your 1st actor file this will add ALL the motions you had in that one.
Saves a lot of time and effort.

Larryboy · Post by **Larryboy** » Sun Sep 23, 2007 12:50 pm

Many thanks... will give it a try... should save me an awful lot of work

Larryboy · Post by **Larryboy** » Sun Sep 23, 2007 1:29 pm

OK I still have a problem if I can beg your indulgence

I have successfully recompiled Virgil with all the motions and using the .bdy file from actordecompile.

The only problem is my modified texture does not seem to be being used.. It uses the original one. I have named it the same as the material that appears in actordecompile and it is the only texture - 'Material #2' ..

Any clues?? I've not had this problem before when making actors from scratch.

Post by **bernie** » Sun Sep 23, 2007 1:59 pm

You must place your new texture in the same folder as the .bdy file, replacing the old one. You could of course just change the texture using the tga2gebmp2.exe prog in the rf tools directory.

Larryboy · Post by **Larryboy** » Sun Sep 23, 2007 2:14 pm

I works... that really was easy thanks..

program does seem to crash a lot though. Crashed when I pressed 'save changes' but did seem to save the changes anyway.

Post by **bernie** » Sun Sep 23, 2007 3:15 pm

Yes it is a bit unstable but does work very well. You have to close it down and restart before you can load another act file but no harm. I don't nkow if you noticed but it also keeps a backup of the old act file in the same folder as the original as a .act.old file which you cn use to your advantage if you are making several different models from the one original.