Is there a 3dsmax expert in the house?

[Buddha]

So I got this silly idea that I was going to pop open 3ds max and make some placeables. Heh. There sure are a lot of buttons in that program!

Which leads me to wonder ... is there anyone out there that is willing to help me with a small project that already knows how to model? I'd be willing to do all of the texturing and 2da work if I just had a set of completed models to work with. This is what I want to attempt. I want to extract certain tiles from the city interior tileset, then dissect them. I'd like the final models to be a set of all of the possible wall shapes that occur in that tileset. Then I'd like to turn them into placeables with different textures. The end goal would be to have a set of placeables that you could drop into any area built with the city interior tileset to basically "wallpaper" a room with whatever texture you wanted.

I was able to extract the tiles with NWNExplorer, and was able to import them into 3ds max with NWNmax; I was even able to delete the parts that I didn't want (I think). Then I got stuck. I just don't know how to make the final model and then get the final UVW so that I can do what I ~am~ familiar with, which is texturing. Anyone got a few spare moments?

[Buddha]

Here's an example of what I'm talking about. This is the walls and areas surrounding one of the doors in the city interior tileset:



With some small tweaking and a new texture, this could easily be a new placeable that you could drop into a room to make the walls look however you want.

[_JM_]

I'm not sure. Not an expert (haven't done much modelling the last few years, though I did a lot of spaceships for X-Wing: Alliance) but I might be able to help. Never tried NWN 1 modelling (made some NWN 2 placables including that bridge), but if its possible to use gMAX for this then I can help. Alternatively the copy of 3DS MAX 2 (yes...2) on my laptop still works as the laptop is still Win98 rather than XP so I could use that and export as 3DS or antique-MAX for you to import into your 3DS MAX number<2.

[Freeze01]

You probably want to use the unwrap UV modifier.
There should be lots of very clear tutorials out there on how to use it, been too long since i used to be clear on how to use it.

The basics of it is that you can put all faces of your model in to a flat surfaced bitmap and map where all the vertices should go.

Best of luck to you!

Bart/Freeze01

[Knightlight]

the uv wrapping probably won't work unless you make the perfect bitmap to wrap with all the spaces overlapping. it would look like a jigsaw puzzle because you have so many turns in your surfaces.. but luckily nothing bubbled or indented that would need to be distorted. it would be better IMO to make each rectangular surface and wrap it then put the pieces together. or use another type of program that does flat paint applications such as sketchup or accurender then export into a 3ds model. If you send me the 3ds model you have and the textures I might be able to put it all together for you.
pm me if you wanna try this...
KL

PS: Sketckup is a lot easier program to use and will export to autocad and 3dsmax.

[Freeze01]

The model looks simple enough for UVW unwrap, I did a quick test on my computer of something similar in complexity and it came out quite well.

[img=http://img168.imageshack.us/img168/5301/gaterzr6.th.jpg]
[img=http://img329.imageshack.us/img329/7896 ... lf4.th.jpg]

these took me about 30 minutes to get to this point, but have to do other things so cant show a finished product

Freeze01

[Grunt]

Buddha if you want to REALLY rock...
New floor coverings. Seriously.

Do you have any idea of the pain of lining an area with rugs or tables? a nice seamless 1x1 tile or 2x2 tile wooden/marble/whatever flooring would rock. Get some nice textures on it and we've got new placeables to help make the interiors look better.

[Buddha]

Buddha if you want to REALLY rock...
New floor coverings. Seriously.

Do you have any idea of the pain of lining an area with rugs or tables? a nice seamless 1x1 tile or 2x2 tile wooden/marble/whatever flooring would rock. Get some nice textures on it and we've got new placeables to help make the interiors look better.

The hak from the vault that gave me this idea already has a wide variety of floor coverings. And yes, I know the pain of lining an area with sunken tables, which is why I got this idea in the first place. However, the wall placeables from the vault hak suck, so I was looking to replace them.

As for the texturing, flattening the polys in 3ds max to make a simple 2d texture is easy. I think gmax does it as well. JM, gmax is also all you'd need for the modeling portion of it. Freeze -- that's exactly what I'm talkin' about! Looks sweet!

[Demonseed]

Wish I could help but my UV mapping sucks (thank god for 3d painting apps) and I use Hexagon/Zbrush for what little modelling I do but good luck !!

[Buddha]

Well. What a weekend. I've been messing about in 3ds max trying to figure out how in the hell to use it, combined with how in the hell to use nwnmax to import/export models for the game. I think I'm finally at the point where I'm proficient enough to make boxes.

That said, here's what I'm aiming for. The pics below show a fair amount of custom content, but the only bit that I did was the wall to Findail's right with the door in it. That's one placeable used three times to do that one-tile room (the other one is behind Fin and not really visible in the screenie). Just drop it in, position, and done. It is set up so that the top edge of the wall still shows, and so that the wooden frame around the door still shows. The second picture prooves that I finally figured out wtf "chamfered" means.





All of the flooring that you can see is from another hak on the vault. Those are also placeables, and one (1one1!) covers a whole tile. I'm not thrilled with all the choices for textures, so I'll probably redo some of them. The ones for my wall/doorframe need a good deal of touchup as well. But I think I'm over the hump, which was learning the freakin modeling program. Time will tell. Start your campaign now for inclusion into a hak pack near you.

[_JM_]

Glad you figured it out.