Duck and Cover

Er, could you elaborate a little on that?

From what I can gather, you are creating custom sprites of Weapon effects, and they are edged with black shading? It sounds as though you are using a black and white alpha channel, where something is either transparent or not. The original FOT sprites have an 8-bit alpha layer, and as such, have shades of grey so to speak. However, I think even our sprites will have black edging if sprite anti-aliasing is off.

You can see how it looks without anti-aliasing by disabling the Alpha in my viewer, in software mode... And you'll notice that there's a darker outline... Which probably means boosting all the other colours up saturated the image into black and white causing it to look like a black outline...

That's right Section8, they do have an outline, but part of it also "get's mixed" with the original color), seems I can use your answer to fix it.
Thanks, I think this and my recently gained experience with Tile making will help solve the problem...

Well, if not I'll just come back with more info, hehe

Is there a way to turn off the music that's played in the editor? I usually have WinAmp goin' when I'm mappin', and it's wierd hearing two songs at once :mrgreen:

Isn't there a switch that you can place in the command line of the shortcut? Maybe -s or /s for sound? You know what I mean?

-s will disable sound (highly recommended) as you will get a little performance boost too. -m might disable music (if you want to hear button clicks, etc.) but I'm not sure.

ok.... i have a question... how did you guys set up the 32 cameras and have them all be equally spaced in Max? I'm trying to render a touret that i built for a new vehicle i'm working on... I used a torus with 32 segments, then placed the cameras on each of the segments, then deleted the torus and rendered using videopost... The problem is, however, that the cameras wern't rotated the correct ammount... how did you guys do this? Is there an easier way of shooting the pics? Could you at least give us a Tutorial on how you guys built the immages and shot them so we can try and do it ourselves... i mean that's not giving up anything, you still have YOUR art made by YOUR artists, I just want a little clue on how i can make mine...
Maybe even a touch more help and give up some of the textures, or say where you got them maybe?

We had some scripts to do our rendering, but if you want evenly spaced cameras, then create one, create a dummy, centred on what you want to render, link the camera to it, and then set your angle snap to (360 / <number of rotations>)

Render out a sequence at the first angle, then rotate, and it should snap to the next evenly spaced rotation. Render the sequence from that angle and repeat. Out of curiosity, what version of max are you running?

I'm using 4 and i'm very new at it... as in I just got a hold of it a few days ago and am learning by tutorial slowly. I got to the point where i could render a barrel, and a rough minigun for a touret i'm adding to a rusted VW which I've managed to learn how to break all the glass in, but not add tires to. The VW is from a Model i downloaded, and the barrel is from a tutorial... so I'm not exactally experianced at this.

Btw, you guys built the models used in the game in quite a bit of detail didn't you? I downloaded a bunch of the game art before the game came out, damn nice btw... anyway it occrued to me that it would only be logical to use the models built for the game art in the game since there arn't any poly restraints considering you rendered it already... maybe reduce the poly count on the caracters to reduce the rendering time, but I'd guess you were working on a pretty hefty machine, so I'm not sure how hard that would be. Did you use the same for the sprites as for the game art, just out of curiosity? And btw, your script had directional light form the camera's direction? Did you set up the camera and light then rotate the model for each animation? What kind of file did you guys use to import the animations from MAX to the sprite editor... or rather, what do you render the animations as? How did you make the shadows... i'm rendering on a black background because i don't want to have to take anything out... that's probabbly a mistake, huh? i should probabbly put something white underneith... You know, I'll give your graphix guys some creidit here, MAX is a hard program to learn and it takes a LONG time (for me anyway) to do anything on it... I'm getting faster... but damn... anyway, any information would be helpful...
I'd like to include 3-4 new vehicles with the project that a friend and I are working on, but that might take quite some time... to do anything with one vehicle has taken me at least a week... I've designed them all, but....
Btw... could I possibly get the texture you guys used to make the crate walls, the ones that are found often in junkyards...
Anyway....uh.... the spelling sux because I've been working on MAX since...uh... 6 or something and it's now 3am... so uh.... yeah....

.....Great.

This might sound stupid, but how do you put items in shelves and stuff?

but I'd guess you were working on a pretty hefty machine

At the time, we were using Dual P3 450s, with 512kb RAM and 32mb video cards. However most of our sprite rendering was done overnight, which necessitated the use of scripts to queue up multiple sprite sequences to render while we slept.

Did you use the same for the sprites as for the game art, just out of curiosity?

Certainly did. Most of the character sprites you see in game are 100,000-250,000 polygons, and so most of them didn't need much rework to b used as promotional art. Considering the sprites are about 72 pixels tall, I'm glad the massive amounts of detail we put in could be shown off.

And btw, your script had directional light form the camera's direction? Did you set up the camera and light then rotate the model for each animation?

The camera was rotated, I think the light was kept stationary, so shadows were always cast in the right direction.

What kind of file did you guys use to import the animations from MAX to the sprite editor... or rather, what do you render the animations as?

Basically each frame of sprite animation consisted of four 24-bit .PNGs with an alpha channel. BASE, SKIN, HAIR, TCOL were all overlayed when imported as sprites.

How did you make the shadows... i'm rendering on a black background because i don't want to have to take anything out... that's probabbly a mistake, huh?

The ground plane in our sprite stage was a "Matte Shadow" material, so it show up black in max, but when rendering, it is alpha'd out, and because it recieves shadows, they are not completely transparent on the alpha channel, but are a light shade of black.

i should probabbly put something white underneith... You know, I'll give your graphix guys some creidit here, MAX is a hard program to learn and it takes a LONG time (for me anyway) to do anything on it... I'm getting faster... but damn... anyway, any information would be helpful...

Don't go with white, and thanks, but Max ain't so bad once you get used to it. It just takes time and practise. If you have any specific Max questions, throw them in another thread, and I'll see about getting that one stickied, and it can serve as another point of reference for any would be modellers.

I'd like to include 3-4 new vehicles with the project that a friend and I are working on, but that might take quite some time... to do anything with one vehicle has taken me at least a week... I've designed them all, but....
Btw... could I possibly get the texture you guys used to make the crate walls, the ones that are found often in junkyards...

Doubtful, and even if I could, our material library is for Max R2.5, and contain a whole swag of plugins that won't work in Max R4. If you start up that max thread, ask me about the material editor, and I'll try and talk you through some techniques.

[QUoTE}Anyway....uh.... the spelling sux because I've been working on MAX since...uh... 6 or something and it's now 3am... so uh.... yeah....[/QUOTE]

I know that feeling. Have a beer. It help spleling good.

vVolf wrote:.....Great.

This might sound stupid, but how do you put items in shelves and stuff?

Very easy. Within the level editor, you want to click on the button on the top that says "Entity Edit". Then pick the shelf you want to add stuff to and scroll down to the Inventory button to add items. Find the entities that you want to add (ammo, books, weapons, etc.). Do you have any problems with any of those steps?

lol, No...Thanks Jimmy!!! I just thought that was for the chrs.

I remembered I wanted to ask something. Now that may sound stupid, but...erm, is there a way to run FoT Tools fullscreen? I used the -w switch, and now even if i don't use a shortcut, it still comes windowed. I want to use both modes(each has advantages), so is there anything I can do about it?

Whilst in windowed mode, go into the options screen and choose one of the preset video mode. This will switch it back to full-screen.

Thanks Red. As always running to the rescue!

Nice one, Red, I needed to know that, too.

BTW, does anyone know where the Ruined City ==> Objects ==> CarWash tileset is used in the single-player missions? I'd like to be able to use it myself, but can't for the life of me think how to put it together!

Steve

I started trying it... but then I think I'm missind tiles with only the demo version as, well, it just doesn't seem that hard, and yet seems to be missing stuff...

http://red.homeip.net:8080/carwash.clp


Which reminds me, wouldn't it be cool to have a site (say... DaC ) host a bunch of clp files of complicated stuff to assemble? I remember a lot of people had problems with the vault door and such... Wouldn't it be cool to have such a thing?

Red wrote:http://red.homeip.net:8080/carwash.clp


Which reminds me, wouldn't it be cool to have a site (say... DaC ) host a bunch of clp files of complicated stuff to assemble? I remember a lot of people had problems with the vault door and such... Wouldn't it be cool to have such a thing?

Hmm, yeah... Maybe a Custom Tile-Sets section, too.

But having said that, I think the greatest priority should be a Sims-style Custom Tile bank.

Oh, uhh, not that I've ever played the Sims, of course... :oops:

Steve

Oh, cheers for the clip, Red!

JimmyJay might want to make such a tile-group eventually. I believe he likes the game enough.

If you did play The Sims, I don't see any reason for embarassment. It was a good game, if you like the genre. I played it a couple of times myself. I probably wouldn't buy it, but that doesn't mean its bad. Its a pretty good world constructing game.