I have created several player skins for JO and JA, but I'm kinda tired of it, I wanna try something new; to create a player model.


So I wonder:

• Would it be possible for me to create a player model? Or do you have to be a total geek and know 15 different programming languages?

• Does anyone know of a good modeling tutorial for total newbies, like I?



I hope you can help me.:)

well, I'm getting my 2nd player model into Jedi Outcast---once it's done I'll convert it to Jedi Academy.

If you want to model players in either game you'll need 3ds Max so that you can assign the model to the Jedi Knight skeleton. Problem is, 3ds Max is marketed to companies who will front the $3,000 bill for 1 license.

However, if you want to model props like lightsaber hilts that don't have skeletons, you can do it all from milkshape or gmax. I recommend starting here because it's much simpler. I may or may not release my newbie milkshape lightsaber hilt tutorial. If not, do a google search for milkhsape or gmax tutorials (gmax is free, milkshape costs $20 but has more import / export features). Once you get the modeling aspect down comfortably you can follow this tutorial to get it ingame:

http://psynex-land.com/saber%20tutorial/Custom%20JA%20Sabers.html)

Thanks! I'll try to create some kind of saber or something...

here is a link to a site with a couple of tutorials on modeling for JO. the basics still apply, but the jedi academy skeleton has 19 less bones than the JO skeleton.

http://www3.sympatico.ca/psykopat/)


import/export tolls for 3dsmax are hard to come by. not to mention the price of the program itself. i have managed to find a glm import, a md3 import and export, and an xsi import and export as well as an autolink tool which will put your meshes into the proper heirarchy. links to some of these tools, will be on the same page as the tutorials....while an xsi impoter for the JA skeleton included in the tools raven released for JA can be found here....

http://www.softimage.com/download/x...max/default.htm)

now as for the price for 3dsmax, we all know the average modding game enthusiast can't afford the price.

I have now created a testsaber in gmax!

However, I have a small problem, I can't load the md3 files in gmax! I have no idea why! I installed the quake III blah blah md3 converter, but it doesn't seem to work at all :/



And eidospsogos, you'd better delete some parts of your latest post, cause the moderators won't like it...

yeah, it was just a tip for the poster. if you saw it that's all i needed. as for gmax, i have had very little luck with md3's. i have had good luck with importing and exporting md3's from milkshape. in fact there is also a glm importer for milkshape.

i would get milkshape to be honest. combined with the md3viewer in the JO tools release, it's quite useful. you can import glm 's export as md3's and convert to glm with md3view.

though if you look hard enough, there are functional md3 import/export tools for gmax. just the fact that it was not meant to be a very functional program for anything other than games designed specifically to be used with the program decreases its usefulness.

I highly recommend milkshape as well for lightsabers, though I've never even tried gmax. It's worth the $20.

Originally posted by eidospsogos
i would get milkshape to be honest. combined with the md3viewer in the JO tools release, it's quite useful. you can import glm 's export as md3's and convert to glm with md3view.

You may call me stupid, but I don't undertand, what to do with the tags?
:confused:

tags can be an issue that is difficult to understand in the beginning. as far as sabers go their only real function is to tell the game where to attach the saber blade to the hilt. if you get milkshape and download the glm import tool, the tags will be imported with the saber hilt model, and you don't have to worry about it. even if you are starting from scratch you can import a model with proper tags scale it down to your model, or scale your model up to it, delete the other model except for the tag and you're ready to go. no worrying about whether your blade curves in the worng direction or other bugs you can get in the beginning when you don't fully understand the way they work.

as for player models, it seems to me the tags are solely for the purpose of movement and dismemberment. a tag when attached properly tells the game which meshes move with which bones, and which areas are dismembered when ever it comes into contact with a saber. i don't totally understand them yet myself in that aspect, but they are important.

Ok, I got the tags to work, with gmax:D



But now... I have another problem! When I open the saber in md3view, and try to load the skin-file I get those two errors:

Unable to find surface named "w_saber" in blah blah

and:

Unable to find surface named "w_handle" in blah blah


I understand that I haven't created the surfaces correct, but can anyone telll me how to do?

once again this is a problem i've only been able to fix in milkshape. i have yet to create a saber hilt from scratch, but there were sabers from JO that i wanted to try to add to JA. but because every saber hilt created for JO was in a folder called saber, they could not be loaded correctly in JA as there was already a folder called saber, with a model called saber_w, or w_saber in it. renaming the folder will not work. as the folder name with the model name in it is essential to the loading of skins etc

in milkshape i simply imported the model, from my renamed folder, renamed the surfaces and model as i saw fit, exported it as an md3 and used md3 to import a skin and convert it to a glm.

to skin a saber hilt you create a skin file similar to the ones used to skin a player.....

say you have your uvw unwarapped all into one image file....so that all your meshes are skinned from one .jpg.....

then your .skin file would look very simple, something like this....(if your model is named such anyway)

w_saber,models/weapons2/saber_specultimate/specultimate.jpg

however if you have multiple surfaces uvw unwrapped and linked to separate images, it would look something like this....

eye04,models/weapons2/sc_saber/eye
hilt1,models/weapons2/sc_saber/skin
hilt2,models/weapons2/sc_saber/hilt2
hilt3,models/weapons2/sc_saber/hilt3
hilt4,models/weapons2/sc_saber/hilt4
hilt5,models/weapons2/sc_saber/hilt3
hilt55,models/weapons2/sc_saber/hilt5
eye,models/weapons2/sc_saber/eye
eye2,models/weapons2/sc_saber/eye
eye3,models/weapons2/sc_saber/eye

depending on what you name your surfaces again of course....

if this does not help at all i'm sorry.....if you need anymore help, or if any of this is unclear, feel fre to ask anymore questions

what I wanted to know was how to stick the parts together in gmax. It doesn't work to simply group them, and name them something.

And now, I tried the saber in game(without textures). But, it was upside down:(

i do not really know, as i have not done anything with gmax. but the two programs i have worked with, it was very simple to rename components. one of which is 3dsmax, which i would think would be similar to gmax. but i could be wrong. so all in all if you want help from a gmax perspective i cannot help you. sorry.

:doh: I'll have to ask someone else... Maybe a friend of mine knows...

so it is impossible to model a character in gmax? Or will I have to make the model than have someonw with 3DS finish it to work with JA? Also there are no MAXScripts for gmax that do what 3DS does to bind the model to the JA skel....if not oh well I will just have to do the first above.

Also with the lightsaber hilts, if you know how to do it in 3DS than you know how to do it with gmax as gmax is just a less fancy version of 3DS they both work the same (I have used 3DS but dont have it). So a nice explanation of how it is done in 3DS would be very helpfull :D