Getting model into game

[BNG Da BZ Fool]

Do you suppose that recessing (indenting) this part of the main body would allow the suspension to sit lower resulting in less of a gap between the 2 components? In one model Ass. Tank I created side skirts extruded from the main body to form a sort of inverted well in which the track assembly resided. The result gave the appearance of semi hidden tracks from the side view anyways.

[mrtwosheds]

Indenting the mainbody would probably just create some more polys where they wont be seen.
Make the suspension so that the it appears to be a little bit inside the mainbody in your modeling prog, not exactly where you want it to be. Then when the model will rise to the correct position in game. How much it rises may depend on the units size/mass etc.

[BNG Da BZ Fool]

Apparently, creating recessed tracks does look pretty cool and gives the appearance of side armor like modern tanks use nowadays. I've started experimenting a bit with cylindrical wheels on a dune buggy twin gun type. I seem to be getting quite comfortable with these type of wheel/track units.

I may try making a sphere tank or two. Something similar to the old ball turrets of the 2nd world war era only this one will be chassis mounted complete with a gunner figure sitting in the position where the weapons would occupy. The sphere would surround the guy and be almost completely transparent so you could see him rotating around inside as it spins to engage the bad guys. I don't know why but I've developed a fetish for adding stuff like this to my models to add a bit more realism to them. Threed, works awesomely for making objects transparent using the material edit controls it supports. When I get a few done I'll release some for others to use freely. BNG.

[mrtwosheds]

The sphere would surround the guy and be almost completely transparent

Transparency's can be tricky in game, notice how most stock units carefully don't allow you to see all the way through and out the other side, allot of in game stuff looks bad-n-buggy when viewed through transparency's. Also the transparent material setting does not work in low detail mode. Better effects may be achieved using alpha channels but care still needs to be taken in where you use them.

[Avatar]

Other than lights nothing drags the game down faster than a transparency seen through a transparency...  better to fake it than go overboard with transparent parts.

-Av-

[BNG Da BZ Fool]

Here's my first attempt at a dome type. It only has one transparent part an outter dome to show the gunner inside sitting behind the weapon. The opacity is set at 50%. I believe if transparent units are not over done then adding a few to the game is more of a plus then minus. A pat on the back would be nicer then a restating what I already know AV. BNG.

[mrtwosheds]

So set the game to high detail, build a base and place 20 of those in front of it...
Just trying to help you not make mistakes that you will later regret doing, I was fairly distressed when I discovered I had to entirely rebuild the entire first generation of Daleks (and the second!) because parts of them started disappearing when they exercised their right to assemble in large numbers. 

[BNG Da BZ Fool]

I know what you mean about BZII really slowing down. I believe that part of the problem itself is related to the AI over build issue, and the older release date of the game with now out dated box specs for a PC based video game.

Again, I mostly play for my own gaming pleasure, and I suppose that with limited use of such transparent units wouldn't really present too much of an issue considering I have most of my performance settings set pretty low to begin with. Besides, transparency usage is already at least in part commonly used anyways by the game engine.

I very much like doing things a bit differently with my models. Tanks for the heads up on the frame rate issue, but part of the fun of playing BZII is customizing ingame stuff to my own personal tastes. For what it's worth I shared this modeling tip with others who feel the same way too. BNG.

[BNG Da BZ Fool]

Okay, so you've decided that you'd like to actually get a model into the game, but you don't know where to start. If your like me you never heard of a 3d modeling program before you decided to make some models for BZII. Also, you don't know what X Y Z means except that it's associated with A B C. Not to mention you don't have any mula to spend on those fancy modeling programs that everybody talks about, but most peeps can't afford on a meager budget. Well, fret not; there's both good news and unfortunately some bad news. The good news is there are quite a few free model making options available. The bad news is that many of them are too complicated for the average peep to figure out. What I'm about to disclose to you is highly secret and must not spread beyond the boundaries of the BZII modding community, so mums the word and lets get rolling....

For the money, the best overall 3d modeler I've come across is one called, Truespace 7.6. It's free, easy to use, and supports a version of X that can be easily converted to BZII XSI via a crappy, but very useful little utility called Threed aka BZ2ME. You'll also need another Windows based utility called Notepad to process your model files prior to converting them to BZII XSI. I start by describing how Truespace basically works and help you get your first model into the game. Nothing fancy just a bunch of cubes stuck together to make the infamous ISDF Sabre Tank; a relatively simple model to construct.

Okay, Truespace, is basically and drag and drop icon based 3d modeler apparently designed for peeps that don't have a clue what a nurbs curve is or how to make one for that matter. If you can click an icon then you already know the basic way to do stuff in TS 7.6. If you can left click and drag the mouse cursor then you already know how to make objects bigger and smaller, and move stuff around in the modeling work space. If you can right click then you just learned how to adjust setting and enter the edit mode in TS. Honestly, of all the icons in the modeler you'll probably only ever use a few of them to make all the model parts and stick them together to make a typical BZII model.

More to come as time allows, or if anybody is actually interested. Time is to valuable to waste for no reason at all.

   

[BNG Da BZ Fool]

Problem: You load your model into the map editor and parts of the model look kind of strange looking.

Solution: Check to make sure you delete unneeded hidden faces like those commonly seen in cockpit objects attached to model body frames. I discovered this recently when I separated a part of the model body to form the cockpit object and forgot to delete the faces left on both the cockpit and body objects. It looked pretty ugly ingame; I guess it's because of the relatively close distance between the 2 objects. You can delete faces in TS by right clicking an object to enter the edit mode, select the delete face icon and then using the mouse pointer to position over the desired face and left clicking the area. I'm not sure how this is done in other 3d modelers, but perhaps other peeps can post how it's done in their' modelers. BNG. 

[BNG Da BZ Fool]

Question: How can I use Truespace 7.6 (aka TS 6.6 in disquise) to make my first model for BZII?

Answer: Start out with a simple model like the ivscout using a single body object and the required hp's, and flame_1__h parts.
Open TS, and click on the button that shows trueSpace6. This will change the workspace layout to TS 6.6. You'll need to identify a few icons for this modeling exercise. TS, is organized to maximize the use of icons for it's modeling tools and they're grouped together as menu bars in the workspace. Some are minimized and appear as tiny boxes that if left clicked will expand to a menu icon bar. They can also be expanded again by left clicking the minus symbols on the left side of the menu bar to show all of the icons grouped together. If the plus symbols are clicked again the bar minimizes again to clear the workspace area. Spend some time getting used to this feature as it will become useful later when we'll begin by adding a cube for our scouts main body. After learning a few key icons you'll start doing stuff really fast with repetition.  

TS, also uses little text messages that appear when we hover the cursor arrow over the icons. Practice moving the cursor around the icons to find the one that says Cube. When you find it and left click to active the icon. Notice that your cursor now has a cube attached to it? Now move the cursor in to the workspace and left click an area to add the cube. Now right click the cube you just added to edit it directly. You'll notice a new menu icon bar appear in the workspace. This is where we can edit the cubes shape and do all sorts of cool things later on. For now though move your cursor away from the cube and right click to exit the edit mode. Notice, the blue and yellow box that surrounds your cube? This is just another tool that when you left click, hold and drag an area of it will move, resize, and rotate the cube in the workspace. Practice grabbing different areas of the cube to get used to moving and resizing the cube.

Notice the 3 pointed object near our cube? You can use this tool to rotate the cube by left click holding any of the 3 points to rotate the cube. Notice the little blue ball object near the 3 pointed object? Left click it to add rotational control points to the blue and yellow box that surrounds your cube. If you left click hold any of the rotational points you can rotate the cube as well. Practice using these controls to get comfortable with what they do.

Okay, so now we know the basics of how TS works and how to add a cube to the workspace. Now we're going to stretch the cube into more of a crude scout body add our hp's, and flame_1__h. To do this we need to stretch the cube. This can be done in 2 ways. The first is to use the blue and yellow box by grabbing it near a corner of the blue and yellow box, or by right clicking the object tool icon to bring up the object info box to manually enter the new size in meters. The default size in TS is 2 meters by 2 meters by 2 meters in the X Y and Z plane. You'll see these numbers in the object info window that pops up. Lets increase the size in Y from 2.000 to 6.000. and hit enter to make the cube longer.

Now we're going to make our hp's by using a new icon called the Add Polyline tool to draw out a 3 sided triangle. Locate the Add Polyline tool icon and left click it to activate it. Now move your cursor into the workspace and left click where you want to place the first point of your triangle, now reposition the cursor again and left click to place the second point. Notice that a line is added between the 2 points? Now to close the triangle right click the cursor to add the third side. Now locate the Convert NURBS Patch icon and left click it. This will make the object into a solid editable object. Now that we have our first hp point we can copy it using the Copy icon to make as many hp's as we need. I believe we need the following for our scout model: hp_com_1, hp_eyepoint, hp_gun_1, hp_gun_2, hp_rocket_1, and hp_special_1.

Now locate the icon for the Scene Editor and left click to open it up into the workspace. Now you can see a complete list of every object that you've created so far. To rename objects right click the object and select rename from the menu and rename the cube object something like scoutbodyz. Why add z at the end of the object name? Later in Notepad we're going to replace the z with a space character to get objects like the hp points to work properly for BZII. Now rename the triangles with the hp names listed above and add a z to the end of each object name.

Now we're going to make our flame_1__h object by right clicking the scoutbodyz object to enter into edit mode and and select one face to separate from the cube object. In the edit mode, left click the face you want to use for the flame_1__h part. Now locate the Separate Selected Part icon and click it to separate the object from the cube. Now select the new object in the Scene Editor and rename it flame_1__hz. The seperated flame_1__h one slight problem it's axes are not set to 0 0 0. How do we fix this? Select the part then left click the move axes to center of object icon, then click the normalize rotation icon. This will reset the rotation values correctly so that our flame points in the rearward direction in BZII. Did you notice the L symbol with x y z appearing on the flame object? Every model part has it's own axis. If you want to make them invisible then click the axes icon to hide them.  

Basically, we have all the parts we need to assemble our simple scout model. Yes, I know it doesn't have a cockpit object and la la la, but you can add it later if you like, but I want to keep things as simple as possible for this exercise.  

Okay, so now we need to attach all the parts together in the Scene editor by adding the hp's and flame_1__h to the scoutbodyz. Left click and hold the first hp and drag it to the scoutbodyz object and release the button to place the hp object under the scoutbodyz object. Do this with all the other hp's and the flame_1__h object. Notice how a plus sign is added to the scoutbodyz object? This is called a basic model hierarchy, and essentially makes one single model from a bunch of different parts. If you left click the plus sign the tree expands to show the parts attached under the main body of the scout.

So far, we've assembled all our parts together to form the basic scout model. Now we're going to apply a UV map to our model. Locate the UV Mapping Editor icon and with your model selected click the icon. A new window will appear with a UV applied to the model. Now we're going to set TS up to open the UV map in MS Paint. To do this right click the UV Mapping Editor icon and then click the External editor button and in the window that opens locate the app by clicking the look in tab, C:>Windows,>System32>mspaint.exe and select open. Once we do this we're ready to export our UV map to MS Paint. To link to the external editor locate the Export Bitmap icon in the UV Map Editor window.

Now while left click holding this icon a second icon called Send bitmap to external editor appears. Select this icon and in the Save as window box enter a name for our UV map and hit save. This will send the map to MS Paint where we can paint some stuff like some squiggly lines, etc. When your happy with what you've painted on the map hit file>save. Now when you return to TS your saved texture will automatically appear applied to our scout body.


Basically, our scout model is ready to be saved/exported as an X file. To do this click TS6 Files>Save as>Object, enter model name, save as type Directx. Now click the Settings button, put an x in the following boxes, Export Geometry, Triangulate all faces, Export textures, Inline material, and on the Convert resolution to bar change it to Closest 2^n size (BZII needs textures formatted this way) and then click OK. Now in the Look in bar locate your BZII Addon folder and hit Save. All of your models and props will need to be saved in the addon folder, so bZII can find them. I recommend that you create a sub folder in addon where all of your stuff in stored. It simplifies things and keeps all your stuff in one place for easier access when using apps like threed, 3DEX, etc. PS: The model name and ODF name should be the same, i.e., ivmyscout.x, ivmyscout.xsi, and ivmyscout.odf.  


OK, so far we've made our model, made a basic model texture, applied it and saved the file to our BZII Addon folder. Now we need to open our model file in Notepad and replace the Z character from the end of the hp_ and flame_1__h object names so they'll actually work in BZII, and resave the file again. How do we do this? In Notepad, select Edit>Replace and in the top box type z and in the second box hit the sapcebar to add a space and then hit Rreplace All. This will place a space between every z it finds. This is critical as BZII reads hp's and certain other object names in a specific way. For example, hp_gun_1-1 will not be read correctly by BZII, but hp_gun_1 z will be read correctly. This oddity is a minor problem with how TS writes out an X file format in relation to how BZII needs to see it.


Now let's open the file in Threed and save it as XSI. Really there's only one other major task to do now and that's to open Pak Explorer, load data.pak>Objects>ISDF>vehicles>ivscout and double click>ivscout.odf. When it opens in Notepad, click save as and name it ivmyscout.odf and hit save. This will load our ODF file where we can change the geometryName = ivscout.xsi to your model files ivmyscout.xsi and save the file in your addon folder.

Now we have all the required files to load our model into the BZII Map Editor by clicking ctrl e to open the editor, click Object and type in our models name under config Team = 1 for my team/ Team = 2 the bad guys, and hit enter. If everything was done correctly then our model will appear attached to our mouse cursor and we can left click an area in the map editor to place it on the map. If you selected team 1 then you should be able to command it to pickup you up. I usually place both a team 1 and team 2 unit in the map editor to see how they fight each other.

PS: If I've forgotten to mention something relavent or you have questions about this short tutorial feel free to post or PM me and I'll try to clarify the issue. BNG.

[Clavin12]

I followed your instructions step by step and I still couldn't find the model in the editor.

[BNG Da BZ Fool]

Did you save the XSI file to your addon folder?

Did you edit the ODF file and save it to your addon folder? These 2 files are used by BZII to make a MSH file that is created in the bin data folder when you first start the BZII map editor.

Could you be a bit more specific about what you mean by "...still can't find the model in the editor?" Were you actually in the map editor or did you just start BZII? 

The process described in my post is the same one that I use to get my models into BZII. I'm assuming that you know how to start the BZII map editor as you say this in your post. Is this correct?

When you select the object button in the map editor and type in your models name in the config box and hit enter what happens?

[Clavin12]

I did

I did

I am using the editor

I thought i did

Thats probly my problem

[Clavin12]

When you make the hardpoints in Truespace to they just look like 2d triangles? and which way does the gun point? what do eyepoint and com1 do? How do you make a cockpit? You don't mention where you put the hardpoints.

Srry about all the questions but i'm going to make a mod so i have to know.