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I can design walkers which other people can animate. I'm working on the animation thing. just learning blenders animation stuff.

Don't bother with Blender's animation just yet; OM's exporter doesn't export it properly (threed-like, and in Euler rotations which BZ doesn't support).

Tech Level 4
ISDF Experimental Units (star ship for now)

A Krogoth is much needed here .

I like the first couple of missions on Pluto, because you don't have to worry about base building and they have the densest in-game storytelling. Also due to not having to command anything they are the only missions that I can play with an Xbox controller which imho is more immersive when piloting a hovertank. Note:this works VERY well because unlike regular FPS's, bzone does not need fast movements and pinpoint accuracy.

The titans were the predecessors and enemies of all Olympian gods; most had to endure some kind of punishment such as holding up the sky (Atlas). The Furies were equated with a restless conscience and in mythology spent all their time chasing around guilty people; they were more of a concept than actual gods per se.

Hello and welcome!

For modeling you're going to want Blender, with OvermindDL1's BZ2 exporter. However be prepared to spend at least a few hours learning the interface because it is not standard and can be very confusing at first.

Blender can be downloaded here: http://www.blender.org/download/get-blender/
Good Blender video tutorials are here: http://blenderunderground.com/video-tutorials/
Model making basics (in Max, but the same idea applies to any modeling program) here: http://www.bz2md.com/fishdotxsi/model.htm
OM's Blender exporter thread is here:http://www.overminddl1.com/forum/index.php/topic,694.new.html#new

Most importantly, use Google and the forums! Chances are someone's already asked any given question.

Hope this helps.
Happy modding!

Wow, these are amazing! Good to see aircrafts finally being used extensively in the game.

P.S. Are you still interested in modeling/weapon help? PM or email me if you are.

Shouldn't this thread be locked because there is a whole board dedicated to the project now?

[Aeolians]

I just realized that I have a "Dictionary of Greek and Roman Mythology" in my possession, so I went through it and picked out some names that would at least remotely make sense.
I'm making several assumptions as to what the third race are/what they did:

• They are a convergence of the Hadeans and Olympians.
• They are fundamentally peaceful.
• They created biometal and other advanced technology.
• They created/control the portals.
• They abandon and/or hide their homeworld to escape attack by either the Hadeans or Olympians.

I only picked out names of gods because that is what the Cthonians are supposed to be.
Here is the list of names I picked out and why:

• Aeolians - Aeolus was the keeper of the winds (appears in the Odyssey) and lived on a floating island. Since in the Odyssey the winds were used for fast travel, we can equate them with the portals that are apparently becoming central to the story. The floating island analogy may be used if they decide to turn their homeworld into a rogue planet to hide it.
• Demetrians - Demeter was the primary earth goddess and a sister of both Zeus and Hades (hence the 3rd faction). Her daughter Persephone was stolen by Hades, causing Demeter to become upset and the earth to become infertile. Eventually, the Olympian gods were forced to intervene, compromising with Hades so that Persephone spent half of her time in Hades and half on Olympus. Persephone here can easily be equated with biometal, as per Mr. X's storyline the Hadeans attack the third faction to get the biometal technology, and the third faction abandons lays waste to their planet and appeal to the Olympians for help.
• Eireneans - Eirene was the manifestation of peace in Greek mythology. Since the third faction is supposed to be peaceful, it would not be surprising if the Hadeans and Olympians gave them this name (Although I do not think that peacekeeping would be the primary function of the third faction, I thought this name would be worth including).
• Hestians - Hestia was the "keeper of the fire" and (more or less) the goddess of the concept of home. She was also a sister to the main gods. In mythology, she stayed away from the disputes of other gods and remained a virgin. The "fire" that she represented was a "homeland" concept to the Greeks; each city maintained a city hearth and colonists took fire from that before departing. Here, fire would be equated with biometal due to its importance to the Cthonians and its presence wherever the Cthonians went, and the neutrality of the goddess is also fitting for the neutral faction.

The map textures in 24 bit TGA format can be found in the "worlds" directory in data.pak; they are organized by planet. If you're looking for vehicle/building textures, they are in the "objects/<RACE>/(buildings/vehicles/people)" folders, but they are in .pic format. You can use XnView to look at them and convert one at a time or NConvert to command line batch convert them to whatever you need.

For people wanting to learn blender, here is a collection of pretty good (and long) video tutorials; this is where I learned blender from.

http://blenderunderground.com/video-tutorials/

Does anyone know what format B3d can import with animation?

Blender can import .x and .3ds out of the box (don't know about animations, haven't tried). It can also import BZ2 XSI files' meshes with its .x importer. However, I wouldn't recommend using Blender to do animations just yet because OM's exporter does not export them properly.

Did you reset the default controls in options? You have to load Keyboard default, then Mouse default (in that order), otherwise it won't let you steer with the mouse.

The link worked fine for me, but the thing is a java applet, so it may be a java-related problem. It says you need at least Java 1.3 and to have to have Java code enabled in the browser, but I guess putting that on the same page as the applet is somewhat fail on their part.

After a bit of research, I have found an explanation of how BZ2's rotation works, along with an applet for converting from XYZ (Euler) rotation to the BZ2 format.

Java applet is here: http://www.euclideanspace.com/maths/geometry/rotations/conversions/eulerToQuaternion/program/index.htm

Complicated math is here: http://www.euclideanspace.com/maths/geometry/rotations/conversions/eulerToQuaternion/index.htm

Hopefully if anyone needs this information they will find these links useful.

It worked! Thanks for the help! That makes a lot of sense and would explain why none of my other animations worked either - the Blender exporter appears to export everything with the 3.

I tried fixing that by changing the animation data to

Code Select Expand

AnimationSet {
   Animation anim-wing_strut_l {
      {frm-wing_strut_l}
      SI_AnimationKey {
         3;
         2;
         1; 3; 0, 0, 0;;,
         31; 3; 0, 0, -7;;;
      }
   }
   Animation anim-wing_strut_r {
      {frm-wing_strut_r}
      SI_AnimationKey {
         3;
         2;
         1; 3; 0, 0, 0;;,
         31; 3; 0, 0, 7;;;
      }
   }
}

and it still wouldn't show up in game (I cleared my BinData folder even though I don't think that's necessary when using the editor). I removed the other two parts of the animation (for the wings) entirely for testing purposes, since I think the double keyframes are a result of the exporter trying to put both the rotation and translation in a single AnimationKey, and the wing struts are only supposed to rotate (whereas the wings move and rotate). I have no clue what's going on with this, and I've as yet been unable to successfully make a completely custom animation (I have mastered the art of the power turbine, but that got boring very quickly).

Ok, here's the AnimationSet portion of the XSI. There's four moving parts - two wing struts that just rotate and two wings that move and rotate at the same time. I've also included a picture of what the model is supposed to look like in its deployed/undeployed state. Also, the animation is untouched from how it exported from Blender.

Code Select Expand

AnimationSet {
   Animation anim-wing_strut_l {
      {frm-wing_strut_l}
      SI_AnimationKey {
         3;
         4;
         1; 3; 0, 0, -1;;,
         31; 3; 0, 0, -1;;,
         1; 3; 0, 0, 0;;,
         31; 3; 0, 0, -7;;;
      }
   }
   Animation anim-wing_l {
      {frm-wing_l}
      SI_AnimationKey {
         3;
         6;
         1; 3; 1, 1, -1;;,
         14; 3; 2, 2, -1;;,
         31; 3; 1, 2, -1;;,
         1; 3; 0, 0, 0;;,
         14; 3; 0, 0, 5;;,
         31; 3; 0, 0, 14;;;
      }
   }
   Animation anim-wing_strut_r {
      {frm-wing_strut_r}
      SI_AnimationKey {
         3;
         4;
         1; 3; 0, 0, -1;;,
         31; 3; 0, 0, -1;;,
         1; 3; 0, 0, 0;;,
         31; 3; 0, 0, 7;;;
      }
   }
   Animation anim-wing_r {
      {frm-wing_r}
      SI_AnimationKey {
         3;
         6;
         1; 3; -1, 1, -1;;,
         14; 3; -2, 2, -1;;,
         31; 3; -1, 2, -1;;,
         1; 3; 0, 0, 0;;,
         14; 3; 0, 0, -5;;,
         31; 3; 0, 0, -14;;;
      }
   }
}


The ODF entry is just:

Code Select Expand

animCount = 1
animName1 = "deploy"
animFile1 = "ivlbbra.xsi" <-- this being the correct filename

Also, the blender exporter was exporting the model as UV Wrapped (mode 4) instead of unwrapped (mode 3), so I saved it it Threed (Which fixed it) and copy-pasted the material data from the threed'd file into the original (this made it work properly in game).