I have a few questions regarding Universal specific modeling techniques. The answers here could probably all be found elsewhere on these forums/website, but I figure you guys wouldn't mind me stirring up some 'hot forum action'.
How to you make transparent glass? I had to look up the transparent color for TU yesterday, but it isn't exactly what I'm looking for (Was helpful none the less). I'd like to do varying levels of opacity. I've seen it in a few of the vehicle in the past I believe
I'm curious about the acceptable poly range. What would you considered to be a low detail range? Medium detail? High detail? Just looking for a suggested range to keep my models in.
When separating wheels from their model should the wheel models remain at the same coordinates as they did on the model or do I just model one wheel? (I'll probably look at the wheel/turret tutorial right after I post this.)
Could I get a ruff push into the direction on how to animate stuff for model? I noticed that 3dsmax had animation key-frames and such, didn't look into it much if at all just yet. If animated do those animations stay in the model when exported or do I have to export each keyframe of animation?
This silly Wing Car I was working on today is 1266 Faces is that too much? Is faces even the correct measurement for poly count? Also what should the hood ornament be? A little cheesy rocket ship? Another set of wings? A monkey? Some lightning?
Good to see you're modelling. I'll assume your questions about wheels and turrets (and all things to do with attach points) have been answered by the tutorials. They're a bit clunky but I'm glad you found them helpful.
Right then:
Transparent glass
Using the old MC there was a sort of cheaty way to do this. You'd build your car model or building model or whatever, and make sure that anything you wanted transparent had its own polys. You'd detach those glass polys and export them from your 3d prog as one model; then do the same for the other non-transparent bits.
In the MC, load up the glass bits and edit the model's global properties: give it a Blend Type of Alpha Blend and choose the opacity. Save the .atm file. Next, load up the non-glass bits and then attach the glass bits as a turret. Save the whole thing, and hey presto... (it might be that you have to load up the glass and attach the rest of the model as a turret... I cannae remember. But that's the basic approach).
However. This was an undocumented feature I discovered one day. And it will soon be defunct, because we have the glory that is the MC v2.
The new MC lets you assign different material properties (and different textures) to different polys on the same model. No more mucking about with all of the above. So you'd just select the glass bits, tell the MC they should be transparent, and... thassit.
I dunno when Mit plans to release it - soon I hope. So I'd hold off doing it the old way for now - just concentrate on building nice stuff in Max or whatever and we'll have the tools to handle the effect you need soon.
Acceptable poly range
"How long is a piece of string". It depends, which doesn't help really does it :] How many of the vehicle/building/whatever will be seen at once... if it's a player vehicle how many players will be onscreen with it... what video card do you have/your players have. All that jazz.
However, we can sidestep a lot of that if we use LoDs properly. It's more work for the modeller but it means you can spend polys on a nice high detail model without it causing too many problems for low-spec players.
I really don't know what to say about actual poly counts... if you feel it's worth 8000 or 10,000 polys on a nice model, go for it - just make sure you have a medium LoD version with 2-3000 and a low LoD version with a few hundred as well. I'd treat your 1200 poly car as sort of low, if that helps. I'd spend a few more on making the wheels properly round; same with the headlights, making the wings curve more smoothly etc. Up to you though, and it does depend how it'll be used. If you're planning a top-down racer, for example, or if the camera will always be far away from the player, you don't need the detail.
Animation
If you're using Max... yes, you use the key frames. World's shortest Max animation tutorial: turn on keyframe recording, move stuff, advance the timeline, move stuff more. Done :)
You can export with the animation inside the file (eg in .3ds and .x files) but the MC can't read it. So, unfortunately, you have to export each keyframe manually, then use the animation builder in the MC to recombine the keyframes before saving as an .atm.
There's more about animation in the MC help file.
One other thing to bear in mind, given what I said about transparency and the new MC, is that you won't be able to have multiple textures & materials with animated models. Sure it's possible but it will require more coding time than Mit can make available right now. So if you wanted a big spinning monkey on top of your crazy winged car, maybe don't plan on using the new material system and stick to the undocumented way of doing transparent glass. Or just stick with black glass, it means you don't have to model the inside of the car :]
