[TUTORIAL] Creating a new unit from scratch

EDIT: NEW VIDEO TUTORIAL!!!!!!!!
Only Blender required!

Hey! This tutorial was made by @robintick, @zx0 (Most credit goes to them!) and me. Hopefully these documents will thoroughly explain how to create a new unit for Planetary Annihilation.

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B_RXrYUHtKK_bjlieXhxbkZLajA&usp=sharing

If you have any questions or suggestions please reply to this thread. I should be able to answer all of 'em.

Noice.

So ******* good. PLS stick it like a madman.

i´m so damn thankful !!! nice nice nice :3

That's really neat. Nothing about how to use papatran though? All of this seems to be about getting PA models into 3DS Max, but not on how to get them into PA again. Seems like an essential step in creating a new unit.
(Also, the weirdness about the bone rotations is because raevn never did completely figure out the 3D rotation matrices in the papa file, which is why the weird bone rotations appear.)

And you might want to enable the automatic spell checker in Word.

Yeah i'll add in some stuff about papatran and my batch files for converting stuff.

I didn't type most of the documents but they should be readable and understandable.

Updated the tutorial with a papa conversion document.

EDIT: Added a google docs link.

Google tells me that this file is no longer available or that I don't have permission to view it

hm that's weird. Try my new edited one.

Got it. Thanks!

Could I make an air-based boom-bot? Wanna make cruise missiles

There was something similar here: https://forums.uberent.com/threads/rel-cruise-missile-flying-bomb.67571/
So that would be a good starting point.

Yeah definitely. Are you wondering if it's possible or do you need help making it?

Never made a mod before, so help would be nice ^_^;

Absolubte max poly count for a unit is??

Also what should I name the bones, or do I (im thinking obviously) define them in a config file? I'm using 3ds max and have made normal cubes the bones, setting options to not render so they are hopefully invisible in game.

There is no max that anyone's tried to reach, just don't go to high. Compare your poly counts to those for vanilla units and make sure that they're similar. The more high poly units there are on the field, the more resource intensive the mod will be.

bone names don't really matter, but make sure the base bone is bone_root

you'll just need to change stuff in the animation tree

So base bone should be the centre of the object on the ground level?? Tried the advice of loading .papa models in blender to check the names but sadly the model is linked or something so I couldn't get an exact on bone positioning, also all im using for bones atm are cubes with rendering to invisible, ive linked them to act as bones, will this be fine?

bone_root must be 0,0,0. And you need to be in edit mode to edit individual bones in blender.

I'm not sure why you're not using real bones for the bones, what's the point of using the squares? I have no idea if the cubes will work :s