what are uber's general business activities

The base max files wouldn't be useful because they use Puppetshop. Really, honestly, internally we just take the .fbx model file of an existing commander, import it, delete the old mesh, skin the new one. Done. Puppetshop never enters the equation.

@bgolus If you ever have any free time I'd we'd love to see a little recording, or maybe a screen shot tutorial. Something visual- and audio if possible.

Seeing how to do something based on writing can be a bit... Hard- if you every had the time a video posted on the mod forum, and stickied would be perfect.

Just to understand this correctly.. I create an animated model we need to use the existing skeleton structure of a commander and replace the mesh? Is there no way to get our own skeletons with associated animations into the game?

I apologize if I am totally asking something stupid here...

For our commanders we reuse the four base rigs (imperial aka bipedal, raptor aka chicken walker, quad, and tank). This just means we don't have to create a custom animation set for each commander.

But it doesn't have to be. The animations are listed in the Json file, so they can be anything you want. The only requirement is the base model papa file and the animation files have exactly the same bones and bone hierarchy.

Have you found that using a different version of 3ds max breaks the model export process or should everything work fine in 2013 on up?

Ok I got ahold of Max 2012 and here are my results attempting to follow @bgolus instructions as close as possible:

Went to max, modified the max script a bit just to change the name of the output file. Ran it selecting my entire model (I did NOT merge the model before doing so... do I have to do this?? Is there any prep work inside of 3ds max that needs to be done to a model before the FBX will come out correctly?).

Brought the output FBX file over to my dev folder and used the papatran options you stated here: https://forums.uberent.com/threads/reference-papadump-exe-papatran-exe.48386/ to output a .papa file. Got a bunch of "Ignoring cluster because it isn't linked to an FbxSkeleton" messages (no idea what this means).

I didn't get any PNG files out of the process, but i'm not too concerned about that since i'm just trying to get "anything" in the game, with or without textures for now.

Brought the new .papa file and swapped it with a vanilla tank.papa file (removed the animations from the JSON). Noticed there were some specular/etc.. files that normally go along with the tank but figured I don't really care if the textures are applied, or applied wrong so my first test was just seeing if the model was showing up correctly in game.

Clicking to build the unit resulted in an immediate "server.exe has stopped working" crash. In the client log under app data/uber/blahblah/log there was no mention of a crash.

I tried removing the texture files, but this didn't change anything.

All other units are building fine, and I confirmed that I could build the animation-less unit before I replaced the .papa file.

Edit 2**: It seems that there were some references to some "socket" bones, used for firing weapons I believe(??). I removed those references and now the single part of my model is coming through fine.

I suppose now, the biggest questions are - how should we set up our models (and *textures*!) in 3ds max to properly come through the papatran process? I haven't seen any PNG files along the way and am wondering if perhaps the way I have set up my textures in 3ds max is causing this....

Would appreciate some help getting this process to work correctly.

PS: What affects the in-game model's size? Is that what mesh_bounds is for or do we need to actually modify the size in 3ds max?





Edit**: Without restarting the game, changing the tank.papa file back to the original, and then starting a new game, I am now able to build the unit... however.. only a single piece of the model loads (a sword - the original model was build up of 57 objects total when looking at it in 3ds max... guess papatran doesn't unify everything after all???). Extremely strange. And, even MORE strange. After exiting from the game and restarting it, without touching anything, the original model now builds out of the factory (which is the response I was expecting to happen when I first restored the original model, instead of getting the new model now showing ingame!!!) craaaaazy

Try importing your resulting .papa into blender to see if the output is at all close to the original model.

Also:

• Textures are handles separately, so you won't get png files - this is fine.
• The "Ignoring Cluster" messages could have something to do with vertex groups - do these match the bone names & is the bone heirarchy correct? (I'm using blender terminology here, so some translation to Max may be needed).

@bgolus

This here is exactly what I'm talking about - a post from an Uber artist, taking an hour or two out of their day to whip up a stupidly simply model that can walk us through the process of exporting the model, animation, and textures and getting them into the game.

The modders here would probably all die of thankfulness. And then import the Monkeylord. ^_^

Please check my edits. I have successfully got a part of the model ingame, no polygon soup or anything, but it's only a piece of the model. I have to head out for awhile right now so @raevn can't check what comes into blender for now. Btw, do you have any idea how to correctly set up textures on a model??

(I would suspect that the output in blender should be what is showing ingame - that is, only one object out of the ~57 or so my total model is comprised of is getting through the process)

PS: Raevn, I really have no idea what I am doing in 3ds max honestly, i'm just trying to get a few models imported from other RTSes into PA right now. Perhaps if you could give me a bit more detailed of a query, I could look into it for you.

You have to modify the model size in 3ds max.

The unit should be a single object, I believe. Assuming I am understanding correctly (again, I can only go off what I know from blender terminology). For example, I assume object != bone group.

Textures are handled entirely separately from 3ds max - there's certain flags on papatran you need, as well as a file (I think it's called something like "default"? can't check right now) that specifies some additional settings. There's many of these files within unit directories that you can copy into the directory with papatran, and there's a post around here somewhere about which papatran flags to use for textures.

I'm not going to lie raevn, that last part of your post about textures was pretty confusing.

Yeah sorry . I'll do a better write-up later, I was rushing.

Edit: Ok, here goes.

1. Copy default.settings from \media\pa\units\land\tank_light_laser\ to the folder where papatran is.
2. Create your texture in png format and save it in the folder with papatran. Details on the texture formats can be found here.
3. Create the texture using papatran (alter paths accordingly):

@raevn any ideas what to do if the textures for your model are split up into multiple parts such as weapon/body/head?

I'm afraid you'll have to merge them all; not sure if there's some tool out there to help, but PA units only have one image for the whole model.

If I merge them won't that screw up the UV mapping with the model somehow?

I mean manually merge them; ie. create a new one that contains all the texture data for all objects, then mapping that back to the model.