Help With A Model Conversion - Longbow Digital Arts Discussion

Author	Topic: Help With A Model Conversion
JVortex Member	posted January 25, 2001 02:58 AM I would like to make a conversion here of a tank from Tread Marks for use in 4x4 Evolution. No specific tank in mind for this. There are a couple of reasons for this. For one it would just be cool to run a tank in a 4x4 offroading game. Aside from that it would hopefully lure some players of 4x4 into the Tread Marks community. This would in theory drum up some additional sales of the TM game as well as just get some "fresh meat" into the multi player games . I know more or less how the various files in 4x4 work, I just don't know enough about 3D modeling to get it to work. And yes I was going to ask for permission to do this before I released it. The general idea that I am after here is for a "hover" tank since the vehicles in 4x4 need to have wheels. I was thinking that transparent "wheels" and suspension should do the trick there. I also think that to put a turret on it that the turret will have to be either attached to the body model to be all one piece or attached as a separate file as if it were a KC rack light (glowing barrel?). I'm not really sure. The tank model itself would have to be modified to where it had no treads and the skin would have to be suitably altered as well. I was also thinking of placing www.treadmarks.com down each side of the tank. Put LDA on a license plate? I don't know, whatever. he he, could be fun to play around with. Any help on this would be greatly appreciated. Hell, if someone wants to just take the idea and do it themselves then that's great too. I would just love to see a finished product of this regardless of who creates it. I do realize the suggestion of releasing a model into another game as a form of marketing may be taken as a rather presumptuous idea/ action coming from a "newbie", but I'm not meaning to offend anyone. If one of the "higher-ups" here wants to shoot this idea down before it goes anywhere then go right ahead. But I still like the idea. Just send some input back in my general direction. ------------------ Let the rocks roll and the battle commence. BZ The RPG. Check out the site!! IP:
peeeto Member	posted January 25, 2001 02:44 PM what format does 4x4 Evo use for 3D models? maybe you can zip up one 4x4 Evo truck's files & send to me so i can check them out? try emailing to pjkelleher at hotmail dot com i don't know if my hotmail account can take it, but try anyway... IP:
Rex R Member	posted January 25, 2001 03:03 PM I believe that zmodeler supports 4x4evo. btw peeeto speaking of model conversions... any luck? IP:
JVortex Member	posted January 25, 2001 04:42 PM Ya Peeeto I'll get that sent off to you you here soon. I have the General Lee sittin here on my desktop still. It's 150K so I'm sure that's no problem. It isn't the perfect example though as it has Bo and Luke in the front seat and the actual game driver in the back seat . Most cars don't have passengers and just have the game driver in the front, but this should do just fine. The cars for 4x4 use .OPA .ACT .RAW .SMF and a TRK file. OPA - I have no real idea what these are to be honest. All I know is that they have something to do with the skin. I think that they have something to do with layers or transparency when it comes to skinning the models. ACT - The color pallet for the various objects. RAW - The pict that makes up the skin. (BMP equivalent). SMF - These are the actual model files. Theres a way to do these as .BIN files as well, but I don't know anything about that, SMF works just fine. And yes Rex R is right, Zmodeler is the standard for editing these. TRK - The TRK file has all the stats for the vehicle as well as tells the game what all the other files are that it should use for that car. There is also a program called FlyRawGui that is used as an easy was to convert the RAW files into BMP and back for working on them. I think that with Zmodeler it should be possible to convert from a LWO to a SMF. Would probably have to go through a program or 2 to get there though. ------------------ Let the rocks roll and the battle commence. BZ The RPG. Check out the site!! [This message has been edited by JVortex (edited January 25, 2001).] [This message has been edited by JVortex (edited January 25, 2001).] IP:
peeeto Member	posted January 25, 2001 05:10 PM SMF - i'm not familiar with that one... i'll have to DL zmodeler & check it out... Rex - no, not yet. it is simple and shouldn't take long, but i haven't had any free time. i will try tonite or this weekend. IP:
JVortex Member	posted January 25, 2001 05:16 PM So what's this secret conversion that seems to be so hush hush? ------------------ Let the rocks roll and the battle commence. BZ The RPG. Check out the site!! IP:
Rex R Member	posted January 26, 2001 01:56 AM only reason we're keeping quiet is because its only just taking shape as it were, and has a ways to go yet(including figuring out all of the nessessary offsets) before springing it on the general public. you should be able to load the tank and turret into zmod, position them as you like. then select both objects and combine/join(forget the name of the tool) them. they will now be considered to be one object(works great for attaching outside mirrors to the car) the default name of the new object is union. prolly your best bet is to convert to .3ds import to zmod, texture map the tank. then export to 4x4(grab any and all doc.s for zmod, and on model conversions. HTH IP: