I’m in the mood for making some super duper low poly ET type stuff.
If I wanted to animate the textures, you know like moving wheels etc, would I just supply like 3 or so different textures with the wheels moved on a bit? Or do you do it another way?
You could use remapshader to make the textures move or stop, but this takes at least two remapshader commands. (And you can only remap 16 different “original” shaders.) This approach is mostly used for tanks since they have lots of moving parts. (Both the tracks and the wheels to support the tracks.)
AFAIK, the wheels for the goldrush truck are seperate models and are rotated from the script, because those wheels follow a simple animation compared to the tank.
For me CH there is nothing on that link but a few ads on the right hand side…
So, for rotating wheels, would I use one model with bones, or different models simulating the movement?
How about… use a real browser? 
Or just omit the “#tcmod” at the end of the link… then even IE might know what to do…
no bones, no frames, no different models… just pure shader sweetness 
So once again: if it involves a lot of moving parts (eg. tank tracks) you’d use a non-animated model with animated shaders. (You apply the shader just like any other, but the shader is responsible for making the textures animate.)
If there is simple movement (eg. truck wheels) you’d just seperate the wheels from the body and put those which are on the same axis (front wheels/back wheels) into one model.
To make them move, you first need a tag in the body so the wheels model’s origin can be attached to the body using scripting. After that, the script can rotate the wheels model just like it pleases.
Short: whilst modeling, you don’t need to animate anything if it can be done using scripting or texturing. The only thing you want to animate are complex movements. That way, you can save quite some filesize from the model since the model saves the positions of the vertexes in each frame.
In modelling terms, I am not familiar with ‘shaders’. I have heard about them with regard to ET mapping, but not with modelling.
I just wondered what I needed to do modelling-wise in order for people to apply these shaders that mimic animation.
The scripting etc is not something I wish to look into y’see, just want to be able to do some nifty little models for peeps.
modelling-wise in order for people to apply these shaders that mimic animation
Nothing afaik, but the less you prepare yourself, the more the mapper will have to do.
You could apply the texture(s) and export the intended moving parts in groups for the shader animations. (provided you can group each part of the single model somewhere within the 1k vert/points limit) If you don’t write the shader yourself, the mapper will probably have to have access to a modelling program to look at the groups and write the shader accordingly though. I write shaders from the export files myself for the proper paths etc. Like I said if you don’t do it all, the mapper will have to finish the model themselves so to speak.
