pants, posting about .mds..... well, i never

(pants) #1

yes, it’s that time again where i have yet another .mds question. through evilasmo, djbob said i should post it here, thanks djbob for trying and helping :smile:

when i export my mesh, it exports the 2 parts (l_legs and u_torso) as one object (u_torso) so the legs inevitably get the torso texture which looks funny to say the least. i know this is not a .skin issue bc i have imported it in 3ds and seen that indeed, there is only one mesh (and, the .skin is setup properly anyways). now i wouldn’t be too concerned and i would work around this, but when i import the rtcw models, they come in as 4 separate meshes (legs, torso and 2 hands) so i think i am doing something incorrectly whilst exporting. so my real question is: has anyone (sd or mod team) come across something similar to this and if so what are the workarounds.

thanks in advance and once again, thanks djbob for trying to help out.

(digibob) #2

On a totally unrelated note, i’ve been to san francisco twice! pity i was ill the second
time, nice city you got there tho :smile:

(pants) #3

i went back to the pyro model from sp and i cut 250+ polys from him and i went to export him… and guess what!? the bugger exported as a single mesh (u_torso). this is driving me nuuuuuts and if anyone knows whats going on, twould be quite nice to share. :smile:

i tried exporting him in a multitude of ways (bones active, tags/model frozen; bones frozen, tags/model active; combo of a bunch of things; etc.) to no avail. same result everytime.

yus, san francisco is beautiful. :smile: lots of bums and such, but you get used to them. the fact that it’s 30 degrees back at home (chicago) and it’s still 65 out here makes me smile. oh, and that’s farenheit not celsius lest i would be dead. :wink:

(pants) #4

i talked to TiCaL about this and this is what he had to say about it. :sad:

“Regarding this mesh problem…that was the first problem I experienced when I started messing around with the skl exporter. Unfortunatelly there seems to be nothing wrong in the code or at least I cannot see it. What I’ve noticed is that this only happens to model objects that have been imported into Max in some way (MDS Importer for example) It seems like the importers don’t really create ‘real’ objects when they import them in or maybe they just forget to do something to them to let Max know they are objects. They do show in the object selection list but they are not in the Max’s object array for some reason. I really don’t know how to fix this except possibly try to import and export a model a few times with different formats and see if that help. Or alternativelly build the entire model and the objects in Max.”

i’ve been helping Malus a bit trying to get his model imported successfully. He went from Maya to Max and when he exported to mds, no mesh data was actually output at all, just a skeleton and tags. I exported everything to md3, then imported it, rigged it, yadda, and came up with an exportable mds, but it’s still doing the one mesh thing. :- if come up with the magic solution, i’ll let everyone know.

kind of on-topic…
i read that Enemy Territory is going to have a different model format (http://www.gamespy.com/interviews/november02/rtcwetpc/index3.shtml). I was wondering if perhaps anyone at SD could lend some insight into it (i.e. different format all together like mds was to md3?, any new tools for exporting?, how similar mds is to this new format?, etc.). I can understand if you can’t bc of NDA’s or bc you guys are just too damned busy, but it’d be cool if you could. regards, looks like ET is really coming along nicely (hurraaaaaaaaa to co-op support!!!).

(Malus) #5

Hmmm maybe it’s because of this new format in ET, that we are not seeing any tools, (or tips) about the MDS file at the moment.
I hate to see when we finaly after alot of trouble we(mainly Pants) have been through to get the MDS working. Has been for nothing becuase of this new format :-

(digibob) #6

kind of on-topic…
i read that Enemy Territory is going to have a different model format (http://www.gamespy.com/interviews/november02/rtcwetpc/index3.shtml). I was wondering if perhaps anyone at SD could lend some insight into it (i.e. different format all together like mds was to md3?, any new tools for exporting?, how similar mds is to this new format?, etc.). I can understand if you can’t bc of NDA’s or bc you guys are just too damned busy, but it’d be cool if you could. regards, looks like ET is really coming along nicely (hurraaaaaaaaa to co-op support!!!).

I don’t think i can go into any details on the actual format itself, suffice to say, it’ll probably have easier tools to work with than you have atm, or at the very worse, they’ll be just as bad :wink: I’m sure we’ll have the tools we use out into the community as soon as we can after release.

(pants) #7

lol. thanks for those reassuring words djbob. :smile:

Since my coder is out right now, could you be so kind as tell us how are hitboxes/locational damage done? are they done via model seperation/names, tag location, or perhaps even X distance above the ground? or something entirely different? Malus made me aware that if it is by model seperations, we’re kind of screwed :sad:

Edit:

clarified a bit

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: pants on 2002-11-25 21:19 ]</font>

(digibob) #8

Locational damage in what sense, in wolf? in ET? in general? not sure what you’re refering to.

(pants) #9

in rtcw.

i guess i just assumed that they would be similar. d’oh.

(digibob) #10

RTCW has only two locations for damage, the normal body, and the head. If you are running a server on your own machine, (i.e. with a client running as well as the server, non dedicated), the server uses the tag_head to position a smaller bbox at the player that you have hit’s head. it then checks if you also hit the head, and if so you do a headshot. (this does have some rather odd side-effects, such as being able to shoot people’s heads’ through their bums, but bleh, there you go :smile:

If it’s a dedicated server (as most, if not all of the ones on the internet are), it “guesses” where your tag_head is, though i have to say gm/nerve did a fairly good good at approximating the position of tag_head for wolfmp, as as far as i have seen, it rarely varies much from what the real position would be.

(pants) #11

rockin!!

thank you much djbob.

(pants) #12

so, i realize that this thread is fairly tired but i believe that once and for all, something really positive can be said as tonight i successfully exported multiple models with model separations, imported or not. The only thing i’m unclear about right now is how exactly it works (this will make sense by the end of this post).

so the big thing that has been driving me nuts is material ID’s. yes, that easy of a solution is it. As long as you have each separate model with a different Mat ID, it will export it properly as a separate mesh within the .mds file.

Examples…
When working with just 2 models (u_body and l_legs) i assigned a MatID of 1 to l_legs and 5 to u_body (i stumbled upon 5 when i exported a different model and part of his boot came in as a different mesh and had a MatID of 5. 1,2,3,4,6 were all part of the same model). This works just fine as is.
When exporting more than 2 meshes (i.e. the pyro which has 9 separate objects which i gave matID’s 1-9 based on the .skin file’s order) the labeling goes amiss. For example, u_handlft became u_headin, u_handrt became u_body, etc. This can obviously be fixed by adjusting the .skin file to match the newly messed up mesh names, but it’s an issue nonetheless.

so, that being said, good luck with your exporting. :smile: If anyone has any clue why the MatID numbers matter and how we should properly apply them for complex models, please post. It’s 3.30 in the morning so if any of this didn’t make sense, lemme know, i will try to clarify.

i’m estatic to finally have this behind me (somewhat).

(Malus) #13

Any luck with finding out why and how the material ID’s matter Pants?. And maybe what ID number diffirent parts of your model should have?

For me and my model, I still have the same problem when exporting. The MDS file it creates has no surface information at all. No matter how I export the mesh first and import it again to make it an true editable mesh for MAX(like you did). I tried .obj and 3ds but no luck. Sadly the MD3 exporter for MAX 4.2 don’t seem to be working correctly so couldn’t try that eihter.

I’m beginning to believe it might be my system, maybe it’s a W2000 problem. Becuase also the Buildmds.exe doesn’t work, it just does nothing when I type the build bodymds command. And now when I finaly get somebody else to do the buildmds on his PC it doesn’t have any surface information, when I check it in the MDS viewer.

For the love ove of god plz let ET have some decent tools. THis is driving me nuts

Ah well let’s all act like a stupid banana!! :banana:

Cheers, :drink: