[GUIDE]Creating a weapon from A to Z

Quote:

Originally Posted by roaches Does this work with the newest version of 3ds?

Quote:

Originally Posted by PsiKiller 2 much reading

Quote:

Originally Posted by paxishere lazy or what? if this is your learning attitude you will never going to learn a thing.

Quote:

Originally Posted by MR-CORY awesome guide im already started doing it ... i followed all of ur steps but when i arrive to the point of assign to selcetion i can't choose it please help me out  Spoiler [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...] [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...] what i missed? sorry i never used 3d max before sorry i figer it out my fault ..... it's awesome guide man

Quote:

Originally Posted by Opale You simply forgot to add the plane in your scene ^^ In this case, it looks like you're trying to put a weapon image on a plane so just go to Create>Plane as you did, and draw a plane in the scene. Once the plane is created, modify its value so that it's a perfect square ( 150x150 is fine, like in your pic ) Then only, you can select the plane, go to Material Editor ( Press "M" ) and click on "Assign to selection" and "Show map in viewport".. and tada ! I figured my guide was quiet old and missing some useful informations, so as soon as my finals are over I'll proceed in a complete thread revamp including: - Working .c3 conversion with ANY versions of 3DS MAX ( or any other 3D softwares ) - Better focus on modelling and texturing part - Biturn tutorial - Different weapons examples - Weapons effect composition part - More ressources - Alpha Channel tutorial ( NO 3D & just Photoshop, for the lazy ones )

Quote:

Originally Posted by Opale /!\ UPDATING THIS GUIDE, PLEASE BE PATIENT /!\ I HIGHLY RECOMMEND YOU TO WAIT UNTIL THE UPDATE IS DONE /!\ 10th September's note: University started again and my amount of spare time is now ridiculously low, sorry for the slow update on this thread but things are getting done ! I finished recording several videos tutorials: 2 for modelling + texturing + implementing weapons with 2 different weapons. 1 video tutorial for "alpha channel" edits As I recorded in super duper high quality it's taking ages to upload on youtube with my crappy net speed ^^ What's left to be done is a tutorial on how to use Biturn to convert models to .c3 / .3ds . Stay tuned, fresh updates coming soon !!! __________________________________________________ Hello ! Today i'll teach you how to make a weapon from A to Z INTRO: Getting ready.  Spoiler You'll need 3 softwares and several plugins. - [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...] (Any versions, 7+ preferred. Free trial [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...].) You can use any 3D softwares to follow this tutorial tho, like Blender which is [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...] - [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...] or [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...] or [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...] - [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...] ________________________ - .dds plugin [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...] or [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...]. Paint.Net natively supports .dds fomat. - [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...] for Windows XP/Vista or [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...] for Windows 7 (Optional) 1ST STEP: The Textures.  Spoiler A texture (.dds) is an image file format used in the gaming industry that is wrapped around a 3D mesh [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...] The image size of a dds must be a multiple of 4 ( 64*64, 128*128, 256*256 .. etc ). For quality weapons renders, I recommend creating 512*512 textures. To create a .dds texture file, simply open your image file in your favorite software and 'save as...' .dds. You'll have a large choice of different .dds export format when doing so; It's best to choose >> DXT3 ARGB 8 bpp | explicit alpha << this one to preserve the alpha channel (I'll detail this point later in this guide) In this guide, we'll be using the [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...]: [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...] It's a well-shaped and realistic weapon. It's already cleaned and resized (1024x1024) for your convenience. Interesting to get started on low-poly modelling. Save this image, it's going to be our future texture ! 2ND STEP: Modelling.  Spoiler Part A/ Getting Started.  Spoiler For those who've never ever touched a 3D software, I'll quickly cover the main and most important tools we'll be using although I assume you know some "basics".  Spoiler Here's 3DS Max 2012's interface, it should be quite similar to other 3D software's. I highlighted several important tools and functions [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...] 3D shapes are composed of polygons, the more polygons an object has, the more detailed it is and vice versa. You can choose how many polygons an object have, scale/rotate/move them, etc.. [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...] You can also choose other selection modes such as Faces, Segments, etc.. but this tutorial is aimed at beginners so we'll stick to polygons/vertex edition. Useful Shortcuts: - W = Move Tool - E = Rotate Tool - R = Scale Tool - F3 & F4 = Show Wireframe / Plain model - Alt + W = Zoom Selected Viewport - Ctrl + X = Expert Mode - Ctrl + Z = Undo - Shift + Move an object = Clone/Duplicate that object - M = Material Editor (Texture GUI) More shortcuts [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...] I'm not here to teach you how to use 3D softwares in depth, a beginner teaching beginners would be quite ironic. Check >[Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...]< for in-depth basic tutorials ! Part B/ Preparing our scene.  Spoiler Open up your 3D software ! We're not going to create a model from scratch, we have a cool weapon image with a clear shape so we will try to make a 3D model out of this. To do so, we'll put a plane in our scene and project the weapon image on it so we can use it as a blueprint. Use the same settings as below! If the plane you created seems to be "invisible", try to toggle F3 and/or F4 on and off [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...] With the plane selected, press "M" or go to Rendering>Material Editor to apply the texture to our plane. A window will pop-up Check the little box next to diffuse, select "Bitmap" in maps and click OK. This will open the image selection folder where you'll just have to paste our weapon image and click open ! [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...] [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...] Then, as shown below, tick the "Assign material to selection" & "Show material in viewport" boxes .. and TADA ! Our image is applied to the plane ! [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...] We're almost ready to start the big part of this tutorial =) Part C/ Studying the weapon's shape and objects needed.  Spoiler Before we start modeling, let's study our weapon shape and see what kind of objects we could use to model the weapon. That's an important step and especially for low-poly modeling, you have to focus on the overall shape of the weapon you'll do, study it, analyze it, visualize how you'll compose the mesh, what basic shapes you'll use, imagine the wireframe, etc. [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...] For this weapon, we should use a box for the sword part, a box for the guard, and a cylinder for the handle and that's it ! only 3 objects are enough to model this weapon. Now that we know how this weapon's going to theoretically be created, lets switch to the practice side ! Part C/ Creating the weapon's mesh.  Spoiler We're ready ! You're still there (right?)! We can now start modelling ! Handle with cylinder :  Spoiler Start by drawing a cylinder in the Front view port and modify its value as shown below from the modify panel, where you can modify an object's number of segments/polygons, height, weight, etc... Basic shapes got way too much useless polygons hence why we modify some of these values. [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...] To make things handier and more convenient to work with, we will make the cylinder we created half-transparent. Right-click > Object properties: Tick "See-through" box, reduce visibility to 0,5 and untick Cast/Receive Shadows. [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...] We'll now modify that basic shape to look like the weapon's handle. Start off by doing "Alt+W" in the Top viewport to zoom in it. With the cylinder still selected; click on the dropdown menu in the modify panel, select "Edit Poly" and click on the Vertex Selection icon to activate the polygon edition mode. [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...] Now, using the three mighty tools (Move, Rotate, Scale), start moving the polygons to make them fit in our blueprint. [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...] Press "Alt+W" again to zoom back to 3DS basic interface and to notice that our cylinder looks nothing like our weapon's handle shape in ,for example, our Left viewport. Using the same tools, try to reshape it to make it look realistic, just like the pictures below. [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...] [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...] Congratulations, you finished the first part of our model ! Let's keep going with the guard part... Guard with box:  Spoiler Draw a box in the Top viewport that fits our Guard's blueprint and modify its values (Width Segments = 2) Re-do the "half-transparency" trick for easier work around ! Now, go to modify panel > drop-down menu > edit poly > vertex selection just like you modified the handle's shape and start reshaping the guard so that it looks like below, don't forget the other viewports ! [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...] Sword with box:  Spoiler Start by drawing a box in the Top viewport and modify its value as shown in the picture. Do Alt + W. Re-do the "half-transparency" trick for easier work around ! [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...] Modifier panel > drop-down > edit poly > vertex selection (AGAIN) and re-shape our box. [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...] Alt + W to zoom out and to notice again that our sword mesh looks nothing like a sword in the other viewports [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...] Start by doing the sharp edges of the sword. Vertex selection activated, select all the OUTER polygons and scale them in on the Y axis. [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...] We're almost there, our sword is sharpy but.. it doesn't look realistic at all yet. Select the INNER polygons and re-shape our overall sword shape as shown below ! [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...] Let's assemble our parts together and check it out ! [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...] Perfect ! Congratulations, you just modeled a low-polygon 3D sword ! Just a few little adjustements here and there and we're ready for texturing ! Make sure your objects are correctly place together. Right-click one of the three object > Convert to... Editable mesh Re-right-click it > Attach. Now click on the two other objects All your objects are now unified in one single mesh ! I explained you how Conquer has low-polygon models standards and that its graphic engine loads much faster lower-polygon models right ? Let's check how many polygons our sword has ! Select our sword mesh > modify panel > edit poly > vertex selection > select every polygons in your scene and check back the edit poly panel... 100 polygons !! If you didn't understand a shit of what I was talking about, you could also watch >> soon to come video tutorial here ! << 3RD STEP: Texturing the model.  Spoiler We got our 3D model and our texture, but we didn't apply it to the model yet ! Still in 3DS MAX, Press "M" or go to Render > Material Editor With our model selected, tick the "Assign to Selection" box ( and "Show Map in viewport" if it doesn't automatically show up ). [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...] The texture is now applied to our model .. BUT it's not mapped correctly yet ! Modify panel > Drop-down menu > UVW UNwrap Drop the menu under "Unwrap UVW" and select "Face" selection. [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...] Now, select EVERY single faces of our weapon ! Keep ctrl pressed for multi selection and select everything in every viewports.. even rotate the views with the top right corner tool of each viewports just to make sure every faces are selected. Then, under the "Projection" menu, click on the planar projection icon and the Z Align icon Then only, you can open up the UW Editor ! [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...] The texturing interface will pop-up ! At the top left corner we find back our three mighty tools: move, rotate, scale At the top right corner, change the map to your texture map ! [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...] You guessed right, we only have to make our blueprint fit in the texture map using the tools ! Before starting, make sure that you use the polygon/vertex selection ( bottom left corner of the window ). Then simply scale the UVW in the texture, make final tweaks, everything must fit perfectly ! [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...] Let's check if we did this right.. ( F9 will make a quick render of the viewport you're in ) [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...] It looks great, congratulations ! You just made a realistic and textured low-poly sword ! We're almost done with 3DS Max. Time to position and scale our weapon correctly. Use the image below as a reference. Conquer's characters handle the weapons at the junction of the two black lines, the center of each viewports. Once placed and scaled correctly, go to File > Export > mesh.3DS ( Select .3DS as output format ) When asked to preserve (or not) texture coordinates, click yes ! [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...] We're (finally) done with 3DS MAX ! :rolleyes: 4TH STEP: In-game render.  Spoiler Create a new folder in your desktop. Inside it, put our weapon image and the .C3 mesh file we just converted. Open your favorite software: Photoshop / Gimp / Paint.Net Open our weapon image in it and go to File > Save as ... > "texture.dds" (do select ".dds" in format selection) and save in our new folder. Make sure the .dds format you're using is the same as in the picture. Once saved, close the picture ! [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...] Inventory and Map Icons using the Alpha Channel:  Spoiler Make a copy of the .dds file we made and open this copy in Photoshop We'll isolate the weapon and delete the rest for our convenience. Go to Select > Color Range. Click any white part of the image, and use the same settings as below before clicking OK. [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...] What it does is that it selects every white parts of the picture, in other word, everything BUT the sword :rolleyes:. Simply hit Delete on your keyboard or use the delete tool. We now have a clean selection of our weapon ! [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...] With the outer selection still active, right-click on the picture and select "Invert Selection" so only our weapon will be selected. Right-click it again, select "Free Transform" and rotate it to 40-50° as shown below. Scale it if needed. [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...] We re-re-right-click our weapon, re-select Invert selection to select everything BUT the weapon. We then go to the "Channels" panel and double-click the white square next to "Alpha channel" This window will pop-up. Make sure the settings are the same as mine, do NOT modify the color or anything. [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...] Now, we just have to use the "Paint Bucket" tool or the "Brush" tool or whatever you want and simply fill in all the transparent space, which is easy because our weapon isn't selected, so it will be clean. Everything showed in red here will be totally transparent in-game ! [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...] One last tweak. I highly recommend to use 64x64 as a size for icons. Go to Image > Image Size and modify the value to 64x64. [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...] Once you're done, go to File > Save as... > Inventory.dds and save in your folder. Let's go for the map drop icon now ! Simply make a copy of the Inventory.dds file we just created and rename it Map.dds . Open Map.dds in Photoshop and using the Crop Tool, do something like below, extend the upper and bottom borders of the image then press enter. [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...] Now, go to Image > Image size and replace the value that changed to 64 so our file size is 64x64 again, then press OK. [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...] We now have a very nice 3D-like perspective effect ! Go to File > Save as... > Map.dds and save in your folder again. Congratulations ! We have everything: A texture, a mesh and icons which means.. we're ready to add our weapon in-game ! DONE  Spoiler Here we are. [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...] [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...] My english is not the best,but I did my best to make it clear enough for everybody, hoping it's understandable and will help anybody willing to start making 3D artworks to get the bases. Thanks for reading, Hope this helps. Credits :  Spoiler - [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...]: Mentor, Sensei, Dreamer.. the most skilled artist I've met so far. He really motivated and inspired me to keep up making art and progressing. I can't thank him enough. - [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...]: Best gfx buddy I met ! Pretty cool, talented, and head-burned dude, also terribly modest ! Keep going ! - [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...]: Made me discovering the world of edits and mods in Conquer Online, thanks to him I discovered Photoshop and that changed my life. - All the others I've edited with.. 2slam, Boijay, Edward, IDivideByZero, Virus.. etc - All of you here in Epvpers that keeps supporting me and I really appreciate it. Have a good day !