[Diaz]

umodel only exports vertex meshes (the ones Unreal 1 uses) to .3d, which is apparently what Epic used originally. Noesis can't read that.

But, if as Hank says, there is an importer for Softimage, then nothing else is needed!

[Spiker]

Here's what I'm working on currently. The shotgun modeling part is done. Now it needs to be textured and unwrapped. I also was thinking about adding some gloves later on. I have a question: why setting player color in player options affects the mighty boot but not the glove? Assigning pal in mapster when the pistol with the hand is used as a prop works but not when it's displayed in the HUD. I was thinking that we could have gloved and gloveless version without altering the defs! If it was assigned to pal 10 for example, or any other that could chosen from the player color menu.

[rasmus thorup]

Pistol is way too big, óthers look great.

[Hank]

Diaz, on 25 March 2012 - 11:18 AM, said:

umodel only exports vertex meshes (the ones Unreal 1 uses) to .3d, which is apparently what Epic used originally. Noesis can't read that.

But, if as Hank says, there is an importer for Softimage, then nothing else is needed!

You don't need my word for it
http://www.moddb.com...ge-rs/downloads
The trick is the ActorX for XMI. As I said it's ancient stuff and it is a steep learning curve (for me) to get Unreal Models out of the game.

[added, I just looked at the model and forgot to read ]
Also, since you have 3D Max (I do not)
http://udn.epicgames...Two/ActorX.html you might be able to tinker from Unreal straight to Max.

[Daedolon]

Trooper Tom, on 25 March 2012 - 12:33 PM, said:

I have a question: why setting player color in player options affects the mighty boot but not the glove?

Because Duke wears no gloves?

[Diaz]

Isn't ActorX for Unreal Engine 3? I can get UE3 models into Duke already, there are very nice scripts for 3ds max.
Maybe I could get newer Skaarj models into the game instead of the old Unreal 1 one, but I'm not sure it will work... since other models in the TC are low poly...

[Mblackwell]

Diaz, on 25 March 2012 - 01:29 PM, said:

Isn't ActorX for Unreal Engine 3? I can get UE3 models into Duke already, there are very nice scripts for 3ds max.
Maybe I could get newer Skaarj models into the game instead of the old Unreal 1 one, but I'm not sure it will work... since other models in the TC are low poly...

Didn't UE1 allow you to get OBJ files? (It's been a loooong time since I've used it)

[Hank]

@ Diaz, we are way off topic. The basic file format used by Unreal has not changed. I don't have anything Unreal 1, but 2004.
But if Mblackwell is right, and you can use .obj to convert ehmm no contest, any program can handle it.

[Hendricks266]

Trooper Tom, on 25 March 2012 - 12:33 PM, said:

I have a question: why setting player color in player options affects the mighty boot but not the glove? Assigning pal in mapster when the pistol with the hand is used as a prop works but not when it's displayed in the HUD.

Because the game isn't magic and the code for using the player's pal is specific to the mighty boot. We don't want this to happen because the 8-bit art uses blue colors for blending and we don't want stray pixels of different colors. Besides, it would cause more unintended consequences than intended results.

[Fox]

Yes. The player color was intended to be used for Duke pants, and supposedly the only weapon that would show the pants was the Mighty Boot. And you won't want the Freezer to display red ice, do you?

Think of it from a 8-bit perspective: if you want to display a different color for the hands, you would need to have different tiles for the gloves.

[Jimmy]

Trooper Tom, on 25 March 2012 - 12:33 PM, said:

duke0008.jpg

Good thing Duke has those gloves. Slide bite is a bitch.

[Hendricks266]

Fox, on 25 March 2012 - 03:32 PM, said:

Yes. The player color was intended to be used for Duke pants, and supposedly the only weapon that would show the pants was the Mighty Boot. And you won't want the Freezer to display red ice, do you?

Think of it from a 8-bit perspective: if you want to display a different color for the hands, you would need to have different tiles for the gloves.

This perspective holds true for Polymer using Highpallookup as well.

[thatguy]

Looks great, but besides the big pistol, it would be cool to include a shoulder mounted RPG. I always thought it added that bit of variety to make things awesome.

[Dave_Billing]

I'm currently working on a HD version of my Operation Blitzkrieg mod which will be implementing skyboxes and polymer lighting throughout. It will be called - Operation Blitzkrieg: Polymer Edition (makes Dr. Evil pinky to the mouth gesture). I've got a couple of screenshots on my blog site if anybody wants to see what I'm working with. http://billingleveld...n.blogspot.com/

[Diaz]

Thanks to MBlackwell's tip I realized I wasn't using the latest version of UnrealEd for Unreal1. Just got the latest patch and now single frames can be exported as .OBJ. It's a pain in the ass cause it just exports one frame at a time, then I have to convert it to MD3 and merge all the frames together with NPherno's compiler. But it works and I didn't make many anims for the Skaarj sprite actor so the model will be soon into the TC

Thanks all!

[Sebastian]

That's great news and sounds like something that'd be worth the trouble. Keep us posted!

[Diaz]

Oh, he is into the game already with his full animation set



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There are some problems, like the hair and the claws, which are single polygons with a double-sided texture (and AFAIK we can't have double-sided textures in EDuke32). Since I have to export one frame at a time, I'd have to duplicate the polygons on those parts for every frame, and that's way too much work for a TC revamp. It doesn't look bad anyways so I'm quite happy.

Oh, and it's a Mapster32 shot, that's why there are some strange sprites around (musicandsfx and sector effector, which I replaced by UnrealEd sprites, lol)...

[MusicallyInspired]

Very nice! Also, I think that cultist models is great as is!

[Plagman]

If that would help a lot, I can make a per-surface attribute to change the face winding order or to disable backface culling entirely

[Diaz]

Backface cull disabling, either per-surface or for a whole model, would be helpful for vegetation, and I believe it's better than duplicating faces since you're not creating new vertices. If it's not much of a hassle (and if it doesn't generate rendering artifacts) I'd say go for it...

[Diaz]

Oh, and I managed to find a way to double those faces without having to do it on all frames. But double sided textures would still be useful

[Tea Monster]

What about the Skaarj multiplayer models in UT 99/03/04?

[Diaz]

I don't like them. They modernized the Skaarj concept way too much in subsequent UT releases.
It would be great if I could get my hands on this model (which is from an Unreal 2 beta, apparently) but I can't find it anymore...
Anyways I'm happy with how the Unreal 1 model turned out!



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[Tea Monster]

It is nice to see him again

[MusicallyInspired]

Can't wait to play this!

[Sangman]

Looks great

[Hank]

MusicallyInspired, on 27 March 2012 - 01:23 PM, said:

Can't wait to play this!

This !!
You beat me to it!

[SanyaWaffles]

I have been working as an earlier topic indicated on an ART tool based on art2tga/tga2art from the Transfusion/Reblood. However it's slowly becoming it's own tool in it's own right. However the topic is rather old, and I don't like digging up old topics.

For one, it uses FreeImage due to it's excellent ability to work with PNGs quickly.

The downside is it's a command line tool, and must be compiled from source. The good news is it's not that hard on Linux/Unix and Mac OS to figure out. Windows users can probably compile it with ease too.

I originally developed this because I wanted to be able to batch compile art then a grp/zip in one swing in a classic manner without using bastART or DukeRES, as those tools are very shaky at best.

Here is the features:

• Compiles on Windows, Mac OS X 10.6+ and Linux variants. [Note: I did recently change how current directories work for *nix systems and hopefully on Win32/64)
  
• Command line tool - useful for putting in your PATH and using in batch or shell scripting. No longer are you dependent on ancient VB6 tools.
  
• Uses indexed PNGs as output, can use 24/32-bit PNGs as input as well as 8-bit (255 + transparency) PNGs. 24/32-bit PNGs are color-quantized down to 8-bt
  
• Very fast - on a modern machine it's fairly quick.
  
• No frills. Simply use a PALETTE.DAT and you're good to go.
  
• Finally, it's free and open sourced.

It is still very much a WIP but it does work on my Mac OS X Lion Setup.

The Source Code Can Be Found on my GitHub

Syntax for art2png (converts art to tangible 8-bit 256-color PNGs and INI files for offset/animation data) is:

art2png index_based_number_of_files palette_file input_dir output_dir

while png2art (converts 8-bit, 24bit or 32-bit (24 with alpha) PNGs and INIs to a bunch of ART files) is:

png2art index_based_number_of_files palette_file input_dir output_dir

index_based_number_of_files => 0-based number of files*
palette_file => relative path to palette.dat to use (ie ./PALETTE.DAT ./grp/PALETTE.DAT or even grp/PALETTE.DAT)
input_dir => relative directory to an existing directory for reading ART files or PNG/INIs (depends on the tool. ie grp or ./grp)
output_dir => relative directory to an existing directory for output of ART files or PNG/INIs (depends on the tool ie tiles or ./tiles)

^{*Keep in mind the number of files (usually 19) is based on the naught-based index. So if you wanted to change all 20 art files, you'd use 19, not 20 (because ART files usually start at TILES000.ART). It also doesn't work with blood tiles due to the amount of tiles it uses per file (though with some code changes, it can probably). I've tested it with Duke 3D Atomic only.}

Also the INI files used share the format of the original tools by Mathieu Olivier found here

[Sebastian]

I can't wait to actually play around with that. Where is that shotgun from? It's supersexy.

[Mia Max]

Diaz, on 27 March 2012 - 12:18 PM, said:

I don't like them. They modernized the Skaarj concept way too much in subsequent UT releases.
It would be great if I could get my hands on this model (which is from an Unreal 2 beta, apparently) but I can't find it anymore...
Anyways I'm happy with how the Unreal 1 model turned out!



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That doesn't look like Duke 3D anymore and I like it!

BTW, is there a chance that we can use your models and stuff in other mods?
I really like those enemies you are adding.