Starting an Animation - from scratch

[Hirazi Blue]

I was under the imperssion that these modeling tools helps simplify this stuff.

They should. Maybe you should look at some specific Mod Tool related texturing tutorials like this one, aptly called "Texturing for XNA"

[Phalitine]

So, I played with this software (SoftImage Mod Tool Pro) all weekend. I managed at on point to texture my model, but when i went back and try to reproduce what I did, I can not.

I have gone through adding materials, textures, try mapping by drag and drop, follow tutorials, write ups. How do you guys manage to get this stuff to work for you. Am I trying to hard?

I guess I am going to have to go find a book on using the software, any good suggestions?

[a5']

try this,

softimage manual

a5.

[Hirazi Blue]

No RTFM on my watch... ;)
Sadly, however, there aren't really that many good books for Softimage and its predecessor XSI. (Actually for Softimage as the application "produced" by Autodesk I am not aware of any books.) So pointing to the User's Guide isn't that much of an RTFM after all ( ). But the User's Guide can be quite a handful to process all at once. There are however numerous tutorials on the internet, in written form or as videos. A good place to start would be Ed Harriss' website, which is a collection of older (but mostly still useful), mostly written tutorials on a wide range of topics....

[a5']

That's really the issue, I looked around and didn't see anything and edharris didn't look relevant. BUT, on the page I linked to (I don't think you can "deep link" in the manual) there is a section for texturing, so I figured I'd give it a shot... and I'm not sure that the MOD tool has a manual or direct access.

a5

[Hirazi Blue]

If you want to link to individual pages of the User's Guide, use the link you gave yourself, surf to the page you want & copy the address of the frame containing the page you want to link to... (which I can do in one click in Opera, but requires opening the properties of the frame (and copying the address manually) in IE, as far as I can tell)
For instance Texturing
(this opens the page without the nagivational sidebar)
;)

[Phalitine]

Thank you all for the suggestions on books, articles and tuts. I have been scouring around looking and reading everything I can. I truly did not like that this was going to be this difficult. I believe I have the basic knowledge of modeling down. I may not know the correct lingo, however I am learning.

This was supposed to be one of the easiest moving models to add to my game, a simple door with eight plates that move in unison to open and close, with the ability to add a variety of textures whenever the need arises. Chest and cabinets were next do to the true 3D effects needed. Then I was going to move on to the more challenging ones creatures and players.

I have already managed to add basic non-moving items to my world, scaling, transforming and rotating as needed. I know I will have to create UV maps for the texture to align correctly.

I am not sure the software is in total cooperation. Whenever I switch it to texture mode it adds the generic watermarked texture.

[a5']

I know I will have to create UV maps for the texture to align correctly.

I am not sure the software is in total cooperation. Whenever I switch it to texture mode it adds the generic watermarked texture.

I'm not sure where I can help but a couple of things:

1.) You can use predefined techniques to map to objects-- in your case planar would probably work-- rather than defining a uv map.

2.) What is texture mode? Do you mean when you assign a texture and you get the property editor window?

....Oh wait a minute, maybe that is the equivalent of the noicon pic..

if thats the case, press the plug icon on the upper right of the property editor to assign an image.

TexturePPG.jpg (107.81 KiB) Viewed 5284 times

to get there ^ as I said before, go to

RENDER > TEXTURE > IMAGE

a5

[Phalitine]

to get there ^ as I said before, go to

RENDER > TEXTURE > IMAGE
a5

Yes, that is what I have been doing. I can get the texture into the material manager and render tree. But every time I try to drag and drop the Scene Material onto my model it does nothing.

The two sceen shots I have included shows the model, made up from 8 layers each of the triangles on its own layer. The animation portion works prefectly. each one of the triangles is going to have a portion of the texture.

[Phalitine]

And this shows the texture I want to apply. If you apply the triangles above over the texture you show see what I am talking about.

[a5']

I think I distilled this into a process.



Middle click the model null

Render > Texture > Image --- find image
pin down window with the keyhole icon on top.

Render > Porperty > Texture Projection > Create new Texture Projection

press OK

Press Edit > Freeze

on the right panel

try the animation.

a5'

[dwigfor]

I think the Noesis training videos would help you, especially with your texturing problems - take a look at the dynamite prop videos - http://www.moddb.com/groups/noesis-inte ... /downloads

[Phalitine]

I think I distilled this into a process.
Middle click the model null
Render > Texture > Image --- find image
pin down window with the keyhole icon on top.
Render > Porperty > Texture Projection > Create new Texture Projection
press OK
Press Edit > Freeze
on the right panel
try the animation.
a5'

nope, no good.
I was hoping this would work. Honestly I have no idea what I am doing wrong. After clicking on everything trying this and that, I was able to get a faint look of the texture to appear through the default black color.

[Phalitine]

I think the Noesis training videos would help you, especially with your texturing problems - take a look at the dynamite prop videos - http://www.moddb.com/groups/noesis-inte ... /downloads

I did download these, they appear to be finish project. No clue how they got there.

[a5']

Select the object the same way you textured it and press Shift 7

post that screen shot.

a5

[Hirazi Blue]

Okay, here's what I did, after finally installing the Mod Tool on my internet laptop... (this is the edited version, written when I had more time tonight)

I loaded the "IrisDoorPlateAnimated" and your "BrickWall" texture.
I've set my Camera View to "Textured Decal" instead of "Textured" as this didn't seem to work for me (laptop-graphics?).
I selected every plate, assigned a separate texture projection to it. Next I created and assigned a material to one of the plates and then copied this by selecting all the other plates, then using "Material > Assign Material" and picking the first plate to get the material from (so they have one and the same material).
In the render tree I refreshed to bring up the material of a selected plate, I brought in the texture (the "BrickWall"), which I imported with "clip from file" and connected it to an "Image" node, which itself was plugged into the "diffuse" and "ambient" port of the Phong.
In the Texture Editor I brought in the texture/clip also.
Opening the PPG for the Image clip, I made sure the XSI Mod Tool uses the right texture projection (in this example the projection "Texture_Projection (Planar XY) on the object "polymsh1").
There's obviously much room for improvement, but that's where the Texture Editor and the separate projections come in. Now you can go in and make the texture fit it's respective plate just the way you want to in the Texture Editor...

SS-2010-08-20_20.32.27.jpg

PS - the window on the top/left is the PPG of the image node in the render tree...
As you can easily see, I am no texture guru either ,
but I think/hope this might help you along slightly... ;)

edit (again):
Another approach for the texturing would be to "create (a) group" with all the plates in it, select this group and assign one texture_projection PlanarXY to it. That one all plates are assigned to the same texture_projection.
Select all plates, go into the texture editor, find the "freeze" command there, which does something different from the "freeze" command on the right side of your interface, to stop the texture from magically changing during the animation.