Ok, I recently found that MS outright lacks the resources to make high quality objects/meshes without tremendous amounts of work.

That said...Ive moved onto Blender and I have quickly caught on and meshing away.

I have created a new mesh and UV mapped the parts in Blenders internal UV unwrapper. Now this is where my Blender skills end...

1. How do I make certain the UV map is linked to my Mesh and ready for export?
2. How do I export the UV map itself to create the .dds textures in PhotoShop?
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While doing some messing around with EA items imported into Blender I noticed the 2nd and 3rd MODL or MLOD files that I was having problems importing them. They would not show up and If I remember right I was getting some kind of error. I cant remember if I even tried the 4th file to be honest.

Using Blender do you only need to edit the 1st MODL/MLOD assigning joints, groups, etc...? Or do you need to work with all 4 of those files?

I would greatly appreciate if anyone has answers, guides, etc...

Thanks
BH

The second and third MLODs are the sunshadow MLODs. You need to edit those no matter which editor you're using if you want the sunshadows to match your object in-game.

I don't know the answer to your Blender-specific questions but I think there are a couple tutorials on how to mesh using Blender in the S2 section. Maybe one of those has some information that could help get you started. Unfortunately,there isn't a similar tutorial written for using Blender to mesh for S3 as far as I can tell.

Thanks OM. You answered at least half of that for me
Ive found a few Tutorials but just not one that answers my questions lol.

If Im not mistaken, I think cmo uses Blender so I may have to ask him.

Not sure what you mean by your first question, "How do I make certain the UV map is linked to my Mesh" – there's not really any way to not link it that I'm aware of, short of deleting it or not exporting it.

Re. exporting, it's somewhere in the "UV" menu, off the top of my head I don't know exactly where. http://wiki.blender.org/has a bunch of tutorials on UV mapping, have you looked at the reference there?

export uv: While in Edit mode, in the UV/image editor, it's UV>Scripts>Save uv face layout.

Thanks Plastic and cmo.

BTW, what I meant by my first question was I know with MS when you make a mesh you export to obj then uv map with uv classic or w/e then reimport to MS. Im assuming since you unwrap with blenders unwrapper that you dont have to mess with it anymore once your done unwrapping all your polys.

If I have any further questions I'll post here. Thanks again everyone

Im running into a problem when trying to export the UV map. Its trying to save a .tga file and when I hit the "OK" button I get this...
Error: "Active object is not a mesh with textface."

Anyone know what Im F'n up?
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Also...What do these little dots mean on this face?

You don't need to do any of the "export to obj then uv map then reimport" business in blender, as you've already mentioned. I'm not sure I understand why you're trying to export the UV map?

I believe it says "texface", not "textface". Without seeing what you're doing, I'd guess that means you have something selected that has no texture loaded so there's nothing to export. There is a "selection only" button in a lot of export menus, is that perhaps active when it shouldn't be?

Other than that, I think you should read this: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/D...ual/Textures/UV

I believe the dotted face is the first face in a mesh.

Very helpful Plastic, thank you. The reason im trying to export the UV is so I can make the .dds texture files for the object out of it.

That link just explained UV (which im guessing you knew). But Ive got unwrapping down just fine...just gotta get that damn file exported somehow.

Which ".dds texture files"? In case you're wanting to make the shadow overlay: are you aware you can just bake that in blender?

Also, which version of blender is this? I just checked and I can't even reproduce that error no matter what I try .. (I'm using 2.49)

Ive read/heard about the baking and I would love to try that (can you teach me ). But in particular im definitely gunna have to make the RGB and the specular as well.

Im using 2.49 as well...which means Im messing something up

I recently figured out the reason I was getting the "Error: Active object is not a mesh with texface" when trying to export the UV Image. For me, all I had to do was click 1 simple button and it fixed everything.
The "Set active UV texture" button was apparently not activated when I was having the export error.

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On a side-note, I figured out the Baking function and wasn't very impressed by the results. Are there better settings/options to use while setting up the Baking process?

Thank you for posting what the problem was.

Re. "better options to use for baking" –*better than what? What options do you use now, and what does the result look like, and what are you unhappy with? It's a bit difficult to give advice without seeing what you do =).

I normally use Raytracing, 10-15 passes, and that works well for me. I know cmomoney uses that other option (Approximate? Average? Not sure what it's called), and is happy with that. There's more than one way to do it. The options are in Shading > World buttons .. I'd just try a few settings and compare the results.

No Prob for posting the fix, I was hoping it may help others from running into the same problem.

As for Baking, sorry for not posting my current settings and a pic.
This is how I was setting up my Baking process...with the "Render" tab.


Im definitely going to try it the way you set it up. Thanks for the tip

From your earlier image, I saw the mesh faces are quads. I might be wrong, but I believe the faces should be triangles. I normally change these and then do a normals outside recalculation before doing my UVs. That's just personal preference I guess.

The settings PB was talking about:



These are the setting you need to play with to get the results you want.

This is the first time Ive actually worked with quads. In MS I actually hated damn tri's, but maybe as well thats a person preference too. My question is, will it matter once imported in-game.

If it did make a drastic difference as far as object quality, how would I do your normals outside recalculation?

Thanks cmo
I appreciate it

Also...do you have any suggestions as far as those settings go?
And how can I make Blender's interface black (or darker) like yours lol?

Yeah it has to be tri's before you put it in-game. Ctrl+N in edit mode recalculates the normals outside. To change the colors (theme) of Blender: User Preferences->Theme. For the AO settings, try PB's settings and see if they work for you.

Damn...do I have to remap since Ill be switching to tri's?
Anyways, thx for the tips.

No, just convert them and you good to go. (CTRL+T in case you didn't know.)

Gotcha I think I prefer builing with quad's because for me it gives you a mesh thats not so busy while your still in your building process. Then, like I had to, convert to tri's.

Once I set those AO settings in the World section...how do I apply them to the UV?

Sorry, still sort of a noob with Blender...but I doubt Ill mesh in MS again unless I have to lol.

Once you've set the AO, you just bake.

Cool, I've figured it out!
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I want to thank everyone in this thread who has helped me (especially cmomoney and plasticbox) because without your help I would have still been screwing around with my head cut off trying to figure all this out...or I would have made another low quality MS object.

Now lets see if I can follow the tutorial for setting up all the groups and joints in blender lmao.

Good to see you've figured it out =)