JEEZUS! Is it all this difficult?

[Valandar]

Hi, all, my first post, and sorry if I offend anyone here for it...

But y'see, I've been making meshes for the game Freedom Force (and soon its sequal, Freedom Force vs The Third Reich) for about two and a half years, now.

When meshing for Freedom Force, it's relatively straightforward. Make the model, UVMap it, make the skins, assign them to the mesh, physique and animate, then export to the .NIF format, making sure it's called "character.nif" and the keyframes are "keyframes.kf". Then just put the skins in the skins\standard subfolder of the mesh folder, and you're done.

The only other game I currently own is the original Unreal Tournament. Well, I decided I wanted to put my Nature God and my Ent into that there game, so I looked up some tutorials on just how to do it.

GOOD LORD! I got ten times more confused on how to get the mesh in the game than I ever was when learning 3DS Max in the first place.

Is it that hard to get a mesh into the other major FPS games, like Quake and the more recent UT incarnations?

[CheapAlert]

It's hella easy getting a mesh in ut2k3 or ut2k4. As for UT, if you want "easy", you'll have to get Bonus Pack 4 (for skeletal animation) and export .psk's for that. It's much less time consuming.

[Valandar]

Gotcha.

I plan on getting UT2k4 one of these days, and maybe working this guy over to it:

http://newpowerinc.com/valanderfiles/Pan2k4prev.jpg
http://newpowerinc.com/valanderfiles/naturegod.jpg

He's a mite low-poly for UT2k4 (2234 when triangulated), but maybe that means I could go in and add some more detail into the mesh, like making the cape flow a bit better...

[malcolm]

I agree, first person shooters seem to be nutorious for having kryptic pipelines as far as I'm concerned. I'm not sure why they are thought of as so moddable and user friendly? I'm not down with the whole home made environment tool with one million tags you have to set just to make a door open, also bsp can eat it.

[cold_electric]

The most difficult part about getting a character model into the game, is bipping it in milkshape via verticies and making sure that theres no deformations in the model.

[FatAssasin]

Hah, try getting an animated character into HL2. They'll most likely find you suspended by a belt in the bathroom after you've gone completely crazy trying to figure it out. /images/graemlins/smile.gif

[Valandar]

So where would I find a tut for getting a model from MAX to UT2k4, including what animations are needed, if there needs to be a note track, what tags are needed, and so forth?

[FatAssasin]

I don't think the process has changed since UT2003:

Polycount UT2K3 Tutorials (http://www.planetquake.com/polycount/resources/ut2003/tutorials.shtml)

[malcolm]

FatAssasin, har! Yes I have been reading a bit about getting assets in half life 2 and it seems like their pipe is not artist friendly. At work it is rediculously easy, tag objects, export, build data, run ps2.