Newbie Modeling 101 - Update in First Post!

[Nerath]

I fought with the evil resolution problem for a long time. What you do is zoom in on the 2d model, press your Print Screen button, then open MS Paint (or another graphics program) and paste the picture in there. Then, remove whatever parts you want, put them in a different file, whatever. Keep doing that until you have all the parts in a couple of neat files. Bingo. Instant killer resolution with bigger files.

This does have its flaws; if you zoom in too much (takes a lot of zooming), the resolution falls apart.

I don't know how much Pepakura costs. I'm beginning to think that buying it is a great idea, though...

Ah, you saw my 3d Exploration area. Metasequoia is also up.

[Hot4Darmat]

Nerath,

Thanks again for taking the trouble to make such a nice series of tutorials. I walked through it, trying to make a model, but ran into a few problems. Some of the problems probably have nothing to do with your tutorial but I'll post them, in case you can make a few changes or additions to help make things clearer.

First of all, the Pepaukra password costs $38US, which I'm still reluctant to pay until I see this thing working for me.

I tried to make a paper model of a Wing Commander Avenger, a fairly simple, boxy fighter from those games. This choice may be the source of the problems because it wasn't in .peo or .geo, there was no r10 file and no LOD0. The 3d model file I tried is textured and in 3dMax format which should be fine and everything, but your tutorial is so Homeworld-specific, the starting pointers you made didn't help. This is only a problem for those of us without Homeworld, or who might like to make models of non-Homeworld ships.

What's the important thing to know here? Does the 3d file need to be converted and saved in .cob format? Do the textures/materials need to be in .bmp format? If this is already the case, do you need to go through Deep Exploration at all?

I did the resizing thing (from 0 to 1) and the model I was working on became insanely huge. maybe this also only applies to HW models. I went through the Materials screen and did the mat1, mat2 and so on thing setting the filepath for each of the textures so that they appeared on the sphere, but there was a problem (I only discovered later) with my Metasequoia in that the bottom command lines and buttons were off screen completely so I didn't see them, can't resize the control panel on my screen at all (I tried all the views and I can't find a mode that'll let me click on the OK button) and as a result my Pepakura model had no textures at all. Is that what was missing? Once you've reassigned the texture paths in the materials screen, do you need to simply click OK, or does it need to be saved in some new format? Or does all of this only apply to models from Homeworld?

I guess I'm looking for any help on what I'm doing wrong, and how I can get a model from a different game to appear in Pepakura. The Pepakura part seems like the easiest part for me (making cuts and getting an unfold development that works well....my untextured, pure white Avenger wokred out surprisingly well, but it sure would be nice to have a textured one).

Thanks again for the help.

[TonyG]

Try wcmdf.solsector.net/ for WC meshes. They are the best I have seen so far and there are a number of low poly models that will unfold well - also go to SFmodels site mrch.free.fr/Papercraft/Flash_paperwingcom.htm
for three really good WC fighters.

So far I've done the Seahawk early warning bird and am working on the Excalibur. I have an unfolded and printed off TCS Victory but its very much in Beta format only. Needs a lot of work before its buildable.

Concordia, Vesuvius, Tigers Claw and the Tallahasee class cruisers seem to be impossible for Pepakura. The Midway is possible - just.

What I'm hunting for - and before my 3D explorer expires - is a simple mesh for the Sheffield class Destroyer from WCIII. So far no joy.

Anway the 3DS files at the above site translate easily into .cob and through Metaseqoia. Be careful to keep a note of the textures as they are a bit messy. Also, for the Longbow, there are extra textures in the file so yo can change the wing stripe colour from red to blue or yellow.

Open the file tellling 3Dexplorer that the file is 3DS then save as a .cob by clicking in the relevent menu. Follow Nerath's guide from there.

As for insanely huge - depends on the mesh. For the Behemoth I had to keep the figure at -3 to be useable. And yes. The Behemoth supergun is dooable!

Asuming you can see the screen for Metasequoia, click each Mat button in turn. Then click the ref button and find the bmp file in the window list - it has to be a bmp and not the jpeg. Click the file and then the open button and go to the next.

When you open Pepakura, open the menue for the 3d model and click on set textures. A box will open listing all the mat. numbers. Click each in turn then the specify texture button to assign the correct texture bitmap to each mat number. That should texture wrap the model. Then unfold.

[Nerath]

Hot4Darmat, the tutorial is for HW ships. Unless I research some of the games, which will not happen soon, it will only be for HW and you'll have to improvise...sort of...

[Hot4Darmat]

Thanks Nerath, I got most of the answers I needed from TonyG, but I encourage you to keep on with the HW tutorial.It's excellent. Thanks again for the reply.

TonyG: Thanks immensely. I think you got most of my problem points on the nose. I'll let you know how my Avenger comes out.

[TheGlove]

pepakura costs U$$ 38,00

[Eris Sjet]

i cant download 3D exploration from right hemisphere without answering to a fricken survay.

[Eris Sjet]

never mind. google kicks ass.

[Nerath]

That's how I got it. Just bear with it. What have you against surveys? If you don't want to use your real name, you can sign it under a relative's name or whoever, as long as the person really doesn't care.

[Eris Sjet]

there just annoiing. i miss a field by accident or on purpose and it kicks me back to the survay and i must do it ALL OVER AGAIN!!!

[TheGlove]

yeah, some surveys are a pain, look in www.superdownloads.com.br

[icepirate]

Something you might want to add in - I found a site that gives a part of the translation for the Metasequoia help/instruction file - as we all know painfully, most of it is in Japanese.

This guy has at least the first half translated. Might be of some use ;D

www.spies.com/~palevich/3d/metasequoia/english/

[fructose]

Nice, I'll add a link in my tutorial that I'm writing.

[Kosh365]

Ok, ive followed Fructose's and Nerath's tutorials up the the meta texturing, i cant figure out how to get the program to display them. I made the cob file and did the texture conversions, but I got lost when it came to meta. Can someone help me out?

[Ace]

best way is to save (in meta) cob to mqo, and then reopen mqo. Now go to View panel (on left menu) and select D3D button. I hope you means how to display textures on 3dmodel.