3Ds max freezes on Vertex Material

[Egozi44 28]

I trying to fix some treads animations for one of my vehicles going more or less by this guide http://www.derelictstudios.net/site/killasmods/tut5.php

 

The issue is that when I change the shader to W3D and go to Vertex Material, shader, textures, it will make max enter to infinity loop state and anything I will do will freeze it...

 

Does it supposed to happened if something missing? did it happened to any of you? if not what max version you uses? I uses max 9 + SP2 and have no clue why it happens and if I in the right track

[Lauren 78]

Don't use the W3D thing at all. TW+ only uses DX9 shaders.

[Egozi44 28]

Thanks for the info

But how I can "animate" (since it not real animations) the treads without it then?

Even TE's modder said to use it.. I totally lost here ^^..

Edited April 27, 2016 by Egozi44

[Stygs 25]

How about opening one of the Sample Assets and look how EA made it? Thats the whole point of the Sample Art packs after all.

(hint: the way treads in TW are done totally sucks)

Edited April 27, 2016 by Stygs

[Ravendark 46]

The w3d part is outdated in that tutorial i said that before.

 

in TW and KW treads use a scrolling shader. where the texture scrolls in a certain direction in your uvw map.

 

Have a look at this tutorial:

http://cncguild.net/item-148

 

but basically like styggs said..open one of the sample max files from the TW sample art..i would recommend the predator or mammoth(the mammoth is a bit more convoluted in amount of sub objects and bones it uses) and see how they use the shader.

[Ravendark 46]

How about opening one of the Sample Assets and look how EA made it? Thats the whole point of the Sample Art packs after all.

(hint: the way treads in TW are done totally sucks)

Iirc Sage2(RA3) uses a animated bone system right?

 

Aside from that, i never tried it, you could do a animation/path constraint setup...you could still keep a one mesh tread layout, just increase it complexity a bit and i think the engine could still handle it? As long as you wwskin the correct vertices to the correct bones that follow the animation path i don't see an issue with the animation not working. The only issue would be..is it worth the trouble as most treads are obscured with parts of the chassis anyway and not importantly visible in game...

[Lauren 78]

RA3 uses the same as TW, just that the engine is now able (again) to animate the texture on its own (by setting shader variables). As EA completely left out track animations from BfME it was never a necessity (even the badly ported tank draw didn't have it really working). So by the release of TW they didn't have it working again so they had to work around the issue with multiple subobjects.

The name you specify in RA3 is the actual sub object that is the tank thread.

Edited April 27, 2016 by Lauren

[Egozi44 28]

I sort of aware how the treads works like more or less, I just didn't was sure how to do it in max, I followed the guide in cnc guild, the guy there don't explained some stuff like what shader I need to use or what texture need to be applied to the secondary texture

 

TE's creator said to use BasicW3D which don't have secondary texture at all while guide only Hint (*H-i-n-t*) to use DefaultW3D, So I used the DefaultW3D shader, put the same tread textures into both basic and secondary, also cloned the treads 4 times renamed each objects and shaders names to the same name he said so that each object will have it own martial and shader, but stuck at the UVW unwrap point, the guide don't tell you how to use the basic unwraping so at "TreadsMove" and onward I didn't knew what to do since I have no clue how to add these green lines to the UVM

 

 

 

 

 

Anyone here can help me out with it? :/

 

 

 

P.S the predator's files he gave as example seem to use the W3D thingy

 

 

 

I really don't need to touch these stuff? cause max freeze for me the moment I do

Edited April 28, 2016 by Egozi44

[Ravendark 46]

You are looking at the wrong thing in the predator files, but weirdly enough when i import the settings aswell from that file it doesnt import the correct settings.

 

Best thing to do is just manually use the Defaultw3d.fx shader and use the following settings:

 

 

Just make sure that texmap0 is set to 1 (scl/move)

 

and uv0 scl/move set the color to R=1.0 G=1.0 and B(blue) the scroll direction to anything but 0.0...use something between 0.0 and 1.0

 

you also don't need to use a secondary texture iirc.

 

That is for your moving treads. for your stationary treads set the blue color to 0.0 and it wont scroll.

 

Those green lines in the picture of the tutorial are just your edges...

 

[Egozi44 28]

Thanks I will try it when I be home

 

So the greens lines not relate to it? He made it look like you need to set them that way in the tutorial

 

And each pic had them in different position despite using the same object and gizmo

 

Oh btw as you know we must put all the textures in max or it won't let us save, so I must add some texture in the secondary one

Edited April 28, 2016 by Egozi44

[Ravendark 46]

Those are basically the seams of your unwrap. Your borders. If they are white it more or less means they are stichted together, while green means it is not connected (within the uvw layout at least). I am not sure if i am explaining this right tbh.

 

But basically your tread texture spans from the left border to the right border and scrolls seamlessly from left to right. If you make sure your uwv are inside the tread texture it should work as intended. If you need to reverse the direction you flip the unwrap 180degrees horizontally.

I'm honestly finding it alot harder to explain then to do. If you do it a few times even with trial and error it explains itself automatically imo.

[Stygs 25]

Yeah, Its pretty easy do to and hard to explain.

 

Basicly, you just need 2 shader settings - one for movements (forward, backwards, turning) and one for no movement at all and 4 or 5 track models with different UV settings.

Forward and no movement are pretty easy to make. Just apply the shader and you should be done in most cases.

 

For moving backwars, you need to flip the UV map (thats why there are 2 tracks on the texture - one for each direction). For the turning models, you need to flip only one tracks UV map.

 

Basicly, just try to understand how the forward movement works, then try the reverse one and then the models for turning are pretty self explanatory.

[Egozi44 28]

Thanks for the help guys, was able to make it work

 

 

 

 

Wish someone will write up to date guide about the treads, because I just know I will forgot what the hell I done there if I won't do it again any time soon (and I don't have reason to do it again any time soon because I don't have any other imported unit with treads atm)

[Stygs 25]

Well, it seems your units are using the forward treads when moving backwards.

 

Otherwise very good work

[Egozi44 28]

Thanks

 

So far all KW's units do it, I looked on the predator and scorpion, seem like EA didn't made backwards condition? O.o

Edited April 29, 2016 by Egozi44

[Stygs 25]

Some units (like the Mammoth) have it. EA either run out of time or never bothered with it xD

[Ravendark 46]

I wonder if the reverse move was a planned feature or atleast a well worked out one. Because you can make units slide across the screen depending on when you click.