Introduction
Here's the flag model for Unreal Fortress. As there are four different colour versions of the flag i.e. red, blue, green and gold, my goal in skinning this model was to avoid having the texture bitmap for the flag pole replicated on each different colour flag skin. I wanted one skin for the flag pole itself and four team skins, one in each colour for the flag canvas itself. However the model is a single mesh.
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Step 1
To accomplish this I simply split my mesh into two objects, the pole and the canvas. I then changed all the faces on the pole to have material IDs of '1' and all faces on the canvas to have a material ID of '2' (Use MAX's 'Material modifier for this). I then used MAX's 'Freeze' function to effectively disable the flag pole object (dark grey) whilst I used ChilliSkinner as normal to create the skin for the canvas object.
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Step 2
Once done I repeated the operation but this time froze the canvas object (dark grey) whilst I used ChilliSkinner to create the skin for the flag pole object.CSv2's functions mainly work only on 'selected' objects, so if you're careful enough with your object selection you can skin an object regardless of what else you have in your scene. Obviously 'freezing' objects can make this process much easier because it prevents you inadvertently selecting the wrong object.
Once you've mapped both objects and applied the Texporter generated bitmap to each object, simply re-attach them in MAX. You'll be faced with a dialog that basically asks if you want to merge the object's materials or keep them separate.. you should choose to keep them separate.
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Step 3
Here's the resultant 128x64 skin for the flag pole object. Notice how I've aggressively scaled down the flag pole tube components as they won't require much detail.
Also note how I've positioned the eagle body parts so that they make more sense when it comes to the actual bitmap painting.
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Step 4
Here's the 128x128 flag canvas skin with the tassles at the right-hand side. Notice how ChilliSkinner has unfolded the canvas loops from around the flag pole.
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Step 5
Here's a beta version of the flag pole skin painted. It's often a good idea to go over the boundaries of the bitmap lines. I.e. rather than using your paint package tools to paint inside of the lines on the bitmap... It's better to go over the top of them and indeed paint outside of them too. This will help to avoid glitches and edges being visible when you place the bitmap on the model or in-game. This is more noticeable when using smaller bitmaps as the mapping relationship between areas on the bitmap and areas on the model won't be so exact. Hence the gold 'fill' between the eagles and the generous covering of the wood texture etc.
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Step 6
And here's the flag canvas skin for the blue team. |
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Step 7
Lastly, here's the final model rendered in MAX.
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