Meshwork User?

[igame3d]

I'm starting this thread to keep up with other Meshwork artists that visit here. Please post only if you are working with Meshwork and would like to share info on your work.
I know there is a Meshwork newsgroup, but that lacks all the fun of iDevGames forums.

Our game engine uses meshwork models, so I have 319 models that I'd like to share, get tweeked, and show off some game making with. Doing it all myself is a less than inspiring.

I'll be posting some models, along with the a free version of the game editor as soon as I finish fixing this Antack v2 beta. (hint hint, I need reliable testers)

[Nickolei]

I've been playing around with Meshworks for a while, and finally decided to jump in and register it - I'm waiting on the serial number right now.

Anyway, it's be cool to look at models and what not. I was thinking of doing something with the dim3 engine, as there's a better likelyhood of me getting something completed with it.

I'm also curious about how people do texture mapping or animation.

[macboy]

I'm playing around with MeshWORK (not works) now also and am pretty much a newbie modeler, but I hope that will change :D

Originally posted by Nickolei
I'm also curious about how people do texture mapping ...Double-click on a color in the toolbar and use the texture settings. :)

[igame3d]

I actually avoid texturing permanently in Meshwork.
I'll set the facings without a texture, and then apply whatever texture I need in my game engine, on the fly.

This avoids large meshwork files.
Sometimes while testing a model its useful to texture it, but I clear the texture before actually using it.

I Mostly try to use Planar mapping, now that it actually works correctly in the current version of Meshwork.

To make a tiled texture in meshwork:
Select all the polygons you wish to texture, set them to the correct Planar mapping with a material. Hit ok. Now choose a smaller polygon, or area of polygons, then set the same Material to those polygons only. The texture will tile across the entire materialed surface.

The first time I found this out, it was in the beta and I was in awe...I had a GIANT quad with something like 1000 x1000 animating explosions, tiled across it. Very strange, but useful when necessary.

Anyhow, thanks to rantings of new member to iDevGames: DarkOcean's the helpful Jeff Quan whipped up the following tutorial to go along with his old one:

Jeff Quan's Meshwork Mapping Tutorials (http://www.geocities.com/jeffq_cnet/Meshwork/alphamask.html)

Its easier than it looks. My alpha technique:

Meshwork polygon selection
Set Material, Planar, smooth, transparent.
save

Photoshop image on a layer
select area to be masked out
delete
invert selection
Channels Pallette
New Channel>selection is white, mask is black
Modify with blur, curves or levels to get varying levels of transparency (black to grey) as desired.
Save for web.. as PNG-24 with Transparency

iGame3D (was T3D) Editor script or console commands:

make "mymodel"
loadtex "path/texture.png"
tex 1,"path/texture.png" //material#,texture

done!
Read Jeff's tutorial anyway, it looks educational (I haven't actually read it yet, I already have a working technique!)

Animations (.mov) with transparency are another thing all together.

Good luck.

[Jake]

Ive been using Meshworks for a while now making buildings for my game (its a 2D game but I take a screenshot from meshworks)

I have found that using non-square textures can cause problems, so if you can't figure out why a texture is going on an object at an angle make sure its square

[igame3d]

Meshwork previously had issues with non 72 dpi (dots pre inch, or pixel per inch) , Photoshop was generating 71.2 dpi or some oddball number, that should be fixed in Version 2, too bad Undo isn't!!.

In general, if I remember to, I work at high resoluiton (300 dpi is used for professional printing work, better to be safe), copy paste to a new file and resize for use in games (72dpi)


Jake I'd like to see some of your buildings in our game engine, I'm certainly bored with my own!!! Care to post them?

[Jake]

Originally posted by igame3d
Jake I'd like to see some of your buildings in our game engine, I'm certainly bored with my own!!! Care to post them?

Sure :) I can do it tomorow, I can't upload now because im sharing my dial up connection with 2 other users on a network.

Some are high poly, but there are tools that reduce the amount of polys right?

[igame3d]

Originally posted by Jake
Some are high poly, but there are tools that reduce the amount of polys right?

To some extent yes. The technique I use is this:
export to 3DS,
import into Cinema4D,
apply poly reduction,
export as 3DS,
drop onto my BINA file type applescript,
import into meshwork
re-map the textures
save as Meshwork file

If that fails to give quality results, its time to start from scratch or think of another way.

I'm thinking you have windows and stuff like which would make the polycount increase. If the structure is extremely basic and becomes distorted by polyreduction:

Enlarge your 3D preview to fullsscreen at the highest screen resolution you can get to.
Fill the screen with as much of the model as possible.
Snapshot (command shift 3)
Photoshop the snapshop into a correct texture material
New Meshwork model with only absolute needed details
Apply texture to each material face you need (3 for buildings, 2 sides in X, 2 Sides in Y, 2 Sides in Z..althought you can cheat if you won't be seeing some sides)

Ah, a year of using Meshwork and at last I feel like I know something about it.

[Nickolei]

Much as I like the simplicity of it, the name Meshwork is just too...harsh. But I guess it really bothers some people, so i'll try to get it right.

Ahh ... how I long for the days when my biggest problem is other people's spelling mistakes.

:D

[macboy]

Okay, just deleted my post.

I have a question: How do you add a texture to a face of a cylinder... I tried to make a clock but failed miserably. :(

[Nickolei]

It seems like texturing in Meshwork (at least in 1.9) was buggy and rather unstraightforward. Anyone here have any luck with UVMapper?

[Jake]

Originally posted by Nickolei
It seems like texturing in Meshwork (at least in 1.9) was buggy and rather unstraightforward. Anyone here have any luck with UVMapper?

I did in 2.0.1

[igame3d]

Ok to texture the face of a clock.

lets assume this is your cylinder from the front view
___________
|__________|

Use Y planar mappion on this top part of the model:
____________


OR rotate the cylinder first 90∞ in X so it faces you in front view:
__________
/ \
| |
\_________/

Something like that...
From the top view select the front face (bottom of screen in that view) and use Z Planar mapping.

Warning!!! The 3D preview REQUIRES Textures with POWER of 2 (32x32, 64x64, 128x128, 256x256)
I tried this for thirty minutes, finally giving up on the stupid 3D preview, saved my models out as they were, brought them into the game engine and ....

http://homepage.mac.com/igame3d/ameshworkclock.jpg

get the clocks here (http://homepage.mac.com/igame3d/FileSharing1.html)

one, the first one I did is TOO many poly's, I thought at first the skewed preview was a poly problem, so I copied, pasted, scaled, and connected the outer ring several times towards the center. Still the Preview SUCKS. Well the Too many poly one might be fun to pull from the center, after you connect overlaps (which still doesn't fix the preview)


I'll think of a solution soon...ACTUALLY NOT NECESARRY NOW that we've discovered the POWER OF 2 TEXTURE solution!
Get old T3D Editor, some cool models in the file T3D_for_Meshwork.sit (http://hompage.mac.com/igame3d/FileSharing1.html)

Read the read me! its really easy, once you know how to use it . and then you can actually see your models working!!!

oh..the T3D EDIT application needs to be restarted to adjust to changes in your model after loadng it once, I cheat to avoid this, I just change the model name every time I modify it, usually I have scripts for textures so I don't have to change those names unless I change the the texture.

Ok have fun with the that, hope it helps with meshwork usage. We really need a better preview!! ugh.

Edit: fixed the link, sorry about that
EDIT2: FIXED THE TEXTURE BUG!! POWER OF 2 TEXTURES.

[macboy]

Originally posted by igame3d
Warning!!! The 3D preview in Meshwork is STILL BROKEN.
I tried this for thirty minutes, finally giving up on the stupid 3D preview, saved my models out as they were, brought them into the game engine and ....If you have Quesa installed in the right place, it should work. Download the newest Quesa, place it in /Library/CFMSupport and restart your computer.

[igame3d]

Originally posted by Nickolei
It seems like texturing in Meshwork (at least in 1.9) was buggy and rather unstraightforward. Anyone here have any luck with UVMapper?
POWER OF 2 TEXTURES, now we know.


U/V mapping takes some getting used to, and you can't modify your model after doing it, or you have to fix your U/V map all over again.

Duplicate your files, modify the duplicate for safe measure.

See post above, your are better off previewing your meshwork models in T3D.

Steps to U/V map for anyone who hasn't read the tutorial.
Assume you have a human (like the bob model in the T3D download)
If you haven't set faces yet, set the whole model to the third Material so you can see that you are making changes.

View from top
select the front face of the Model (facing down in top view)
set these poly's to the first material with Planar Z, hit OK
reset these poly's with the first material with Pinned mode.
SAVE AS ...before something goes wrong and you have to do this all over again.

Now Select the Back facing poly's (facing up in top view)
Set these poly's to the second material with Planar Z, hit OK
reset these poly's with the 2nd material with Pinned mode.
SAVE AS ...better safe than sorry

deselect all poly's

Command Click the first material to select all poly's with that material
Display menu, texture map.
Make the texture map window as big as possible or you could miss some clicks.
Click in the window to deselect poly's.
Click on points and adjust with the drag
CAREFULLY, click back into the modeling window (you don't want to accidentally move points!!)
and SAVE AS.

I find I can get away with just planar mapping mode this way, only having to go U/V for extreme poly's.

Ok good luck.

[Nickolei]

Above link is missing an e, should be...

http://homepage.mac.com/igame3d/FileSharing1.html

[Jake]

Originally posted by macboy
If you have Quesa installed in the right place, it should work. Download the newest Quesa, place it in /Library/CFMSupport and restart your computer.

Thats not the problem, the preview is still broken half the time. For me it works some of the time, others i have to reduce texture resolutions.

[igame3d]

Yep this is the result I'm getting on that clock I posted.
http://homepage.mac.com/igame3d/quesameshwork.jpg
(read more to find out why!!)

I thought there was nothing wrong with the texture or the model because it looks perfect in T3D Edit. I've also installed the Quesa at the root library as well as the local user library just in case, and restarted and still crud.

By the way the texture in that model is 72dpi and only 124x124...

AHA THAT IS THE PROBLEM!!!!

IT MUST BE A POWER OF 2 (how annoying)

32x32
64x64
128x128
256x256

http://homepage.mac.com/igame3d/POWEROF2.jpg

Man that was frustrating. Hope this helps everyone who is having texture problems.

Please note the textures in the T3D download may not be power of 2, sorry for any inconvienance.

[igame3d]

Has anyone used the T3D app yet? I'd like to see some screen shots of your models in a composition instead of all alone in a Meshwork preview.

I'm surprise noone has commented on that sexy lo-res model in the download.
http://homepage.mac.com/igame3d/bobbette.jpg

:rolleyes:
Hey you, stop looking at my wife that way! :mad:

If you are like me and use Command Control Shift 4 to make screen shots you may get a shock when the T3D view moves when holding the control key.
To screenshot without this happening, click into finder,
the 3D view stays available, then do your screenshot.

[igame3d]

Original Post to Meshwork List by Jeff Quan The best optimization I know of is use as few materials as you can possibly get away with (read: lots of pinned mapping). As far as I know (Joe can correct me on this) the graphics file format is irrelevant, since 3DMF stores the textures uncompressed with the mesh. If the above statement is true, using jpegs could hurt your textures -- all jpeg compression artifacts would be visible on the models.

Of course, using as few vertices as possible doesn't hurt, either!
--
Jeff Quan
jquan@mindspring.com

Of course, just setting the material without a texture, and using T3D/iGame3D is the BEST optimization of all.
.png files are great!
See Here. (http://www.igame3d.com/modelop/)