Generals conversions

Mig Eater · Posted: Fri Dec 05, 2014 11:51 am Post subject: Generals conversions

Several years ago I converted the Chinese buildings from C&C Generals to Red Alert 2, well I'm now finally going to convert the other sides buildings!

I started with the American command center, only to find that the textures & material settings on the model are a mess, I then soon fond that all the American & GLA buildings have this problem >.>

Unlike the Chinese buildings that were a simple matter of import the model, apply one or two UVW mapped textures & render. The USA/GLA ones however use multiple small textures for each side/face of the model & on top of that none of them are listed in the material editor. Obviously two different artists worked on the Generals buildings, using two very different texturing methods. Its also obvious why I didn't convert the USA/GLA models several years ago along with the Chinese buildings, at that time wouldn't have even know were to start with fixing them.

Now days tho I know my way around 3DS Max a lot better so it shouldn't be a problem, It will however require cutting up the models into their individual parts & studding screenshots to find the correct textures for each part. This means that In the time it took me to convert all the Chinese buildings I'll be able to make one USA/GLA building.

Well enough with my grumbling & on to a render...

cmdhq_01.png

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Lin Kuei Ominae · Seth **Joined**: 16 Aug 2006 **Location**: Germany

you should model out the bars on the radar tower to cut out the black parts. Simply using an opacity map to set black as transparent doesn't work unfortunately, since then you would clearly see that the bars are flat planes and opacity maps also cause 3dsmax to anti-aliase against background so you get ugly unsharp borders.
But by using splines (which you then render as bars) this is done in no time.

Maybe they used multi-map sub-materials for the more complex buildings.

Mig Eater wrote:

It will however require cutting up the models into their individual parts

i hope by cutting up, you don't mean to break up one mesh into several separate meshes,
but
only select the individual polygons and assign a specific material ID to them.

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Mig Eater · Posted: Fri Dec 05, 2014 3:57 pm Post subject:

Thx for the multi-map tip, I really hope that's what they did.

I selected the individual polygons & detached them, that way I don't need to reselect all of them again for the snow version. It's still a very messy way to do it. I'm really tempted to just make one big texture & re UVW map the whole thing. But then I might as well just remodel it all from scratch as well.

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FurryQueen · General **Joined**: 24 Jul 2010 **Location**: Liyue

Will you have complete sets? IE, buildups and damage frames at the very least? If there's everything, I will love you forever. #Tongue

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4StarGeneral · General **Joined**: 14 Sep 2006 **Location**: Limbo

Probably would be best to bake it into 1 big texture for which you can add the snow easier, or even just do 3D snow. As far as dissecting it to make a buildup, well, you would probably just want to rebuild it from scratch then as its surely not made to do that and would have to play around with the textures anyway. (I feel your pain in working with EA's models #Tongue

)

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Mig Eater · Posted: Fri Dec 05, 2014 6:49 pm Post subject:

FurryQueen wrote:

Will you have complete sets?

Yep :3

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Lin Kuei Ominae · Seth **Joined**: 16 Aug 2006 **Location**: Germany

Mig Eater wrote:

I selected the individual polygons & detached them, that way I don't need to reselect all of them again for the snow version.

When you assign material IDs to the selected polygons, they will keep them. Later you can simply choose to select all polygons with a certain ID in the rollout

see Select ID

This way it's actually a lot cleaner and the normal way to go.

When everything is set, you should be able later to replace only the texture images with the respective snow versions (rename/replace the files, not the textures in the materials) and everything should instantly work for snow too.
So you don't even have to touch the 3dmodel again and just render right away.

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Mig Eater · Posted: Sat Dec 06, 2014 4:15 pm Post subject:

The models aren't multi-mapped, or they might have been but the import script can't read them & just loads the first material & not the sub materials.

Assigning materials to individual polygons would be a lot cleaner, but I also want to separate the single mesh into its individual parts so I can more easily make the buildup anim.

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0warfighter0 · Posted: Sat Dec 06, 2014 4:29 pm Post subject:

Don't forget the opacity maps.

Mig Eater · Posted: Sat Dec 06, 2014 4:46 pm Post subject:

0warfighter0 wrote:

Don't forget the opacity maps.

Lin Kuei Ominae wrote:

you should model out the bars on the radar tower to cut out the black parts. Simply using an opacity map to set black as transparent doesn't work unfortunately, since then you would clearly see that the bars are flat planes and opacity maps also cause 3dsmax to anti-aliase against background so you get ugly unsharp borders.
But by using splines (which you then render as bars) this is done in no time.

It's already going to take some time to fix the textures & redo the animations, so I'm reluctant to spend even more time remodeling parts of the buildings. The black parts don't look that bad IMO, I'll see how I feel after I work on them some more.

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The_Hunter · Posted: Sun Dec 07, 2014 12:46 am Post subject:

If you need any help i could likely convert all of these structures to use the correct textures over the course of an afternoon to use the correct textures. (they would be in MAX7 tho)

Considering that i know almost all of the textures of Generals like the back of my own hand X)

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Mig Eater · Posted: Sun Dec 07, 2014 9:44 am Post subject:

I'd be very grateful if you could, it would save me possibly weeks of work Smile

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The_Hunter · Posted: Sun Dec 07, 2014 6:09 pm Post subject:

I'll probably get on that next week then.
I'll you know when i finnish.

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LEGO · Vehicle Driver **Joined**: 30 Oct 2008

The_Hunter wrote:

If you need any help i could likely convert all of these structures to use the correct textures over the course of an afternoon to use the correct textures. (they would be in MAX7 tho)

Considering that i know almost all of the textures of Generals like the back of my own hand X)

Ooooh good lord, plz also help lord Eater to convert the ROTR Russian and European buildings, they Rocks!

Graion Dilach · Posted: Tue Dec 16, 2014 7:21 pm Post subject:

Pretty certain it won't gonna happen.

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Mig Eater · Posted: Wed Dec 17, 2014 7:35 am Post subject:

I'm not going to rip models from mods o.0

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Atomic_Noodles · Defense Minister **Joined**: 05 Oct 2011

LEGO wrote:

Ooooh good lord, plz also help lord Eater to convert the ROTR Russian and European buildings, they Rocks!

The_Hunter isn't gonna let people rip his models. Besides the Generals ones are fine as is.

The Tech Artillery Platform,Tech Reinforcement Pad & Tech Repair Bay would be really useful conversions too actually.

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LEGO · Vehicle Driver **Joined**: 30 Oct 2008

Mig Eater wrote:

I'm not going to rip models from mods o.0

Oh the mighty Eater, it's not ripping if the author agrees.
The building design in ROTR is so good realistic Russian style, and there is hardly anything comparable in YR. Those in vanila YR and mods are either way too cartoon or too scifi. The only exception may be the buildings in your D-Day, yet they are not morden but WW2ish, and only for DDay.
I mean, it would be good if someone can make a realistic semi-morden/semi-scifi base. It doesn't necessary to be a copy of ROTR, ROTR is simplly a good example.
And, if the ROTR team agree to export their asset to YR mods, why not.

Graion Dilach · Posted: Sat Dec 20, 2014 10:18 am Post subject: