Creating .x objects

Taera · #1 September 13th, 2005, 03:52 PM

Seeing that SEV is coming, I'm looking at my lovely green ships and thinking "Man, that'd look good in there". Now I don't quite own any great 3D programs, and don't know much about .x files.

I know there are a couple articles, but I want a communal answer as to how to create the dreaded .x files?

Should I dish out the money to get some 3d-max-esque program?

narf poit chez BOOM · #2 September 13th, 2005, 03:56 PM

Make a ship in wings3d (Free). Save it as 3ds. Load the 3ds into milkshape ($40), texture. Save as .x.

Ed Kolis · #3 September 13th, 2005, 04:01 PM

Or:
Make a ship (and texture it) in Art of Illusion (free, www.artofillusion.org).
Export directly to .X using my .X exporter plugin (http://kolis.dyndns.org/ed/prog/exportX/exportX-1.1.zip)
Note that if you use procedural 3D textures, the model won't look all that great (you will have lots of ugly seams)... I'll have to work on fixing that!

Atrocities · #4 September 13th, 2005, 04:04 PM

Downloading the AOI program is a real ***** though.... must go through several web pages to get.

Hugh Manatee · #5 September 14th, 2005, 02:44 AM

Try Blender, its free, powerful, has built in texturing tools(you can use lithunwrap too if you want), a large helpful community, its easy to download, easy(but different) to use and exports to .x . Once you realize that everything you need to do can be done with hotkeys it's pretty simple.

zircher · #6 September 15th, 2005, 08:59 PM

If you're on a budget and want a fairly easy learning curve, you might want to try DoGA CGA as a designer and Metasequoia LE as the model tweaking tool.

I recently wrote up a three part tutorial that walks you through nearly everything you need to do to create models for SEV/StarFury.

http://zircher.iwarp.com/doga
--
TAZ

Atrocities · #7 September 13th, 2005, 04:01 PM

If you do buy 3d max, John Beech has a great tutorial site.
You will have to ask him for permission to view the site though.

I plan to do it on the cheap... by using DOGA.

I create the model in DOGA, export it to Meta, then clean it up, create a UV Map, then save it as an X file. My only problem is texturing the model.

I have a nice UV map of the model, with all the parts, that does not really help me, but it does give me a BMP to work with.

Once I learn how to layer the BMP, I hope to make some nice Textured skins for models.