Sword of Moonlight Forum

Sword of Moonlight => SOM Guides, FAQ and Help => Topic started by: HwitVlf on March 11, 2011, 10:23:03 pm

Title: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on March 11, 2011, 10:23:03 pm
Plugins:
Here (http://www.mediafire.com/?816g4mfw6l82lbg) is a link the latest v0.2 how-to. It also includes translations of some Metasequoia plugins and basic info on how to use Keynote. So it could be useful for people interested in Keynote more than Sword of Moonlight. Additional translated plugins are listed below including Keynote.

Here (http://www.mediafire.com/?toijei6z1p59l52) are some additional translated Metasequoia plugins (batch#1).
   UVPowerUnwrap was already in English, but some of the directions in its readme are translated. Home (http://space.geocities.jp/uvpowertools/)
   EasyUV gives a control panel for better control when moving UVs around. Home (http://www1.ocn.ne.jp/~relize/#EasyUV)
   KeepUV gives a simple control panel that lets you 'keep' UV shape when you reshape a mesh. Home (http://www1.ocn.ne.jp/~relize/#KeepUV)
   StitchUV(under "Selected") joins close UVs just like 'Join Close Vertices' does for vertices. Home (http://www1.ocn.ne.jp/~relize/#StitchUV)
   ROKImport lets you import ROK models made in HexaGreat (2D to 3D model maker). Home (http://homepage3.nifty.com/moripapa/soft/mqplug.htm)

Here (http://www.mediafire.com/?2aaex1x92993jzq) are some additional translated Metasequoia plugins (batch#2):
  Pipe lets you draw a 'framework' with lines, then extrudes a pipe tree along the lines. For pipeworks, or maybe trees. Home (http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~jv9h-msk/metaseq/plugin1.html)
  Multi-Bevel extrudes selected faces with various taper and division options Home (http://www1.ocn.ne.jp/~relize/#MultiBevel)
  Loop is a 5 function plugin Home (http://d00.cool.ne.jp/metase/boko/boko.html):
       Select a full line, Make a hole in a face, Flatten multiple faces to point in the same direction,
       Select all polygons surrounding the current polygon(s), Make a rectangular face into a perfect square.

Here (http://www.mediafire.com/?p6b8yarcgfrbggo) are some additional/updated translated Metasequoia plugins (batch#3) including a new version of KEYNOTE.
   Keynote update v0.0.4.4 for making animated models in Metasequoia
   Make Anchor update for making anchors.
   AnimatedX Export translation update with a a few new errors translated.
   PMD/PMX  Export which lets you export animated models to MikuMikuDance format.
     All brought to you by the genius at MQDL Home (http://mqdl.jpn.org/sb.cgi?cid=2)

Here (http://www.mediafire.com/?sqq4gu5713yfd7r) is an additional translated Metasequoia plugin (batch#4):
  'Create Polygon On Surface' lets you draw new polygons on an existing polygon. Home (http://efk.seesaa.net/category/9689059-1.html)
 
Here (http://www.mediafire.com/?pk0opowf7ritvwi) is a translated tool that can sometimes fix broken Keynote animations- Home (http://nora3d.blog68.fc2.com/blog-category-2.html)

Here (http://www.mediafire.com/?ijiy251giwosua8) are two translated Metasequoia plugins (batch#5):
  'PolyCounter' adds a new Panel that show the current polygon/vertex count.
  'Keynote Serial Save' adds a new "Save As" option that lets you save each keyframe from a Keynote animation as a separate non-animated MQO model.

Here (http://www.siobi.info/program/index.htm) is a set of plugins made by Siobi, who graciously released English versions for us! You can hover the mouse over the pictures on his site for an English description of what the plugins do.

Tutorials:
Keynote -
   In this (http://swordofmoonlight.com/bbs/index.php/topic,492.0.html) thread, there is some very helpful Keynote information (a huge thanks to AirFlamesRed!)
   Here  (http://www.mediafire.com/?go1dnosuoav26v4)is a document with information about Keynote controlls.
   Here (http://mattaku.sa-ra-sa.com/) is a Japanese site with lots of Keynote tips. -Click squares to the right of "Mikoto TIPS"

Metasequoia -
  Below are some "tutorial" sites for Metasequoia. The information might be good for beginners or have a few new tips for 'old-pros':
   grumpyrarab (http://www.grumpyrarab.ffximc.com/pages/site/homeframe.html)
   skribblerz (http://www.skribblerz.com/tuts/metatut.htm)
   cutfoldpaste (http://cutfoldpaste.blogspot.com/2011/01/metasequoias-boolean-plugin.html)
   Metasequoia Menu v1.0 Page 1 (http://web.archive.org/web/20080501012316/http://homepage.ntlworld.com/papermodels/meta/docs/commands1.htm) / Page2 (http://web.archive.org/web/20080430225642/http://homepage.ntlworld.com/papermodels/meta/docs/commands2.htm) / Page 3 (http://web.archive.org/web/20080501012321/http://homepage.ntlworld.com/papermodels/meta/docs/commands3.htm)  (Download Complete Tutorial  (http://ulflyer.com/models/images/metadocs1.zip) / Home (http://ulflyer.com/models/))
   Video's by Verdite: Head modeling 1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86JiuZpbi_w&list=FLd5p1fMZIWc5gHyEDIyDcTA) & 2 (http://youtu.be/pt913xkv588), Monster modeling (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRdWo8HZFh8&feature=youtu.be) & texturing (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GycODM2cm5E&feature=youtu.be)
   Utilizators (http://utilizator404.wordpress.com/2014/01/06/metasequaia-educational-material-dump/)

3D Modeling Resources -
   Itchy Animation.com (http://www.itchy-animation.co.uk/tutorials.html) Lighting tutorials - some very good information about how to use light.   
   3D Total.com (http://www.3dtotal.com/newsite/index_tutorial_detailed.php?id=473&page=1#.TpX9v0RQNxk) modeling tutorials- link goes to especially comprehensive human modeling tutorial.
   anniemation.com  (http://www.anniemation.com/textures/flowers.html) Plants and Flowers textures and reference resource.
   biology-resources.com   (http://www.biology-resources.com/articles.html) Amphibians, Birds, Fish, Shrooms, Insects and Plants reference resource.
   mega-tex.com  (http://www.mega-tex.nl/highqualitytextures/) General Textures and references.
   cgtextures.com (http://cgtextures.com/) General Textures, well organized and specifically geared to 3D modeling.
   New York Metropolitan Museum (http://metmuseum.org/collections/search-the-collections?ft=*) database with pictures and descriptions for thousands of ancient artifacts.

HexaGreat - (aka HexaSuper aka Rokkaku-Daioh)
   flad2d (http://www.flat2d.com/hexagreat_en.aspx) has tutorial links and download for this program that takes 2D 'drawing' and makes it into a 3D ROK model.


If anyone has other tutorial site links, post here and I'll add them. Or if anyone has a Metasequoia plugin they want in English.

Thanks to Verdite for finding the Metasequoia keynote plugin by the way :)
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials
Post by: Verdite on March 14, 2011, 09:48:37 am
I understand this quite well. I look forward to mick's compatibility intergration for metaseq. Tried the test model in keynote for a test but x2mdl couldnt handle it.

Cant wait to make my own krakens ;)
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials
Post by: Verdite on March 19, 2011, 09:53:37 am
Any news on the new x2mdl?
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on March 20, 2011, 01:19:13 pm
Just read most of the new posts on x2mdl in som.net's forum. I'm trying to at least get a basic grasp on this, although i havent actually hexed or taken apart any programme in my life, so its all a bit fuzzy, but i have to start somewhere. :dazed:

You're really hitting this head on, and i think thats awesome. I'd like to contribute more, but alot of my creative or intellectual energy goes into designing and making assets  :wink:
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on March 20, 2011, 05:06:17 pm
I downloaded these files, firstly, mikoto wont open the coffin, but keynote is fine...

Secondly, will there be a metaseq tutorial or starter guide coming our way? I havent used bones before. Feeling a bit powerless :)
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on March 21, 2011, 07:22:02 pm
Keynote has a pop-up menu that isn't easy to find. Access it by pressing 'G' while Keynote is active. It lets you set coordinates for joints and other neat stuff.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on March 25, 2011, 03:45:04 pm
Hi guys
First post here. I was drawn in by the keynote translation, so thanks very much to HwitVLF for that. Now, I shouldn't have to bother with the quite bewildering blender - thanks once again.
The normal bones are straight forward enough, though I can't get any results with weight of vertex so I would be gratefull for any pointers on that. The constraint bones seem to be dependent on the code in the bump chanel, of all places. Still looking into that one.
So I don't appear as a freddie Freeloder here ; If there's anything I can offer back (I'm guessing you guys are more than familiar with metasequoia) perhaps models - just shout.
many thanks
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on March 26, 2011, 06:11:46 am
Ah great I did try adding weight to the anchor so Ill give that another go. I did notice that although you have to start with a cube for the anchor you can  then subdivide and reshape.
For years I had wondered why WOVertex was in meta at all and only recently learnt it  worked with patch spline 1/2

Is it easy enough to edit the xml files? I tried with the boolean - no joy
thanks
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on March 26, 2011, 01:40:05 pm
OK Weight of vertex update
Tick 'revise top weight' under option
WOV should be added to bdef mesh verts. Won't work on sdef mesh
They only seem to work where two anchor cubes overlap

Freddie Freeloader - I got it from Miles Davis - don't know where he got it from.

regards
Mark
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on March 26, 2011, 09:08:26 pm
To be honest I had keynote a while ago and took it off through frustration so your translation has been a real godsend. I don't really do animation cause I have enough on my plate with meta and terragen 2 but I shall keep you posted with any findings.
Is meta the weapon of choice around here then? It does seem to cover MMD and the paper folding folks communities quite well.
I asume you know that meta development has moved to V3 (alpha atm) and will include sculpting tools (ala sculptris). I guess its not much use for you guys but at least its looking like it has some sort of future. Its available for download on the b site. Its just a shame its so hard to comunicate  back to Mr Mizno cause this is such a good app for all levels of modeling (and I'v tried most of them)

cheers
Mark
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on March 26, 2011, 09:25:27 pm
I use meta for all / most SoM work with a few blender models here and there.

Just out of curiosity, are you interested in playing the SoM games here?
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on March 27, 2011, 07:39:14 am
To be honest Verdite I don't really have enough time atm to get involved with anything else, My wife is in full agreement as well!
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on March 29, 2011, 04:01:15 pm
Ooh more to play with
thanks
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: dmpdesign on April 03, 2011, 01:27:38 am
John, planning to start finally diggin into this tomorrow.

Do I have your permission to add this how to into the main site's tutorial area once I have followed all youve done and understand it a bit better?
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: dmpdesign on April 03, 2011, 03:43:00 am
OK john, worked on a breakable barrel tonight...it has 5 parts.

I am to the 'motion' part of your tutorial and i have a few questions.

When I go into motion, I dont want to change anything for the initial key frame, so i leave it be and move the slider...lets say to 2.

At 2 I moved all the bones a bit, save for the bottom bone since the bottom of the barrel doesnt move (in fact, if/when I perfect this, I think the bottom of the barrel will actually be an object, that way when you break the barrel the top animates away via npc death leaving the bottom of the barrel object in its place, then upon death activate the trigger to spawn the item in the barrel) i moved the frame to 4 saw it place a blue key frame indicator on the timeline and again moved the bones.  After I moved it again i noted that at 2 and 4 i now had indicators for keyframes, so i played the animation...however it only showed keyframes at 2 and 4 but not the original 0 positioning....can you tell me what I may be doing wrong?

In addition, do you know how many seconds (or parts of a second) the ticks on the timeline equate to in game?

Thanks!
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: dmpdesign on April 03, 2011, 09:53:48 am
Thanks for the info, i will contact Holy about whether or not I can host his updates for x2mdl or not, I would assume if he is genuinely wanting to help the general populace of SOM users he will probably allow it as long as I put the time in to let everyone know the proper terminology for what to call it and how he may take legal action if they mispronounce it and so on :)

Hopefully I will have a workable breakable barrel by sometime today for you guys to have a peek at, I am glad I can flip all the model stuff, working with it upside down has been a pain.

I would read more stuff on holy's site but his forum runs absolutely awful for me, I suppose its because I use IE and not firefox, but really, not making your forum more browser friendly just seems weird to me.  I wish I could just have him use this damn forum and stick to his technical stuff and leave his abrasive opinions about everything else to himself...oh well.  I do thank him, and you of course for the effort put forth on this particular project though for sure.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: dmpdesign on April 03, 2011, 12:05:56 pm
OK animations 0 and 3 are in (idle and death for npc).

Saved to x...going to work on the x2mdl side next.  So far so good.

I think I know the first enemy I am going to build, because it will be easy:)

A spectral sword....for those of you unfamiliar with what that is, its a floating sword (going to have its idle animation basically be a glow effect if I can figure out how) and it will have maybe two swing attacks and a magic attack, shouldnt be terribly difficult since it will be one bone.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: dmpdesign on April 03, 2011, 01:01:18 pm
I hate to sound like a total dumbass, but I cant find on holy's site where he has x2mdl available for download.

I checked his svn and see nothing in the tools directory and so on.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: dmpdesign on April 03, 2011, 01:17:02 pm
OK found x2mdl...but now I can't find cpgen.exe @@
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: dmpdesign on April 03, 2011, 03:56:27 pm
Thank you Ben for cpgen.

Got everything going ok, sent john an email to look over what i have and point out my miss steps:)
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on April 03, 2011, 04:19:32 pm
Created this model, and i get this error, any help would be great.

I setup one bone. I created an anchor to the main body, and clicking on motion keeps this error up.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on April 03, 2011, 05:52:21 pm
Sorry more issues. Tried making an enemy, made a simple sword and textured it, and got it into game by using the skeletons prf.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWm-waLq6g8

Though, it seems inverted, like the sword is shy, or has its back to me. Also it is in the floor... I tried lifting the actual model but to no avail. Any ideas?
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: dmpdesign on April 04, 2011, 02:28:28 am
OK, here is the first shot...its functional, feel free to use it.

One breakable barrel complete with breaking sound effect.

I would suggest probably doubling the size of the mdl when you place it, though 1x could be used as the smaller barrel types that are common in SOM games.

The texture needs work I know, something for a patch down the road.

It is an NPC, I am going to be making most of my animated objects as NPCs for a few reasons:

#1 its far less likely any given map will have maximum npcs on the map vs enemies.  If you wnated to place many many barrels and many many monsters youd have a problem =)

#2 its far easier to find an npc that doesnt have idle sound effects and i was too lazy to search for an enemy that didnt breathe or scratch or growl at idle.

#3 im pretty certain homing missile type spells dont target NPCs, which I think is preferable for breakable objects.

I will taylor this prf when i have more time to remove the undesirable options in the npc editor window since of course it should not walk, or sit etc.  I will see if i can get all the non usable options grayed out.

Currently I went with one model that totally disappears once broken.  If anyone is interested in a broken barrel object to use at the base I would be happy to create it for you and leave the animated portion just for the top (so the bottom stays on the screen after its busted).

Enjoy.

BTW, I talked with holy quite a bit tonight, he told me he knew the current build etc had the issue with the idle pose, i thnk he will be updating it sometime soon, will be checking on there for the update myself when he releases it.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: dmpdesign on April 04, 2011, 09:17:09 am
List of models that are basically equivalent to objects I plan on producing first:

-Breakable crates
-Breakable pots
-Breakable doors

Possibly chests that stay open so they can reveal items similarly to the way chests worked in KF (stay open and item is inside).

Other things I think are cool ideas that I wanted to discuss with people:

-Moving tree branches to offer some life to large forests
-Small schools of fish to add to watery areas, such as fountains/beach fronts/small pools of water.
-Breakable bridges
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on April 04, 2011, 09:30:15 am
Haha, i made him just for fun. He took like 8 mins to build. Hes a kind of "land kraken" i just wanted to follow you're guide through with him.

I began working on a spear guard, but my animations were not saved. Im gonna work on map construction today, if i get time ill mess about with him again.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on April 04, 2011, 12:00:40 pm
Todd, any luck on the billboard front?
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: dmpdesign on April 04, 2011, 12:56:54 pm
Havent peeked yet, thanks for reminding me, I will figure it out sometime this week.

John gave me a hint on how tom was able to accomplish it, but I think there must be something in the object prf that flags this feature on/off.  Ill pin it down and let you know.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on April 04, 2011, 04:21:29 pm
Nothing much new to report on keynote apart from frustration and this, which shows the degree of influence in colours. Also shows any WOV applied.

I'm finding it easier and quicker to work with just wireframe, and setting different colours for the mesh,bones and anchor, in the object properties, as opposed to the semi transparent mats approach.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on April 04, 2011, 08:06:25 pm
Actually!  :biggrin: Wolf, you just reminded me. About the saxon topic we were talking about, well... In my "ruins" clip there is an item i equip called the spangenhelm, it would have been worn by early saxons.

Here are my models.
Spangen Helm:
(http://img190.imageshack.us/img190/66/alphacoif.png)
Briton Helm:
(http://img440.imageshack.us/img440/2350/newmape.png)

And here is the fricken (excuse me) model ive been messing with all night, not being able to put it through cpgen (!!!! :dazed: FURY!) and sadly realising that i can only have 1 material for x2mdl.....

So to clarify i made this model but applied one texture to test. Cpgen wouldnt output when i tried to use the full 3396 vertices model, but when i tried with just a 'skeleton' (bones etc) through x2mdl then cpgen it worked, so i renamed the cp to fit my full meshed mdl. However upon placing the npc then trying to enter the map, som would crash. I'll send the model to you. Btw dont worry about textures, i really just need the cp. But if it doesnt work, feel free to stick a daft texture on it for test purposes.  :rainbow:
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: dmpdesign on April 05, 2011, 12:13:36 am
Just fyi, I peeked at ben's file and unfortunately everything is one object and meshed together.  I am fairly certain that is the root of his issue trying to export it, as I dont think the tools allow for a single mesh export.

I would consider breaking it up, but it will be a daunting task to seperate all those objects in meta.

I am just about done with a skeleton'd model of harvine's wind knight from KF1 US.  Tomorrow night I will start animating it and see what happens.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on April 05, 2011, 10:58:14 am
Im thinking about remaking something like the skeleton in the SoM stock set. Just looking at the "skeleton", it looks strange, but i can see triangles (i'm guessing these are bones.) im curious, do you think this way of placing bones would be better, and the red lines, leading to the objects, how do you think they are attached and controlled?
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on April 05, 2011, 02:57:07 pm
HwitVLF
Yes thats draw debugging. Now we know what it does it maybe easier to name!
ctrl E brings up number input for bone movement and rotation. I went through keynote with notepad to find any more clues and it would appear qdef is another usable mesh tag, though I couldn't see how it differs from bdef - yet. Theres more to come I think.

Nice helmets Verdite
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: dmpdesign on April 06, 2011, 01:24:52 am
Im making headway, found some nasty things along the way I will document to help others out with their animations...

A familiar face:
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on April 06, 2011, 06:05:47 am
'showboneinfluence' seems the most apropriate to me. I'm finding this really usefull - doing a 15000 quad cow (one mesh) so its quite easy just to alter the anchors to suit. The enable simple setting seems to work in reverse for me. ie unticking seems to give some restrictions?
If its alright with everyone I'll keep posting the nibbles of info in this thread and maybe do a full tut once all has been revealed. I hate those half-arsed tuts with 'I don't know what that button does' bits in.

airflamesred sets of for another beer in the Bone and Anchor Freehouse!

Someone over at DA has found an old hair/grass plug-in if anyones interested It's pretty versatile.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: dmpdesign on April 06, 2011, 10:59:12 am
I have a question for you metaseqouia experts.

I began animating my first enemy model by putting in his walking positions.  Unfortunately, to make it easy on myself, when I created the walking I actually had the model step forward in the file (it was alot easier than trying to have him walk in place).  I was hoping at the end I could simply select all the bones and move them backwards on the z axis so that the animation didnt move forward (since the game controls enemy position and not the animation).

Does anyone know a good trick to take all the bones of an animation frame and apply an x,y or z adjustment to them all at once so the relative positioning stays the same but the location can be dragged back over 0,0,0?

If not, I might as well trash this animation and start over :)
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on April 06, 2011, 01:31:45 pm
Hmmm No I don;t think there is, if I'm reading this right. Even re setting the bones won't move the mesh - only change the pivot point.
On the upside once you have this animation sorted it will be simple to save the mqo file,re-open and just replace the mesh and use the same walk cycle over and over
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on April 06, 2011, 02:39:43 pm
Good point on the chara file there's a lot to be learnt from that (rolling shoulders etc) - it's classy
The cow is for the terragen comunity. I wanted to give something back and I'v seen one of a similar quality over at turbo squid for $150! so it should go down well.
Ill upload the plug-in once Chelsea have given ManU a footballing lesson!
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on April 06, 2011, 03:26:46 pm
Good to know im not the only Brit around here! Todd the texturing looks great. Im gonna ask u about how you get you're textured model into game without x2mdl distorting and moving you're UV map. I'm getting a bit frustrated with it. When you export the model do you need to do something to retain the original texture map?
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: dmpdesign on April 06, 2011, 03:28:14 pm
John, I may have done mine wrong, I created the bones etc all from hand and not in the plugin, so my bones dont connect etc...at least I dont think so.

Would you mind if I emailed you the files tonight so you can have a peek?

The issue I saw with my model in game with the walking forward is the hitbox/shadow stayed in one place and my model started walking away from it, so I am fairly certain I did it wrong.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on April 06, 2011, 03:58:37 pm
I've put a readme for translation purposes just to get folks started, Please don't feel obliged HwitVLf, to do your magic, though it is one of those few that needs it.
regards
Mark
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on April 06, 2011, 04:52:25 pm
I dont understand how this hair plugin works or where it goes. Feeling a bit daft.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on April 06, 2011, 04:57:45 pm
copy and paste the .dll file into plug-ins/create folder
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on April 06, 2011, 05:08:42 pm
Sorry its the slect sub folder. I got confused cause it creates a new obj.

Just select a face or faces and click it from the select menu. My readme should give you some clues as to the variants
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on April 06, 2011, 07:07:06 pm
Oh well. Not working... I'm not using the latest version though...

Man... I dunno whats going on with cpgen / x2mdl i think it might be my version of meta. The mdl exports at like 1000x its size, the textures dont map, meh.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: dmpdesign on April 07, 2011, 01:42:10 am
Alright, work in progress...smoothed out the walking a little more (still not right) and added a death animation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdz9tiUVpRM&feature=player_embedded

John/Ben, any luck getting your enemy to actually walk forward?

I tried with animation that jumped forward and animation that stood in place neither seemed to affect the actual movment of the enemy (except the one that went forward left behind its shadow until it reset back to 0,0)

I wonder if there is something special about walking animations in the mdl files SOM uses, similar to the way you had to use the triangle to make your moving textures work John?  COuld that be possible, some sort of control mechanism that tells the model which way to move forward?

If its not that, perhaps the walking animation has to traverse a certain distance, maybe one designated by the prf?  Or possibly the game requires a set length dependant on something in prf?

I am stumped, so far I only have a walk in place enemy...you can peek at it here:

Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on April 08, 2011, 05:40:08 am
More fine work from HwitVLF
Thanks for the hair translation. As you can now see that is one that  really needed it.
Your commands runthrough are very comprehensive (the best I have ever seen) ctrl E brings up box for a number input for the extrude. I may have missed it but its worth a mention as there is no separate extrude on adjacent faces.

Verdite - Sorry I was right the first time its the object sub folder, along side boolean. I guess you've worked that out by now

An interesting thing with keynote is that the bone influence runs out at around 550 mqo units
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on April 08, 2011, 07:06:04 am
http://www.siobi.info/program/mq-pluginlink.htm#mash-lclean (http://www.siobi.info/program/mq-pluginlink.htm#mash-lclean)
Just in case anyone isn't aware of the plug-in page. Most are quirky and not the sort of thing you would use everyday though there are some usefull modelling tools in there
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on April 08, 2011, 08:20:49 am
HwitVLF
May I send you my cow mesh to look at. Im not getting the correct movement on things. I would value your opinion. If you can email me your email.

thanks
Mark
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on April 08, 2011, 04:13:11 pm
We need to make Hwitvlf a cake or something to say thank you for being so patient.

I really appreciate and value this.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on April 08, 2011, 06:12:26 pm
3 cheers and a mesh cake on its way!
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on April 09, 2011, 03:25:27 pm
And cake for being such a benevolent person!
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on April 09, 2011, 04:03:23 pm
With regard to the plug ins. The only one I use on a regular basis is edge loop select. Multi bevel is like a turbo charged extrude with a material bug - and doesn't always work. Same with the UV tools -hit and miss. The hair- and thanks for that, although you would't use it everyday, would save a lot of time.
BTw the cake would have been better using the new sculpting tools which if you want to try is at the b site (the japanese side). It comes without a file (mqrend?),  so just copy from your current version. Only japanese atm but the sculpt tools have a window the same as magnet when you find it

I'm having trouble with the anchor cages and how much to overlap them. This qdef mesh tag doesn't seem to accept WOV either so I'm stuck with the smooth sdef, or bdef and WOV. I was hoping WOV would only have to be subtle but the overlap area is painfull (for the cow anyway!). Maybe keynote its not suitable for the higher poly stuff?
Found a japanese keynote tut in which claims are made of morph targets being possible though by the looks of it its, using the multi track and replacing the models in each frame. I'll post the link.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on April 09, 2011, 04:27:03 pm
Cake looks lahvley!

Quick question. I want to isolate the top bone in an arm. I just want to move the forearm and hand, can i get them to move on their own? How do i stop the top bone from moving amigos?

Thanks  :biggrin:
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on April 09, 2011, 04:48:02 pm
I seem to get differing types of movements by using the centre yellow handle or the other, relevant, ones. The orthagonal ones, if that makes sense?
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on April 09, 2011, 06:56:46 pm
Hwitvlf
I'm getting an error whem connecting two bones head to head as in your example above. I'll have to check, but its so serious I have to deploy my task manager as I remember!
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on April 09, 2011, 07:12:25 pm
http://www.microsofttranslator.com/bv.aspx?from=ja&to=en&a=http%3A%2F%2Fbtahp.spaces.live.com%2Fblog%2Fcns!D933A4FD91D32041!697.entry (http://www.microsofttranslator.com/bv.aspx?from=ja&to=en&a=http%3A%2F%2Fbtahp.spaces.live.com%2Fblog%2Fcns!D933A4FD91D32041!697.entry)
This one is worth the read if only for the google translation!
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on April 09, 2011, 07:19:05 pm
http://rat-hex.cocolog-nifty.com/blog/2008/10/keynote-d584.html (http://rat-hex.cocolog-nifty.com/blog/2008/10/keynote-d584.html)
or this
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on April 10, 2011, 07:40:48 am
Ah yes the confusion was all mine. A lethal cocktail of Kinect and red wine!
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on April 10, 2011, 02:20:58 pm
That raven is pretty nice.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on April 10, 2011, 03:04:16 pm
Ok more stuff to play with - morphing
From the raven file info I did this
Cloned the tyres and moved into position. Its a vert movement I think. Merged into two objects
keynote and right click on that slider that wasn't doing anything - it is now. select steer and look no bones! This is looking pretty powerfull
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on April 10, 2011, 06:30:03 pm
Yes
I thought it was just my eyes
I did use a null object to rotate and maybe thats ended up in the mix. Lets hope, cause I didn't see any of that in the raven file. I assume you jus tadd a keyframe where suits as normal. Logically you would put another bone for the beak to open, but this seems to have uses beyond following the bone direction if you see what I mean. things could move in the opposite direction for example. I could make a steering wheel move the tyres - I think.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on April 10, 2011, 06:54:02 pm
Todd can you zip up you're model for me please, so i can help out with the walking anim tomorrow?
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: dmpdesign on April 10, 2011, 08:50:56 pm
Ben I apologize for not getting this up sooner...though they are all very very broken right now, you may be able to use one of the 3 thats in this zip.

Also, John may have remade this with a proper skeleton also that you might be interested in toying with instead, but if you want em, here they are.

All three have their own work in progress states (knight.mqo walks forward a lil, knight 2 walks in place and knighttest, well i forgot what it does )

Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on April 11, 2011, 07:01:18 am
Ok
No question that there is unwanted deformation with this morphing and rotation. I think it only calculates a straight line of movement between the verts of the two objects. A curve is what is needed for doing any major movements. That straight line is then extrapolated for the negative axis which then gets silly. So small deformations only. The freeze curve button leads me to think there maybe more though.

Does the knight need to walk on the spot for the game or literally move and walk?
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: dmpdesign on April 11, 2011, 09:23:34 am
I think it needs to move forward, though I am uncertain how far and fast at this point.

Ben has had luck with an npc that moves around ok but I have not yet gotten it to work, mine always return to the start position...JDO sent me an email though that basically says its an issue with the x to mdl converter putting things in the wrong order so when I get home tonight Ill anxiously be checking that out.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on April 11, 2011, 12:30:25 pm
Okay got the model in the game and able to walk, one problem...

Each model i make, gets stuck in the floor. Its weird. Any way around this...? Been trying for over 3 hours.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on April 11, 2011, 01:06:06 pm
Btw this applies to npc's too. Could you send me an example, wolf? :)
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on April 12, 2011, 11:32:30 am
Hwitvlf - thats just what I thought but think of it as moving from A to B no matter where they start from. from right to left I spun the cube 100deg on the Y axis the squashing is because the individual vert moves as the crow to the target. This is why you have to use clone so as keep the same number of verts. Has its uses though.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on April 13, 2011, 12:16:21 pm
And todays finding
With keynote on just keep pressing G on the keyboard for the various menus. If there are the relevant tags in the object panel, then you will get one for that. If you've tried the morphing (ie elem in object panel) then that will appear.
Currently working on 'select' tag which shows up as an offshoot of the second press of G. I think its something to do with morphing a morph?  but  I'll keep you posted.
There appears to be two more tags - 'coll' (collision) and 'soft' (soft body) and these would then introduce us to the screen that Hwitvlf showed way back in this thread though until we know the code for the mat panel its going to stay rather elusive. I will try and post a Q on mqdl's forum, if he doesn't know!

I'll be glad once all this is done and can get on with producing something!
Mark
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: dmpdesign on April 13, 2011, 11:44:29 pm
OK ive done some more work on the knight thanks to your skeleton'ing John.

I have some interesting things to note....you may already know this and very well may have posted about it on Holy Diver's site but it is down at the moment and I can't read the posts you have there or make a new post about this, so I am posting here until his site is back up.

When I used your skeleton I successfully had the enemy/npc moving foward toward the player, everything works as desired except I now have the landshark problem.

So I did some testing, I added a bone not attached to any object and had it move with the model during the walking animation...didnt change anything as far as the landsharking is concerned, but it did pin my enemy to the 0,0,0 point and wouldnt advance toward the player...not even during the animation that would typically move it forward (so if you have an unanchored bone it will totally pin your model to the start point)

Next, I added a new object, tagged the new bone to it and created an anchor...this new object set was not attached to the main model skeleton whatsoever but sat at the y=0 placement.  I animated it to follow the the rest of the skeleton and tested it in game.  This corrected the landshark, and the enemy moved forward during the animation but still reset to its 0 point once animation completed.

So I guess what this means is if you have an object not joined to the rest of the model it breaks its ability to move forward for sure, hence why my original skeleton would not advance.  So that mystery is definitely solved...(I know for sure youve already addressed that but I just wanted to mention unlinked objects are a nono for everyone that may not have caught it earlier in the posts).

The interesting thing is I would assume since this singular object was on the floor and x2mdl generated a model for SOM that allowed it to walk above that Holy Diver's program must be simply setting the lowest object's control point to Y=0 by default, so the question is, can he make it so the control point stays where it should in the model or can we find a way to put a dummy object at Y=0 without breaking the model's ability to move forward.

I will email him this post since his site is down along with the attached .x files - one with the object at the feet and one without so he can see the difference.

Once again, thanks john for putting that skeleton together, makes me feel alot better to know why the one i made wasnt working.

I would like to ask you something though, if I recall skimming Holy Diver's forum you mentioned there was a way to move bones individually during an animation so I could accomplish something like the falling apart death animation.  Can you let me know how that is done, I am ready to make his dying animation :)

Thanks!
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on April 14, 2011, 06:10:36 pm
Well I've been using meta for about 8 years now and stuck with it , through belligerence initially, and more recently cause it has mesh painting - my favorite! I thought $45 dollars was cheap for that and now the keynote........And the funny thing is if you look at people who are really good at modelling and using maya, they use very few tools. Metasequoia is well worth the money.For modeling I wouln't swap for anything I digress.
The morph, In conclusion,  works for small movements ideally in a straight line move rather than large scale rotate - explode for example.
The select tag I mentioned is not what I thought yesterday, but more of a multi-hide function if that makes any sense. The example I've deciphered is for a series of hair-do's. As you know keynote shows every object (bones and anchors excepted) and you may not want this.  So long hair, short, pony tail etc you can turn these off individually for your animation. Morph and select could be used ad-infinitun but it just increases your file size and so may not be that beneficial.
Ther appears to be a way to, (and this maybe relevant to Todd's post above) alter the bones so that they stay connected and add constiction to all three rotation handle. If you think of restricting the knee joint - once you reach a certain angle it will pull the rest of your leg or break! Very realistic though I have'nt fully tested it yet.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on April 16, 2011, 07:48:57 am
Ok
You don't need to do anything to the bone as i first thought. If you select the relevant mat (which covers the bone and anchor) open it up and in the bump channel at the bottom you can put these sorts of figures for example.
H(45, -12);
So 'H' or 'P' or 'B' refer to the bottom right on keynote (head, pitch and bank) followed by the maximum rotations on positive and negative. You can add figures for all three if necessary. Operation is by using the handles on the tail of the bone. simples!
I can't make any sense of the constrain bone (the pink one), in particular, what the two numbers that go, once again, in the bump channel refer to.
I aiming to put all the discoveries into a sort of tut once I can get some consistent results with anchors and overlapping. Its not really a problem for separate meshes but a single mesh gets a bit tricky.

Anyone found any useful plugins ?
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on April 16, 2011, 01:07:17 pm
Eight years of metaseq! Interesting... I really like meta and ive only been using it a year. I got quite good at blender (if you can ever get good with it - memory has to be pretty big to store everything) but much prefer meta with its easy to use interface.

I didnt expect the meercat to come as far as the SoM boards  :biggrin:
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on April 18, 2011, 11:50:40 am
Do you think its possible to create a flying enemy with the new bone structure?
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on April 20, 2011, 04:23:57 pm
Ok we seem to have come to the end of all this stuff with keynote. I have spoken (and I use this very loosely, as googla translate was used ) to mqdl and both the pink bones and the bump channel stuff I mentioned are all about constaint. Most of it is, I guess not that relevant for SOM but on a personal note I would like to nail this. He sounds very friendly and there appears to be more stuff on the way.
My wish is to get this in some sort of tut, though only when I'm fully clear on things. Theres quite a big difference with using one mesh as opposed to many - and hence the bone influence which is where a lot of the mystery is.
All good stuff and happy easter to everyone.
Mark
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: dmpdesign on April 22, 2011, 05:01:02 pm
I am 99% sure there is a prf that controls whether or not an enemy can 'fly' and I was fairly certain way back when you showed me where that flag was in the prf lol.

The thing is, the idea of leaving the root bone at the bottom and moving the model up may be a better way to do it in the long run because the 'flying' enemies SOM currently has put the root node way in the air and when you kill them, their coins/drops float in the air where their root node is.  So if your root for a flying enemy were at the ground but the enemy were way up high i think the dropped items would appear on the ground instead.

One thing to think about though...where is the hitbox for the enemy?  I am not sure how this is controlled but if your floating model is above the hitbox, it could really mess up the way som interprets combat interaction and its ability to see you above/below itself as it moves.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: dmpdesign on April 22, 2011, 09:09:17 pm
I would tend to agree the hit 'box' size is controlled by the prf as well as the enemies hit range.

My knight for instance uses the living armor prf and he can hit you a bit further away than his attack animation indicates he should be able to.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on April 23, 2011, 05:41:51 am
Thanks for addressing that one wolf! I noticed that the zombie's hitbox is terrible with attacks - you'l stand way back from it, and it'l hit you with the sweep of an arm. I got mashed in maunstraut many times because of a zombie in the caves (first level).
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on April 25, 2011, 10:52:47 am
Help please  :biggrin:

So ive often wondered if you could stop the knife tool from mapping a new line adjacent / near to where you cut with a straight line... I'm using "cut with a knife" to get a single line on a face, and meta maps a line near to it, which i dont want ... Can i get around this?
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on April 25, 2011, 03:29:54 pm
I'm not quite clear what your image is showing there Verdite.
' cut with a knife' : a merciless cut through everything in its path - deadly!
'cut straight face' : drag across opposing sides of a quad and a cut will be made. this will continue across the quads adjacent as far as it can, in either direction.
'erase chained lines' : The reverse of the above.
Meta has done that because (and rightly so) it doesn't entertain n-gons. This is why it creates tris that you don't want.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on April 25, 2011, 05:21:59 pm
Ok i understand now. Thanks :)
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on April 26, 2011, 06:12:30 am
Thats what i shouldve asked, because thats what i was looking for... But with the "cut a straight line" you can cut, then select the vertice, then move it to create an angled line.

I noticed someone mentioned about a feature in keynote that lets you hide an object? It'd be nice to be able to have say, spikes that appear from a monsters head when it attacks you.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on April 26, 2011, 04:27:53 pm
Ok metas knife tool, pretty much the standard of what's going on, bar the slide option which verdite mentioned. maya has this and I must say its quite neat. So you can cut/place an edge loop and then have the ability to move it along the edge. Take a primitive cone and make a cut around the circumfirence. In meta move that line up on the Y and it will distort the shape. Maya will follow the line: At £3500 I shall find a way around it!
This particular examlpe won't work in meta but there are methods of working ie using quads which may make things easier.
I'm a novice when it comes to this low poly stuff So I might be talking stuff that irrelevant or impractical.

Cutting at specific coords would be make a guess and follow up with 'align verts'. I have this as esc on keyboard shortcut, such is its popularity.
 
@Verdite - Yes that would be no problem with the horns - and a couple of different ways to do it!.
Is everyone happy with the reference guide rather than tuts? Thats the way I prefer thing.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on April 26, 2011, 07:28:29 pm
Interesting. airflames, could you explain a way to do the object appear/reappear? :rainbow:

Align vertices... I dont understand this feature  :biggrin:
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on April 27, 2011, 02:09:38 pm
Sorry Verdite I'm a bit busy with work I shall see what I ca do tonight.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on April 27, 2011, 06:46:36 pm
Visible meshes within keynote; Press keyboard G twice and you can tick/untick the ones you want to see. There is a more complex way of doing this which I shall do next on the keynote thread.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on April 27, 2011, 06:48:45 pm
Thought you might enjoy this
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on April 27, 2011, 06:49:51 pm
part2
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on May 02, 2011, 10:03:53 am
Metasequoia 2.4.13 out. A bug fix though nothing new.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on May 03, 2011, 05:00:07 am
Bug fixes. I hadn't found any problems with the obj export and terragen is particually picky for imports.
I'm having real struggles with anchors so the cow isn't really progressing nor is the explaination for the keynote thread.
I've been looking at the constaint bones (the pink ones) and have some sort of idea, though I must say their usage is very limited; Some mechanical stuff but nothing of any use for SOM
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on May 05, 2011, 01:59:10 pm
And hot on its heels V3 alpha 3 - sculpting tools, and wait for it, 3 new selection buttons. One is edge loop select the other two I'm not sure
3 cheers for Mr Mizno!
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on May 05, 2011, 03:03:36 pm
Huzzah! *Listens to the big echo*
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on May 06, 2011, 07:34:57 pm
New selection features could be quite helpful. I spend a lot of time picking out selections when modeling.

I've been looking through the plugins for better UV control and found a few good tools. The 'UV Power unwrapper' plugin is pretty much just what I was looking for and is in English already. But if you're not familiar with unwrappers it could challenging to figure out. It's like an 'atlas' feature with better control- mainly useful for texturing irregular shapes like faces or trees.

Basic use is to select a 'chain' of lines on your model that will be the seam where your texture will be split open and laid flat. 'unwrapped'. Then go to "Selected >UV Power Unwrap Auto" and it will set the UV based on where your selected seams are. You'll have to finish up by scaling/moving/rotating the UV layout to where you want it.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on May 07, 2011, 12:01:21 pm
I'm getting no joy with that. What does the live unwrap panel do? I know with roadkill you can pin uvs and relax - I'm guessing this is similar.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on May 08, 2011, 06:55:18 am
Ah thanks
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on May 08, 2011, 01:35:26 pm
Alpha 4 rleased
 alt left-click view rotation etc like maya (and terragen come to think). I hpoe this is optional or shall have to lodge a complaint to Japan!
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on May 13, 2011, 01:49:37 pm
Well thank you Sir. This is fast becoming 'The place to be for all things Meta'.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: dmpdesign on May 16, 2011, 01:55:43 pm
Hey John, been out of the loop the past couple weeks, wanted to ask if any progress has been made on the control point front for enemy spells and so on?

I was wondering, looking at an unrelated post about the pixie and its ability to fire projectiles, is it possible the enemy attack sequences also have control points embedded in them?  I was assuming they didn't since the attack range of the melee seemed to be unrelated to the model (my harvine knight for instance hits you further than it should because of a borrowed .cp/.prf file).

I would love to redo the KF2 archers if you think it would be possible to modify the enemy to work similarly to the pixie's that shoot arrows.

Any thoughts?
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: dmpdesign on May 22, 2011, 12:08:05 pm
I will definitely be creating an archer enemy (I may as well tell you that I intend to recreate US KF1 someday as best I can) but I cant say when Ill actually get time to devote to it.

I hate to be so hit or miss about doing stuff SOM related, Im just having a hard time getting the chunks of time necessary to really get anything done with it.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Creatura on May 24, 2011, 04:15:51 am
Hi

I get this error. I know what it means but I don't know how I fix it:

(http://i052.radikal.ru/1105/b5/d75a33a367b9.png) (http://www.radikal.ru)
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on May 24, 2011, 06:10:58 am
Assuming you have the plugins in the correct folder you may need to move up to a later version of mets. 2.4.13 is the current release.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on May 24, 2011, 07:08:20 am
Dont mean to sound condescending but check that your plugins are exatly in the right places, i had this error too.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Creatura on May 24, 2011, 09:25:40 am
Turns out my metaseq was outdated. and I checked for update and it worked.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on May 24, 2011, 04:33:13 pm
Outdated, I'm supprised the display wasn't in black and white!
Seriously though, I'm supprised  that version of meta ran on windows 7
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Creatura on May 24, 2011, 06:32:40 pm
it was version 2.4.1.3
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on May 30, 2011, 04:40:45 pm
Thanks for that. I'd seen it and wondered what I needed to fix!
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on June 02, 2011, 07:26:01 pm
OK
This zip contains two anims with just a couple of things that may crop up while modelling. They are more for higher poly stuff but still maybe usefull and I hope you will find interesting. And another use for keynote I hadn't thought of before!
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on June 03, 2011, 07:05:28 pm
I thought after about the textures - thanks for pointing that out. I realised after that I should have said to just delete the faces and then make new ones. The operation is called spin quad or spin edge and there is a plugin for it but I don't find it any quicker.
The idea of keeping with quads is so that if you have a similar situation on a different part of the mesh and need to put the loop cut in, you know where its going. TRis get tricky at UV stage as well.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Creatura on June 10, 2011, 01:15:52 am
there is a hand model included in the how-to.
It looks great.
how did you make fingers?
Is there any easy way?
Or do I have to draw them piece-by-piece?
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on June 10, 2011, 08:20:34 pm
There are a few ways to get a decent hand. Metasequoia has a plugin that creates a body with good low-polygon hands (object > create > m_bodyGen Beta). You can make one from scratch -tutorial (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vwd7O3JlVmk). There are also some free collections of hand models floating around the internet.

Personally, I have a few hand and foot models that I've made to look the way I want and I 'splice' them into new models and adapt them as needed.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on June 11, 2011, 05:11:00 am
Agreeing with all that John
I like the enable auto anchors
The only other was the morph initz to reset that I can think of

thanks for your time

EDIT
ctrl W = haven't got a clue
W = swaps between global and local
ctrl G = go to frame (handy for long anims)
ctrl B = copy motion range (clone motion atm in the edit sub menu)
ctrl T/R = can't see a difference
Mind you I can't see what 'keyboard shortcuts' does
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on June 11, 2011, 06:27:09 am
You can make fingers quite easily by taking the top of a cylinder and extruding it and scaling / moving it as you want. Dont forget if you are making your own hand for SoM to keep the fingers in segments / sections, because as you know x2mdl doesnt handle "warping"  :cool:
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on June 11, 2011, 06:37:01 pm
I think I understood from some of the answers I got over at mqdl forum that some of the menu/commands date beck to previous versions and may well not be in use now. Seems to me we have pressed most buttons, more than once, and if it doesn't work, then it doesn't work.

That sound interesting about the keyboard keys
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on June 11, 2011, 06:52:18 pm
I know you guys use the default screen set up whereas I plumped for 'style24'. some years ago now. I just prefer the icons to text. Well the comand panel is just a bitmap stored under data. So you can open this in gimp or whatever and re paint - make your own interface!

The fun never ends!
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on June 12, 2011, 06:20:50 am
configuration/ screen under language is a drop down list - take your pick.

pmd export. Where does that take us? MMD is the only destination I'm aware of

I did ask (maybe that should be pester!) about soft and coll as you can imagine there was no end to the replies! I had to change email adresses and take up wearing dark glasses. - only joking folks. Without a clue to the codes we have a needle in haystack type situation. I'm pretty sure the qdef tag is for future development.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on June 12, 2011, 05:41:25 pm
Ok im having big trouble with my custom arm.mdl (well, its your model John  :biggrin:) Basically i can get the positioning right. The frames are about 160 for a full co-ordinated swing.

The weapons simply hide. They never show. There must be a tag embedded in the stock arm to provide it with the swing model during animation. No matter what, i cant fathom this.

There must be a way. Creatura and I are determined to make a new arm and put it into our games. :smug:

 ------

Edit

Ok so i checked out the stock arm.mdl in somimp. I saw that the weird old triangle showed up. So i remade my arm and got something... Not sure what it is.
Check attachments  :wink:
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Creatura on June 12, 2011, 06:05:21 pm
I have the idea but i didn't get the positioning right. we should totally work together on this :biggrin:

Now what my finding is: When I opened the original model in the somimp it had an arrow above the hand which is probably telling the game where to hold the weapon.

the only thing that remains is finding how to exactly create that triangle. Considered your extra bone and decided: maybe it's not a bone object after all.

<EDIT>

I think we're doing it all wrong.
I had a look at original hand's skeleton and it isn't anything like ours.
It's late night now so I'm gonna go to sleep and resume my experiments tomorrow. wish me luck guys. :biggrin:
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Creatura on June 13, 2011, 03:22:34 am
After some inspection I found that the original arm has 2 parts instead of 3 and it has strangely shaped skeleton. I'm currently trying to make a similar skeleton.

(http://i035.radikal.ru/1106/98/31e0c2b3c5b5.png) (http://www.radikal.ru)
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on June 13, 2011, 04:23:06 am
Figured out some more things about Keynote and added a document with menu information to top post 'tutorial' section.
Also revised the Keynote translation in a couple places and updated plugins#3 with new version.

Quote
pmd export. Where does that take us? MMD is the only destination I'm aware of
There might be an PMD importer for Max and Blender. I haven't tried it, but there's hope.
http://www.vocaforum.com/showthread.php?t=1644 (http://www.vocaforum.com/showthread.php?t=1644)
http://sites.google.com/site/mikumikubeat/tutorials/pmdmod (http://sites.google.com/site/mikumikubeat/tutorials/pmdmod)
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on June 13, 2011, 06:10:39 am
Nice work John
I see 'G' needs to be followed by 'N' to cycle through the menus now.

The C6 bone                         C(6, A,B,C,mat);
You need to have an IK chain of bones, joined.
A - The number of bones in the chain that will be influenced
B - rotation angle (radians) limit
C - either '0' or '1' (I think this is local/global)

I can't see any great usage for it, though I could well be missing something
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on June 13, 2011, 06:32:25 am
Actually john after attaching that 'weapon' bone to the hand bone i got a blank mesh show up as in the screenshot.

So its kinda stumped me.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on June 14, 2011, 03:11:23 am
I did more tests and think I've figured out the problem with the arm.  First off, incase anyone doesn't know, when the player equips hand armor, SoM replaces the swing arm with 3 new segments that are part of the hand armor MDO model.

The arm does need 4 bones (upper arm, forearm, hand, weapon), but the bones have to be in a specific 'order' in the MDL. Mick's x2mdl might have a bug in that it 'sorts' the bones in reverse order from what SoM expects. That makes the weapon move with the 'upper arm' segment, and all the 'hand armor' segments are reversed too. Mick could probably sort it out without much effort, if anyone wants to go over it with him on his site- but I'm too busy right now to get into that.

You can technically make a skeleton with an extremely convoluted structure that will make the arm turn out correct ingame, but it would be almost impossible to animate. Example is attached- try it with and without hand armor equipped.

Also- SoM expects the arm to start in a downward position on the first frame of each swing animation- like it is holding Verdite's 'sword alignment' mode. And then move up for the normal swing animation. This is because the weapon and hand-armor-segments move with the arm's parts so they won't align properly unless you start the arm in the expected position.

Lastly, x2mdl has a bug that sometimes instantly flips part of a model. Mick said it was fixed, but it's not. You'll see the effect in the attached sample arm MDL. We might be able to work around this problem by changing FPS if he doesn't fix x2mdl.

Sorry for the long, probably confusing post.  :tongue:
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on June 14, 2011, 06:32:11 am
Actually i understood pretty much exactly what you were saying. So if i wanted an arm before x2mdl's fix, i'd have to reverse the skeleton?
And also do you know the order in the mdl?
Nice sword by the way. Looks good.

ALSOOOOO  :biggrin:
(edit)

How can i join up vertices and smooth the surface (of the two joined faces) in meta?
The pic here is my tree i made in blender by joining vertices, then recalculating the surface area (more or less smoothing.)
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on June 14, 2011, 08:39:35 pm
Technically, you don't have to reverse the skeleton, you have to reverse the order the bones are linked together. It would have to look like the attached picture (I staggered the bone triangles in the picture so you could see the 'link lines' separately- they should actually be straight). You could animate an arm swing with this skeleton, but the arm would "tear itself apart" every time you move a bone. So you would have to manually realign each arm segment. The MQO sample I attached a couple posts above (reply#123 - ArmSamples.zip) has a rough skeleton setup this way.
The bone labeled 'root' would have no mesh attached and is just a 'tool' to keep the where it should be relative to the player.

AirFlamesRed cold answer about join/smoothing better than me, but Meta has a 'join vertices' option under 'object' as well as the loosely related 'reduce polygons'. For smoothing options, there's 'object > mesh smoothing' or right click on the object name and check one of the patches. I've gotten some interesting effects by applying the Catmull-Clark smoothing then reducing polygons.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on June 15, 2011, 04:53:05 am
Blender?! How did that get through security?!
I would use a cube, and extrude to make branches. Then smooth with 'mesh smooth' or 'Catmull-clark'. Mesh smooth is a bit of a strange smoothing alogarithm, similar to 'Doo-Sabin. CC, set at 4 on an elongated cube will give you 4x4=16 sections around and getting a bit high (poly) for the game I would have thought. I think taking UVs into account I might be tempted with a different approach altogether for trees.

For the smoothing to work you will need to join verts, either 'join closed verts' as John sais or just select the offending verts and 'selected/join verts'

You need to be carefull with blender as it can leave stray verts, which is impossible in meta. Blender has this strange idea that people want to be able to extrude verts. Makes no sense to me.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on June 15, 2011, 08:24:29 pm
CC
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on June 16, 2011, 07:18:34 am
Thanks alot for this :)

And i had been doing this manually. Coulda saved alot of time hehe.

Now i realise how you sculpted John Barry without an edge loop function.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on June 17, 2011, 10:28:40 am
HAHAHA

Love it :)
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on June 17, 2011, 05:22:46 pm
So recently ive been inspired by Airflames and Wolf to start finally getting into the nitty gritty for custom npcs and knocking out some trials.

Ive been using blender for my facial construction, and learnt a ton over the past three days about face modelling. Braving it - the stature of blender - i came out with my first, earless face that i exported to metaseq via the obj export. I created my own "baked" texture, and modified the skin and rotated the image. (it came out with a y-axis flipped UV map)

Blender picked up the shadows in a basic lighting setup that i used, and this attached image has no material shadow modifiers at all.

I know that he's got the wide eyes going on but thats a wee trait of mine. (fish reference.)

(http://desmond.imageshack.us/Himg84/scaled.php?server=84&filename=faceprocess.jpg&res=medium)
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on June 18, 2011, 09:50:56 am
Very nice Ben
The topology looks fine - its just a matter of stylizing it how you like. Big eyes, big chin or whatever.

It struck me to make a blueprint type of interface - so I did. I then realised I like the one I have.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Creatura on June 20, 2011, 03:46:43 am
I've spent a couple of days working on this model and finally I'm done with it but when I try to animate it, it plays on my nerves!

I know how to setup bones and anchors (at least I think I do) and I've set it all up but when I move 1 bone it affects other parts which are not connected to it (this doesn't happen to pelvis and legs).

(http://s60.radikal.ru/i168/1106/9d/25a90ebaa903.png) (http://www.radikal.ru)

what might I be doing wrong?
I've checked all the anchor cubes and they are connected properly.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on June 20, 2011, 01:08:26 pm
Your pic is not showing creatura So its hard to say whats going on.
Make sure the bone is clad in the same mat as the anchor and that the whole mesh is covered in anchors
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Creatura on June 20, 2011, 01:43:50 pm
I have done it correctly

let me repost the image:

(http://s59.radikal.ru/i164/1106/59/aaefdecc1ee0.jpg) (http://www.radikal.ru)
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on June 20, 2011, 01:57:05 pm
Sorry mate it loaded a second time.
I'm pretty sure it an overlapping anchor - the top of arm anchor. I guess you auto generated the anchors so my previous post is viod.
post the zip if this doesn't sort it.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Creatura on June 20, 2011, 04:27:26 pm
http://www.mediafire.com/?8r4eysga4bdso06

here's my model.
It doesn't have any textures.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on June 20, 2011, 06:39:49 pm
Very nice skeleton Creatura- the eyes are definitely a creepy touch!

The problem where the arm was pulling on the chest was because a | symbol was missing in the object name. There were other problems too like meshes that were poking out of their anchors. But the good news is that AirFlamesRed figured out a way to set up models without using anchors. It is MUCH easier for SoM.

To set up an anchorless bone, cover a bone in a unique material, then add that material's name to the end of the object that will move with the bone. For example, the 'chest' bone would be covered in a material named 'chestMat' so you would name the chest mesh object 'chest-chestMat' (the dash mark is required). I changed your skeleton to work without anchors (attached). It should work much easier for you now.

Some other problems:
You need to change the angles on your bone-triangles. A triangle should have an angle over 90 degrees where it attaches to another bone or a line (see attached picture). You may have problem with animation or converting to MDL if you don't.

SoM requires that you have the 'root bone' at XYZ=0. The root bone is the 'first' bone in the skeleton; it moves all the other bones with it. In SoM, the shadow will follow this root-bone. Make sure you never move the root bone up or down (Y axis). But, DO use the root-bone to move your model forward/sideways (ZX axis) during walking etc. I moved the root bone where it needs to be and also added a second bone above it- use this second bone to move your model up and down (Y axis) by selecting the bone and pressing Ctrl+E.

Don't use spaces in object or material names. It can cause conversion to fail.

SoM expects your NPC/Enemy models to face down the Z axis (blue line). Otherwise, they'll face away from the player ingame.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Creatura on June 20, 2011, 07:42:39 pm
Wow thank you love how it actually works.
Although I should have noticed that anchor was smaller on the skull.

But there still it one tiny problem:
The skull doesn't react to any bone and I want it to move and take jaw and eyes with it.
Is it also possible tom make the eyes better? I mean is there a way to make them look at the same spot while moving 1 bone. If you move it it will rotate the on the center of both eyes and I want them to rotate on their own with single bone which will work as a focus point.

And thank you  :wink:
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on June 20, 2011, 08:23:40 pm
Yeah pretty much what John said. Unless you need deformation (think moving skin) then stick with the anchorless system cause it saves a lot of messing about with the anchors. You had a sort of combination of the two systems going on. If you're going to use anchors then use the sdef or bdef tag for the mesh (conected or not)
On the upside I thought your bones were very good - you obviously did your homework.
Though your exported mesh was around 95k polys which, and John will know more than me, seemed a bit high. If its OK i'll look at this tomorrow and see if I can reduce them a bit.
Great effort though - You have put a lot of work into it
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on June 20, 2011, 09:59:39 pm
I don't know what the max-polygon count is for a SoM animated model, but less is always faster so Mark's offer sounds like a great idea to me.

I messed up the skull earlier by covering the 'root bone' in the skull-bone's material- duh :tongue: The root bone doesn't need any material since no mesh is attached to it.

There is a way to make both eyes rotate as a set (using the 'constraint' setup in Mark's Keynote tutorial), but it's also nice to make them move independently in case you want him to look cross-eyed etc.

Attached is a copy with the skull's bone fixed.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Creatura on June 21, 2011, 04:10:28 am
Thank you all
now about the poly count what if I just remove the patches. the model won't look that good but at least the concept will be kept :)
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on June 21, 2011, 06:45:13 am
I wouldn't bother with a patch on these. From what I've seen in games, 8 poly on the circumfrence is enough and thats easy enough to work with.

I haven't done much with this - Its not fair to mess with other peoples designs but managed to halve the poly count on the arm. Its really a guess on the level of detail (LOD) it really depends on how close the camera is going to get and if its animated then there is less to concentrate the eye on.

With the eyes, I would just copy from the 'chara constr' file that comes with keynote.

Well done to John for all the tedious work with the anchors. I was just thinking ; create the bones add the auto anchors which will give mats to the bones then delete the anchors. Then just atatch the bone mat to the relevant mesh. Any quicker method John?
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Creatura on June 21, 2011, 07:05:17 am
thanks for the advice but why the middle finger?  :biggrin: :biggrin:
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on June 21, 2011, 10:49:21 am
Ahhh sorry. We brits don't use that one. It hadn't even occured to me
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on June 23, 2011, 01:07:01 am
I was just thinking ; create the bones add the auto anchors which will give mats to the bones then delete the anchors. Then just atatch the bone mat to the relevant mesh. Any quicker method John?
That's the method I've been using, and it works quite well. And once you've made a humanoid skeleton, you can use it on other models by just moving the joints to the right place.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on June 23, 2011, 09:56:56 pm
I know that he's got the wide eyes going on but thats a wee trait of mine. (fish reference.)
I could say Al Murray on smack but i wont.
Ha, speaking of weird looking eyes...
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on June 24, 2011, 04:20:01 pm
Unless anyone one knows something I don't, the anchorless method leaves us with problems adding a texture no? Or jpeg to be precise. what happened with your skeleton, Creatura in this regard.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Creatura on June 24, 2011, 04:23:23 pm
I didn't have time to work on it recently because I was out for work.
I made quick Excellector model though and posted in associated topic here.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on June 26, 2011, 07:03:12 am
Whilst digging a hole last week I was suddenly overcome with a fear that attatching a mat to a portion of mesh that this would cause problems adding a single jpeg. However, each mat can reference the same jpeg - doh!. So disaster averted.
There is a problem with exporting the UV map though- I think? unless you export each mat layer separately and then combine the layers.

Come to think of it I have a plugin which may sort this.

Is this making sense?
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on June 26, 2011, 03:37:22 pm
Is this making sense?

Clearly not! I hadn't turned 'material' off (the left side Uv menu). Too be honest I hadn't noticed what it did up until now!

Normal service resumed.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on July 07, 2011, 02:53:55 am
This really is a treasure trove for meta and keynote users. Looking forward to modelling again, cant really model anything on a laptop, especially without a numpad for box modeling heads in blender :)

Hope you're all having fun at modelling, keep going!
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on July 07, 2011, 12:23:51 pm
I see someone has started a wiki (wikja) page for metasequoia.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on July 08, 2011, 05:51:58 am
http://metasequoia.wikia.com/wiki/Metasequoia_Wiki

Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on July 09, 2011, 01:07:10 pm
I thought you had seen this John - someone had posted a link to the thread here -guessed it was you.

I also saw a blog somewhere else which was very complimentary of the keynote stuff here.

Please find attached a texture map for UVs (there are pleanty of these on the net so I made this to suit my displa ypreferences) I don't know whether anyone else is using one but I've had a close look at mapping in recent days and realised I had been doing things wrong in a lot of areas so this maybe of use.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on July 09, 2011, 04:49:46 pm
No, I wasn't familiar with wikia, but I like they're 'mission statement' a lot more than wikipedia's. The Meta listing is off to a good start. It seems like it would be good to add some of the info floating around here to that page.

I think your UV map would be useful- what 'improvements' did you learn? I doubt I handle UV setup in an optimal way.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on July 09, 2011, 07:41:17 pm
Well its pretty much to do with streatching textures. So if you apply this whlst mapping and you can keep squares then you;re good to go. Previouslt I thought I was being smart with and efficient with my method, but my theory was flawed. Brace yourselves for a tut!!!!

O.T Is Family guy funny over the water there? It's my fave since king of the hill disappeared.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on July 09, 2011, 09:20:20 pm
I'd welcome a tutorial. Maybe wikia would be a good place? Right now I use the 'neurotic tweak every vertice till it looks right' approach. . . ugh  :biggrin:

I loved King of the Hill. I sometimes tell people "Don't play lawyer ball son"  and they look at me like I'm nuts ha ha.
Hank said that to Bobby when Bobby thought he should try to get hit by the baseball and walk to first. . . . yep . . . . .uh huh . . . yep   
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on July 13, 2011, 05:40:45 am
lathe
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on July 13, 2011, 07:00:46 am
In my haste I neglected to mention that the lathe function produces double sided polys. To get rid of these I reccomend the following
object/unify faces (reduces to single sided faces)
object/align faces (faces all the normals in one direction)
If your object is still 'inside out' then select all faces (ctrl B)
selected/invert
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on July 13, 2011, 04:44:13 pm
That is ultra cool and I never knew what lathe did. You can make just about anything that's symmetrical like helmet domes, bells, mushrooms, crystals, bottles and tons more- just by drawing a single line. Thanks for this!
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on July 13, 2011, 05:59:23 pm
Added one more translated plugin (batch #4) to top post, and new link to a good Metasequoia function tutorial.

The plugin lets you draw new polygons on an existing polygon.- good for making filigree designs on parts or many other creative endeavors. Basically, it works like the 'create' function, but it sets new vertices aligned with an existing face so it's much easier to control.  It makes a new 'poly-surface' button in the 'command' menu
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on July 14, 2011, 05:32:03 am
Local axis

In all my years I never saw this work. Not the local axis command from the command panel but the W S L from the edit options beneath. By a stroke of luck I got a result (of sorts)
Create a tri at an odd angle and then add an anchor to it - object/create/make anchor. Select the cube in the object panel then move, scale and rotate work in W S L.

The trouble is you can't create a default cube at an odd angle but this feature has been around long before make anchor so your task, should you choose to accept it, is to find the neccesary conditions!
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on July 14, 2011, 07:20:41 pm
GOOOOOOOOD info and happy to be at my desktop pc again!!!  :wink:
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on July 14, 2011, 07:29:25 pm
That's quite strange. I hadn't used the 'local' button really so I never noticed. I get the same results you do anyways.  I tried everything I could think, but the 'local' button only seems to work for the anchor that 'popped' into existence.
All I can figure is that the feature was disabled and not removed (it's hover text is in Japanese still) or, since I see on the Metasequoia site that "local coordinates" are only supported on the shareware version, there might be a bug that's leaving them disabled.

Verdite's back YAY!!

Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on July 17, 2011, 01:50:47 pm
Local axis - less of a mystery
So the idea seems to be to set the local axis with the command panel loc. If you untick shape and children you can set a local axis. Using the properties panel and this can be set acurately.  This then allows you to use the usual move, rotate and scale in local,world or screen (screen remains a mystery)

Takes a bit of getting your head around and I'm not sure about its usage but hey! its there.

So you can apply a different local axis to each obj and 'borrow' that axis just by selecting different objs in the object panel
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on July 26, 2011, 07:19:35 pm
Well after looking at this local axis it is extraordinarily versatile but not really a lot of use - to me anyway.
However, the relax UV thing is up there with some major apps when it comes to quality. I did some tests with roadkill (you gotta love that name!) cause it shows stretching and shrinking as colours and I must say it does compete.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Creatura on August 09, 2011, 04:23:01 am
I have reinstalled Windows 7 and I had to start Meta as a first time start-up.

I copied all of the plug-ins in corresponding directories but they act as if they don't exist at all.

Can anyone tell me what to do?

I'm running Meta 2.4.13. maybe it's incompatible?

[Edit]

I think I found the solution.
I am using an unregistered version.

[Another edit]

I registered and it works now like a charm :)
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on August 09, 2011, 03:36:59 pm
I wondered where you were; Windows problems?
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Creatura on August 11, 2011, 01:18:10 pm
I was gone missing from the forum because I was out for work and I won't have time at least until the end of this week :S :(
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on August 14, 2011, 12:57:33 pm
Ive attached a file relating to Wolf's post in another forum. (based on the error in x2mdl) i had exactly the same error.

Ive attached a bone structure which should work with your model. It also has an animation which others may want to peep at...
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on August 14, 2011, 07:34:25 pm
I see no animation Ben?
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on August 15, 2011, 07:15:13 am
Sorry here it is :)

Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on September 04, 2011, 07:15:58 pm
So you've made your lovely model and you need to scale it to size.
Make sure its sitting at ground zero, select scale then select the number button. Another dialog box will open and you can change the 'Y' to zero and apply.
This will move the scaling centre and your model can be scaled without having to keep moving back to ground zero.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on September 05, 2011, 04:21:43 pm
Thanks, that is an excellent tip! I've struggled with that problem many times and didn't know there was a fix. Any idea what the "initialize" button does? I think it might be the same literal, but bad translation I used on the first Keynote morph slider meaning "restore defaults".
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on September 06, 2011, 07:30:47 am
Ah yes sorry John, I wrote 'apply' and should have put 'initilize'
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on September 21, 2011, 08:38:57 pm
Added a few modeling reference and texture resource sites.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on September 22, 2011, 05:04:33 am
Do any of the resident Metasequoia geniuses know if there's an easy way to separate vertices? Sometimes I want to change the 'group' a triangle is bonded to  and the only way I know to move the triangle to a new object, move the vertex a little and remerge it.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on September 22, 2011, 04:25:06 pm
Well done with the reference sites. Not quite clear on your triangle thing. Move to a new obj and then re-merge? thats what I do with splitting for UVs, I should say 'did' before these new tools. That said I'm still not fully happy with the edge loop select nor the up and coming one in meta 3.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on September 22, 2011, 06:04:33 pm
I didn't explain that very well; that's what I get for staying up past my bedtime. I'm looking for something that works like the "Separate" button does for UVs, but that separates polygon vertices instead of UVs. Sounds like something there might be a plugin/hidden control for.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on September 23, 2011, 08:38:47 am
The only thing i can think of right now is to keep half of your object then mirror it or simply move faces to new object, then with the rect / rope tool select the verts that you wont be wanting to mess about with (down the middle between two meshes or by selecting individual verts) go to scale and scale them in on whichever axis runs along the front of the selected verts and click on that axis, then press 0 and scale them all in. That'l leave whichever face you want to mess with moveable.

The only tip i could add here for this method is to not scale multiple verts if they arent in a straight line, example if one offset above and one below you'l distort the mesh and the UV layout if you scale them. My reccomendation is to get whichever mesh you want to seperate set straight on an x y or z axis so that the mesh wont become distorted by this method.

If you leave the faces un 'welded' you might get a nasty unjoined line in game or in a render.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on September 23, 2011, 06:36:24 pm
theres no direct (or plug in as far as I know) way to do that. but I think its 'what do you want to acheive' is more the question
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on October 10, 2011, 03:53:47 pm
Its very rare I use the word 'amazing' but this tut is just that. Its long but well worth it
http://www.3dtotal.com/newsite/index_tutorial_detailed.php?id=473&page=1
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: dmpdesign on October 10, 2011, 08:09:17 pm
Excellent find, thanks for the post, Ill be checking this out :)
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on October 12, 2011, 05:31:45 pm
That is a really good site- a lot of professional quality info.  The low-poly tutorial has several tips that I think will help me with the fairy NPC I'm working on right now.  Loading the UV layout into Paintshop as a layer to help align the texture is brilliant. That's one area where I have a lot of trouble. It's so simple I could kick myself for not thinking it up on my own  :tongue:

Thanks for finding this. Added the link to the top post.

Interesting what he said about 256x256 being the maximum texture size on the PS2 console. SoM's 256 limit has always felt... well, limiting, but after seeing that the PS1 textures were 32x32, I got the impression that maybe it was more about learning to utilize texture space better rather than using huge textures. I started allotting a larger part of the texture space to key focal points on the model (eyes, filigree  etc) and shrinking the less key parts (clothes, bare metal). It think it's working better, but I still have a lot to learn.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on October 13, 2011, 04:43:36 am
I still get confused painting over the UV map in PSP, I much prefer mesh painting in meta. Alas there are some things that are just impractical in meta.
Optimising textures is one thing but normal mapping is the big difference in my eyes
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on October 13, 2011, 07:27:41 am
To me its all about how you unwrap the model, and its assets. If you unwrap something that has bad symmetry, or a wrong shape according to your object, then it'l warp and look terrible if you start modifying it's shape. Something like a thumb isnt easy to unwrap - in fact projection view is probably a safer bet for that.

For my custom npcs now i use one texture, i wouldnt be surprised if ps1 developers made their textures large then dummed them down to suit the ps1 capabilities. I use blender to unwrap (blender 2.49b) because of its excellent choices when unwrapping and baking textures / shadows.

I wouldnt mind making a video on how i make paint textures in GIMP from blender, if it would help.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on October 15, 2011, 04:33:13 pm
I wouldnt mind making a video on how i make paint textures in GIMP from blender, if it would help.
I'm up for that Ben.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on October 16, 2011, 08:45:27 pm
I still get confused painting over the UV map in PSP, I much prefer mesh painting in meta.
I mostly use modified photos for textures, but I can see how painting a texture from scratch over the UV map would be hard. Incidentally, I finally tried using Meta's paint feature to make a texture (plant) and was pretty happy with how it came out. It will take some learning, but it's a good tool.

Quote
I wouldnt mind making a video on how i make paint textures in GIMP from blender, if it would help.
  I'm all for making tutorials. Most of the methods I use have been pulled from a lot of different tutorials; I almost always learn some new helpful tips when I read a tutorial. 
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on October 16, 2011, 09:12:13 pm
Great well since i know you guys will benefit from the tut ill finish it off tomorrow with any luck. John do you use camstudio also? Mine seems to take up masses of memory. Fraps only took up a short amount... Fraps :dazed: mm costly, but nice...
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on October 16, 2011, 09:56:33 pm
I have been using camtasia studio because it has the free trial.
Does Fraps let you record from the desktop? I seem to remember it only works with games.
It looked like Mark had found a new recording tool that worked well in his youtube tutorials. 
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Guyra on October 17, 2011, 05:15:55 am
Does Fraps let you record from the desktop? I seem to remember it only works with games.
Fraps only works with games, yeah. :/
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on October 17, 2011, 04:06:29 pm
http://www.bsrsoft.com/downloadbsr.asp
I'm using this one now
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on October 18, 2011, 05:57:44 pm
This is a great recorder. Thanks :)

When i save a movie the 'jump' isnt included... it seems to ignore the jumps that i added to save time, any ideas? How do you cut out pieces of video?

Tomorrow ill do a sound file to sync with the video. Ive done a full unwrap tut in blender and also a tut on how to create nice textures in GIMP - two in one!
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on October 19, 2011, 08:06:19 am
I'm not sure Ben. Ijust press rec and do it 'live' with sound, and say 'erm' an awful lot

Looking forward to it.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on October 19, 2011, 06:10:29 pm
 How to unwrap and bake textures in Blender  (http://youtu.be/haFchwOXprM)

Tutorial is ready! I mostly done it for the 3d artists here *bow* enjoy.

By the way, the first steps were from object mode > edit mode, W key subdivide smooth.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on October 19, 2011, 07:57:46 pm
I'm not sure Ben. Ijust press rec and do it 'live' with sound, and say 'erm' an awful lot

Looking forward to it.

You'l notice that i say 'actually' alot, too.  :sweatdrop:
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on October 20, 2011, 05:52:32 am
Very nice Ben. I didn't quite understand the part Blender played. Can you bake the AO from blender and export it?

You have the face for radio btw, as they say!
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on October 20, 2011, 09:16:56 am
Theres actually alot of stuff you can do with lighting, ambient occlusion and normal mapping in that section of the tutorial. I'll cover it in another tutorial as this is the way to bake shadows to models which is great for working with games.

Haha, is that a polite insult about my face or are you commending my voice?
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on October 20, 2011, 02:02:30 pm
Its a compliment Ben.
Its funny how you sort of an idea of how people may sound. John's voice was nothing like I would have imagined. All pleasant supprises.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on October 20, 2011, 03:04:43 pm
Yeah same with yours. I suppose you naturally build up a picture and idea of people, i havent seen anyones face from this board, so if i met someone i'd be surprised i imagine.

I thought it was a compliment, i just remember it once being a polite insult. I'm pleased its changed.  :beerchug:

Are you interested in low poly models and techniques these days?
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on October 21, 2011, 03:35:29 pm
Yeah, the UK accents don't come through in reading so I was picturing you two sounding American even though I knew better. Todd sounded different than I expected in the KF remake opening movies too.

You make using Blender look easy! The tutorial does a good job of showing some of Blender/gimp basic features and making the axe from scratch was informative too . Is the setting you used when 'baking' for alpha masking? Using that procedure to 'black out' areas  of the texture that aren't assigned to a polygon could be helpful in keeping things tidy and efficient. I going to try it on my next model. 
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on October 22, 2011, 04:51:53 pm
It is very efficent. Its probably the fastest way to create a properly unwrapped model. Because i've recieved good and encouraging feedback on this ill do the next stage on monday or tuesday. That'l involve using lighting to create shadows in the texture and the ambient occlusion to create noise for a texture, i wont cover the normal mapping - mainly because i feel it wouldnt really benefit anyone here.

I'll also cover using layers to create effects and what effects do what.

Actually the way blender bakes a texture is probably similiar to an alpha map, however because the colours are solid and not transparent makes me wonder. The fact that you can use the magic wand to select a differential colour area against the background colour speeds up texturing time.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on October 23, 2011, 07:06:54 am
Great, I shall look forward to the AO bake. It'll have to be good to beat my wifes chocolate sponge!!!
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on October 23, 2011, 04:34:06 pm
My missus has yet to bake me one. I usually make the mince pies! :dazed:
Shes good at trifles though.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on October 24, 2011, 07:17:23 am
I've seen quite a few requests for hand tutorials recently if anyone fancies a go. I use sub-d so a bit high poly for games and MMD but a low poly version would go down well.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on October 24, 2011, 09:41:46 am
Not a bad idea, ill try to fit this into my next tut.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on November 03, 2011, 03:23:19 pm
Ben, that BRS recorder has a 58 day limit. Only does 5 min vids after that. My hand tut is going to be in about 14 parts now!
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on November 03, 2011, 05:14:13 pm
I have a couple decent video editing/splicing programs. I'd be happy to splice segments together if it would help. :rainbow:
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on November 03, 2011, 06:02:01 pm
Thanks for the offer John. I'm still undecided on doing it cause I'm not sure who it may benefit. Theres a bit of box, edge extrusion and point to point so it gets a bit hard to follow. Also included shear, bend and lattice tools. Its a bit of a marathon.

How do people watch these vids? Play, pause and copy?
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on November 04, 2011, 08:01:49 am
Would you prefer me do it instead? In blender its very easy. Blender has extrude individual faces and selective subdivision, so making a simple hand can be very easy. It might take me 10 mins max.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on November 04, 2011, 08:24:11 am
Oh yes carry on Ben. Mine would be fairly high poly and a sort of organic approach- not suitable for most I suspect.
2.2k poly count
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on November 04, 2011, 09:50:49 am
Hmm that is a little large, but it sounds interesting, id like to know your method - the hand is stunning and has a good poly count for a non textured model. I just made a video, the final vertices are 466. I intended to run through a bit of sculpting to create grooves etc for a texture but my video recording time ran out.

http://youtu.be/VYS2y-N3mN8
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on November 04, 2011, 04:22:42 pm
Very nice Ben. In fact I've layed on some fireworks for you, just take a look out of the window!
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on November 05, 2011, 08:52:02 am
I'll keep an eye open tonight! Last night i was indoors having a few  :beerchug: in town.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on November 06, 2011, 04:08:42 pm
Metasequoia 3 beta 11 available on the download page.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on November 07, 2011, 05:11:39 pm
Thanks for the notice. I'm loving the new selection tools!
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on November 08, 2011, 04:33:15 am
If you create a cube and add an edge loop the loop select doesn't seem to work and yet at higher poly it goes overboard - through poles - I'm sticking with the plugin.
I like the sculpt though I do find I have to use the reduce poly function periodically.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on November 08, 2011, 05:18:46 am
Not sure if its been plugin fixed, but the poly reducer really messes up the UV mapping of a model.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on November 08, 2011, 06:02:25 am
Yeah you're right there. The theory is to sculpt after mapping
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on November 08, 2011, 02:22:25 pm
I use a blender plugin to decimate the poly count whilst retaining the UVs. Though generally speaking i'm careful with my verts now  :smokin:
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on November 08, 2011, 06:34:19 pm
Yeah, I noticed the loop select seems wacky on some shapes. Hopefully he'll tweak it in the final release.

Using the word "decimate" reminded me of when I learned where that word came from. When a division of Julius Caesar's men fled from in combat, he had them lined up and stabbed every 10th man in the stomach as punishment, a slow and excruciating way to die.  It always surprised me that you see busts honoring Caesar in high-brow places considering that some scholarly estimates place him on the top ten list of mass murderers in history along with people like Hitler. It just proves the old adage 'History is written by the victors'. Caesar won his battles. How's that for off topic!  :tongue:
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on November 09, 2011, 11:27:33 am
 deviartion
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhEF-KS0Ay0&feature=related

I feel obliged to let Mr Mizno aware of this (and other issues) but I can't for the life of me post on his BBS
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on November 09, 2011, 05:18:04 pm
Ha, can I get half a point posthumously?
1/2 cup  all-purpose flour
800 g  kangaroo steak, cut into 2 cm cubes
250 g  button mushrooms, halved
3 cloves  garlic, peeled and crushed
1 1/4 cups  beer (like Guinness)
1 cup  reduced beef stock
2 tablespoons  fresh marjoram, chopped


What problem are you running into with posting? Have you tried the page here? (http://www.metaseq.net/bbs/metaseq/nph-bbs.cgi?Kaku)
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on November 10, 2011, 04:47:10 am
I had two or three goes on that page John. After using babel fish on mqdl page its clear you get unpredictable results. Maybe he thinks its spam?
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on November 16, 2011, 08:05:35 am
Mark did anyone you know find that hand tut useful?
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on November 16, 2011, 12:31:21 pm
I had intentions to post a link from the DA group Ben, but the cut thing at the begining doesn't translate to meta (It really is for beginners over there) That said, the topology turned out well at the end.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on November 16, 2011, 12:44:35 pm
I'm not a fan of keeping the grid mesh on, most of the time, but it does have its uses.
 John's measuring stick is great but if you want to do things on a larger scale, I'm sure most of you know this, the grid settings are (view>grid) and from top to bottom 10, 500,100. I'm sure you can vary some of these but this will give 1m mesh for SOM. Its not really a good scale to work at but for scaling before export its useful.
Hands up all who knew this already!
Anyone seen creatura?
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on November 16, 2011, 05:06:23 pm
Ah, the subdivide smooth? No probs. Well maybe someone might pick it up someday. I often take the grid off when im sculpting in Blender, maybe it'l help you with the meta sculpt tools.

I speak to Creatura on a regular basis however he is very busy with his last year of study, but is looking forward to being creative again. He hasnt the time for 3d or SoM at the moment, but hasnt given up on his project.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on December 07, 2011, 01:25:31 pm
It feels weird posting when nobody else does! Heres an animation sequence for anyone who is interested.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: dmpdesign on December 07, 2011, 09:33:58 pm
Very very cool, im very excited at the idea you guys figured out how to seperate bones during animation to make things come apart.

I have some cool models Id like to make, maybe ill have time to work on them soon=)
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on December 20, 2011, 07:39:11 am
Jerimiah and Ethel
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on December 20, 2011, 11:56:58 am
Looking good! How many verts for each? :)
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on December 21, 2011, 02:33:25 pm
just over 1000 for him and shes just under. Each of them on a 256 texture.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on December 24, 2011, 03:07:34 pm
Well happy Christmas everyone, and according to his blog we can look forward to metasequoia 3 in Janruary.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on December 25, 2011, 02:22:45 pm
Yes Happy Christmas all!
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on March 20, 2012, 06:35:08 am
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBNbbZeAdD0&lc=6_bpObw7BFbUgxJnqR1JtDhne4Cp_UXn6zuHklL2twQ&feature=inbox

This made me chuckle
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on August 10, 2012, 01:37:15 pm
Nice tutorial on lighting here if anyones looking for some such.

http://www.itchy-animation.co.uk/tutorials.html
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on August 10, 2012, 05:00:23 pm
Good call Ben. Depends on your renderer, but shoud be of interest to everyone.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on August 11, 2012, 03:01:46 pm
Any news on the sculpting tool in metaseq airflames? Is it useable?
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on August 11, 2012, 03:19:17 pm
Its usable, and available for download. Kind of fun just to mess around with but without retopology tools........

Anyone still here?
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on August 13, 2012, 10:58:17 am
Mostly just me and Wolf. Some people still lurk from time to time!

Hows the drumkit?
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on August 20, 2012, 07:21:50 pm
That's some neat info and well laid out. Thanks Ben. Added the link to the list.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on September 01, 2012, 07:10:14 am
Welcome, i was looking for a lighting example for making my textures look more striking, i thought id add it incase any aspiring game maker came along.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on September 03, 2012, 12:26:07 pm
Hello everyone.
Hope you're all well. The drums are progressing at a glacial pace Ben. I'll keep you posted.

Just found this. This guy has got the hang of keynote
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxLQ0Ek9c-I
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on October 05, 2012, 12:09:49 pm
Found an 'improved viewer' for metaseq:

http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&ie=UTF8&prev=_t&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=auto&tl=en&twu=1&u=http://sio29.sakura.ne.jp/celsview/celsview.html

The decompressor for the lzh format:

http://picozip.com/download_PicoZipSetup.html
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on November 10, 2012, 07:58:22 pm
You can now post in the BBS at metasequoia, in English! Whatever next!
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on January 31, 2013, 04:39:24 pm
Anyone tried the new 3.1? There seems to be an attempt at intergrating normal mapping. It's greyed out - strange.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on February 04, 2013, 11:33:29 am
I havent yet. Though i remembered what you said about metaseq being closely equal to the likes of blender, maya etc. So i tried to intergrate my methods from blender into metaseq, and i actually increased my model process output time.  :smile:

I need to move on if im going into commercial development. But right now metaseq is the fastest option ive got for outputting models into SOM. The only trouble ive had is the texture export tends to fray around the edges of an unwrapped model. It can be fixed though, just takes a while to readjust the UV lines in the model afterwards. Doesnt seem to be an option for a smooth UV texture output.

Does anyone know how to restrain the UV points on the x / y axis? Id like to just select three UV points and move them upwards without worrying about them veering off at the sides.

This one was born in metaseq. Not my usual blender to meta conversion. 
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on February 13, 2013, 05:39:00 pm
Well I haven't moved up yet to 3, for various reasons, but I am fairly confident there is nothing faster for general modelling.
With regard to the UVs, Ben, I'm not really sure what you are referring to. You can restrain/align the UVs on the U or V axis.
Tell me more.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on February 23, 2013, 05:05:22 pm
I think I know what you mean Ben. When importing models into SoM, the textures shift a bit- it's either a bug in SoM's rendering or in Mick's X2MDL conversion tool, or it might have something to do with the UV number index starting at "1" versus "0" in the different model formats. But anyways, you often need to move one edge of a texture straight back by one pixel or you end up with seams ingame.  If you do that by hand, it's impossible not to "wiggle" the UV-dots sideways.

In Metasequoia, you can use the numerical inputs + "OK" to move selected UV dots straight. Also, the "EasyUV" panel plugin has a set of buttons that let you align all selected UV-dots to the rightmost, leftmost etc selected UV dot. I use that all the time to straighten out funky UV-dot lines. The "AVG" button spaces the selected UV-dots at averaged intervals along a line. It's nice for straightening too :)

I don't think I ever publicly released the last two translated Metasequoia Plugins. So I added them to the top post (plugin batch #5).  One is  polygon counter panel and the other is a "serial save" that saves each frame in a Keynote animation as a non-animated MQO file.

Mick said that SoM's "scarecrow" animations used a "snapshot" format where the pose for every frame is stored in the animation file (rather than only storing the first/last frame and using interpolation to fill in the middle) so this "serial save" plugin may be especially suited for producing SoM "soft" animations if Mick ever wants to implement that in X2MDL.
 :beerchug:
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on February 24, 2013, 12:26:24 pm
Actually it could be possible to have a mesh warp, only thing is that if you place / "add" a blue marker to every single step in keynote, x2mdl will process it but the model will crash SOM if placed on a map.

"One is  polygon counter panel and the other is a "serial save" that saves each frame in a Keynote animation as a non-animated MQO file."

When i read about the serial save my first thoughts were "gif compatibility" which would prove less time consuming than freezing each individual frame, copying the frozen model, pasting etc.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on February 24, 2013, 03:43:10 pm
Well, I got meta 3 to display bump and save a normal map out. It seems abit buggy, and crashed, but thereis hope. Curiously I loaded my skip model but couldn't get the bump to show so maybe the mqo has changed.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on February 25, 2013, 04:36:08 pm
It would be great if bump mapping were implemented in Metasequoia. Have you tried loading your skip in Meta 3 and re-saving? That may "convert" it if there has been an MQO format change.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on February 25, 2013, 04:43:14 pm
Good idea John, I'll try that abd let you know.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on February 26, 2013, 04:42:41 pm
I messed a bit with this. The skip loads and texture loads but the bump loads very pixalated and wrong - nor can I paint on it - ie the bump slider won't show on the colour sub panel. If I load the noise bump (that comes with meta, under bump) its fine. Is seems you have to paint from scratch?

On a more serious note Google chrome won't let me access this site for fear of malware but IE is fine.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on March 01, 2013, 03:55:22 pm
Odd, sounds like it still has some bugs to work out, but at least its a good step in the right direction.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on March 01, 2013, 06:18:39 pm
Yeah, well I'm not swapping versions yet.
Came across this tut for head modeling
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86JiuZpbi_w&list=FLd5p1fMZIWc5gHyEDIyDcTA
Brilliant and quick. In fact I knocked up the attached image in about half an hour. If you're using meta its best to do just one side and mirror.
It struck me that most heads would have the same topology so instead of starting new every time, why not make a generic mesh and add morphs. So, for example, 'wide mouth', big nose' or racial features. It's a theory at the moment and I'm not sure about the practicalities when using reference images.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on March 02, 2013, 03:21:44 pm
Not bad at all. Added the link to the Meta tutorial section in the top post. How many polygons does your head have?
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on March 03, 2013, 05:35:45 pm
Added a link to "modeling Resources" for the New York Metropolitan Museum's site. It could be useful for modeling reference and has some high resolution pictures for texturing.  Search filters let you narrow down region, era, material etc. to match your needs. 

When you view an artifact's picture in "full screen", there is an icon in the lower right corner to download a high-res picture of the item.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on March 05, 2013, 07:13:53 pm
Good idea that John. I keep forgetting to look at how many polys -- in the region of 2k I guess.

Found this plugin from MASH (pipe), replicate along a path. I assumed it would be like pipe (all the geometry in the same vertex group) but you need to have the object to be replicated, as say obj1 and then draw the spline in obj2. Select obj1 in the panel and from the create drop down click on the funny writing. There's a spin and scale option as well
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on March 07, 2013, 08:18:32 pm
I did some research recently to find the average polygon count for game models and it seems the industry norm is around 10 to 15 thousand polys for a player character an 7 thousand for enemies. That's on mid-grade PC hardware with a standard rat-in-a-maze type linear area. Larger open gameplay areas can use about the same but have 2-4 LOD layers (level of detail). The cap is considerably lower for consoles (360 etc) and way lower for handhelds/phones. Of course other processing like shadows/textures make a huge difference so that's just a ballpark. Anyways, 2K for your head seems like its reasonable even for gaming.

Did a quick translation for the Copypath plugin. It goes in "Plugins/Object" and shows up at the bottom of the (who would have guessed) "Object" menu in Metasequoia. I think it could be good for making pine trees by using "taper+rotate" and copying a branch layer up a line where the trunk goes.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on March 07, 2013, 08:57:01 pm
you're a star John, thank you. Normal mapping seems to be the norm these days. My daughter has been playing Assassins creed of late - pretty impressive. X normal seems real easy.
That would be a good use of that plugin. Have you noticed it won't replicate on the last vert in the line?
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on March 13, 2013, 08:47:57 pm
Hi Folks
Decided I'm not swapping to ver 3, so made the most of plugins for 2 and found this. Ben will know this as bridge from blender. I've thrown it about a bit and it;s pretty substantial. Select 2 edges and it creates a polygon in between. Much quicker than create face. It does have to be adjacent lines to work in bulk, but I'm mighty impressed.
It's not a call for translation John, just the D/L page is a bit confusing and so my reason for posting.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on March 15, 2013, 05:43:24 pm
That tool will save me a lot of time since I often edit the polygon structure after I complete a mesh. Thanks for pointing out these helpful plugins. I translated it - selfish reason since it makes it easier for me to use. :smile:
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: dmpdesign on March 15, 2013, 11:38:43 pm
Sorry I am coming into this very late, I did not read all of your posts but if you need help generating normal/height/spec maps I can probably assist you with other tools other than meta.  It is what I do for a living these days :D

Anyhow, if you are fabricating the proper height map, use this program here to create a good normal:

http://neotextureedit.sourceforge.net/download.html

If you dont mind, can I see how you are constructing the normal map now, and are you basing it off a height/bump map texture?
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on March 16, 2013, 02:44:26 pm
Thanks for the link Todd. Personally, all I want to do bake out a high poly and onto a lower poly figure. In the dark a bit atm.

A couple more plugins for you John. Vertex snap - drag a vert onto another. please note it doesn't weld
The other one measures the lengh of a line/s - both command panel
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on March 16, 2013, 09:03:57 pm
Sorry folks forgot to add the file!
My desktop seems to have some issues atm - 'm guessing its the graphics card. So using V3 on this laptop. Although the plugins work it seems to be very buggy - either vista or the awkward bit I'm attempting to model - most annoying. Anyone else having issues?
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on March 17, 2013, 08:04:31 pm
Thanks Todd! Neotexture looks like it will be excellent for making textures. My current photo editor can do most of the same effects, but it's WAY less user friendly and no 3D preview of course. Neotexture seems like it would be good for making multiple, variations of a single texture for landscaping or such.

Mark, I tried using a bump map in Metasequoia v3 and couldn't get it to work either. I wonder why Metasequoia has had a slot for bump maps for a long time even though they don't seem to function. Is it possible that the bump map info is saved in the MQO, but just not rendered in the preview? Unfortunately, there don't seem to be many decent model format converters for meta.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on March 17, 2013, 08:43:51 pm
If you'd like i can explain how you can make a normal map manually along with the bump map.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on March 18, 2013, 05:50:57 am
John , The bump map slot has worked from a painting aspect its just direct X can now display it. You'll need directx 9 or above, installed and and 'on' in the view panel (under command) and 'show precisely' ticked on the view menu drop down.

Ben, Yes please.

The issue for me is that with direct x on almost all the colour goes from the screen.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on March 18, 2013, 04:02:34 pm
Well, i started doing a step by step guide in blender to show both the ambient occlusion and normal map generation, though the model i was using turned out to have the wrong type of map for certain parts of it (front projection for a mesh including front and back faces overlapping) so the baking was too jagged.

So instead, use xNormal. Its a fantastic program that lets you render your images in a really nice viewer where you can adjust lighting and so on.
Where it says high-poly meshes right click and import mesh.
Do the same for the low poly meshes.

In baking options, specify your output filename and type (like meta's export function) then select what you want to generate, normals, occlusion, height maps.
There are 17 options!

Fix the edge padding, and the bucket size, it seems the higher the bucket the longer the render takes.

Now hit that generate maps button! Your files will come out with the specified output files name and a suffix such as _normal or _occlusion where you stated.
If you are looking for your screenies you took in the 3d viewer, they will be in your 'documents' library under xNormal > screenshots.

Heres my skeleton (untextured) enjoying the shadows.

Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on March 18, 2013, 06:08:11 pm
Can't grumble at that Ben. though not the bast view of any normal mapping.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on March 18, 2013, 06:16:13 pm
Have you tried it? Actually alot of game developers use it.

Make sure you have 'average normals' in the options for normal mapping. You'l want a maximum frontal ray of about 2 also.

Dont forget that you'l need to have unwrapped everything.

If its not working for you ill do you a blender tutorial. Or theres Faogen http://www.rusteddreams.net/faogen.html
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on March 19, 2013, 09:21:38 am
This is the normal map i got from blender when i started sculpting about 2 years ago...

The situation is easy to setup, with the lights affecting the map how you want them to. Blender isnt that hard  :smile: and if you get to grips with the basics, you might want to enjoy the sculpting tools.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on March 19, 2013, 01:13:00 pm
Nice Ben. Can you show the related mesh?

Here is the info from Mr Mizno
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on March 19, 2013, 05:27:08 pm
Ahh, so the ability to real-time render bump maps and normal maps is what has been added to v3? Figures, it was just me being stupid  :tongue:
It seems to display fine with Ben's skeleton normal map - cool!

Mark, does your video card support Pixel-Shader 2.0? 

Thanks for the info about xnormal Ben, do you know what mesh formats it can import?
 
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on March 19, 2013, 05:44:31 pm
Funny you should mention that John. The graphics card on the pc has given up just this minute, and I'm not sure whether it is worth replacing. Hmmm
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on March 21, 2013, 05:09:20 pm
John rather than extracting info from the list I thought it would be better in screenshot format, obviously us metaseq chaps would import a .obj file.

Mark, I took a screenshot of the mesh for you. It was my first proper sculpt for a texture on a low poly model, and was lacking in alot of areas (the main glaring error is too much definition at the top of the model, less where its needed).

Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on March 21, 2013, 05:25:59 pm
Ah box modeled from a cube. Now I see I was expecting way fewer poys. Was that through X normal Ben?. I was looking at the retopology tools in blender and it seemed to work in the same way as the poly surface plugin we have for meta.

Ordered a graphics card from ebay - so I could be crying or smiling tomorrow!
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on March 21, 2013, 05:57:30 pm
Good luck with the graphics card  :smile:

Actually I only started using xnormal recently, this map was taken from blender. Yeah - its high poly. Speaking of which did you know about the amazing, poly reducer for blender 2.49? Im not sure if its been updated for the latest version. Basically you can reduce a ton of verts without distorting the UV (super useful) i used it for my NPCs heads in Rathmor. If metaseq had this function (John?  :rainbow:) it would be great.

There are some great tools in blender that work way better than meta's mesh smoothing.

Multires (picture is decieving)

http://www.blender.org/development/release-logs/blender-243/multires/

Built in subsurf (a bit more accurate)

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.4/Manual/Modifiers/Generate/Subsurf

Beauty fill, about halfway down the page, along with the regular fill faces (hit F after selecting 2-4 verts)

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.4/Tutorials/Modeling/Meshes/Fill_Faces

Particle systems for hair etc

http://youtu.be/TyOXbdvlIqI

To name a few  :sweatdrop:
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on March 27, 2013, 07:45:29 am
Success with the graphics card - back on the big screen again. Some useful bits in ver 3 - in rotation, hold ctrl and you can move the rotation handles to a new position.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on March 27, 2013, 06:30:43 pm
Did the new video card fix your problem with Normal maps not working well?
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on March 27, 2013, 06:58:19 pm
No John. Basically, someone gave me this pc and only when I went to get SP2 for windows did I find the installed version of XP is not legit. When I get some money I can afford to do something about it and upgrade direct X etc

Uploaded a drum pic to my DA account.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on March 27, 2013, 08:10:30 pm
Ah, if Meta's normal mapping just requires DX9, have you tried downloading the DX9 installer directly HERE.  (http://download.microsoft.com/download/8/4/A/84A35BF1-DAFE-4AE8-82AF-AD2AE20B6B14/directx_Jun2010_redist.exe) I don't think there's any "genuine check" before install.

Some very nice stuff on your DA page (http://airflamesred.deviantart.com/gallery/)! What was "Dave " for?
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on March 27, 2013, 09:56:09 pm
I'd no idea you had an account on there Mark - ill be frequenting more often!

My first guess about Dave was

http://unlimitedcinema.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/2001_a_space_odyssey_1.jpg
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on March 28, 2013, 07:58:55 am
Dave is for a quite large project which is moving at a glacial pace, cause I keep getting bogged down in detail and side tracked!
It won't load ver 3 on that pc but I have it on the laptop for emergencies.
The pic would't upload to the gallery http://sta.sh/01mhpowwgbtv
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on April 07, 2013, 10:37:19 pm
Is that a drum set in the picture?  Thats a crazy lot o drums!

Of minor interest, I just noticed that Metasequoia doesn't save UV coordinates precisely. Not sure why but sometimes it converts a coordinate of something like "1.0000" to "0.9998" etc. I don't think that minor difference would be noticeable to the naked eye, but it could make a difference in some model handling/converting programs.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on April 08, 2013, 12:26:26 pm
It actually affects how the atlas is exported, its exported incorrectly and you have to either re-map everything or use another program, like xnormal which allows you to 'pad' the outer edges for textures.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on April 08, 2013, 11:09:17 pm
Ben, does that problem only happen when you are making MDL's using x2mdl or does it also happen when you're making Items/Objects with X2MDO? If you send me a simple example of a file with the problem, I might be able to make a tool to fix it.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on April 09, 2013, 01:30:43 pm
Actually it happens in metaseq, ill attach a pic. Basically the outer edge lines arent drawn correctly, it seems they are drawn jagged rather than smooth, and actually squash inwards, into the UV lines in some cases.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Holy_Diver on April 09, 2013, 08:27:29 pm
You may notice that your texture there isn't smooth. It's made out of pixels. So that's where the jaggies come from.

Atlasing is intrinsically problematic. Its really only done in the modern sense so that larger textures can be loaded into memory so that more things can be drawn in a single pass without changing the configuration.

You need at least an entire pixel separation. Many of SOM's models suffer from putting UVs smack in the middle of two pixels, or on the edge, or not a full pixel distance between them.

But if you want a game to appear to be solid. You have to use mipmapping. By the time the texture is converted into a mipmap the single pixels separation disappears, since the four pixels nearby are merged into a single pixel, and so on, until the final mipmap texture is a 1x1 texture.

As you can imagine if you don't want that tan colour in your final model. By the time the texture is like a 16x16 mipmap or smaller, the model will become mostly tan as seen from the distance. Or a blending of that grey and that tan.


PS: Speaking of x2mdl. I know HwitVlf was upset that the models didn't always appear right in SOM_MAP. No one ever thanked me, so I don't know if anyone noticed that a feature was added for this a year or so ago. I know Verdite is aware of it. I just assumed he would pass on the news. But I am saying it here just in case not. Also there is an option for making transparent MDL files. But its all or nothing. If these aren't in the --help screen that's my mistake.


PPS: I have no clue how games build large atlases and keep the entire texture from being displayed as a 1x1 mipmap (where all of the textures would get merged into one) you'd think every texture would need a gutter around it at least as wide as the smallest allowed mipmap.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on April 10, 2013, 01:37:46 pm
Thanks for the information, Holy Diver. The model and texture has been complete for a while, I just wanted to show John the problem Metasequoia has when it draws the lines upon exporting the UV mapping. Its likely not meant to be a texture bake option, probably just a rough reference to the face placement in the texture.

Ive found that generating a base texture with padding in another program is alot easier than remapping the outer edges.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on April 10, 2013, 03:06:06 pm
It almost looks like the UV coordinates have been shifted upwards in your screenshot Ben. I tried to recreate the problem I was seeing earlier where Meta shifted the UV coordinates slightly, but couldn't make it happen again. It must only occur under some circumstances. I'm thinking this is being caused by either a bug or an incompatibility somewhere in the tool-conversion-chain. Meta's file format is certainly capable of UV precision and it uses DirectX to render so models should come out looking the same as they will in SoM.

I really can't tell what is going on without looking inside a sample file. If you come across a file whose UV seems to shift when it is loaded into, or saved by Metasequoia, it would be good to check it  out. I may be a bug worth reporting.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Holy_Diver on April 10, 2013, 08:25:51 pm
I am not sure what the problem is supposed to be here.

By outer I assume you mean the lines near the tan areas and not the edges cutting down the middle of the model. You need to move the edges far away from the tan region, or colour a thick border in around them.

A difference of 1.0000 to 0.9998 is rounding error. Most likely the program is just not displaying as many decimal places as it could just to save room in the display field. A 32bit floating point value has a precision of 6 decimal places with the last place not considered to be reliable.

Also remember that 1 is (literally) the same number as 0.99999... (ad infinitum)

FPUs are not perfect, there is always rounding error. The only way to get a value of exactly 1 is to either not compute it, or compute it with a rational number. In other words 0.9998 is 1. That's not your problem.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on April 11, 2013, 08:20:31 am
Its completely fine and no problems. Flip I hope I havent distracted people, im not experiencing an issue, rather a minor inconvenience. I found a workaround probably 1.5 years ago, im just showing the bad line generation.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Holy_Diver on April 11, 2013, 08:44:22 am
Its completely fine and no problems. Flip I hope I havent distracted people, im not experiencing an issue, rather a minor inconvenience. I found a workaround probably 1.5 years ago, im just showing the bad line generation.

Maybe I am confused. Is Metasequoia generating that texture for you or something?


BTW: I find its usually best to do your textures and UV mapping from scratch, instead of relying on projection tools and things. That usually just leads to lazy texture mapping. Like in Demon's Souls. Its good practice to do things from scratch too. Bottom line, in game you really want all of the texels to be about the same size is space, not stretched in either directions, with the exception of interstitial regions where shapes converge into one another. In which case the error shouldn't be much more than a single pixel.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on April 11, 2013, 08:59:37 am
"Maybe I am confused. Is Metasequoia generating that texture for you or something? "

Yes Metasequoia generates an atlas map, see attachment for an example. Dont worry about the faces in it, its an old atlas.
Its just a white background with black lines drawn to indicate where the UV is layed out. I manually modified it and used that tan colour in the earlier picture to indicate the jagged edges and how they affect the model, unless you adjust every UV outer edge line.

"I find its usually best to do your textures and UV mapping from scratch, instead of relying on projection tools and things."

Actually I started doing that in Jan this year, and it saves alot of time in the long run. I do all my textures by hand that includes not using a 3D programs ambient occlusion map for shadow and contours, rather painting the details myself. Its the only way I can be satisfied with my texturing, if I know exactly how its going to turn out.
I used to sculpt then bake the sculpt details into a rendered texture using lamps and light sources to affect the shadow placement, which took just as long as painting the texture but yielded less effective results, for me that is, im sure alot of people prefer to use this method. 


Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on April 11, 2013, 02:19:50 pm
I get what you're saying Ben, when you said it affects "how the Atlas is exported", I thought you meant in the model file, but you're talking about the exporting the atlas as a graphic file, right? That seems like it would be tricky for any program because a graphic (BMP etc) has to draw lines 1 pixel wide whereas the UV in the model file can "draw" lines along fractions of a pixel.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on April 11, 2013, 03:52:36 pm
I know it doesn't really apply here, but some years ago I got involved with some tests on the accuracy of obj exports and metasequoia stood up really well along side all the other apps (max 5 I recall) so you can see how long ago it was. I think it was good to 6 decimal places.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on April 11, 2013, 04:40:37 pm
"but you're talking about the exporting the atlas as a graphic file, right?"

Thats right, sorry about that.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on April 12, 2013, 11:38:44 pm
...some years ago I got involved with some tests on the accuracy of obj exports and metasequoia stood up really well along side all the other apps ...
Meta's UVs have always seemed precise to me. I'm not sure what was happening earlier, but I haven't been able to recreate it since. Maybe it had something to do with me having the EasyUV panel open, or maybe I was just doing something stupid.  That has been known to happen ha ha  :doh:
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on April 14, 2013, 04:44:01 pm
Working on this. Rendered in terragen.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on April 15, 2013, 10:28:58 am
Looks great Mark! Do you say dunny in the south? We usually say bog or something just as crude.  :biggrin:

Does anyone know of any line extrusion plugins for meta? It would save me alot of time.

Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on April 15, 2013, 01:02:04 pm
Dunny, Ben, Australian. There is a plugin, I think its here
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on April 16, 2013, 04:36:06 am
The edge extrude. Plugins/select. Extrudes at zero then use the move, scale, rotate. Make sure you have the relevant obj selected in the obj panel.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on April 16, 2013, 08:44:48 am
Thankyou Mark this will help alot.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on April 16, 2013, 08:54:33 am
I don't know how I ever managed without it  This, and loop select and bridge. I notice with ver3 that the inbuilt edge extrude now has a constrain to axis (shift) but only works in screen  rather than world
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on April 18, 2013, 05:32:10 pm
Oh, now that I look close I see the "Bruce Sheila"; it really is a bathroom! Being an ignorant American, I thought you guys were using dunny to mean a "hovel" or something.  Where I once lived in Arizona, there were American Indian adobe houses that looked a lot like your building so my brain went there.  Nice use of normal mapping :)
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on April 19, 2013, 11:25:13 am
Bump only, John
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on April 19, 2013, 01:44:45 pm
Height map, normal and AO texture editor and creator to watch, its in beta at the moment

https://www.knaldtech.com/

Nice flowers Mark :)
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Holy_Diver on April 21, 2013, 12:47:10 pm
Height map, normal and AO texture editor and creator to watch, its in beta at the moment

https://www.knaldtech.com/

I am not so sure SOM games will benefit from this kind of esthetic. Mind you these are fine technologies. But artists are prone to get excited about effects like this and not question whether or not they actually complement the art. For instance, Ico, SOTC, KFIV, all very nice looking games, none really using the generic game esthetics of today. Where they might, sparingly, and to good effect.

I just want to caution artists to think critically about their tools. When you make a house you can use a hammer to drive in nails, or just use the hammers to beat in things at random for using the hammer sake. I also caution artists because we have a lot of really great older games, and we have a lot of really blah newer games,  many outlets are predicting a looming video game sector crash like in the 80s. Visual effects can't make a bad game good, and they can't make a good game bad. But they can make a good game ugly. That's just shy of a lose lose proposition.

Never mind that, I felt like typing something up, just because that page mentions OpenCL. I am hoping by the time Dark Slayer is rearing to go that it will be possible to port its algorithms over to OpenCL so that it can be very much accelerated. OpenCL is still a very new standard. It will be some time before it is ready to be put to good use.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Holy_Diver on April 21, 2013, 01:16:25 pm
^A good example. The Metal Gear Solid series, if nothing else has always been very easy on the eyes. The character models are beautiful in that way that only Japanese artists seem to understand. But the new game trailers for V look like rubbish...

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=search_videos&search_query=Metal+Gear+Solid+V&search_sort=relevance&search_category=0&page=

If not for sex appeal, I don't know if this series has anything else to offer. It looks like screen actors are having their heads scanned or something and then piped through the usual normal map etc regime, for very ill effect.

More than anything I think I worry that SOM enthusiasts won't get the esthetic right. As long as we prod one another to look towards the likes of KFIV for direction I think we'll be alright. But if we go the way of the shopping mall I fear what will become of us. Down to earth is the only way I know how to say it. Its like the original Star Wars vs. Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings. One is believable, the other looks like a department store catalog.

PS: This is not offtopic. 32 pages in it may be. But its a reply to the above post.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on April 21, 2013, 02:20:13 pm
I tend to use very basic functions of texture tools, like baking base textures. If I deviated from my art style now - drawing my textures and ambient occlusion by hand, my finished product would look awful.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on April 21, 2013, 03:02:03 pm
Some good points there Holy Diver. Things like normal mapping, and maybe ptex, are a natural progression towards realism. Once we get to that point, where things are indistinguishable from real, it will be boring and sense of style will have emerge again.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Holy_Diver on April 21, 2013, 10:48:16 pm
Some good points there Holy Diver. Things like normal mapping, and maybe ptex, are a natural progression towards realism. Once we get to that point, where things are indistinguishable from real, it will be boring and sense of style will have emerge again.

If MGSV looked real, like a movie, I don't think that would be a problem. The problem is its actually visually inferior to even MGS3 on the PS2. It may just be the staff is not up to it. A lot of Japanese IPs are having their games made in the west too nowadays. Which can only be bad.

Japanese movies are horrible today. But its hard to believe that there was a time when Japan was producing the cream of the crop of cinema. Quality just seems to come and go in decade long cycles. But western video games have never been very good. Neither beautiful nor fun (of course there are a handful of exceptions excluding games that either inspired Japan or were inspired by Japan)
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on April 22, 2013, 02:27:54 pm
For those that maybe interested here is a plugin for bevelling. I know its been fixed in the new version but this is easier to work with. Plugins/object. Seems a bit odd to bevel the whole object but with this you can set min and max angles and it does it all for you. There are some other options but my japanese isn't as good as John's, hint,hint!!!!
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on April 24, 2013, 07:52:28 am
Thanks Mark, sorry to pester you more but do you know if there is a quick edge select plugin? I used it often in blender, you hold ctrl+right click an edge to select a line of connected edges.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on April 24, 2013, 01:37:35 pm
ver 3 has one as standard and there's one John translated, on the first page.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on April 30, 2013, 01:22:28 am
Sorry for the delayed response! I got busy for a bit there.

Anyways, here's the translated BevelEdge plugin. The "Max Angle considered flat" setting is a bit confusing to me. It seems to affect which faces are joined when beveling complex shapes. I found the readme and it doesn't have any directions at all. So my translation may be a bit wonky. If you figure out a better phrasing, let me know.

One part in the readme may be a bit useful:
 
Process is done in stages
1. Separate existing polygons
2. Create bevel
3. Join old and new vertices
4. Plug holes in corners.

Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on April 30, 2013, 10:10:09 am
Lovely, thanks John. The panel looks fine.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on August 13, 2013, 05:49:10 pm
Recognize this? ver 4 beta
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on August 14, 2013, 08:11:04 am
Thats a smart interface, and the axis-based distance in meters looks like it would save us SOM developers some time. Most of the time I just use multiplication to figure out my distances.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on August 14, 2013, 08:25:00 am
Does M cm or mm. Looong way from being the finished article.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on August 14, 2013, 03:43:06 pm
Quite a new look v4.  I like the cleaner menu layout. 
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on August 14, 2013, 05:20:43 pm
It is John, though my worry is that, that's all there is. Ngons now introduced - from boolean, especially, this is a nonsense.
Local axis has taken a backward step.
Now that blender is being taken with some seriousness now, I wonder where meta fits in the market. I'm still using 2.4.14 with the plug ins.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on September 21, 2013, 10:08:47 am
Done a face creation video. I would have saved an hour or so if I modeled it in Blender, I do enjoy modelling in Metaseq alot more, probably because thats where my 'roots' are so to speak.

http://youtu.be/C18Vq9j_Zx4
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on September 21, 2013, 11:18:56 pm
Cool Ben, added the link to the top post. Any chance you'll post the texturing proces video?

Also, is there a "method to the madness" in the beginning stage when you are manually drawing the triangles on the face's side-view? I mean something like "you make breaks along shadow lines" etc.

What is it that makes the process quicker in Blender?
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on September 22, 2013, 11:19:40 am
Thats a part of the video I should have shown fully and slowed down, I work in side view first and prior to adding the triangles I drew lines as a guide for the facial structure, estimating where ill need to add emphasis. Then its a process of eyework, bringing the created faces to their right positions when I begin shaping the entire head, and then using the front image reference. Making the breaks along the shadow lines is to create the head more spherical and less cubed, if that makes sense? I know some people use box modelling, but I find it unrewarding and not as accurate.

Blender has multiple shortcuts to smoothing off the mesh where I had to smooth it by hand. Im not sure if there is a smoothing (as in smoothing the surface, not subdividing) plugin for meta.

I would be happy to do the mapping and texturing video.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on September 22, 2013, 06:09:00 pm
Interesting Ben, Not a method I would choose but I have to say you do have a fantastic likeness. And as I always say with modeling - 80% observation.

Meta 4 potentially $125 dollars on upgrade. Your thoughts are needed.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on September 23, 2013, 07:18:43 am
"Meta 4 potentially $125 dollars on upgrade."

Thats worrying. When did meta step up the mark, and are its newest functions worth paying for?

Makes me wonder if I should have gone back to meta. I know people are encouraged to donate to Blender, but it still remains free.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on September 23, 2013, 07:29:57 am
Well I think at $45 it was under priced, but this is well over priced. I'll DL the latest beta to test but I shall stick with 2.4
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on September 23, 2013, 05:43:03 pm
Holy poverty Batman! That seems like a lot, but looking at the Meta site (http://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&hl=en&ie=UTF8&prev=_t&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http://www.metaseq.net/release_v4.html&usg=ALkJrhhnvx-gQqQytRbdZ9x-IJkACMj6eA), at least the "standard" version is still afordable ($53 USD new, $36 for upgrade). Maybe he's trying to upgrade the high end Meta to a pro-level tool, while still keeping it version that's affordable for hobbyists.

It never feels good to have to make do with a lesser versions, but looks like the main difference between Standard an Ex is that Ex has more output/input formats and some neat rendering options. Those are great, but I can maybe live without them. Will v4 support old plugins?

Ben, I would find it quite helpful to see a video of the texturing phase. I gave up on making my own textures from scratch (as opposed to using photoshopped pictures) because every time I tried came out looking like a 2yr old finger-paint art. I love the idea of doing it from scratch, but I'm just getting something horribly wrong  :1782:
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on September 23, 2013, 05:52:23 pm
Will v4 support old plugins?
I'm not quite sure, John, the BBS is saying yes and no. It really needs to though.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on September 24, 2013, 04:53:53 pm
I too would be interested in your texture approach, Ben. While I was looking at some alternatives, Sculptris popped back onto my radar, which also does mesh painting.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on September 24, 2013, 06:16:44 pm
The only time ive ever used painting on a mesh was for weight painting in blender, a pre-animation process. Though you did get my attention Mark when you painted that axe - looked damn good given the process you used.

I have a method which you two may like, its more about using a saved atlas image in the texture for accuracy. I have edited my video clips today, and should have the vid up by tomorrow evening (GMT) as converting various clips into a saved movie format takes a long time.

Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on September 25, 2013, 04:45:49 pm
I decided to drop the resolution at the beginning of the video to save on upload time, and adjusted the speed for the texturing process for YOU John!  :smile:

This isnt my best texture, but it'l be fine for this character. People sometimes go overboard with 'noise' in textures, but it looks un-natural. Smooth textures are easier on the eye, and I may add some stubble later.

http://youtu.be/pt913xkv588
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on September 25, 2013, 08:52:50 pm
Thank you for all that work Ben! Checking it out now  :beerchug:
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on September 26, 2013, 05:21:15 am
Did it help? 5 mins into the video is the texturing process.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on September 27, 2013, 07:04:23 pm
Absolutely, Thank you Ben! I'll add this to the top post shortly too. I am absolutely going to try hand-made textures next time I give it a go.
 
I was using the paint brush tool (not sure what it's called in GIMP) to paint the entire texture from scratch whereas you started with a solid "base color" layer. That's kind of a no-brainer, but I hadn't thought of it.  :doh:

I was ending up with a harsh step between color fields that I really didn't like in my hand painting attempts. You painted in multiple layers of similar colors and used what I think was a "soften/blending" tool to smooth it all together in the end. That made a huge difference. It also looks like there is also a good amount of talent/knowledge involved in knowing where to put the shadows and the highlights. I learned a lot about head-shading from your video, and I expect I just need to find references for other models I make, and eventually I'll learn.

Near the end, it looked looked like you applied an effect to the entire image; was that a hue change, saturation adjustment or something else? 
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Holy_Diver on September 28, 2013, 05:56:05 am
The best thing you can do for yourself is stick to 16bit colour. If your gradients are 32 shades you'll have a much easier time than 256 shades, and the gradients will still be gradients after down converting to 16bit colour. All SOM textures are 16bit. Except in extreme cases like sky gradients it will look fine. Even Dark Souls' textures look like they are 16bit to me most of the time.

No matter how many times I hand out the advice, no one has ever taken it.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on September 28, 2013, 11:47:03 am
Really good Ben. Nightmare with the UVs but I say again its a dam good likeness.
Meta is short on brushes etc, but I do find making some markers on the map just so I know where things are, as in your eye brows here.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on September 28, 2013, 02:39:02 pm
"I was ending up with a harsh step between color fields that I really didn't like in my hand painting attempts. You painted in multiple layers of similar colors and used what I think was a "soften/blending" tool to smooth it all together in the end."

Actually it sounds like the opacity was interfering here, switch to GIMP and I can help you alot more  :smile: the main thing to remember about your brushes is the opacity amount, pressure amount and the mode its used for - in some parts of the video I used the 'overlay' mode for my brush which blends whatever colour you are using into an existing colour, primarily I stick to blacks and whites as overlay colours.

The only time I used the smudge tool for smoothing, was when I took away the atlas lines around the cheeks, neck and head but left some lines as a guide for the eyes etc.

That final effect was achieved by using the curves feature in GIMP, I find it alot easier to work with rather than using levels to edit colours.

"Even Dark Souls' textures look like they are 16bit to me most of the time"

Thats more noticable on the PC version IMO.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on September 29, 2013, 06:46:23 pm
The best thing you can do for yourself is stick to 16bit colour. If your gradients are 32 shades you'll have a much easier time than 256 shades, and the gradients will still be gradients after down converting to 16bit colour. All SOM textures are 16bit. Except in extreme cases like sky gradients it will look fine.
You don't see 16bit color much outside PS1 which used it for palleted colors because it worked well with the hardware (5bits for RGB +1 bit for transparency). I can't picture why 32 RGB options would be easier than 256, but I'll try it and see.  :smile: 

Actually it sounds like the opacity was interfering here, switch to GIMP and I can help you alot more  :smile: the main thing to remember about your brushes is the opacity amount, pressure amount and the mode its used for - in some parts of the video I used the 'overlay' mode for my brush which blends whatever colour you are using into an existing colour, primarily I stick to blacks and whites as overlay colours.

So far, I've been able to understand your GIMP directions and they seem to have similarly named equivalent in Paint Shop. Attached is a pic of the paint brush settings menu with the same-named opacity and overlay settings. With black/white set and low opacity, it seems to do well at lightening darkening colors without obliterating them- that's great for hilights and shadows-cool. I'll play around with some of the "blend modes" next time and see how it goes.

That final effect was achieved by using the curves feature in GIMP, I find it alot easier to work with rather than using levels to edit colours.

Nice, Paint Shop has the curve tool for colors and black/white point etc. In your video it seemed to take the whole image away from "pinkish" and more toward a natural skin tone. I'll give it a try when it comes up :)
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on October 07, 2013, 03:16:23 pm
Ok, From what I understand, the 64bit ver of meta 4 won't read the current plugins. The 32bit will as long as the plugin doesn't conflict with the introduction of n-gons - I think. I don't like the n-gon, I find it lazy, and see no reason to introduce.
Anyone tried sculptris?
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on October 07, 2013, 04:36:43 pm
That is frustrating since a lot of people use 64bit systems these days. I expect the v3 plugins will fade away pretty quickly.  From a rendering point of view, I can' t see any benefit from n-gons -more or less undefined triangles.

I haven't tried Sculptris (http://pixologic.com/sculptris/features/). It looks like it's mainly for high-poly work, but does mention having tools to reduce polygon count if needed.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on October 07, 2013, 06:02:42 pm
While I would definately encourage high poly modelling and sculpting for artists I would not recommend any form of multire - shifting or poly reducing for game assets, unless you are making scene games. Im not pointing that at anyone, just a general statement  :smile:

Ive been there and done that and wasted time being in that direction. Its not a personal preference, it just isnt in my work flow.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on October 07, 2013, 06:45:03 pm
Well, it is high res John, that's for sure. The retop I've seen, seems to involve modelling over the top of the hi res mesh - like the poly surface plugin  we have. It's a direction I would like to go in as I do get fed up with poser figures. I want to see beer bellies!
I'll look at this once the drum/VST/VI project is up and working
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: toshiootomo on October 10, 2013, 08:41:34 am
Hello, guys!
I've got several errors with the new plugins which says they failed to install for some reason.
My version have plugin support, but it still fails for some reason.

I'm using the version 2.4.13

The plugin must be installed with japanese language active first?
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on October 10, 2013, 08:48:40 am
No, they should be good to go. Just check they're in the right folders. Which ones are causing the problems?
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: toshiootomo on October 10, 2013, 01:44:22 pm
No, they should be good to go. Just check they're in the right folders. Which ones are causing the problems?
The keynote plugin is not working, I try to install and it get a error message.

It's the translated keynote which was used for the tutorial.

Well, any tips about the right folders?
I seems that no matter if rename, it still works only the previous plugin which is outdated.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on October 10, 2013, 02:02:30 pm
 Hmm. Keynote should be in the command folder. Beyond that, Idk. I had no issues with 2.4.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on October 10, 2013, 04:00:21 pm
Hello toshiootomo  :smile:
Like Airflames said, I think the latest translated keynote should work in Metasequoia v2.4.13.
You can try to install it by going to "Help > About Plugins > Install" and then browsing to bone.dll.
If that still doesn't work, can you post a screenshot of the error message you are getting?

When you say "it still works only the previous plugin which is outdated", do you mean that an older version of keynote will work, but not the latest?
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: toshiootomo on October 10, 2013, 09:41:26 pm
It like that renaming the plugin doesn't work.

I wanted to fix that model of Meteo http://www.geocities.jp/tenten909/3D/meteo.html

She have issues with keynote and I can't make reliable poses since she gets deformed, sigh...

I'll try make a video of the error with time, thanks for the replies.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on October 11, 2013, 08:00:12 am
Might be stating what you already know, but bone.dll goes into plugins > command

You can get a human skeleton from my file here: http://www.mediafire.com/download/6u5q4zkk2z2lm4r/SOM+skeletons.zip
Import it, then rename it to 'bone'

You will see the tab called 'motion' in the left hand column of Metasequoia, so click on that.

My tutorial might help if you need it

http://youtu.be/9IfocVl8Uxw

頑張って
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: toshiootomo on October 11, 2013, 02:15:36 pm
Might be stating what you already know, but bone.dll goes into plugins > command

You can get a human skeleton from my file here: http://www.mediafire.com/download/6u5q4zkk2z2lm4r/SOM+skeletons.zip
Import it, then rename it to 'bone'

You will see the tab called 'motion' in the left hand column of Metasequoia, so click on that.

My tutorial might help if you need it
http://youtu.be/9IfocVl8Uxw

頑張って

Import? How?
Here is a little video:
http://youtu.be/skO76hD9BAk
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on October 11, 2013, 02:31:32 pm
That is a very old version of keynote, there is a more up to date version on this site.
http://www.swordofmoonlight.com/bbs/index.php?topic=464.0
The problem with the anchors can be solved with the tutorial also on this site
http://swordofmoonlight.com/bbs/index.php/topic,492.0.html

You have come to the right place.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: toshiootomo on October 11, 2013, 09:53:21 pm
That is a very old version of keynote, there is a more up to date version on this site.
http://www.swordofmoonlight.com/bbs/index.php?topic=464.0
The problem with the anchors can be solved with the tutorial also on this site
http://swordofmoonlight.com/bbs/index.php/topic,492.0.html

You have come to the right place.

I tried to use the uptated keynote, but it seems that there are error messages like the video says.
I'm confused, because it always get a error...
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on November 17, 2013, 05:13:36 pm
When I made the ST spider for the ST remake project, I recorded myself making it. I even recorded animating the model and rigging it, but sadly I had left two metasequoia windows open and my active window wasnt recorded. Anyway, here are the links.  :smile:

Modeling (http://youtu.be/rRdWo8HZFh8)

Texturing (http://youtu.be/GycODM2cm5E)

Im a bit discouraged from making videos. I just dont seem to get the traffic. Anyway, anyone interested in making similar assets should enjoy the videos.
Cheers.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on November 18, 2013, 11:51:37 am
Nice job Ben, but it surely needs that Northumbrian voice to get the ratings!
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on November 18, 2013, 08:25:10 pm
Ha, does Northumbrla really have a recognizable accent? I think accents are dying out in the US because people move around so much and learn to talk from television.  Without narration, at the beginning of part 1 it looked rather... umm phallic.  :eek:

I have no idea what gets views on youtube, but I would expect voice and good key words/title make quite a difference.  For what little it's worth, I almost always learn something when I watch your videos. For example, you showed a good use for the Bend tool which I had never considered. I try to make organic non-straight shapes a lot when I model, so you showed me that the bend tool could be quite useful.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on November 19, 2013, 08:01:08 am
Actually Northumbrian accents / dialect is similar to Cumbrian except that it has alot of Anglian thrown in!

Yeah Mark I think you'd get it if thought a bit more west :) maybe an hour or so  :biggrin:

I agree it looks like a pingas, but sadly no women have commented.  :sadani:
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on November 26, 2013, 04:30:29 pm
Added those 2 videos to the top list. Thanks Ben
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Haiyami on February 14, 2014, 11:41:22 am
I installed all the plug-ins you have. I have metasequoia version 3.1.6 and 2.4.12. I installed all the plug ins and for the most part they work, but I can't find keynote at all in either versions. I don't know where it is.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on February 14, 2014, 01:04:31 pm
At the bottom of the command panel?
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on February 14, 2014, 01:08:44 pm
Yep, like Airflames says, Keynote should show up as a "motion" button in the "Command" area. The plugin's DLL is called bone.dll and should be in "...\Plugins\Command", and the link to "Batch3" in the top post is for the Keynote plugin  :wink:

Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Haiyami on February 15, 2014, 03:51:28 pm
Thanks. After moving some of the files around it appeared. But unfortunately the Export to PMD/pmx doesn't work. Here is a screenshot of what happens.

(http://i59.photobucket.com/albums/g311/Akio_Haiyami/1_zpsfc6fd92e.png)

(http://i59.photobucket.com/albums/g311/Akio_Haiyami/2_zps4eca9969.png)

Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on February 16, 2014, 08:05:34 am
The only thing I can suggest is to exit keynote and try to save.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on February 18, 2014, 02:06:16 pm
I had never used the PMD export, but I did a little checking and I think it needs a configuration file to finish the export. This file (Default.txt) was included in the original package. Attached is the Japanese readme and the "deafault.txt". Both the readme and default.txt  are rather long and I don't have time to translate them right now. Default.txt seems to be listing facial expressions, bone structures etc. The readme gives details about how to structure the configuration txt.

If anyone wants creates a translated version of the readme or config.txt, please share!
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: euka on February 21, 2014, 10:44:46 am
hi to all

it is not easy to register on your forum, for a non-English.
(again, I do not play this game, I feel ashamed...), but it may be that I need assistance from the forum for the keynote metaseko

It seems to me that:
To translate Japanese files, you need a text editor that supports encoding "Shift-JIS".
For exe or dll files, a ressouce editor, which will start with "local japanese".

This is certainly not the best translation, some space, tanslation, uppercase and lowercase letters are confusing, but it should give a general idea of building files. I can not do better. (I don't have many time to translate more precisely them to...)
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on February 21, 2014, 05:07:38 pm
Thank you very much Euka!  I've added your translated documents to batch 3. It should be quite helpful to users.

Sorry about the confusing sign-up questions. The forum was becoming flooded with bot-spammers so it was necessary to add questions designed to fool auto-bots (or was it the decepticons  :badteeth: ). I can image they would be hard to solve without a firm grasp of the English language.  But thank you for persevering to share your translated docs with people.
 :beerchug:
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: euka on February 26, 2014, 02:54:47 am
 :beerchug:

I think this version is newer than the one you are proposing.
(I used your Keynote translation to make it.
just a small part of the text files joined is translated)

Keynote (bone.dll)
Version 0.0.4.5    2013/07/23 
Metasequoia\Plugins\Command
Keynote source : mqdl.jpn.org/sb.cgi?cid=2


I use Metako very long time (since 1999 !!!), and I'm just starting to get interested in Keynote.
But whichever version I install, I do not see "boneinflnce". (I think the command - right click option - but I do not have the colors influence .. :confused:..?)
I have Metaseko Ver 3.1.6 registered
[edit] Oops ... I see now. It was enough to restart keynote ... :doh:

I continue to look for myself to problems that I encounter with Keynote
your tutorials are very helpful, and I learn a lot from my mistakes this time. :movingeyes:

[edit]
Here are some tips for modeling with Metasequoia - http://mattaku.sa-ra-sa.com/
(http://www.mediafire.com/convkey/df21/y4unhg4izpyjohwfg.jpg?size_id=4)


Link in attachement updated _ bone.dll work now :bowl:
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: euka on February 26, 2014, 11:16:13 am
 :1zhelp: , first question:
Do you know where is the hidden resource that allows me to translate this button?
(This dll allows to move "normal" the selection)
(http://www.mediafire.com/convkey/d05a/1nzmboz03im4ij3fg.jpg?size_id=2) . (http://www.mediafire.com/convkey/61f7/c2q5v7co5fma64rfg.jpg?size_id=3)
Some translated dll that I use, do not display their name and I dont know how to fix this. Must there a special editor?
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on February 27, 2014, 01:22:40 pm
I added the Mikoto tutorial site to the Keynote section in the top  post- thanks for that :)

I tried to use the updated bone.dll and get an error when I try load it in Metasequoia. Could someone else please check if it loads properly for them.

As far as how to translate the "button labels", I can't really say without looking at the actual file. Sometimes text can be compressed, or in a non-standard encoding.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: euka on February 28, 2014, 02:49:25 am
 :confused: Sorry, failled to install for me too.
I had yet to try before before posting.
I'll try to review it.
____________________________________

sorry for the inconvenience
The file is repaired.

Bone.dll works now, but the "button labels" and drop-down menus is not translated

 :smash2: (http://www.mediafire.com/convkey/f6d6/27z4f8oc6y2slixfg.jpg)
I have had enough! , when it will not work correctly.
I wanted to be useful but I see that I have reached the limit of my skills for this plug.
I have done better to stay quiet in my little corner.
For the umpteenth time, sorry ...
____________________________________

Another site with a tutorial for Metasequoia with getting started of the modeler, creating step by step a character, bones, anchors, morphs and how to use it with Keynote.
The bigger tutorial I have ever seen.

original link> http://www.clip-studio.com/clip_site/howto/library/categories/view/metasequoia
english google translation> http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=fr&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.clip-studio.com%2Fclip_site%2Fhowto%2Flibrary%2Fpage%2Fview%2Fmetasequoia_002_21_002&sandbox=1

(http://www.mediafire.com/convkey/8e2f/ib0xj32990297d3fg.jpg)
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on February 28, 2014, 01:54:45 pm
I appreciate what you are doing and it is helpful  :smile:  It doesn't take special knowledge and you were doing it right. I expect the problem was just a typo or perhaps your hex editor is moving text instead of overwriting it. I use MadEdit for most Japanese hex editing.

Was the "hidden resource" question you asked earlier about Keynote, or a different plugin? If if is a different plugin, would you like to post it so I can try to find the hidden resource?
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on February 28, 2014, 02:29:28 pm
Thanks Euka, What's new in this version?
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: euka on February 28, 2014, 05:43:27 pm
@HwitVlf        - Thank you. I'll try MadEdit, and if I can not do if I want, I ask your advice

@airflamesred           - What's new in this version ...?
I do not know. I use Keynote for a short time.

The readme file says:

-
Original
-
-
Google trans
-
-
Excite trans
-
□2013/06/28 ver0.0.4.4→ver0.0.4.5

・物理設定を可視化出来る様に
・コンストレインの無効・有効オプション追加
・「エッジ有効」のオプションは別プラグインのOutLiner導入時のみ動作します
□2013/06/28 ver0.0.4.4→ver0.0.4.5

・ In order to be able to visualize the physical configuration
-Disable-effective option of adding constraints
Option of "effective edge" will only work OutLiner introduction of another plug-in
□2013/06/28 ver0.0.4.4→ver0.0.4.5

- They are the invalidity and effective option addition of - コンストレイン so that a physical setup can be visualized.
- "the option of edge effective" operates only at the time of OutLiner introduction of another plug-in
- 0.0.4.5 物理設定に関して -- 0.0.4.5 for physical configuration -- 0.0.4.5  Be Related with Physical Setup. -
- ・形状タイプ
球         0
ボックス   1
カプセル   2

・剛体タイプ
未定義         0
ボーン追従      1
物理演算      2
位置あわせ      3

・ジョイントタイプ
現バージョンでは1を指定して下さい。 -
- And shape type
Sphere 0
1 box
Capsule 2

-Rigid type
Undefined 0
1 follow-up bone
Physics 2
3 align

Joint type
Specify the one in the current version. -
- - Form type
Ball     0
Box 1
Capsule 2

- Rigid body type
Undefined     0
Bone flattery    1
Physical operation    2
Position あわせ    3

- Joint type
Please specify 1 in the present version.
 -
- 剛体命名規則
 R(0剛体タイプ, 1形状タイプ, 2幅, 3高さ, 4奥行, 5質量, 6移動減衰, 7回転減衰, 8反発力, 9摩擦力, 10衝突グループ, 11衝突マスク, 12位置X, 13位置Y, 14位置Z, 15回転X, 16回転Y, 17回転Z); -
- Rigid naming convention
R (0 rigid body type, shape type 1, 2 width, height 3, 4 depth, mass 5, 6 move attenuation, attenuation rotation 7, 8 repulsive force, friction force 9, 10 collision group, 11 collision mask, 12 position X , 13 position Y, 14 position Z, 15 rotation X, 16 rotation Y, 17 rotation Z); -
- Rigid body naming convention
R (0 rigid-body type, 1 form type, two pieces, three highs, 4 depth, 5 mass, 6 move attenuation, 7 rotation attenuation, 8 restitution, 9 frictional force, 10 collision groups, 11 collision mask, the 12 positions X, the 13 positions Y, the 14 positions Z, 15 rotations X, 16 rotations Y, and 17 rotations Z); -
- 二つ目以降の剛体命名規則
 G(0形状タイプ, 1幅, 2高さ, 3奥行, 4位置X, 5位置Y, 6位置Z, 7回転X, 8回転Y, 9回転Z, 10衝突グループ, 11衝突マスク); -
- Rigid naming convention of two subsequent
G (0 shape type, one width, height 2, 3 depth, 4 position X, 5 position Y, 6 position Z, 7 rotation X, 8 rotation Y, 9 rotation Z, 10 collision group, 11 collision mask); -
- Rigid body naming convention after the second
G (0 form type, one piece, 2 height, 3 depth, the four positions X, the five positions Y, the six positions Z, seven rotations X, eight rotations Y, nine rotations Z, 10 collision groups, and 11 collision mask);  -
- ・ジョイント命名規則
 J(0ジョイントタイプ, 1回転下限X, 2回転下限Y, 3回転下限Z, 4回転上限X, 5回転上限Y, 6回転上限Z, 7ばね回転X, 8ばね回転X, 9ばね回転X,
   10移動下限X, 11移動下限Y, 12移動下限Z, 13移動上限X, 14移動上限Y, 15移動上限Z, 16ばね移動X, 17ばね移動X, 18ばね移動X, 19位置X, 20位置Y, 21位置Z, 22回転X, 23回転Y, 24回転Z) -
- Joint naming convention
J (0 joint type, one turn lower limit X, 2 lower limit rotation Y, 3 lower limit rotation Z, 4 rotation upper limit X, 5 upper limit rotation Y, 6 rotation upper limit Z, 7 spring rotation X, 8 spring rotation X, 9 spring rotation X ,
10 Moving lower limit X, 11 move lower limit Y, 12 move lower limit Z, 13 move limit X, 14 move limit Y, 15 move limit Z, 16 spring move X, 17 spring move X, 18 spring move X, 19 position X, 20 position Y, 21 position Z, 22 rotation X, 23 rotation Y, 24 rotation Z) -
- - Joint naming convention
J (0 joint type, 1 rotation minimum X, 2 rotation minimum Y, 3 rotation minimum Z, 4 rotation maximum X, 5 rotation maximum Y, 6 rotation maximum Z, 7 spring rotations X, 8 spring rotations X, and 9 spring rotations X)
10 move minimum X, 11 move minimum Y, 12 move minimum Z, 13 move maximum X, 14 move maximum Y, 15 move maximum Z, 16 spring movement X, 17 spring movement X, 18 spring movement X, the 19 positions X, the 20 positions Y, the 21 positions Z, 22 rotations X, 23 rotations Y, and 24 rotations Z
 -

Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: euka on March 05, 2014, 04:59:05 am
Hi

Another question :sick[1]:

Is it possible to make a morph (elem) in Keynote, which cuts the movement on 2 or more times ?

example (for a a fodable satellite dish ) :
1 - a antenna come out .
2 - it deploys.

Or even better:
1 - a antenna begging to come out .
2 - it finish to come out and begins to deploy.
3 - it finish deploy.
_____________________________

 :biggrin: I succeeded in find the little "hidden resource" in the dll, thank you HwitVlf, MadEdit has been useful here.

NormalMove for normal movement of the selection. (Not a perfect tool, but can sometimes be useful)
And DividEdges that divides one or more faces, quad or triangle into smaller faces, I use it more often.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on March 05, 2014, 02:53:29 pm
Hi

Another question :sick[1]:

Is it possible to make a morph (elem) in Keynote, which cuts the movement on 2 or more times ?
Not really sure, it's pretty basic. The vert moves in a straight line from  A to B (elem) You can't physically move 2 morphs at the same time. You can animate it though.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on March 21, 2014, 12:06:37 pm
Decided to unlock my old Blender video. Locked it a while ago because I started learning new techniques in Blender, but its still useful as an intro to Blender (and makes it look much less scary) its for 2.49b which I stuck with for about 3 years.

 Blender UV unwrap texture baking and editing in GIMP - basic  (http://youtu.be/haFchwOXprM)
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on March 24, 2014, 04:14:39 pm
You know what really grinds my gears with blender, that trackerball motion. Nice vid, Ben.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on March 24, 2014, 04:33:28 pm
Actually its simple to change it :)
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on March 24, 2014, 04:44:20 pm
I had 2.49 and couldn't. What I also couldn't do was get the right click rotate around ( as in, the meta default) It was at this point, that as feature ridden as it is, I gave up on it.
It does look slightly less cluttered these days but......
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Lurietchi on May 26, 2014, 12:04:26 pm
Hi there~
I was reading this post for a while now and it's really helpful and unique .
Thank you all for sharing your knowledge =)

I hope you find a solution for this :
I was trying to install UVPowerUnwrap in Meta 3.1 32-bit version
But I got these two windows :

(http://i62.tinypic.com/znae6b.png)

(http://i62.tinypic.com/6pbw60.png)

Dose anyone know what is the problem ?
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on May 26, 2014, 02:18:44 pm
Hello Lurietchi and welcome!
Is your copy of Metasequoia registered? Plugins only work with registered copies.

If that isn't the problem, you might try a different method to install. There are two ways:
You can manually put the plugin DLLs in their folders and restart Meta
Or you can go "help >about plugins >install".

If you use the manual instal method, make sure the plugins are in the correct folder. The UVPUnwrap.dll goes in \Plugins\Select and UVPowerUnwrapLive.dll goes in \Plugins\Station

The Japanese message is just  a generic one saying "Read violation at address 0000005C has occurred in module 'Metaseq.exe at address 00865F94".
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Lurietchi on May 26, 2014, 03:46:40 pm
Thank you  :sflower:
It was a nice fast reply ~

First about the regeneration , no I didn't buy it .
But I managed to add Keynote to it , so might that still a reason ?

I tried both methods but I still can't see it in the selected menu .

I see , I guess that's good . I thought it's something with the whole program/computer .
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: s on May 26, 2014, 10:34:03 pm
In the first post you have a link to webarchive.

I think that the original zipped docs are available to download here.

http://ulflyer.com/models/ (http://ulflyer.com/models/)

Some guides in PNG format to download here also.

http://utilizator404.wordpress.com/2014/01/06/metasequaia-educational-material-dump/ (http://utilizator404.wordpress.com/2014/01/06/metasequaia-educational-material-dump/)

Also wanted to mention that help is very good now in Metasequoia 4.

Have you fellas looked at Toystudio?
It needs translating though. Maybe translation of the CHM manual is possible?

http://kotona.bona.jp/ (http://kotona.bona.jp/)

Also have you tried fragMotion?

http://www.fragmosoft.com/ (http://www.fragmosoft.com/)
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on May 27, 2014, 06:50:19 am
For mesh warping, I think Blender is a good choice. The only trouble is learning how to use it, as most of its features are hidden within keyboard shortcuts.

Blender uses weight paint and armatures, and is free. The best thing is that the Blender community is huge now, and you can even buy some great tutorial books on character modeling etc in Blender.

(http://code.blender.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/dragon_rigged_sculpt.png)
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on May 27, 2014, 05:29:07 pm
Lurietchi - I expect the non-registered copy of Metasequoia is the problem. I'm surprised that Keynote works.

s - Hello and welcome! Your screen name "s" is pretty complicated. Mind if I call you "" for short?  :biggrin: (pardon my stupid sense of humor :drool:)
Thank you very much for the tutorial links. Added them to the top post. Fragmotion is one of my favorite modelers and last I checked, it had an option for 100% free use. I find it comparable to Metasequoia but with better animation support.
I had not heard of Toystudio, but it looks interesting. A lot of Japanese! It sounds like its an animator more than a modeler?


Verdite - Is that your dragon? It looks very close to the Wyvern creature from Brigandine.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Lurietchi on May 28, 2014, 12:01:05 am
I am surprised too !Thanks a lot HwitVlf , UVPowerUnwrap worked fine in Metasequoia 4 32-bit .
Actually I put the same regeneration ID/Password in Metasequoia 4 64-bit before few days ,
Surprisingly, it worked for the 32-bit too !! That's weird actually I thought that I need to buy another ID/Password .

Hi s ~
Your post is full of helpful links , as I am still know I didn't know any of them so thanks for sharing them .

Verdite
You are right XD Blender looks great , many people talks about it , but for someone new it's complicated .
I am planning to use it in the future after understanding 3D world a little bit .
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: s on May 28, 2014, 01:08:17 am
Verdite I did put some time in learning Blender 2.49 mainly from BlenderUnderground tutorials so I know some of the basics.

I took a break from Blender when it became 2.5 to wait for it to become stable again since my main interest was scripting.

I have 2.7 now and have added the pymeshio addon to import/export MQO and slowly learning the new UI.

Is it any better at exporting animations?

Also, where can I find a tutorial on this site for getting anims into the game?

I'm not a SOM builder (yet) but just want to see how it is done.


Nevermind. Found it in the "How to" in post 1.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: dmpdesign on May 28, 2014, 04:12:20 am
One of the modellers I work with uses Blender, and yes it is quite powerful, but I do have to agree learning to use it is much more difficult...I die a little inside every time I am asked to paint a texture onto a model done in Blender lol.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on June 01, 2014, 06:44:18 am
@John Thats not my dragon :) I just wanted to post a good image of how the armatures are setup in the new Blender. I didnt post anything on how weight painting is handled though so  You can click here to see how it was handled in 2.49 (https://s3.amazonaws.com/lecs-community-secondlife/20664_weighted+mesh+two+3.jpg)

I'm looking forward to finishing my project so I can 'doss' and create some interesting high poly meshes in blender. Sculpting in Blender is amazing.

@s I never had a problem exporting the direct x animations from 2.49b I havent tried in 2.70. Welcome to the forum by the way  :wink:

@Lurietchi I was completely the same when I started with 3D, meta is great for beginners with its easy interface but also great for pros, if you dont mind not taking shortcuts to achieve great results. Meta is like an older traditional modeling program, it might be behind a little compared to maya, blender etc but a skilled modeler can use it.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Lurietchi on June 05, 2014, 05:19:39 am
@Verdite
That's good to know , actually I tried 3D max , blender , meta and some other not very famous programs like poser and DAZ , but meta was the only one that I liked , maybe it's as you said it's easy for a beginners .
I still don't know too much about the program itself , but if it's that good I guess I will use it forever as my main 3D program ~
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Smittiox on August 25, 2014, 02:59:27 pm
Hey folks ! Been quite a while since I've posted. Hope everyone is doing well, or at least well enough :) Been looking in now n then on the Rathmor progress. WoW doesn't do it justice but .. WoW !  :eek: Nice work Man !!!

Been fooling around with transparent objects and .MDL files. I understand with making a transparent .MDL, It's all or nothing but I can't seem to figure out how to do it. I read elsewhere the transparency has to be stated in Meta. I've nearly worn out my alpha and diffuse sliders, tried covering in a texture , trying without textures, covered in just vertex colors etc to no avail :P. I'm thinking/hoping it's just a setting I'm overlooking somewhere in Meta. Also I'm assuming it will work for Objects too like I've read it will with Enemies and if so, possibly even Magic projectile models ? Also thought it may be something I might have to hex edit in or out like a transparency on and off byte , bit . chomp ... whatever lol

My goal was to make a lamp with a flame on top with a glass see through part on a solid frame which I can achieve partly in .MDO (flame at the bottom)and partly with .MDL (no or full transparency). Making the object an MDO then putting a 'flame object' on top works fine though. Also I could save the file in meta below the surface since the flame defaults to 0,0,0 then set the Y up in the map editor. works but feels like cheating without actually figuring it out :P

In the process I'd gotten an idea for a fully transparent skull enemy with a flame in the middle to guard whatever secret goodie the player is going for. The rough test looks more like an ice cube though :P  Any help would be greatly appreciated  :smile:

As far as flamed objects in general, I'd been saving my .X file as animated X. can't get cpgen to drop a file so the flame knows where to go if I save in .X retained mode. Kind of pointless to have a bone and 1 frame of animation in there when it does nothing but get cpgen to work unless theres a better way. Also I dunno how bad that taxes resources either in case you had a lot of them.

Speaking of having lots of objects taxing things, I read elsewhere about billboarding. I found the spot in the obj prf's to turn it on and off. its at line 00000030 / 0E --- 00 is off 01 is on. If this is old news I'm sorry, new to me  :smile:

P.S. sorry if I should have posted in another thread for modeling but since I'm under the impression the transparency setting I'm trying to find is in meta I figured I'd post it here.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on August 25, 2014, 03:51:27 pm
Really appreciate the comment on my work Smittiox, stay tuned, it'll be released hopefully this weekend.

Speaking of having lots of objects taxing things, I read elsewhere about billboarding. I found the spot in the obj prf's to turn it on and off. its at line 00000030 / 0E --- 00 is off 01 is on. If this is old news I'm sorry, new to me

... ............................................ ............................. All I can say is thank you, very much. We've been trying to figure this out for ages. I already gave up on some of my flame sprite ideas, but now I have the know, I may use it in the future.

 :beerchug:

To get transparency, you need the latest mdl converter, and alpha in your texture. So you'l select a part of the texture that you want to have transparency, then (if using GIMP) go to colors > color to alpha. My advice is to desaturate the texture (colors > desaturate, gray / middle slider usually works well) then colourise it (colors > colorize) to get a good transparency map  :badteeth:

Incase you don't know, make sure the texture is 256x256 for smaller objects. The mdl converter handles 3x 256x256, but you can up the scale (to 2048x2048) for larger models in one texture alone, providing you use the prf editor and an external texture command in the .prf file.

The latest .prf editor comes with an option for setting 'lamps' along with flame animations and loop timing  :smile:
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Smittiox on August 25, 2014, 05:07:56 pm
Thanks for the quick reply and you're very welcome man   :beerchug:

   What I did was put a few swords into the obj folder from the item folder like I read Tom did and threw em in a test area to see what they did. Then I compared the prf's with the altar object. I noticed on the right side of the hex editor a few symbols ( > Z o ) stayed the same between the swords so I tried editing them into the altar prf manually but got nothing.  Then I grabbed the dagger prf since it was the least complicated looking and noticed that little 0 turning to one as I flipped back n forth between files so I changed (guessed) it in the altar prf to a 1 and voila, it worked !!

   Again happy to give back something here  :smile: Actually I oughtta put up the 'flame object' files in the addon thread. Not much but something to play with. Put an independent flame /lamp object anywhere you want. the flame size increases and decreases with the size of the object too :) kindof and unexpected added bonus. figured the flame would stay the same size. And yeah the new prf editor John put together is great. kinda where the ideas started flowing from once I saw the extra tools and settings :) Thanks John !!. Had some fun with the cp green setting for the enemies but could only get one flame. tried putting 4 green 0 cp's on a single object but only got one flame. mabey only good for custom enemies ? anyhoo, had 4 cloth skeletons roaming around with flames in different places :P

I'm gonna get crackin with the info you gave me Ben , Thanks a load , been drivin me batty lol. kinda thought it may have something to do with textures since all the untextured tests just came out white. As far as I know I have the latest MDL converter .. 1.0 , the one at holy's site at the top of the post. let ya know what happens 

I'll keep checkin in for the masterpiece release  :wink: Again , Thanks for the info man

(bah, just got a call. gotta help a neighbor haul some mattresses. have truck will travel I guess)

Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on August 26, 2014, 05:40:31 pm
Wow! I didn't know anyone else besides Ben even knew what a CP triangle was much less actually working with them :) Neat!. Thanks for finding the bilboard location. I'll try to add support for that to the PRF editor when I get time.

I don't think the flame location in MDOs has anything to do with a CP triangle. It's location is set by a value in each MDO. x2mdo just zeros it out normally so flames start at XYZ=0 by default. I wouldn't be surprised in x2mdo.exe supports a command line switch to set the flame location, but nothing was mentioned in the tools readme.

The location is set by three 4-byte long floating point values written backwards at around 0x28 in the MDO (hows that for a mouth full  :drool: ). BUT, the 0x28 location is NOT constant. It varies depending on the header size. In the MDOs I've looked the flame location starts in a blank area 16 bytes after the value 803f.  On lamp MDOs, the Y value is not blank of course.

If you're not familiar with floating point values, they're just the way a computer writes numbers with a decimal point. So 1.0 becomes 0x3f80 or as written in SoM 0x803F. You can probably find an online floating point converter easily- the distance is in SoM 'meters', so 2m = one map Piece.

So to make a lamp with a solid base and clear glass top, I think you would make a non animated model with 2 textures. The transparent texture wouldcover the glass and have an adjusted alpha of emission. If I remember correctly, emission makes the object see-trough and bright like glowing. Then after converting to MDO, edit the flame height in a hex editor.

Ha, skeleton on fire. Reminds me of joking about how dumb the genetically altered super soldiers in Metal Gear Solid were. "Huh! What was that noise!" as you shoot a bullet 2 inches from their head. In this case, "Huh!? What was that smell?"
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Smittiox on August 29, 2014, 02:33:15 pm
Hey ! Thanks for the Mdo info man :) I'll mess with that some tonight. better to have it all in one package than two eh ?
  No problem on the billboard tag. I  kinda just stumbled onto it really :P. almost didn't notice the number changing. 

   Been getting back into SOM lately trying to get the noggin wrapped around the CP functions and getting into the animation end of things . Guess I could have posted more often lol. been a lurker  :ninja: 

  Was reading up on the bone constraint info you guys posted up. Got a handle on it to an extent I guess but the info in the bump setting of the materials looks kinda hairy.       
  Playing around with a skull off one of the stock skeletons making it fly with a flapping jaw. Got it working but the preview in the SOM parameter editor has the jaw buried in the skull for some reason :P Looks that way in SOMIMP too before you hit play. Think I have the bones set up wrong mabey.

  Lol yeah, the metal gear soldiers were a bunch of numbskulls lol. kinda like these guys    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHbF9ynGZV0

 
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Smittiox on August 29, 2014, 03:12:14 pm
pics
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on August 29, 2014, 05:04:40 pm
x2mdl moves the root of each object in a model to XYZ=0 during the conversion process. That only changes when the first frame of animation moves everything to its proper place. It was mentioned that this bug had been fixed, but I have no idea which version if any of x2mdl actually contain the fix.

x2mdl also has and interpolation path-finding issue that makes moving parts sometimes twitch into a mirror image of what they're supposed to be. I've had some success with fixing those "twitches" by changing the keyframe placement.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on August 30, 2014, 12:05:14 am
The scrunching doesnt affect the model in game, so its only editor based and map preview based. There was a freeze option in the latest build, you'l need to use CMD during your conversion, and after x2mdl type 0,1,2 (first frame from an animation to freeze)
Example
x2mdl.exe 0 skull.x

I intend to add a bug report of errors, workarounds etc I have found in SoM as a return favour for x2mdl and cpgen. I hope others contribute when I do, its good to give something back!

Smittiox, have you seen my boning (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IfocVl8Uxw&list=UUS_XEJI9p25CS0y5XWoYIvw) video :tongue: :biggrin: tutorial it might help.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Smittiox on September 05, 2014, 08:15:29 pm
Hey guys ! Thanks for the info . haven't had any twithching problems yet but I'm just messing around with simple models and animations at the moment.

  Tried running x2mdl from a command line but couldn't get it to work. kept thinking I was trying to load a file called "0" lol

pretty sure I was running it correctly. When you mentioned a 'freeze option, were you talking about the latest keynote or x2mdl ? .. not really sure if I'm running the latest x2mdl either . I have the one from the Som download page here included in the divers tools folder. I'd gotten one from the forums over at Holy's site too but I think it's old also. could you point me in the right direction for the latest x2mdl ?

   Yeah, your right. It's always great to give back if ya can man :) I appreciate Holy's work on x2mdl and cp gen as well. had a lot of fun with it. tell him if ya get a chance. I get lost at his site lol.

Yeah, I watched the 'boning' vid , good stuff man :)

   I've got Moratheia downloading as I'm typing now. It's a lil after 9pm where I'm at now, bet it'll be 3 am before I know It once I get playing :D
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on September 05, 2014, 09:29:42 pm
Ok I'm not sure if you want to work this way, but it may be that the command line is wrong. Usually you need to mount a drive to work with cmd in this way. So for me, I work with a folder named "tools" so when cmd loads up I type

cd/tools

(drive appears on left) x2mdl.exe 0 fist.x

Make sure the texture is in the output folder

I dont think Holy would appreciate me distributing x2mdl here, so I wont. There was a bit of fuss a while ago with his program being mentioned here, I have respect for his work...

Anyway... x2mdl is still in beta stages. It works, but I think alot more will be added in the future.

Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on September 05, 2014, 11:23:32 pm
In the screenshot, it appears that x2mdl is not recognizing the 0 switch. It thinks the 0 is the model's name and producing an error because the file doesn't exist. Which means you are probably using an old version of the program.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: s on January 04, 2015, 09:50:14 pm
There are some good Metasequoia plugins at this site.

http://www.siobi.info/program/index.htm (http://www.siobi.info/program/index.htm)

Is it possible for you fellas to translate them?
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on January 05, 2015, 03:22:25 pm
I'm really short on time right now. I don't think I will be able to. Are there any that you've used and find really helpful?

I noticed a message link on the page. You might try contacting the author and request an English release.  :beerchug:
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: s on January 07, 2015, 10:36:38 pm
No problem.

I use the first one a lot which creates polyhedral primitives.

EDIT: What Resource Editor do you use for editing the DLL?
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on January 08, 2015, 11:47:26 pm
Attached is the first one. Those shapes have some pretty technical names. I don't even know all of them. I went with a more "layman" phrasing but I can change it to technical if you care.   :beerchug:

Translation procedure depend on how the object is formatted. ResEdit is a good free tool but I don't think it handles compression. You'll almost always need a hex editor that supports Shift-JIS also. Pointer editing is often required as well. I either do that manually in a hex editor or use the tool armips, but it's a fairly complicated until you learn how to use it.

EDIT: A huge thanks to the author who released his plugins in English HERE! (http://www.siobi.info/program/index.htm)
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: s on January 09, 2015, 09:32:21 pm
Wow. Thanks for that. Your layman terms are good.

I did try and use a resource editor+bing translate but was only able to change the easy stuff - the dialog caption and labels.

The resource editor (ResTuner 30 day trial version) didn't list any strings.

I tried to use MadEdit which at least had a tab for the strings but I still couldn't match them with what Metasequoia 4 was showing.

I also sent message to author requesting English versions.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on January 10, 2015, 04:41:10 pm
For this one, the Japanese dropdown text should have been visible in MadEdit at the same location as the English text in the translated one.  If you do a comparison of the Japanese and English versions, you'll also find a block of pointers that have been edited. All the pointers for the dropdown are in a single block; the copyright and name string pointers are elsewhere by themselves. The pointers are 32 bit values (reversed) that show the location where the text starts in the file. If you have the inkling, you should be able to translate all those using the tools you mention.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: s on January 12, 2015, 12:28:49 am
Good news. The author of the plugins now includes English versions in the downloads.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on January 12, 2015, 01:19:09 am
That's really nice of him!  I added a link to his site on the top-post list. Thank you for finding this s.

WoW  :eek: look at that list of polyhedron names. Like I said pretty technical. He's smarter than I am!
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: s on January 12, 2015, 07:02:26 pm
I expect to see some RhombiTruncated icosidodecahedrons in your next game!
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on January 12, 2015, 08:57:52 pm
Lol  :biggrin:
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Havok on January 23, 2015, 02:05:25 am
Finally made my first Object/weapon, a Halberd! It has a ton of messed up spots but Im still learning, this is so cool

(http://i60.tinypic.com/op8kmd.jpg)
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Verdite on January 23, 2015, 04:33:06 am
Good work Havok, your first model looks great!

I would be happy to assist your progress in any way I can.

You may have already been here,The DIY thread (http://www.swordofmoonlight.com/bbs/index.php?topic=710.0)
It contains some out dated but useful information on modelling
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Havok on January 23, 2015, 05:07:57 am
Thanks, that very post was what got me started on it all! I was completly clueless and after reading that and a few other posts I'm now creating all sorts of things!
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on January 23, 2015, 04:10:01 pm
Very nice, especially for a first attempt!
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Havok on February 02, 2015, 07:19:28 pm
Is there anyway in Metasequioa to make curves and round edges/lines good? I cant seem to find a good way or the tool to do so, please explain :)
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on February 02, 2015, 07:41:32 pm
Could you give a specific example of what you're trying to round? I think the answer might differ depending on what you're working with.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: Havok on February 02, 2015, 09:43:32 pm
Like a sword blade, to make it kinda like a S shape, is there anyway to take a highlighted line and curve it that way? or should I just stick to tracing pictures to do curves.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: HwitVlf on February 02, 2015, 10:49:32 pm
I'm far from a modeling guru, but you might try the bend function which lets you draw a 'base-line" (left click+hold+drag to draw) then make a second bent line (left click+hold+drag) to warp the selected vertices. The up/down location of the first 2 dots will affect how the object is bent. Pressing F1-F3 to align the view might help.

Another possibility is the "Pipe" plugin. To use it, draw a curved line (create line) that follows the center of the object you're making (ie, the curved sword blade). Again, pressing F1-F3 should help keep the line flat. Next draw a separate line loop that will be what the cross section of the sword will look like (ie probably a diamond). Select both lines and run the Pipe plugin. It will draw polygons along your curved line that match the looped lines shape.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: fuerchan on August 25, 2015, 01:39:34 pm
Hi,

I downloaded "Keynote" from http: //mqdl.jpn.org/sb.cgi cid = 1?
But where is the contradiction in English ?

"Keytonte" works with Metasequoia 4.5 ?

Thank you
F.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: airflamesred on September 09, 2015, 01:48:35 pm
I don't believe it works with metasequoia 4 and above.

As I understand it, MR Mizno (the creator) has now made this his full time business and as such is charging accordingly. It is just about catching up with we had 4? years ago with metasequoia 3 and the translated plugins from John.

But I do think ver 4 seems to have some sort of bone system.
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: djil;f on October 25, 2015, 09:13:25 pm
I request help. Where can I get a download for x2mdo.exe. When I make a 3d model to put into my SOM map with metaseq I have the 3d model but I do not have or do not know where x2mdo.exe is. I am following the tutorial on the SOM webpage about custom 3d objects without animation and it says to put the 3d model and x2mdo.exe into the same folder. Anyone who can help is very needed.  :coffee:





                                                                                                           Sincerely-djil;f
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: dmpdesign on October 29, 2015, 09:52:18 pm
The downloads section of the boards has what you need, specifically the link you are looking for is here:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/26802124/SoMEditTools.zip
Title: Re: Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins
Post by: djil;f on November 08, 2015, 03:53:10 pm
Thank you for the help, this will get things rolling :smash2: