3D Scenery

Okay well I just got sketchup so I thought I would try it out and make a little catwalk ( I didn't finish it) but I thought I should put it in No Limits and see how it looks well this is how it turned out.

you need the anim8tor fix for sketchup ;)

Meh, proportions are off and object uses too many polys. Part that connects vertical posts can be done as one piece instead of two for example, then delete the caps on the vertical posts.

You can make the metal part inset for more (useful) geometric detail, otherwise you're just using polygons with what can be done via texturing.

using too many poly's at this point is NOT a big deal at all. The track itself has like 10,000 triangles, and this 30-poly catwalk won't affect framerates at all, even if the railings were all 32-sided cylinders lol. Framrates are really only affected when you start making more complex shapes and putting those in rides. Then you have to worry about optimization and poop, and that's always a bitch...

If you model everything in the scene using bad techniques as demonstrated, you get framerates that plunge, so it's good to get off to a correct start and model things correctly. It's not unreasonable to expect that many users will eventually create many objects for their rides and when you have such scenes with many objects that are badly modeled, that's when problems occur.

Optimization for NL models is actually pretty easy if you start off correctly. Try modeling for games where you need to deal with several LoD levels and reducing the polys as much as possible for lower LoD's while retaining the details. (Which is what I'm currently figuring out.)

Example:

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I've done this same thing with other models though that had more polys and were bigger and the textures showed up fine. But for some reason it just won't with this model.



It has to be no limits because I did just a big rectangle with the same material and its still no showing up.

[Metazoanhaddock]

is the texture file in your objects folder?

Yepp. I have my model saved into my Documents then I also have the texture file in my Documents also. And for some reason only certain textures show up on no limits cause there are a couple on sketchup that do work -_-

[TheArchitect]

When in Sketchup, go view>face style> monochrome

and check that no exterior faces are purple, they must all be white. Do this by clicking on the purple face>right-click>reverse faces> then retexture it.

With your fence, i suspect that you have duplicate faces, delete the multiple lines on any single face. So long as it is all one flat surface and you want it all the same colour, you don't need any lines apart from the edges. even in coasteragent99's "good picture" he has diagonal lines on the corners. These aren't needed provided it is all one flat face.

If you delete a line and the face vanishes, it is because your apparently flat face is slightly off being flat. in which case you either ctrl+Z and leave the line there or correct your model to ensure the faces are flat.

When you export, i advise you do it straight into your objects folder. If you dont want it getting lost amongst all the other objects then create a folder in there. When you export it should automatically put all the texture files there for you. Then in NoLimits, load it from this same location.

To avoid your shadowing issues you will need to import this object into Anim8or>Click the four ball button>click on the texture spheres> click "=">click OK> repeat for all spheres.
If any spheres are bellow your window space then drag them up.

When done, export and save back into that same folder with a file name that you will know as the one with the textures sorted.

Archy.

Originally posted by TheArchitect

even in coasteragent99's "good picture" he has diagonal lines on the corners. These aren't needed provided it is all one flat face.

Doesn't actually matter as long as all vertices are welded together, as everything gets turned into triangles anyway. (In fact, the .3ds format only works with triangles.) The lines show how the surface is divided up in the most efficient manner and concave polygons aren't often shown as one single face anyway, depending on the situation.

I'd suggest using Blender or 3DS Max to do the materials as well as scrap up any faces that need to be deleted and patch up smooth shading. Anim8or handles smooth shading pretty well in general, but most problems with it are caused by UV's (texture mappings) and the limitations of the .3ds format. However, Anim8or does not export spherical maps nor .png textures. .png is the best format for preserving quality while keeping file size down, and supports alpha masked and alpha blended textures. (i.e. Textures that can be used to represent lights, foliage, decals, low-poly fences, fog/smoke, and other items.)

Originally posted by JellyBeans

Yepp. I have my model saved into my Documents then I also have the texture file in my Documents also. And for some reason only certain textures show up on no limits cause there are a couple on sketchup that do work -_-

Save both the model and your texture file in your NL Objects folder! and make sure it was linked in the first place to a file in the same folder

ie...

/mydocuments/file.3ds
/mydocuments/images/texture.jpg

goes to

/nolimits/objects/file.3ds
/nolimits/objects/images/texture.jpg

Yeah no luck. Both these files are in my objects folder
Cat.3DS
Metal_Steel_Texture_White

But I still get no luck for some reason. -_-