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Custom 1st Person Weapons Tutorial |
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MOD
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Written by KungKrille
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Page 1 of 5 This tutorial assumes that you have some knowledge
about how 3D Studio Max works.
Part 1 - Preparing the finished model for skinning
A first person gun in Red Faction (RF) is a combination of the
weapon and the players arms - actually they are one single mesh. If you are
working on a total modification with new characters, you have to model arms
that corresponds to those. Others like me who just want to add new guns need
Parkers arms. Don´t worry, you don´t have to model them by yourself. Download RF
Weapon Examples, extract the files and you have several .max scenes
containing the arms.
Open a Rail scene in Max and hide everything except
for the model itself ("Mesh" is usually included in the objects name). Be
sure that you are on frame "0" (if you don´t see frame "0" expand the
timeline).
It´s where the model is in rest pose. Goto Modifier
stack and choose "Edit Patch".
There are hidden geometry you can´t delete if you don´t. Select all patches except for the
arm and delete them. Turn the model back to editable mesh. Unhide all the other objects and delete all bones referring to the gun. Open a new Track View and expand Objects one step.
Right click on Bip01 and select Expand Objects. Right click again and select Expand tracks. Delete all keyframes and close the window. Save the scene and open your gun model or start on a new one now :-)
Otherwise you can download my testgun and the
texture.
When you have finished the new gun merge the arm scene. Position the gun so it doesn´t mix with the arm and resize it so it fits your concept and the hand. Attach them together to one single mesh and rename it to XXXX-Mesh.
I assume that you have mapped your gun and made some cool textures. RF requires that all textures are collected in one
material. First check the material ID:s. For a quick test goto modifier stack, select polygons and scroll down to surface properties. Click on Select by ID and select "1".
The hand polygons should be highlighted. If not change the ID to 1 while the polygons are selected. "2" should be lower arm
and "3" upper arm. My gun have just one texture so those polygons can share one ID and I suggest "4". Don´t mind if the gun suddenly looks odd with wrong texture - we will fix it in the next step.
Open the Material Editor. Select the first material and turn it to Multi/Sub-Object and choose Discard old material.
Click Set Number and select "4". Browse each texture - hand1st.tga for the hand, envirohand.tga for the lower arm,
armnew1.tga for the upper arm and gun_map.tga for my gun. Type in names that make sense for a better overview.
The last step before rigging and skinning is to center the models pivot and put all in the origin of the scene. Select the
model and goto Hierarchy and click Affect Pivot Only.
Click Center to Object and Align to World. Now don´t forget to reset the model!!! This is one of the most common
mistakes. That is for bones as well (but you don´t have to reset the existing bones). Goto Utilities and click Reset XForm and Reset Selected.
Collapse the Modifier stack. Bring a pencil and a piece of paper and write down the models position in all three dimensions,
then center it to the origin by typing in "0" in all three slots.
The BDBN bones and biped don´t follow, so you have to select each root bone and align them to the model manually with help by your notes. Before you do it you have to link the BDBN bones together with the link tool.
Upper arm to root (the little diamond), lower arm to upper arm, hand to lower arm, thumb 03 to hand, thumb 02 to thumb 03
(Volition numbered the fingers from the tip to the hand, very confusing) - continue until all bones are linked. Select the root bone you want to move first and concentrate on the coordinates. Use the previously written figures and
add or subtract to get new values and type them in. Do this for both roots and look in the viewports so all are aligned.
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![](images/modtutes/weapon/gun_arm.gif")
