Well most or all of you that wanted to make custom weapons, have seen KungKrille's first person weapons tutorial.
However, most of you (and I) have complained about it not being thorough enough, and wanting a better tutorial.
Well i have FINALLY achieved to making first person weapons, and i come to say that it can be ALOT easier than it seems.
So now it comes down to weither or not i should teach an easier tutorial.....
And i said yes because im not mean and i have time :D
So here it is:
------Slitzerfest's First Person Weapons Tutorial--------------
PART 1 - TEXTURE/Import to Export GUN
Open 3ds max 4 or 5. Import or create the weapon you want, and texture it. Go to Render-->Material Editor and import your texture (make sure it is a 1 texture .tga format. You can shink max and drag and drop your texture into the editor if you find it easier for now), then drag the texture from the editor onto your weapon model. Now use UV Map in the Modifier Stack. (The Modifier stack is a little blue rainbow icon over on the right hand side of your screen) Scroll down until you see UV MAP and add it.
Now expand the UV map bar and it should say "Gizmo", select it, and rotate it so the flat square is up and down, the way your texture will be applied to the gun.
Ok, now right click on the modifier stack and select "Collapse All".
Now you need to select UVW Unwrap in the modifier stack. Do this, and select "Edit UVW" which would be below the modifier box in grey buttons.
Now a screen with your texture and a bunch of vertexes in the shape of your gun should be there. Highlight all of the squares and move them using the + icon. Rotate or scale the gun vertexes until it matches your gun texture.
After you have finished that click Update Map on the top of the screen, then close the screen. Right clcik the modifier stack again and select collapse all. There you are done texturing for now. Export your weapon as .3ds somewhere u can find it.
You are now done texturing your weapon for this part.
PART 2 - IMPORTING YOUR WEAPON INTO BONED/SKINNED MAX SCENE
Ok, before we start again, you need this setup file to make the guiding easier.
Open the scene given to you in this post. Now import your weapon model .3ds into the max scene with the arms. Align the gun and scale the gun to where the gun will be placed... (make the center of the weapon placed where the little pink and green boxes are). Now select the weapon, go to modifier stack Edit Mesh-->Element and highlight the whole gun. Scroll down and you should see a box "Material ID: < >".
Select the right button (>) until it shows "Material ID: < 1 >", and make sure you set it to 1 only. Go to the Material Editor, and you should see a sphere with squares of texture in them. Below there should be names of the different textures like "ID 1, 2" and so on. Select ID 1. Scroll down until you see +Maps, then select that. Then scroll down again until you see krillemap1.tga, and select it..... now browse for your .tga texture. Once you found it, select it and import. Now return to the texture you were at with all the blocks of texture, and drag and drop that texture onto your gun model. You gun is now textured for RF.
Now Select the arm mesh, go to modifier stack, select Edit Mesh-->Element, and under Geometry select the "Attach" button. Attach your weapon. (Note: A warning may come up saying there is RF_Bone applied, just select YES/HOLD).
Now for Boning (Kungkrille called it Skinning, this is what he means). Select your arm/gun mesh, and go to Modifier stack and select in the grey area below the box "Add Bones" button. Add only "BDBN-Weapon". Now go back to the modifier stack, select RF_Bone-->Vertex, and select all you Weapon's blue little vertexes (just highlight the whole weapon, and weapon only).
Now back to the modifier stack. Go down until you see all these bones like "BDBN-LowerArm" and so on..... find "BDBN-Weapon" and select it. Enter into the box beside it 100 and deselect BDBN-Weapon. Now click BDBN-RLowerArm (which should be just above BDBN-Weapon), and enter 0 into the box. There, now your boning is COMPLETE! Save you scene.
Select the weapon and arm mesh again, go to modifier stack, and under the stack in the grey should be "Mesh Parameters". Go down and select Export.
Export your mesh as "fp_testgun.vcm" into your CCrunch.exe directory.
(You will need RF_ToolKit.zip)
Close 3DS Max, and go to Start-->Run and type C:\RFToolKit\CCrunch\ccrunch.exe fp_testgun.vcm (or wherever you put your RF Toolkit.)
-There, your mesh and boning are finished. - Now for animating :)
PART 3 - ANIMATING/RUNNING MVFREDUCE.EXE
Ok now open your Max scene again with your completed boned weapon.
Go to your Track View (This is an icon that looks like 2 yellow boxes with dotted lines, on the top right side of your screen)
In your track view select the + sign beside BDBN-Root. Right click and select expand all.
Select all the Rotation keys (the green triangles beside the word), and you can do this by holding CTRL and selecting every little Rotation you see.
After that you need to assign controller. On the very top of your screen should be like an icon that shows 2 green arrows, and select it.
Go to "Linear Rotation" and click ok.
Now do the same with all the Position keys exept assign "Linear Position".
There. You are now geared for animating :)
Save your scene as Testgun-idle, because we are going to make an idle animation.
Ok, now we get to have some fun. Select the top bone (green box) of the arm and rotate it and use each arm bone and hand bones to make the arms holding gun. You can use both arms if your feeling ok about doing it.
After you have completed doing that, select the Bone "BDBN-Root", it is a blue box on the very bottom of the torso.
On the keyframe timeline on the bottom of the screen, select the first key.
Hold SHIFT and drag the keyframe over to the very last frame.
Now drag the time line box on the timeline to half way. Select the "Animate" button, and move the box down a bit.
Deselect the animate button. Now play it, you have a perfect idle animation! :lol:
Save your scene.
Alright, now for exporting the animation to .mvf.
Select your weapon mesh and scroll down until you see MVF Export.
Select all the bones in their boxes holding CTRL, and export your animation as fp_testgun_idle.mvf into your C:\RFToolKit\MVFReduce\ directory.
Go to start-->run and type "C:\RFToolKit\MVFReduce\mvfreduce -d .00007 -e .00007 -c fp_testgun_idle.mvf".
This has now converted your .mvf to .RFA!
You do this animation step for each animation such as fire, reload, jump, holster, draw, and run. Just animate like i told you, save your scenes, and you should be fine.
-You are now finished your custom weapon! Now you need to open up a mod.vpp, add all your textures and your fp_testgun.v3c, add your fp_testgun_idle.rfa, Then edit your weapons.tbl as KungKrille explained.
***
If there is a problem with the hand... its too far away or the offset is wrong, you can easily fix these by editing the offset in weapons.tbl, and for the far away hand, you need to adjust the bones in your .max scene to where it would go, then do the exporting process over again.
HOPE THIS HELPS ALOT YOU GUYS!
-Slitzerfest.
****************
The attached file does not have the arm textures so dont worry about it you dont need them. Just continue doing what i said.
*****************************************************
rfsetupweapon.zip 66.2 KB |
