[cncrenegade]

When you import the 3 views into gmax/renx, do the images of the aircraft - not the size of the image itself, need to be the same size?

ie... The length of the aircraft in the TOP and SIDE views be the same.

[Pestilence]

cant quite figure what your trying to ask, can describe more what you are looking for.

[cncrenegade]

I was afraid that would be the case...ok.





On this pic, you see the two small hash marks on the bottom, one at the nose and one at the tail of the plane? That's the measurement I was referring to.

Let's just say that the real distance between the 2 hash marks is 2 inches. When I import the TOP view, does the length of the plane in that pic need to be 2 inches as well? The same would apply for wingspan on the TOP and FRONT views.

[killakanz]

yes, otherwise they wont have the same proportions and they will be virtually useless for modelling

[cncrenegade]

Thanks...I kinda thought so but wasn't sure.

Another thing I've noticed is that there always seems to be a set of 3 W3D files for each aircraft. Are these 3 files representing various stages of damage (view-wise) and if so, is that viible damage taken from the skins?

[killakanz]

well, the raptor for example, has the normal model, the damaged model (largly just a skin change), the wrecked model (minus a wing) and a wing, so that's 4 models (cos when it's crashing down the wing falls off, they're 2 separate models)

[cncrenegade]

Okay, you have 3 sets of images for a given unit.

tga, dds and W3D

Based on the ini's, the tga images are addressed in the Mapped Images/ Texture Size_512 folder. The tga images are put in the Art/Texture folder and the W3d's in the Art/W3D folder.

What exactly are the dds images used for and read by, and where are they suppose to be placed?

[Pestilence]

the DDS format is used to create LOD (level of detail) for for objects that are far away in view. when saving to DDS format you get the option to creat MipMap, which are smaller and smaller resolutions of the same image but kept all in the same file, this makes it easier on the graphics system so that when the object is to small to see the detail of the skin, the game will automatically tell the graphics system to use a smaller image mipmap. the smaller the image the less processing it takes to display it.

[killakanz]

As he said ^^

DDS files are put in Art\Textures just like tga

[cncrenegade]

When you have all 3 view images the same size, and then import them into gmax or 3ds, is it going to screw things up when you have to zoom in or out to get the image to fit properly in the view window?