Exporting

From Celestial Impact Wiki

This is a summary of what to think about before export a model to Celestial Impact from Lightwave.

There is two exporters, one for the object and one for animations. Both used from Lightwave (Layout) not Modeler. The exported files will be created in the root of your chosen content directory. Object and animation files will not overwrite any previouslly exported (named after increasing number starting with 0000) but a logfile will overwrite any existing file (bolo2log.txt and am2log.txt).

Contents 1 Models 2 Animation 3 Normal map (bump) 3.1 ORB 3.2 modo 3.3 Zmapper

Models

• use bolo2exp.p (todo: link to latest)
• only triangles
• material name
• smoothangle (the first materials angle will be used)
• divied sharp edges (no common vertexes)
• no shared vertexes in uv
• only one uv / object
• no skelegon layers
• points for use in Celestial Impact are null objects starting the name with prefix TAG
• if bones one "mother"
• record piv rot (shift+p) first and then record bone rest position (r) for all bones  !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Animation

• use am2exp.p
• number of bones in am2 and bo2 must be the same
• record piv rot (shift+p) first and then record bone rest position (r) for all bones  !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
• controlbones must have a zero weightmap
• bones not active for a animation must be set to bone inactive in properties
• all bones should have use weightmap only
• renderframe start / stop are used for which frames to export
• renderframe step is used for offset when exporting frames

Normal map (bump)

As Celestial Impact supports normalmapping I have used and tried some diffrent tools for obtaining them. This is more a selfnote to me (Danne) then a general guide for exporting. ORB is an tool similar to ati and nvidia tools but I find it more easy to use. Though it is extremly slow and modo 202 does a better job in no time (2 min vs 10 hours).

ORB

• both highpoly and lowpoly must be triangleized
• delete any nonplanear triangles (failed modeling ;)) in highpoly (and low)
• correct smoothing set for both objects
• check script for exporting
  • objects paths
  • genereting method
• move any old texture so they dont get overwritten
• merge all points in lowpoly
• if setting AntiAlias on it will actully turn it off (default is on).

modo

• highpoly in background
• displacment distance is "raycast" distance
• blank image in low material and then bake from objekt

Zmapper

• store morphtarget for lowlevel
• more to come...