Need Help Problems with TOOL

[Levis]

I don't know where to place this so I just put it here.
I tried to follow some tutorials about tool to get a grip on the moddeling.
I checked this tutorial:
http://www.piratesahoy.net/threads/location-remodeling-with-inez-tool.10381/
And the one in the documentation but I keep gettings a error which I can't find here.
I just tried to open a location model and remove everything except 1 thing with the edit scene. then I saved it as a VRML. No problem till there. I can edit the VRML in 3ds max without problems. But when I want to convert it back to a gm file I get problems.
Even if I change nothing I get this prolem. I also tried it by just importing a gm into tool and save it as a VRML and trying to save it as a gm again. Still I get this problem.
Everything goes well untill I get the question for the bounding boxes. I clicked cancel there and then I first get toolerror1.png. After that I get toolerro2.png. Now I'm in tool and the model shows up fine. But when I try to save it as a gm I get toolerror3.png. There is a file created but this file isn't finished. So somewhere it goes wrong. Probally it has something to do with the matrix out of bounds which is talked about in error1 but I dont know for sure.
Can someone please explain me how to fix this?
I'm running windows 7 Professional x64

 

[Pieter Boelen]

The tool is just a custom-made program by this community and isn't always very stable.
For exporting to GM, technically the best way would be to use Maya. Armada is the resident expert on that here.

I have added you to the Modders group, so you can now access this here: http://www.piratesahoy.net/threads/ftp-akella-modding-tools-and-help-files.12623/
Most relevant are the Maya links at the top, along with the help files there.

I hope this helps a bit.

 

[Levis]

Thanks. I will try that.

 

[Armada]

If you try working with Maya and run into any problems with exporting to GM (and that does happen quite frequently), post here and I'll do my best to help.

 

[Levis]

Hmm....I got my model in maya (first tried it trough GM viewer but that caused some glitches so) I went trough tool and made a VRML which I converted to a obj file and loaded it in maya 5. I installed the export dlls but when I try to export it just doesn't do anything. I can set settings etc but when I press export it just doesn't do anything. It could have something to do with missing textures. I didn't set those right etc. Do you maybe have/know a folder or something like that where everything is set right which I can load into maya and try to export so I can see if the problem is in maya or in the model?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Do you maybe have/know a folder or something like that where everything is set right which I can load into maya and try to export so I can see if the problem is in maya or in the model?

I think those are in those help archives somewhere.

 

[Armada]

Exporting without textures does work for testing purposes, I think, but nothing will export unless you have the correct hierarchy and choose the right settings.
By default, you must parent the model to a locator and select that locator before exporting.
The locator's name doesn't matter, and it should be placed where you want the model's centre of rotation to be.

For how to apply textures to a model, see this tutorial and scroll down to the section about the Hypershade window.
Things to bear in mind that differ from that tutorial:
- I'd normally use the Lambert shader instead of Blinn, because we can ignore specular and displacement maps for this game.
- You need to use GM Viewer to determine which textures the model uses, and then use TX Converter to find the textures in the game files and convert them from TGA.TX to TGA format.

Could you also show a screenshot of your model in Maya? There are usually a couple of other things to do to make sure the model looks right when exported.

 

[Levis]

are there any tutorials on how to do it exactly? I can find them with TOOL but I can't find the ones with maya and I can't think of any keywords which makes the search give me the right results.

 

[Armada]

There are no in-depth tutorials covering everything you need to know just yet, though I intend to write one fairly soon.

Can I ask, before going any further, what it is you're trying to achieve? Are you simply experimenting with the process or do you have a specific goal?

 

[Levis]

I'm experimenting for now. But I want to go archieve things as soon as I mastered it. Also trying to find out what the (current) limitation are so I know what to keep in mind. For now I was for example trying to remove a single tree in the oxbay suburb because it was going trough a house. Just trying that to figure out how everything worked.