There's a 1 month 3DS Max trial version available for anyone to use. Just get it off their site. It's not a full year, but it's better than nothing.
If you use Blender, then make all your models that you need to in Blender. When you're ready to export, just load up 3ds Max trial and export what you need. Likewise, with a month trial, you can export all the .m3's you want through 3dsMax, then export those back into Blender.
The exporters will most likely be supporting 3D Studio Max. This is the program you should be looking at for animation.
Modelling and Texturing can usually be swapped between different 3D Applications, but Animation is more difficult to transfer between programs (ie Maya -> Max). Stick with 3DS Max if you're just getting started.
DPI has no affect on digital resolutions. Inches are never used, it's always pixel resolution. Textures aren't meant to be printed out, and screen monitors aren't affected by dpi. I don't really understand how this is relevant.
Compression
Image files can be categorized into two types; Compressed and Uncompressed. Targas (.tga) and Bitmaps are uncompressed, and they will have the highest quality image files at the price of a larger filesize. Every pixel stays the same no matter where you open the file from. Compressed file formats such as JPEG (.jpg) and Direct Draw Surface (.dds) are much more efficient formats at the cost of quality. With these file formats, you might get some artifacting or aliasing.
UV Mapping
UV mapping is an important part of texturing. Aliasing, texture stretching and color bleeding can all be attributed to poorly layed out UV's or texture maps that aren't high enough resolution. Aliasing can be caused by UV's, either not having enough texture space/resolution to capture the information to draw a straight line. Texture stretching can also cause aliasing.
Color bleeding (or seams) is when your texture spills over a UV border, causing pixelation. You can alleviate this by making sure you space out UVs and extending your textures beyond the UV border by about 3 pixels.
3D App Settings
If the problem is not the texture, it may be an issue with your 3D app. Make sure your settings are correct and you aren't using a low quality texture/render mode. Depending on what app you're using, there could be settings for your workspace, or there could be quality settings on shaders/texture maps. Even the SC2 editor has graphics settings, so make sure you're on the right one.
As it stands, it's a 120kb .m3 file. The vert count is high due to hair planes and collar flaps. I might be able to optimize this but it depends on how animation and rigging will work for exporting.
Static models don't generally don't take up a lot of space though. It's animation that takes up a chunk of the .m3 file. I'd figure the .m3 getting up to 700k with basic animations included. This model is not rigged or animated.
I'm using .tga's for the texture maps, and they're about 750k each. Together, it's about 1.7mb for a static model + 2 textures.
Yeah in disrepair and what not. What would make it less plane?
Some variation in height would make it more interesting. It looks very flat atm with everything being on the same plane and with very few raised areas. If you had larger sections raised up and give it some ramps, it could look more interesting.
1. You should be using the Starcraft 2 Materials and Starcraft 2 Bitmap
2. For any textures you want TC you will need to flag them as Team Color for the alpha information to work. Do this by going into the Starcraft 2 Bitmap you want TC'd (Lets say Diffuse for example) and at the bottom, there is an option that says 'Use Team Color'. Check this if you want the map to be TC. You can do this for emissive as well if you want TC glows.
From what I know, .M3 is based off Max, and Blizzard has been using Max primarily to create assets for their games. Max is the go-to 3D application if you want to export custom models into Starcraft 2. Even if you use other modelling programs to work in, you should still have Max simply for exporting.
When you export your model with the exporter, the script has a part where it asks you 'use material path'. If you leave this checked, it will point the .M3 to the texture location where you have it set in your .MAX file.
You want to uncheck that so it goes to Assets\Textures; so that the .M3 will look for texture files in that directory (Blizzard's default directory for textures).
Once you've exported an .m3, take it and your textures and import them into your map. Put your texture files into an Assets\Textures folder in the Import Editor. Save the map. The model should be sourcing your textures from within the map now.
I'm playing around with the script right now. Emmissive seems to work (Self Illuminate in Max), though I still can't get Specularity to work. The map is applied but the Spec value in the SC2Edit Previewer has Spec set at 0.00. I'll test out custom shaders in a bit.
-Edit- Woo! Works great :D
Specularity issues were fixed by using the Starcraft 2 shader. The SC2 shader seemed to fix the diffuse lighting fall off as well, so it looks like other units.
I'm having issues getting Spec Maps and Normal Maps working, however. I'm using a Multishader and the Diffuse map works perfectly. I have tried plugging the Spec map into the Specular channel and Normal Map into Bump Map channel (using Tangent space normals). The exporter hiccups at the normal map when I try to export this. Even when I export without a Normal Map, the Spec map doesn't seem to work. I've tried using .dds and .tga, 512X512 maps.
-Edit- Figured out the Normal issue. Had to change it to "Bitmap" type instead of "Normal Bump". Shows in game now. Still trying to figure out my Specular issue.
-2nd edit- Okay going through older posts, seems like Specular isn't fully supported by the script. That's cool.
One added issue. The lighting affecting my custom unit seems to be different from other units in game; the lighting falloff is a lot sharper and makes my model look 'darker' when not in the light. Wondering if this has to do with the default shaders being exported not being the same as the ones the SC2 ones are exported; and if there's any way to tweak this.
0
There's a 1 month 3DS Max trial version available for anyone to use. Just get it off their site. It's not a full year, but it's better than nothing.
If you use Blender, then make all your models that you need to in Blender. When you're ready to export, just load up 3ds Max trial and export what you need. Likewise, with a month trial, you can export all the .m3's you want through 3dsMax, then export those back into Blender.
0
The exporters will most likely be supporting 3D Studio Max. This is the program you should be looking at for animation.
Modelling and Texturing can usually be swapped between different 3D Applications, but Animation is more difficult to transfer between programs (ie Maya -> Max). Stick with 3DS Max if you're just getting started.
0
DPI has no affect on digital resolutions. Inches are never used, it's always pixel resolution. Textures aren't meant to be printed out, and screen monitors aren't affected by dpi. I don't really understand how this is relevant.
0
Here's a few tips
Compression Image files can be categorized into two types; Compressed and Uncompressed. Targas (.tga) and Bitmaps are uncompressed, and they will have the highest quality image files at the price of a larger filesize. Every pixel stays the same no matter where you open the file from. Compressed file formats such as JPEG (.jpg) and Direct Draw Surface (.dds) are much more efficient formats at the cost of quality. With these file formats, you might get some artifacting or aliasing.
UV Mapping UV mapping is an important part of texturing. Aliasing, texture stretching and color bleeding can all be attributed to poorly layed out UV's or texture maps that aren't high enough resolution. Aliasing can be caused by UV's, either not having enough texture space/resolution to capture the information to draw a straight line. Texture stretching can also cause aliasing.
Color bleeding (or seams) is when your texture spills over a UV border, causing pixelation. You can alleviate this by making sure you space out UVs and extending your textures beyond the UV border by about 3 pixels.
3D App Settings If the problem is not the texture, it may be an issue with your 3D app. Make sure your settings are correct and you aren't using a low quality texture/render mode. Depending on what app you're using, there could be settings for your workspace, or there could be quality settings on shaders/texture maps. Even the SC2 editor has graphics settings, so make sure you're on the right one.
0
As it stands, it's a 120kb .m3 file. The vert count is high due to hair planes and collar flaps. I might be able to optimize this but it depends on how animation and rigging will work for exporting.
Static models don't generally don't take up a lot of space though. It's animation that takes up a chunk of the .m3 file. I'd figure the .m3 getting up to 700k with basic animations included. This model is not rigged or animated.
I'm using .tga's for the texture maps, and they're about 750k each. Together, it's about 1.7mb for a static model + 2 textures.
0
Some variation in height would make it more interesting. It looks very flat atm with everything being on the same plane and with very few raised areas. If you had larger sections raised up and give it some ramps, it could look more interesting.
0
Here's my submission
Snow Villiers
Screenshot taken from SC2 editor
1814 polys - 512x512 Diffuse Map - 512x512 Normal Map
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I need more information on this.
One model of the following, correct?
Just the model + textures (color, spec, normal map) I'm assuming?
What is the polycount? Aiming for SC2 unit resolution or something higher?
Final product is just renders?
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<<reply 89323>
1. You should be using the Starcraft 2 Materials and Starcraft 2 Bitmap 2. For any textures you want TC you will need to flag them as Team Color for the alpha information to work. Do this by going into the Starcraft 2 Bitmap you want TC'd (Lets say Diffuse for example) and at the bottom, there is an option that says 'Use Team Color'. Check this if you want the map to be TC. You can do this for emissive as well if you want TC glows.
0
From what I know, .M3 is based off Max, and Blizzard has been using Max primarily to create assets for their games. Max is the go-to 3D application if you want to export custom models into Starcraft 2. Even if you use other modelling programs to work in, you should still have Max simply for exporting.
0
@Cyb3rD3lux3: Go
When you export your model with the exporter, the script has a part where it asks you 'use material path'. If you leave this checked, it will point the .M3 to the texture location where you have it set in your .MAX file.
You want to uncheck that so it goes to Assets\Textures; so that the .M3 will look for texture files in that directory (Blizzard's default directory for textures).
Once you've exported an .m3, take it and your textures and import them into your map. Put your texture files into an Assets\Textures folder in the Import Editor. Save the map. The model should be sourcing your textures from within the map now.
0
Great work NiNtoxicated01!
I'm playing around with the script right now. Emmissive seems to work (Self Illuminate in Max), though I still can't get Specularity to work. The map is applied but the Spec value in the SC2Edit Previewer has Spec set at 0.00. I'll test out custom shaders in a bit.
-Edit- Woo! Works great :D
Specularity issues were fixed by using the Starcraft 2 shader. The SC2 shader seemed to fix the diffuse lighting fall off as well, so it looks like other units.
0
Great script!
I'm having issues getting Spec Maps and Normal Maps working, however. I'm using a Multishader and the Diffuse map works perfectly. I have tried plugging the Spec map into the Specular channel and Normal Map into Bump Map channel (using Tangent space normals). The exporter hiccups at the normal map when I try to export this. Even when I export without a Normal Map, the Spec map doesn't seem to work. I've tried using .dds and .tga, 512X512 maps.
-Edit- Figured out the Normal issue. Had to change it to "Bitmap" type instead of "Normal Bump". Shows in game now. Still trying to figure out my Specular issue. -2nd edit- Okay going through older posts, seems like Specular isn't fully supported by the script. That's cool.
One added issue. The lighting affecting my custom unit seems to be different from other units in game; the lighting falloff is a lot sharper and makes my model look 'darker' when not in the light. Wondering if this has to do with the default shaders being exported not being the same as the ones the SC2 ones are exported; and if there's any way to tweak this.