CaeDares
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11 years ago
I'm creating a couple characters right now for CNC:ZH and was just wondering what I have to do in order to give a character the "color indication" to show what team it's on. Is that something I have to do while modelling the character or does it have to be done within an .ini file...?
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acidbrain
11 years ago
Make an object called housecolor and asign a housecolor texture to it and voilla.
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CaeDares
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11 years ago

Make an object called housecolor and asign a housecolor texture to it and voilla.

Originally Posted by: acidbrain 



Thank you, but could you explain what you mean by "Housecolor Texture"? Are they certain textures that I have to use like solid in-game colors?
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acidbrain
11 years ago
Check the textures in Art/Textures, there are textures called Housecolor, if you asign that texture to parts of you model it will be teamcolor in game.
Note: the textures are in both vanilla and ZH
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CaeDares
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11 years ago

Check the textures in Art/Textures, there are textures called Housecolor, if you asign that texture to parts of you model it will be teamcolor in game.
Note: the textures are in both vanilla and ZH

Originally Posted by: acidbrain 



Thanks a bunch for this.

Edit: Do you mean the Art/Textures folder under my Gmax/RenX folders, or in one of my Generals folders? Whichever it is, I don't have that folder for any of them, so now I'm clueless as to where it is.

Would you also happen to know how I skin the front AND back of the model?
I'm using ChilliSkinner (Not sure what it's purpose is so far, was just told to use it in a tutorial).
I click on "Asset Browser" and find the file I want to put on my model. I did a recolor of the "zhca_airanger_s2.tga" file and saved it under a different name. It basically looks like an alien. Naked upper body with the rib cage and chest muscles and whatnot. I apply the new skin and only the front of his body seems to be skinned (he's all gray). How would I go about doing the back side of him so that I can give him shoulder blades and stuff like that.
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Rrtaya_tsamsiyu
11 years ago
Actually, you just need to name the object HOUSECOLORxx [x's are numbers]and you can give it whatever texture you want.

The team color will combine with whatever texture you use. So, if you color the object red and the player selects green, the object will be yellow in game due to the colors combining. Grey will darken the team's color.

You can use this to achieve different effects, like making an an exhaust port be the house color, and have the texture get dark in the middle so it looks like the housecolor has been covered in soot from the exhaust, things like that. Or don't put any texture and it should just give you the team color.

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And the main thing you'll probably use chilli skinner for is the Auto Detach function. It's right under the Detach Angle thingy, the icon looks like a cube with some gears. Select your object, then click that icon and it should turn most of the surfaces into little pieces that you can texture individually.

Another thing you can do, since you're just trying to texture two sides, is to copy your object, then delete the front half of one copy and delete the back half of the other copy. Then your object will be two sides instead of a bunch of little pieces like what chilli will do.
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CaeDares
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11 years ago
Alright, thank you.

So guide me a little bit, here, with this file as an example.

UserPostedImage

Obviously I know where the head, body, legs, and feet, and arm are, but what the hell are the other 2?
And on that note, there are others that look completely different than this one. When I make my own, how the heck do I know where to put everything? How large should they be? Are they supposed to be that close together?
What even?
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Rrtaya_tsamsiyu
11 years ago
i'm guessing the other thing is his gun. i've never used .dds, i've always used .tga files. From what i understand though, the .dds files are basically multiple images mashed together, and the .dds file remembers which images are which so the game can use them individually. i think.
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CaeDares
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11 years ago

i'm guessing the other thing is his gun. i've never used .dds, i've always used .tga files. From what i understand though, the .dds files are basically multiple images mashed together, and the .dds file remembers which images are which so the game can use them individually. i think.

Originally Posted by: Rrtaya_tsamsiyu 



Okay, so you say they're multiple images mashed together. Am I supposed to be making separate images before doing this?
Also, this is a .tga file originally. I only converted it to .png so that I could post it here.
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Rrtaya_tsamsiyu
11 years ago
hmm. i'm really not sure how the dds is different than tga then, also dont know how it sees what needs to go where. i always use individual tga textures though.
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CommieDog
11 years ago
The DDS format is essentially a compressed form of TGA. The big difference is that the DDS format stores smaller versions of the main image (called mip maps) for faster drawing at low resolutions.
UserPostedImage 
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Gameanater
11 years ago

3 users thanked CommieDog for this useful post.
Rrtaya_Tsamsiyu on 11/20/2014, UTD^Force on 11/21/2014, CaeDares on 11/21/2014

cnclabs forums wrote:



Now that's not something you see every day.
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UTD^Force
11 years ago

3 users thanked CommieDog for this useful post.
Rrtaya_Tsamsiyu on 11/20/2014, UTD^Force on 11/21/2014, CaeDares on 11/21/2014

Originally Posted by: Gameanater 



Now that's not something you see every day.

cnclabs forums wrote:



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Gameanater
11 years ago

Yes, I actually thank any post that I see useful, even if I already know it 🙂 & he's CommieDog 😛 xD

Originally Posted by: UTD^Force 



lol


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menard
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11 years ago

The DDS format is essentially a compressed form of TGA. The big difference is that the DDS format stores smaller versions of the main image (called mip maps) for faster drawing at low resolutions.

Originally Posted by: CommieDog 



excuse me sir what is diffuse color mean in Material Navigator?I extract the textures.big using finalbig.exe but all image files are in .dds file extension format. But how could the game engine recognize dds file extension? While in RenX the bitmap textures is in .tga files.
CommieDog
11 years ago
I think that diffuse color is the regular color channel. It's the only color channel that Generals uses.

As for the game engine recognizing the DDS format, it's essentially a compressed form of TGA. You could save the skins in TGA format and Generals would read it just fine, though it might run a little slower depending on your graphics card setup.
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menard
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11 years ago

I think that diffuse color is the regular color channel. It's the only color channel that Generals uses.

As for the game engine recognizing the DDS format, it's essentially a compressed form of TGA. You could save the skins in TGA format and Generals would read it just fine, though it might run a little slower depending on your graphics card setup.

Originally Posted by: CommieDog 



Okay sir now how to generate or make an mipmaps in my new textures and what software should i use to do that?
CommieDog
11 years ago
You don't have to worry about making mip maps. Photoshop or whatever you use to save the DDS file should make them for you.
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CaeDares
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11 years ago
Im a little confused on how creating these texture files is done. Could anybody here provide a tutorial explaining how to do so and how it works? Would be much easier than trying to explain it all in several different posts.
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CommieDog
11 years ago
Making a TGA texture is easy. Just make something in an image editing program and save it as a TGA file.

Making a DDS texture is trickier. You'll have to find a program that can save in DDS format (I think Photoshop can with a plugin from Nvidia). And you'll have to make sure that the dimensions are both powers of 2.
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