Modeler Tips

Anything to do with Drakan level editing and modifications, post it here! Also this is the place to tell us about your new levels and get player feedback.
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shoprat
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Modeler Tips

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Modeler tips

Keyboard Shortcuts____
Learning the keyboard shortcuts will make working with the modeler much more enjoyable. You can find the keyboard shortcuts listed next to their function under the menu.


Remove all duplicated vertices____
The engine can crash when a model is corrupt like this so double check all your models. From the Modeler main menu go to Edit/Vertices/ Remove All Duplicates.


Lighting____
Make sure assign proper lighting to your models. Use smooth shading on all large models even if they aren’t "smooth". Because the engine uses vertex lighting Flat shading on large objects don’t shade correctly. Use Smooth Blend w/ Landscape on models that you want blended with the landscape. This will ensure proper lighting from the landscape to the model. Use Flat shading on objects that you want to have a faceted look. Specular enables your models to have a hard metallic or crystal look. You’ll see the specular highlight applied to the entire polygon so be careful when applying this to polygons with an alpha map. No lighting (that is giving your object no lighting) can give your objects the appearance of being illuminant, like light bulbs. Additive blending is used mostly for special effects but can be good on windows. Any RGB values in your texture that is additive exceeding 128 will not render correctly and get strange artifacts on screen. By controlling the RGB values you can control how the pixels blend with each other. As with anything, you must try all things and see what kind of looks you can achieve.


Textures____
Make all your textures square. It’s a more efficient use of space. The Riot Engine will convert any non-square texture to be square before it loads it into memory.


Quads____
Only Quad static models and don't increase the threshold more than 2 degrees. Otherwise your textures will warp and look silly in the game.


Modeling in Max____
To ensure proper lighting and efficient rendering make sure the object you export is a single object with all the vertices welded.


Fitting you models to the landscape____
To have your models fit into the landscape you need to make sure that all the vertices of the model match PERFECTLY to the vertices of the landscape. Make sure your grid and units are set properly in MAX and that you have "snapped" the vertices to the grid. Any gap, no matter how small, will show up in the game.


Texturing in MAX____
The REO and REC exporter will retain all the texture UV mapping coordinates you place in MAX. It’s a good idea to use MAX to outline your texture coordinates quickly and fine tune them in the Modeler.


Bounding____
Hide the faces once they’ve been bound. This will help keep the screen free of clutter and help you see what faces have been bound and what haven’t. The value of this technique will be more apparent on large complicated models. See View in the Overview section for more information on hiding polygons.

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