Need help making vehicle asset [Solved]

[RaeFromStateFarm 3]

Hi, i'm new and basically im trying to convert pre-textured 3d models of cars to assets for CS but im so lost on how to properly uv map or how to make a proper diffuse maps for a model that already has textures(in seperate files at that). . Heres a look at what im working on.

The models already have their own uv maps(right?) though they don't seem to include the wheels and they're organized weirdly..i can't rearrange or explode them in the uv editor without the models textures going allover the place and messing up.

And those are examples of the textures.

 

I've already looked at the two tutorials on steam related to making assets for CS but they're missing too much info and are more focused on models that aren't textured and overall didnt help me much at all. I know the basics to what type of texture maps cars need, and how to optimize the mesh to have less polys. If anyone can please help me i'd appreciate it.

I use 3dsmax 2015 but can also use blender 

 

 

 

[pauliaxz 195]

Well, I can give you some advice, but I see you give up too easily. There are more than enough tutorials here or Steam, but there is no such in-depth step-by-step tutorial how to make vehicle from 0 to 100%, it is impossible to become skilled modeller just after reading one tutorial. You just need to grab things you need from one, from another and so on. In the time being I saw many new individuals deciding to start modelling, they were complete beginners. I remember giving some little tips for some of them, therefore, today I see they are quite popular and became quite skilled. 

So my tips for you:

I see that car has a mediocre UV map and texture, but for first trials it's OK. Also I see wheels have separate texture and are separate objects(?).

So firstly, if there are only two textures, merge them into one. Place wheel texture in the empty space:

 

Then in 3ds Max if wheels are separate object, attach it to the main body. Whole vehicle with it's parts must be one object (when you select). After you attached it, open UV Editor, select seams of the wheels rescale if needed and place in the exact spot where you placed the wheel texture in diffuse:

 

All of this can be found in various tutorials.

BTW,  texture size is wrong, it is 1800x1180. For CSL it must be 1024x; 512x or 256x. Because of this you will need to readjust all UV seams to fit corrected texture. Why? because seams are transformed in such way that whole UV editor window is fake 1800x1180 texture, but actually is a checkered square, you can clearly see how seams are stretched vertically, after enabling diffuse texture, UV Editor window will be of correct size.

[RaeFromStateFarm 3]

4 hours ago, pauliaxz said:

Well, I can give you some advice, but I see you give up too easily. There are more than enough tutorials here or Steam, but there is no such in-depth step-by-step tutorial how to make vehicle from 0 to 100%, it is impossible to become skilled modeller just after reading one tutorial. You just need to grab things you need from one, from another and so on. In the time being I saw many new individuals deciding to start modelling, they were complete beginners. I remember giving some little tips for some of them, therefore, today I see they are quite popular and became quite skilled. 

So my tips for you:

I see that car has a mediocre UV map and texture, but for first trials it's OK. Also I see wheels have separate texture and are separate objects(?).

So firstly, if there are only two textures, merge them into one. Place wheel texture in the empty space:

 

Then in 3ds Max if wheels are separate object, attach it to the main body. Whole vehicle with it's parts must be one object (when you select). After you attached it, open UV Editor, select seams of the wheels rescale if needed and place in the exact spot where you placed the wheel texture in diffuse:

 

All of this can be found in various tutorials.

BTW,  texture size is wrong, it is 1800x1180. For CSL it must be 1024x; 512x or 256x. Because of this you will need to readjust all UV seams to fit corrected texture. Why? because seams are transformed in such way that whole UV editor window is fake 1800x1180 texture, but actually is a checkered square, you can clearly see how seams are stretched vertically, after enabling diffuse texture, UV Editor window will be of correct size.

wheel and car cant be one object in CS or the entire car will spin like a wheel ingame.

[pauliaxz 195]

I have released numerous cars, and you say I am wrong?

It doesn't matter if it is building, vehicle or prop - in all cases model must be one only. But for vehicles wheels are separate elements that must have some vertices touching the ground (at 0 coordinate). Element and object (model) are two different things. In Editable Poly you can click on the red cube, it actually is Element selection tool, or hit hotkey 5. Then select something in your model and you will see what I mean.

[RaeFromStateFarm 3]

46 minutes ago, pauliaxz said:

I have released numerous cars, and you say I am wrong?

It doesn't matter if it is building, vehicle or prop - in all cases model must be one only. But for vehicles wheels are separate elements that must have some vertices touching the ground (at 0 coordinate). Element and object (model) are two different things. In Editable Poly you can click on the red cube, it actually is Element selection tool, or hit hotkey 5. Then select something in your model and you will see what I mean.

okay you confused me there sorry, no need for the hostility. i dont even know how to attach the wheels to the same body yet so i still have work to do. im probably better off clearing the textures and organizing/editing the uv map since the current one is kind of bad then editing the diffuse map to my liking

[Darf 1,439]

2 hours ago, RaeFromStateFarm said:

okay you confused me there sorry, no need for the hostility. i dont even know how to attach the wheels to the same body yet so i still have work to do. im probably better off clearing the textures and organizing/editing the uv map since the current one is kind of bad then editing the diffuse map to my liking

Well it doesn't help if he posts a whole tutorial and the only thing you seem to have gathered was that he was wrong.  If you want to attach an object, click on an object in 3ds max and in the modify panel click attach all, than select the objects you want to attach.

[RaeFromStateFarm 3]

7 hours ago, Darf said:

Well it doesn't help if he posts a whole tutorial and the only thing you seem to have gathered was that he was wrong.  If you want to attach an object, click on an object in 3ds max and in the modify panel click attach all, than select the objects you want to attach.

oh ok thank you both, i thought i posted a 2nd comment replying to the rest of his tutorial guess not didn't mean to look like i was ignoring the rest of his post.

[RaeFromStateFarm 3]

On 11/6/2017 at 6:33 AM, Darf said:

Well it doesn't help if he posts a whole tutorial and the only thing you seem to have gathered was that he was wrong.  If you want to attach an object, click on an object in 3ds max and in the modify panel click attach all, than select the objects you want to attach.

 

On 11/6/2017 at 3:03 AM, pauliaxz said:

I have released numerous cars, and you say I am wrong?

It doesn't matter if it is building, vehicle or prop - in all cases model must be one only. But for vehicles wheels are separate elements that must have some vertices touching the ground (at 0 coordinate). Element and object (model) are two different things. In Editable Poly you can click on the red cube, it actually is Element selection tool, or hit hotkey 5. Then select something in your model and you will see what I mean.

Another question, i opened the entire model in uv editor including the wheels and added the wheels to the diffuse map but when i try to shrink the wheels uv maps, the textures of the wheels zoom up as i shrink the wheel  uv. Could it be that the wheel's are set to use the original wheel texture instead of the wheel texture inside the diffuse map?

I cant figure out how to set the wheels to use the diffuse map if thats the case

[pauliaxz 195]

18 hours ago, RaeFromStateFarm said:

 

Another question, i opened the entire model in uv editor including the wheels and added the wheels to the diffuse map but when i try to shrink the wheels uv maps, the textures of the wheels zoom up as i shrink the wheel  uv. Could it be that the wheel's are set to use the original wheel texture instead of the wheel texture inside the diffuse map?

I cant figure out how to set the wheels to use the diffuse map if thats the case

It seems so, wheels are using their original texture. I believe it is because you chose wrong attach option out of three, when two objects have different textures. Just manually re-apply the texture to whole model, and it should work then. Because now model is one but still uses different textures.

[RaeFromStateFarm 3]

On 11/9/2017 at 3:28 PM, pauliaxz said:

It seems so, wheels are using their original texture. I believe it is because you chose wrong attach option out of three, when two objects have different textures. Just manually re-apply the texture to whole model, and it should work then. Because now model is one but still uses different textures.

i selected everything and clicked attach in edit poly, i'm not 100% sure if it worked but reloading the car's texture didn't change anything until i manually went in material editor and set the wheels to use the same texture as the rest of the car.

i did all my texture maps(example above) and extracted the car as an fbx but when i load it into the asset editor in CS it doesn't load up or let me continue after i select it. Is it possible that's because i didn't create a lod for it yet? Or because all of the elements actually aren't attached? 

edit: also i chcked the model for errors and apparently got double faces and open faces that might be the problem, i fixed most of them and tried loading it and it still failed so i guess i need to find out how to fix all of them

[pauliaxz 195]

LOD is not necessary for importing, so reasons for model not showing up might be various. If you want to make sure if your car is only one object, after selecting it try to hide it right clicking on it and then clicking "Hide Selected". All unattached parts will be hidden now.

It might also be that your model has wrong scale, it could be very tiny, so you just physically can't see it in asset editor, while it imports fine.

Also it might be that you export it wrong, you need to export only the model but not the whole scene (in case if there are more objects than the car itself), do this by clicking "Export Selected"

[RaeFromStateFarm 3]

23 hours ago, pauliaxz said:

LOD is not necessary for importing, so reasons for model not showing up might be various. If you want to make sure if your car is only one object, after selecting it try to hide it right clicking on it and then clicking "Hide Selected". All unattached parts will be hidden now.

It might also be that your model has wrong scale, it could be very tiny, so you just physically can't see it in asset editor, while it imports fine.

Also it might be that you export it wrong, you need to export only the model but not the whole scene (in case if there are more objects than the car itself), do this by clicking "Export Selected"

i tried some of the things you said but they didnt seem to work until i tried fixing the overlapping vertices, i did it using a "fixing script" for 3ds max (It also fixed overlapping uv faces, open edges etc. ) the asset was able to load into CS but the problem is that the script messes up the mesh when trying to fix it and builds like a second "fixed" mesh ontop of it or something. Also the script fixed overlapping uv faces, open edges etc. but im not sure if all of those are what keeps an asset from importing into cs or if its just the overlapping vertices. 

after using the script (this was the 2nd time doing it, before it left 0 overlapping vertices)

it finally appears in asset editor

Any idea on how to go about fixing the uv vertices without screwing up the mesh or perhaps a good clean up tool?  thanks

those are the overlapping vertices btw

[pauliaxz 195]

Here comes the downsides of reusing other models directly. Anyway, doesn't it work just simply Welding all vertices, without using any 3rd party scripts?

[RaeFromStateFarm 3]

3 hours ago, pauliaxz said:

Here comes the downsides of reusing other models directly. Anyway, doesn't it work just simply Welding all vertices, without using any 3rd party scripts?

are you talking about "vertex wield" 

[pauliaxz 195]

Nope, there is an option to Weld selected vertices. An option without I couldn't imagine my modelling process.

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/3ds-max/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2016/ENU/3DSMax/files/GUID-697BAC48-F5F7-4B5B-9E98-DF979887AEA6-htm.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaWb6I1qurY 

[RaeFromStateFarm 3]

3 hours ago, pauliaxz said:

Nope, there is an option to Weld selected vertices. An option without I couldn't imagine my modelling process.

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/3ds-max/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2016/ENU/3DSMax/files/GUID-697BAC48-F5F7-4B5B-9E98-DF979887AEA6-htm.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaWb6I1qurY 

Okay thanks that helped, not sure if that is what i needed but i tried collapsing everything into one group without fixing too many vertices and it loads up into CS mostly fine now. The texture on one side near one of the doors is a little weird but oh well (the glass looks weird cause i changed the windows positions in the uv map and didnt update the glass texture map yet).

Now im just confused on how to get the car to sit on the ground instead of standing on it's face, i can probably make the lod on my own(might skip if it's not needed)

[Darf 1,439]

Either reset the pivot in 3ds, or you can rotate it in the editor before you press ok.

[pauliaxz 195]

It's because of different default coordinate system that Unity use and 3ds Max use, my cars also import standing on the front. So I just rotate them in the Import window (three times by X axis). Rotation buttons are nearby scale number before importing it.

[RaeFromStateFarm 3]

6 hours ago, Darf said:

Either reset the pivot in 3ds, or you can rotate it in the editor before you press ok.

 

2 hours ago, pauliaxz said:

It's because of different default coordinate system that Unity use and 3ds Max use, my cars also import standing on the front. So I just rotate them in the Import window (three times by X axis). Rotation buttons are nearby scale number before importing it.

okay that helped too, thanks yet again. The car was kind of sunk into the ground though so i reset the pivot to the center and im going to do a 2nd copy with the pivot further below to see if that helps

[pauliaxz 195]

Also don't forget to do Reset XForm after readjusting the pivot, this option resets the instance to the current state. For example non-reset re-scaled objects retain their first state which was  before scaling.

Also, for correct pivot placement,  simply create any flat plane, so that it is in 0 by Z axis, and then using Align tool align your car to that plane (minimum to minimum). After that set pivot Z coord to 0

[RaeFromStateFarm 3]

2 hours ago, pauliaxz said:

Also don't forget to do Reset XForm after readjusting the pivot, this option resets the instance to the current state. For example non-reset re-scaled objects retain their first state which was  before scaling.

Also, for correct pivot placement,  simply create any flat plane, so that it is in 0 by Z axis, and then using Align tool align your car to that plane (minimum to minimum). After that set pivot Z coord to 0

thanks :D, I think you can also just set all the coordinates to 0 when moving the pivot, worked for me.  

almost ready to publish, the only thing bugging me now is that triangle i must've left by accident trying to fix those overlapping vertices, im trying to figure out how to revert it in 3dsmax. Its showing as it's own element.

[RaeFromStateFarm 3]

if i cant figure out how to fix it ill just re-do it all with an old save of my model now that i have a way better understanding of what to do and how everything works, thanks yet again

[RaeFromStateFarm 3]

actually i re-did it with a save of the model before i caused that to show up. Finished now just trying to scale it right, its either the size of a smart car or a large suv right now. 

[pauliaxz 195]

Just google for correct dimensions, and then rescale it to those

[Turjan 1,048]

Just as an aside: Keeping a meaningful title of the thread is useful for other people who want to find solutions, even if your original issue may be solved.

[RaeFromStateFarm 3]

21 hours ago, Turjan said:

Just as an aside: Keeping a meaningful title of the thread is useful for other people who want to find solutions, even if your original issue may be solved.

oh my mistake

22 hours ago, pauliaxz said:

Just google for correct dimensions, and then rescale it to those

Are you talking about in asset editor or in 3dsmax?

[pauliaxz 195]

3ds Max of course, how could you see the exact model dimensions in Asset editor?

[RaeFromStateFarm 3]

9 hours ago, pauliaxz said:

3ds Max of course, how could you see the exact model dimensions in Asset editor?

just asking, i dont quite understand scaling in 3dsmax yet