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[madhatter106 3,931]

Adding Sound To Custom Query Window - SC4 - Custom Content - Simtropolis

Sound effects with custom queries - SC4 Modding - Open Discussion - Simtropolis

Editing Type Address and Group Address with Ilives - SC4 Bugs & Technical Issues - Simtropolis

It's been ages ago since I've done this, but just having a look at what I did early on for some of my BATs in the Reader, it looks like the sound effect .wav file is bundled with a .trk file into its own separate .dat file with a directory.  The .wav file has a group ID of aa4d1933 and a unique instance number.  The .trk file has a group ID of ca4d1943 and the same unique instance number as the .wav file.  In all cases (having looked at a couple of these) those group ID numbers (the aa4d1933 and the ca4d1943) have been the same in my uploads, so I am guessing these are specific to sound effects. 

I suppose one might be able to insert the .wav and .trk file into the actual custom query file, but for some reason, I have them separated.  One would just need to remember to include the custom .wav file's unique instance ID in the query itself, so it doesn't pull the game's sound effects despite having the custom sound there.

I am not sure exactly what I did when I did this ages ago (ie. the step-by-step of it all), but just glancing at these in the Reader, this is what I do know and have been able to deduce in the fog of my memory.  There used to be a tutorial about adding custom sound effects to queries somewhere here on ST, but alas I cannot find it.  Perhaps it is lost to the ages.

EDIT: this link InstanceFormats - SC4D Encyclopaedia (sc4devotion.com) has a list of different formats, and the numbers I listed above are specific to sounds in the game, but not necessarily the proper categories, so my modding may be askew - however with the group ID numbers that I used that are listed above, they do work - so I could call that a "win" and gets me to where I need to go, even if they are miscategorized...

[Rott 2,398]

I should have known it had something to do with Reader, I have no idea how to use that program so I guess this isn't really something I should attempt...

[Rott 2,398]

So I tried to incorporate the sign to my lot into the building but it messes up the LODs, and it should probably be a prop anyway, so the question is; how did I make props? I can isolate the sign into a Gmax file, the part after that is where I have no idea...

[AP 3,591]

That is rather easy @Rott, you simply pull the model on the Prop section PIMX works pretty similar in that way

The most important settings are the following:

under COMMON > Is Ground Model: makes the prop cast shadows (not on other props, just on the ground)

under ADVANCED

> AppearanceZoomsFlag: the soom levels at which the prop is visable
> Light: turns on night lighting if you have rendered some on this model
> Previewable: when you hover with the lot in game over an area where you want to place it, whether you see the prop or not

Of course you can set all of that up in reader as well...

 

[Rott 2,398]

I can't believe I never noticed that before, nice and easy...

I'm guessing timed props are a bit more complicated?

[AP 3,591]

24 minutes ago, Rott said:

I can't believe I never noticed that before, nice and easy...

I'm guessing timed props are a bit more complicated?

actually not too complicated (once I understood it) I was thinking about making a little bit of a more detailed tutorial, since the once I used, really drove me crazy...

[AP 3,591]

BACK FACING in gmax

Does anyone know how to activate back faces in gmax?

Deleting the top polygon of a cube leaves me with this, but I would like to see the away facing polys as well. When I rotate the view I still see them from the outside:

[Raymond7cn 6,776]

10 hours ago, AP said:

BACK FACING in gmax

Does anyone know how to activate back faces in gmax?

Deleting the top polygon of a cube leaves me with this, but I would like to see the away facing polys as well. When I rotate the view I still see them from the outside:

Hiya @AP, I have a quick answer for this, You can right click this box and then select "Properties", Then you will see a checkbox which named "Backface", Uncheck it, You will see them.

Best Regards,

-- Raymond

In addition: You may can always see the backface of object in a way, Sorry that I can't help on this due to not with comp right now, Hope others could help you.

Clue from Google

"I set my Preferences/Viewports defaults to Backface Cull on Object Creation. I rarely ever want that turned off"

[AP 3,591]

@Raymond7cn that is exactly what I was looking for:

Now the problem that is left is that the render does not take this setting into account. Is there a solution for that?

Or is there any other way I can fix this? I tried extruding the bulwark to flip the normals but that option seems to be grayed out (also I am not sure if I did the extrusion correctly since I seem not be able to select the extruded outline of the poly:

[Raymond7cn 6,776]

Hiya @AP,

Sorry that I couldn't take a screen-shot for you now, but I thought it's right by flipping the 'normal', You can Create a 'Plane' for a test, then flip the normal either use a 'Normal' modifier, or use a 'Shell' modifier to see what happens.

Actually, If you just want to see this at rendering, I thought you can make a single material with double (two) sides, Hope it helps.

Sincerely,

-- Raymond

[AP 3,591]

Thanks Raymond,

I will give that a shot in gmax at some point... I went back to 3dsMAX, copied the shape, made it a little smaller and flipped the normals, so now I have an inner and an outer hull. (not the most elegant solution and not ideal for the polycount of course)

God, I love 3dsMAX! There is no one with a spare license floating around who would be so kind to provide that for me?!   My 30d trial is ticking

Now the big question: Can a poly have "normals" on both sides?
Otherweise the solution with the double sided materials might work. (I have no idea how to do that, but I also didn't have time yet to explore around in the texturing settings to try to find it. Any tip on how to do that is greatly appreciated)

[Raymond7cn 6,776]

1 hour ago, AP said:

Can a poly have "normals" on both sides

Hiya @AP, 

I'm not pretty sure about this since I just returned to 3ds max recently, however dimly remember that the answer is no. Hope our specialists come over and correct me, Anyway, here are some tests:

You can tell that it's easy to make a 2-sided material, then both sides will has map, As below they are the results I rendered from front and back.

Apparently the advantage of the Shell method is that we can apply different materials to both side, It actually makes a plane to a box, whereas you can set the number as a minimum so that it looks like a plane during rendering. here below is another example with the teapot:

I hope it helps.

Sincerely,

-- Raymond

[EffTheGrid 3,726]

Hi all. Noob question regarding lighting

I'm trying to set up a spotlight on the front of this model but...

but when I render, the light only shows during the day and not at night. I would like the opposite to be true;  the intended effect would be, no additional lighting during day and bright lights that appear at night.

How can I fix this?

This is a persistent problem for me, btw. Thanks in advance, all.

 

[AP 3,591]

try adding "nitelite_" to the name of your spot light

[EffTheGrid 3,726]

Thanks AP! That did the trick. All lit up now

[AP 3,591]

Hi everyone,

I am currently learning 3dsMAX and I am unable to add a texture... It drives me absolutely insane!

coming from GMAX I would add a standard material and then under blinn basic parameters add a bitmap:

In 3dsMAX 2022 I seem incapable of doing that, I can't even select a standard material:

I seem to have "general" and "Arnold" Materials and I cannot find anything that says standard which will let me add a simple .png texture!

It is incredibly frustrating wasting the weekend not getting forward, having to go through dozens of tutorials and ppl just seem to have this option:
(from youtube, 3dsMAX 2016)

Hope anyone can help! Thanks!

EDIT: I found a partial explanation here. The standard material seem to be taken out to the latest 3dsMAX, which then leaves me with the big question of how to apply textures from pictures now...

[Jasoncw 11,949]

In the most recent versions of 3ds Max, they've started hiding things which aren't made for the currently selected renderer (which would be Arnold, and not Scanline like in gmax). This page will help you out: https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/3ds-max/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/Standard-Legacy-Materials-don-t-appear-in-3ds-Max-2021.html

However, the Physical Material which it was giving you is basically the new Standard type material. It's compatible across a few different renderers and it has the typical settings that are used in renderers nowadays. The Standard material would have been from the 90s and it's still included for legacy support.

For the Physical material, the top sections where it says "base color and reflections" is the main area to look at. The grey box with the map slot next to it is what you're looking for.

"Roughness" next to it is a single value which controls how reflective and sharp the reflections are. A low roughness means it's very reflective and has very sharp reflections, like glass, or glazed ceramics, or shiny plastic. A high roughness value means that the material is rough looking, so things like brick. If you click on Roughness, it's a dropdown box, and you can select what iirc is labeled as glossiness, which is the inverse of roughness (so a roughness of 0.8 is the same as the other setting set to 0.2). With the Arch & Design material for the Mental Ray renderer, there are two settings, reflectivity and glossiness, which in newer renderers/materials are combined into one setting (idk the physics behind this, but in practice the two are almost always set to be about the same). Anyway, for making buildings I think most of your materials can have a roughness of 0.8, and then you can lower the roughness down to make a shiny material.

There's also a "metalness" option, which should always be set to either 1 or 0. Turning metalness on is very intuitive, it really does just make it look like it's metal. Keep in mind though that painted metal is not metal it is paint.

Then there's the IOR setting. That should typically be kept to its default. But higher IOR settings means that the amount of reflectivity is the same no matter how you look at the object. In real life, how reflective an object is depends on what angle you're looking at it from (you can test this by looking at a window straight on and then putting your face really close to the glass and looking at the glass from the side). And then there's something like a bathroom mirror which is very very reflective no matter what angle you look at it from. It's an interesting setting but for now (and in general) it's not something that you have to deal with.

There's also the Arnold Standard Surface material, which is very similar to the 3ds Max Physical Material, but it has a few extra options.

Unfortunately, all of our BATing stuff with 3ds Max is set up for the Mental Ray renderer, which has been discontinued and isn't in 3ds Max anymore. I've started updating BAT4Max to work with Arnold instead, so that everyone can use the currently available versions of 3ds Max with the newer more modern renderer, but it's going to be a while before it's ready.

[AP 3,591]

Thank you very much! Here is how I succeeded:
selected Physical material: and then inserted the same png on the 3 yellow markings

The result is quite nice:

 

[Jasoncw 11,949]

@APFancy!

[Girafe 1,729]

I think a 6.b could be added to the install tutorial with the inclusion of HD plugin into Gmax .

I guess without this installed, we can't export in HD through 3dsmax

 

[Jasoncw 11,949]

11 hours ago, Girafe said:

I think a 6.b could be added to the install tutorial with the inclusion of HD plugin into Gmax .

I guess without this installed, we can't export in HD through 3dsmax

 

Isn't the BAT4Max installer supposed to update the gmax BAT scripts too?

I don't make HD things very often so I forget about it. I do want the instructions to be complete though.

[Girafe 1,729]

I am not quite sure it neither :/

However there is the case of a user wanting to use HD only for Gmax (and in that case, BAT4max is not involved)

[Oidaas 1,696]

I've reinstalled gmax and now it freezes upon start, i don't know why. Anybody got any ideas?

Edit :Nevermind Solved it by opening Bat instead of GMAX.

Another question, Bat crashes for me when loading it, could it bee an issues with my grahpic card or something else? GMAX seams to work fine for me.

 

  Edited May 25, 2021 by Oidaas  
Another fault

[AP 3,591]

Can anyone explain to me why in some boolean operations the cut off faces get closed and in other they do not?

What I basically want is on the white shape, where I cut the light blue object away to have a closed surface instead of an open hole. When cutting away from that cube it closed the open surfaces. (both were objects i turned into polys. Maybe @Raymond7cn knows more...

[mattb325 28,891]

2 hours ago, AP said:

Can anyone explain to me why in some boolean operations the cut off faces get closed and in other they do not?

What I basically want is on the white shape, where I cut the light blue object away to have a closed surface instead of an open hole. When cutting away from that cube it closed the open surfaces. (both were objects i turned into polys. Maybe @Raymond7cn knows more...

It depends how the white object was created before making it an editable poly.

So I quickly replicated your set up and it worked fine. These are the steps:

1) Make the rectangle -> convert to an editable spline -> extrude -> convert to an editable poly

2) Convert the subtraction operand primitive shape to a poly and do the subtraction.

I've attached a couple of screen shots pre/- and post/- boolean.

[AP 3,591]

Thanks for the reply @mattb325!
I kind of came to the same conclusion, since this white object was from an extrusion of face of a poly that I then detached. Any idea if there is a settin/modifier that might fix this issue?

[Raymond7cn 6,776]

4 hours ago, AP said:

Thanks for the reply @mattb325!
I kind of came to the same conclusion, since this white object was from an extrusion of face of a poly that I then detached. Any idea if there is a settin/modifier that might fix this issue?

Hiya @AP, 

I agree with @mattb325, Honestly, I rarely use Boolean method due to my teacher's tips, sometimes I have to deal with unnecessary lines before Nurbs or Turbosmooth, Anyway, here is a test and same conclusion as Matt's.

You may can give ProBoolean a shot, however I thought it probably to no avail as well, All I can thought of is that have you checked both operation objects to see if they are sealed completely? Sorry if won't be helpful.

Sincerely,

-- Raymond

[Raymond7cn 6,776]

On 5/23/2021 at 4:09 AM, Oidaas said:

Another question, Bat crashes for me when loading it, could it bee an issues with my grahpic card or something else? GMAX seams to work fine for me.

Hiya @Oidaas, Sorry to hear that, I used to have problem with Gmax loading but not SC4BAT, Since I was wrong to add gmax into Nvidia control panel, Anyway, May I suggest you to switch the driver for a try, it's Under Customize/Preferences/Viewports, Gmax FAQ

Or you may can have a look at gmax.log to see how it describes the error. 

Sincerely,

-- Raymond

[Raymond7cn 6,776]

Hiya Great Modelers,

I have an off topic subject,  what's the background color of viewport with your 3ds ma? I seldom paid attention to it until looked through an article which said the gray color is more healthy to our eyes. Anyway, I have set the default theme to that light gray one. Good health everybody!!

[mattb325 28,891]

I have 3ds set to grey (default) and gmax light grey-blue (also default). I know you can really customise the former to every detail but that seems like a lot of work!

Also,, speaking of work, instead of filleting the corners, you can the rectangle with rounded corners from the start (both in gmax and 3dsmax) which I find quite time saving...when making the spline, the option is located in the parameters section