Quick Question...

Jeremy Lindstrom

Was watching the Hellboy tutorial and checking out all those nice head SDK's everyone was putting out.. Anyhow, is there a quick way to get into that? It's been so long since I've touched texturing I'd like to quickly get back into it, and would love to be able to just open the 3dsmax and photoshop or Maya and switch back and forth creating my texture..

To show my noobness when I did texture previously, I was editing existing skins and then throwing them on the model, jumping in game to see it.. ghetto texturing...

Erol

Are you looking for SDKs? There's a sticky'd thread in pimping and previews

http://boards.polycount.net/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=56973&an=0&page=0#56973

Mark Dygert

I think he is looking for a streamlined way to view his 2D flats on the model.

I set up a save/save as action in PhotoShop. It saves the file as a PSD to a specific folder, then saves it as a TGA with the wire overlay and as a seperate TGA without. I then use the material editor in max7 to switch between the two textures if I need to. Max7 auto updates textures and the texture preview is pretty swanky if you turn it up higher than 256x256, but it chugs some systems so it might be best to just do a quick render at 100% self illumination.

MoP

Hmm, what's wrong with just slapping the working PSD onto the model in Max? It'll auto-update every time you hit CTRL-S in Photoshop, then just Alt-Tab into Max...
No actions, different saving or fancy rendering needed... put the viewport in Expert Mode, maximised, with 100% self-illumination and pure white as the diffuse/ambient colour in the material (better than just putting the Ambient lighting up to full, because that looks fine in viewport but crap in renders).
That's the setup I always use...
Shouldn't this be in 2d/3d discussion? Didn't I already answer this in a different thread in 2d/3d?

Jeremy Lindstrom

Just saw it.. must of missed that yesterday.. was just thinking about it again today, gotta hit the books again been 2 years since I took my Maya classes at IADT, was thinking it'd be nice for me to hit some SDK's to get back into skinning some stuff, before I tackle some modelling...

Jeremy Lindstrom

Where'd the thread go with all the 'head' sdk's? I did a search and couldn't find em..

MoP

http://boards.polycount.net/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=13950&page=&fpart=1&vc=1

Thar...

Jeremy Lindstrom

Thank you, you sir are my hero, not once but twice to help save me from myself.

Mark Dygert

When I first upgraded to Max7 I started using PSD's for materials and for some reason Max would crash (not all the time) when I switched from PS to Max. I went back to TGA's and it hasn't crashed since.

Instead of CTRL-S I press F9. It also backs up the PSD to a seperate drive and saves the TGA to a my fini model folder that way I don't have 2 billion working files in my model folder, just the latest version of the TGA's I am using. This is also handy because I port my work between two computers. It also saves me from having export errors because the materials use TGA's. I have a simmilar max script that backs up the model(s) to another drive when I save. Rick also pointed out the use of having a max script that sets up folders and takes care of names when you start a project. I have adapted this also. It sounds complicated but really it's all handled with scripts and is VERY easy to use and has saved my bacon. Not only do I have the autoback files but I have back ups on another drive.

It's kind of a crazy pipeline but it saves my work if my C:\ drive ever melts and it keeps max from crashing. Double plus in my book.