Modelling in Renx

Welcome to my tutorial for using RenX to model BFME. I decided to write this, mainly because so many people want to model, and for some reason don’t understand the oldfaq one… the guide I used when I started can be found here: http://www.artistrygamers.com/nickselvesmod/inftut.zip

inftut.zip

To start off with you’ll need a copy of Gmax, RenX, and a w3d importer. I'll be using the ones located on this site: http://the3rdage.net/tools.php so you might want to get yours from there, so you’ll know what I’m on about. (The w3d is by Coolfile, and I hope Hostile doesn’t mind me linking to his site...)

Now that we have everything working, we need to first import our w3d file. (This guide assumes you have extracted the files you want to use from w3d.big and textures. big)

Use the w3d importer to do it.

1. Click Customize
2. Click Customize User Interface

3. Select Group: Main UI, Category: All Commands, and find ‘Coolfile W3D Importer’.

4. Click on Hotkey, and assign it a button. I use Ctrl – K.

Close this window and you should be left where you started. Now you can use your hotkey to open a w3d file. So press the hotkey, and navigate in the new window to your w3d files. For infantry, you will need to edit the _skn files, for others, you will just have to work it out. (In this tutorial I will edit the Gondor Man at Arms)

Click Open.

Now you should be back to the main screen, but there should be things in each window. Zoom in on everything by pressing this button

Normally it is located at the bottom. You should now have something that looks like this:

Now, we only want to edit the model, so lets hide the other bits, by left clicking on the model, and pressing ‘Hide Unselected’.

Now right click on the same mesh, and click ‘convert To: Editable Mesh’

Expand the new menu on the right hand side called ‘Editable Mesh’ and select Vertex.

You can now do what ever you want to make your model different, using the buttons at the top:

In order they are move, rotate and scale. After editing my model I got:

Now we have edited our model we need to apply the skin. Press ‘m’.

Press this button:

If it changes tabs, go back to Pass 1, Vertex Material. Now change these colours

So that:

Ambient is White

Diffuse is White

Specular is Black

Emissive is Black

Press the textures tab.

Where it says Bitmap Texture (GUManAtArms.tga) you can choose which texture to use, but dds files won’t work. Choose the skin, and then press this button:

Next you have to bind all the vertices to bones. This is considered the hard bit, but is more time consuming than hard. Press these buttons in this order:

Now click anywhere on your RenX scene, preferably far away from your mode, but still in view. The thing you have just made is called a WWSkin.

.

Now right click on the scene, and unhide all. Then click ‘Add Bones’ from the menu on the right. (You may have to click on the WWSkin again to make the button come up).

Check the ‘Display Subtree’, and ‘Select Subtree’ buttons. Now from the list, choose all the bones you want use, normally the only ones you don’t want to use are things like ‘BOUNDINGBOX’, ‘WWSkin’ etc.. Click OK.

Now press this button:

It will be located at the top.

You then have to drag it from the mesh to the WWSkin.

Press the mouse cursor button.

Expand the WWSkin Binding Menu and select ‘Vertices’.

Now all you have to do is select the vertices (blue dots) closest the bones (light blue/ grey squares) and link them. This is how to do it.

Select all the vertices closest to a bone, ill start with the head. Now click ‘Link to bone by name’, and select B_head, or Bat_Head, and press ok. (It can vary).

Now just repeat this for all the bones. If you don’t know what a bone is called, you can click on the WWSkin Binding menu, and you can then click on a bone to see what it is called, it will tell you just above where this menu is.

Once you have done this, you may have to repeat the whole process from the Create WWSkin phase, linking it other objects like shields.

Once you have done all this (and it may take a while) click the hammer tab, and then ‘W3D Tools’

Now you have to choose export settings for each item by clicking on it, and choosing the settings. Here are the settings for most things:

Meshes (The actual model): Only ‘Export Geometry’

Bounding Boxes (big opaque boxes): Export Transform, Export Geometry, AABox

Forged Blade/other effects: Export Transform, Export Geometry, 2 Side, Normal

Arrows: Export Transform, Export Geometry, 2 Side, Normal

Now we are ready to export the model.

Click File > Export.

Choose your w3d folder, and save as type w3d.click ok.

YOU MUST CHOOSE ‘Hierarchical Model; and in most cases ‘Export using Existing Skeleton’. You must then browse to the skeleton (if the model was random_skn, then the skeleton will be random_skl). Click OK.

Well done. You have made your model! Now all you need to do is add a reference to it in the ini’s, and add it to the asset.dat. Plenty of ways to do that though. Good Luck with the modeling!!