posted 11 February 2014 11:26 AM EDT (US)
In this tutorial, we will be putting a teapot into AoM. That’s right; a massive checkered teapot, complete with player color, animation and attachpoints. The tutorial has plenty of pretty pictures (click to expand) and is aimed at absolute beginners – with AMP anyone can make model mods for AoM.
Let’s go. During the process, save your .MAX files often.
Let’s start by creating the actual model. Open 3ds Max (hereafter referred to as “Max”). Close the welcome screen (although it won’t hurt to do some of the tutorials to familiarize yourself with the program). On the right-hand side of the screen, click “Teapot”. Expand “Keyboard Entry” and enter 2 as the radius. Click “Create”. (In case you were wondering, Max’s developer has a teapot in their logo, hence it is included in this menu).
Tap CTRL+SHIFT+Z to center all viewports (optional). Right-click the teapot, click “Convert”, then “Convert to Editable Mesh”. You could go on editing the model but we’ll leave it at that for the moment.
Having created the model, it is now time to paint it. This process is called “texturing”. For this step, you will need the supplemental files I posted above.
Open the supplemental files. Put “teapot.jpg” somewhere handy. You will need this file for Max. AoM itself will need the texture in the .DDT format, however. Depending on whether you have the Steam version or the old-school version of the game, proceed as follows:
Now go back into Max. Tap “M” to open the material editor. In the menu to the left, double-click “Multi/Sub-Object” to create a new multi/sub-object material. Double-click on the new material. “Set Number” to 1. You can use multiple sub-materials, but we will start with one here.
Click on the first sub-material (“None”). Select “Standard” in the window that pops up. Open the new standard sub-material that you just created.
Change “Ambient” and “Diffuse” to plain white (otherwise the texture will be slightly greyed out in AoM). Both of these fields will change simultaneously if the lock is on. Change “Specular” to black. Tick the box that is labeled “Color”. (You can play around with these settings once you're feeling more experienced; for now, leave them as described.) Expand “Maps”. Click on the “Diffuse Color” map (“None”).
Select “Bitmap” in the window that pops up. Select the “teapot.jpg” from the supplemental files. AoM will take the texture filename from this file (“teapot”). Also, if you zoom out of the Material Editor’s viewport, you should now see something like this:
Make sure that the teapot is still selected in the main viewport. Right-click the far-right piece of the material, then click “Assign Material to Selection”. Right-click the middle piece of the material, then click “Show Shaded Material in Viewport”. The teapot should now look like this:
The texture is looking fine and we can close the material editor. (If you want to learn more about materials and textures, see endnotes 2, 3 & 4.)
With our teapot being complete with model and texture, we could now use AMP to convert it into AoM’s file format. However, I would also like to show you the basics of animation and attachpoint editing, beginning with the former.
At the bottom of the screen, click “AutoKey”. The active viewport will be framed in red. Now, any changes you make to the scene will only affect one particular moment in time.
This is where the slider from 0 to 100 comes in. Move the slider to, say, 20. The changes you make will now only affect the 20th slide (“frame”) of the slideshow that we call “animation”. Disable “AutoKey” and you will make changes to all frames, as before. For now, leave “AutoKey” on.
Click on the teapot. In the top right corner of the screen, make sure you’re in the “Modify” tab, and go to “Editable Mesh”. Click on the little red dots under “Selection”. These are called “vertices”.
You can now move vertices around. Remember, you’re still doing this for frame 20 only (“AutoKey” is still on). Click “Select and Move”.
Disable “AutoKey” as well as the little red dots icon in “Editable Mesh”. Click “Play Animation”. You should now have a little animation playing between frames 0 and 20 (by default, Max will play until 100, though). The animation will only be displayed in the active viewport. Click “Play Animation” (“Stop Animation”) again to stop the animation.
We’re almost done. The last thing I want to show you is attachpoints. You will find them very useful in AoM (see endnote 6). In Max’s menu, click “MaxScript”, then “Run Script...”. Go to the “\scripts” folder where you put RunAMP.ms. (Max should take you there by default.) Run that file. AMP will start up. In AMP, navigate to the “Utilities” tab and you will find the attachpoint menu on the left. Look for HITPOINTBAR and double-click on it.
We’re now ready to take our teapot to AoM! In AMP, go back to the “Brg Data” tab. Leave the default BRG settings on. You can play around with these settings once you’re feeling more experienced. (AMP’s “Help” menu has a list of all settings and their effects under “Brg Settings Info”.) Now click “Max”, then “Export”. You can see AMP filling up with data.
When the exporting is done, go to the “Material” tab that has just been loaded into AMP. Apply the flag “PixelXForm1” to the material. We’re doing this because we want our teapot to be checkered with player color in-game (blue for player 1, red for player 2, etc.) instead of just black and white. The textures I gave you will allow you to do this (see endnote 4).
Let’s save our teapot in AoM format. For our purposes, we will be overriding Agamemnon’s idle animation, but you can also create new units instead of overriding existing ones (see endnote 7 once you’re done with this tutorial). Depending on whether you have the Steam version or the old-school version of the game, proceed as follows:
Finally, open AoM and place Agamemnon in the scenario editor. You should get the massive teapot that I promised you, complete with player color, animation, and an attachpoint that places the hitpoint bar right over the teapot’s spout.
If your game crashes to the desktop when using your new model, it’s usually because one of the following two problems. 1) Missing .MTRL files, if you’re on the Steam version of the game. Check if you have placed the .MTRL files in the right folder and under the right name. This can happen often. 2) If that is not the case, your model file might be corrupted. Check by opening the .BRG in AMP/Max.
- Max offers excellent
online help resources and tutorials which will help you develop your modeling skills. - In our case, we only have one sub-material, and it is correctly assigned to all of the teapot’s polygons. Generally speaking, you want to make sure that the material is indeed assigned to all polygons, or assign it only to certain polygons if you are using more than one sub-material. To this end, leave the material editor open, navigate to the “Editable Mesh” modifier of the teapot and select all (or some) of its polygons. Right-click the desired middle piece of the material, then click “Assign Material to Selection”.
- Doing the above will tell Max where to put the desired textures but not how. In particular, it doesn’t know how to map the texture on the object. You will need a UV map. This is where the “Unwrap UVW” modifier comes in. Read
this tutorial. Note that for our purposes, “Quick Planar Map” will suffice. (Picture) - If you want to learn more about how to create your own textures, read
these two guides. With regards to the tools you are going to need, download this for the Steam version of the game and AoMED for the old-school version. (You might also need this file in the same folder for AoMED to run.) The two versions of the game use different .DDT file formats. Other than that and the aforementioned .MTRL files, both the Steam version and the old-school version of the game use exactly the same file types. - For advanced character animation, learn how to use bones and
skins. AMP can handle skinned animation. To that end, move the Skin modifier to the top of the modifier list. - Attachpoints are a very powerful tool for anim editing. Browse some anims and you will understand. If you are an absolute beginner you can also try
this guide or section 5 of this guide. Know that you can link attachpoints to bones, if you have any. - Finally, you may want to create a new unit altogether without overriding Agamemnon. Read
this guide to learn how. For most other AoM-related purposes, this guide will have you covered. - In our case, we only have one sub-material, and it is correctly assigned to all of the teapot’s polygons. Generally speaking, you want to make sure that the material is indeed assigned to all polygons, or assign it only to certain polygons if you are using more than one sub-material. To this end, leave the material editor open, navigate to the “Editable Mesh” modifier of the teapot and select all (or some) of its polygons. Right-click the desired middle piece of the material, then click “Assign Material to Selection”.
[This message has been edited by Android 000 (edited 09-24-2021 @ 03:59 AM).]
Can you not scale it down and use the screenshot gadget offered by AoMH? Like I did 
