If you've made a mistake but want to continue, or want to see my finished product you can download my max and texture files here.

PART II: Texturing and Adding them to the Game

Step 1: Start 3dsmax and open your sword file or, if you downloaded my max files, then open sword blade.max. Because i added this last minute in Part 1 i'm going to repeat, move each part away from the center in the UVW Map screen like so:



Now that everything has been set up its time to make your sword whole.

Step 2: Its time to attach the separate parts of your sword together. Select the blade and convert it to editable poly (right click>Convert To>Editable Poly), now go to the tube icon tab and click on Editable Poly. On the scrolling menu below, click "Attach" then click on all the other objects in the scene. This will join your objects, however the UVW Map will stay the same:



Step 3: Use the drop down menu again and now select "Unwrap UVW Map", you should now get a screen like this:



Step 4: For this tutorial, I've decided to add my new weapon and shield to a Hastati. Now its time to fetch the Hastati model and texture. Navigate to your RTW folder and get this model :



and this texture:



Step 5: Open up Adobe Photoshop, its time to edit the texture. Now, you'll notice that the hastati texture is relatively small and awfully cramped up, there isn't any space to put in a full shield texture. However, I've noticed several BI textures that are 512x512:



Step 6: Create a new document with these dimensions:



This will give all the extra room we need . Now, Fill the background with gray and then drag and drop the hastati texture onto this new document and place it in the corner. DO NOT RESIZE IT.



Step 7: Now to take care of the Alpha Channel, click on the channel tab on your new texture and create a new alpha channel named Alpha 1, fill it completely in white. Now in the original Hastati texture go to the channels tab and click on the alpha layer, drag a box around the whole thing and copy paste it onto your alpha channel layer, then move it to the corner where the hastati is, should fit perfectly.



Step 8: Now for the actual textures, because im not very good at it and i'm semi-lazy, i'm going to use the Internet. Open Firefox/IE go to google, and type in "Roman Shield". Use this one.



Copy-paste it and resize it so that it fits like this:



For decorative cylinder things, i'm using these:



For the leather handle:



And finally for the blade:



Copy paste these / resize these so that they fit nicely into your texture:



For the DDS exporter to recognize this texture(you'll get an error message otherwise) select all your layers and "Flatten the Image" (right click>flatten image). They are all now merged:



Save your texture as "Custom_Unit2.tga.dds".

Step 9: Back to 3dsMax. Import the Hastati model, if you don't know how, check out SubRosa's 3dsMax basics tutorial.



You should now have this:



Step 10: Time to texture this guy. Press "M" to open up the Material Editor, select a blank sphere and give it your new texture, again, if you don't know how to texture, read SubRosa's tut.



Step 11: You should now have something like this:



*Gasp!*. Not to Worry! all you need to do is edit the UVW coordinates. First off, delete the shield and the sword, we'll be replacing those anyway, right click on the pila and click hide, we'll get to it later. Now select the body and Unwrap its UVW. You'll get something like this:



Select all the wireframe object things and hold CTRL and resize them to fit your texture.



Repeat with the pauldrons and plume. In the end you should have:



Step 12: Now go to "File>Merge" and select your shield, you'll notice the shield is MUCH bigger than your unit so resize it accordingly and place it on top of his hand.




Step 13: Time to give it its texture. Apply the texture in the material editor and discard the Unwrapped UVW map you already made, create a new Unwrapped UVW Map and now you should have this:



Resize your shield wireframe and place it like so:



If there is white on the borders just shrink your wireframe thing a bit.



Step 14: To make the shield move with the body in the drop down menu select "Skin" then underneath add "bone_lhand".



Step 15: Now for the sword. Use Merge again and add the sword to the model, resize it and position it like this:



Step 16: Apply the texture to your sword and then Unwrap the UVW Map, you'll get something like this. The circle are those decorative things, that cylinder thing is the handle, the blade shape is...the blade and the rectangle is the thing between the blade and the handle.



Place them / resize them like so:



You now have this:



Step 17: Again use the skin modifier except this time select "bone_rhand":




Now rename your sword "secondary_weapon"

Step 18: Unhide your pila and Unwrap the UVW map, resize it so that it fits correctly.

Step 19: Go through all the objects in the scene and make sure that the skin modifier is on top, if it is below the Unwrap UVW modifier, simply drag and drop it above. If you don't do this, the exporter will give you an error and your CAS file will be corrupted.

Step 20: Save your model as a max file and then Export your file as a Cas:



There you go, you've successfully edited an RTW Model and added your own models to it.

INGAME:



Well, I know the shield texture isn't so good and the shield needs to be shrunk and the little separator between blade and handle I forgot to get a texture for so i gave it leather, but you get the idea

[This message has been edited by PrivateClark (edited 05-25-2008 @ 01:40 PM).]

Outstanding!

You know, if you can just email me your articles in a text file with the pictures attached, and I will code them and put them up on the main site.

I'm looking forward to part two. I'm really weak on the textures part of the process, learning how to put those in without changing the existing models would just be fantastic. Would also speed up the eventual release of my modern military units considerably.

I have some more guns to make ... probably the only hidden downside to making models is that once you start you don't want to quit until it's absolutely perfect.

Quoted from SubRosa:

Outstanding!

You know, if you can just email me your articles in a text file with the pictures attached, and I will code them and put them up on the main site.

Thanks What do you mean? Like a word document with the pictures already inside? or a .txt document with the pictures attached in the e-mail?

Quoted from DrFuzzy:

I'm looking forward to part two. I'm really weak on the textures part of the process, learning how to put those in without changing the existing models would just be fantastic. Would also speed up the eventual release of my modern military units considerably.

Yeah, had to take a break from all the copy-pasting of image links

A Word doc or a text file would be fine. But if you do it in Word make sure that you do not use any of Word's special characters, like their smart quotes or apostrophes. I have to remove thing like that because they do not display correctly on the site. Just put all the pictures in a zip file and attach it to the email. I will host them in our Gallery.

With your permission I will put part 1 on the site.

sure, go ahead, ive just finished the pictures for part 2 so il have that part up in a bit, and il make a text file for you.

Phew, added Part2

Sorry for the Triple post, but SubRosa, i just sent you a txt document with all the pictures attached, hopefully that will help?

Yes, I received it. Although you sent me more pictures than you are actually linking to in the articles.

I have part 1 finished. I ought to have part 2 done today and will then get both up and newsied.

yeah, i realized that many of the pictures weren't needed so i didn't add them, but there all still in the folder.

Thank you for the excellent tutorial. I feel like I learned something.