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388 Chapter 13 ■ Introduction to Modeling with MilkShape

Table 13.1 UVMapper OBJ Export Options Values

Table 13.2 UVMapper BMP Export Options Values

21.Your texture should appear on the can in the 3D view, wrapped correctly.

22.If no texture appears, click in the 3D window to force an update.

23.If there is still no texture, make sure that you have the 3D window still set to Textured, by right-clicking in the 3D window and checking the menu.

Enhancing the Soup Can Model

Have a seat and stew on that for a while. When you are done, we'll carry on and start hammering at the soup can and improve the model.

How about we open the can up? The can model has a top and a bottom. We want to leave the bottom where it is and flip the top lid up.

First we need to separate the lid from the can.

1. Choose the Model tab and click Select.

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2.Click Vertex and select all the vertices at the bottom of the can, as shown in Figure 13.8. Use either the Side view or the Front view.

3.Choose Edit, Hide Selection. The dots of the vertices will disappear. This means that none of the vertices for the bottom face are selectable.

4.Now click Face. Make sure that By Vertex is selected.

5.In the Top view, select the vertex in the center of the can, as in Figure 13.9. Because you had hidden the bottom vertices, only the single center vertex for the top of the can has been selected. And because you are actually selecting faces by vertex, then all the top lid faces—and only those

faces—have been selected.

6.In the Groups tab, click Regroup. This will create a new mesh with only the faces from the top of the can. The mesh will be named "Regroup01". Rename this mesh to "lid" in the same manner that you did earlier when you renamed the cylinder mesh to "can".

7.Switch back to the Model tab. Your lid mesh should

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390Chapter 13 ■ Introduction to Modeling with MilkShape

11.Choose the Groups tab and click Regroup. The lid faces will now be part of their own group.

12.Choose Edit, Duplicate Selection. Another copy of the lid will be made in exactly the same location as the original.

13.Select Face, Reverse Vertex Order. This will invert the normals of the lid's faces, making it viewable from the other direction. You will recall that the normal of a face is, in the simplest terms, the direction that a face is

14.On the Groups tab, add the original lid to your selection by clicking on the first lid group.

15.Select Vertex, Weld Together. Now the original lid is viewable from one side, and the copy is viewable from the other. They now share the exact same vertices.

If you rotate your can in the 3D view, you'll see that your lid now has the lid part of the skin on both sides. You'll also notice that the inside of the can is black. This is because no faces are normalized to the interior, just as the lid at first did not have any faces normalized on the side.

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You may be wondering why you didn't have to assign a material to the new faces you created with the Duplicate command. What happened is that when you grouped the original faces and the new faces together, the material that was assigned to the original lid faces were automatically assigned to the new group.

16.Repeat the above steps but this time create a set of faces for the can body that are normalized to the interior instead of the exterior, and then group them together. You can use your UV mapping and Paint Shop Pro skills to create a more realistic metallic interior to the can, instead of just repeating the exterior skin on the inside.

17.Save your work—you never know when a nice can of soup may be needed for dipping your towel in!

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So, here we are. You've made a model of an object, using a couple of shape primitives. And you've learned how to make double-sided textures, rotate and move meshes (or groups), and assign skins. Feel free to explore your new capabilities. Poke around and try out the other primitives.

Menus

MilkShape can perform many more features and operations than what we've just gone over. In later chapters you'll learn how to make more difficult and challenging shapes, like player-characters, vehicles, and weapons. In this chapter we'll take a look at the program itself in more detail.

Most but not all of the menus have shortcuts assigned to the keys. Typically, the ones that are used the most do have shortcuts. If you want to add your own shortcut, you can use a plug-in to do that. We'll cover that when we discuss the Tools menu.

File

As in most Windows programs, operations in the File menu (see Figure 13.11) relate either to the creation and saving of files or to making global alterations to the current file's properties or contents. See

Table 13.3 for more detail.

Figure 13.11 The File menu.

The MilkShape Edit menu (see Figure 13.12) contains commands that assist the user when modifying models. It does not have Cut, Copy, or Paste but does offer commands in a similar vein for duplicating, hiding, and selecting objects. See Table 13.4 for more detail.

Vertex

You can perform a number of operations on vertices in a model. They are available through the Vertex menu (see Figure 13.13). In most cases you will need to ensure that you've selected only vertices in a model or at least have the

selection mode set to Vertex. See Table 13.5 for more detail. Figure 13.13 The Vertex menu.

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392 Chapter 13 ■ Introduction to Modeling with MilkShape

Table 13.4 MilkShape Edit Menu

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Table 13.5 MilkShape Vertex Menu

Face

The Face menu (see Figure 13.14) provides commands for manipulating triangles and faces in the workspace. See Table 13.6 for more detail.

Figure 13.14 The Face menu.

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394 Chapter 13 ■ Introduction to Modeling with MilkShape

Table 13.6 MilkShape Face Menu

Animate

The Animate menu (see Figure 13.15) is used to manipulate animation frames in the model via the Keyframer. See Table 13.7 for more detail.

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Tools

The Tools menu (see Figure 13.16) provides access to both built-in tools and user plug-in tools. The functions available are not the same as those available in the toolbox. This is a potential source of confusion. See Table 13.8 for more detail about the Tools menu.

Figure 13.16 The Tools menu.

Table 13.8 MilkShape Tools Menu

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396 Chapter 13 ■ Introduction to Modeling with MilkShape

MilkShape Plug-Ins

There is quite a large list of MilkShape plug-ins that extend MilkShape's capabilities. For information about where to find them to download, tutorials about how to use them, and the names of the individual creators, see Appendix B, "Game Development Resources on the Internet." The plugins that were known at the time of this writing are listed; some plug-ins are import or export filters for different file formats and aren't included here, except for the Torque DTS Exporter, because we use it in this book (the Wavefront OBJ Importer and Exporter are built into MilkShape).

■ms2DTSExporter. This plug-in exports models, animations, and materials to DTS model format for use with the Torque Engine. This plug-in appears in the File, Export menu.

■msSelectionEditor. This plug-in edits the selection from a 3D view. There are a lot of options and you can read some detailed information about it here.

■msTimer. This plug-in lets you time how long you've been working on a certain model.

■msEdgeExtrude. This plug-in lets you extrude edges in addition to faces.

■msJointTool. This plug-in allows you to add joints in the middle of the hierarchy, unlink a joint from a hierarchy, and assign vertices to the closest joint (some kind of "Assign Mesh to Skeleton" tool).

■msSnap. This plug-in snaps not only to 1.0, it also snaps joints.

■msToolArray. This plug-in duplicates objects and then places the duplicates in 3D space according to user specifications.

■msVertexPlane. This plug-in is similar to the Vertex, Flatten command, except that it snaps selected vertices to a plane instead of a single point.

■msToolFatBoy. This plug-in will make your model fatter or thinner. This is useful for tweaking player and monster characters.

■msOperationMirrorAll. This plug-in will mirror everything about your model over the selected plane: bones, mesh, animation—everything.

■msToolReverseAnimation. This plug-in will reverse the order of the keyframes in whatever animation you have loaded.

■msToolScaleAll. This plug-in applies scale to all objects in the workspace at once.

■msSelPolyCount. This plug-in shows the selected polygon, vertex, and unique vertex counts, as well as how many polygons there are per group.

■msBridge. This plug-in creates a mesh connecting to previously independent meshes or groups.

■msTerGen. This plug-in can generate random terrains or import a bitmap file to use as a height map.

■msTextGen. This plug-in generates 3D objects in the form of text.

■msModelInfo. This plug-in provides more detailed information about a model than the Show Model Statistics command.

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■msTileTextureMapper. This plug-in generates texture coordinates to geometry for tile textures (also known as seamless textures).

■msLathe. This plug-in takes flat geometry and turns it around the X-axis to build a 3D model.

You can install plug-ins by simply copying them to the MilkShape directory and then launching MilkShape. They will then appear under the Tools menu beneath Show Model Statistics.

Window

The Window menu (see Figure 13.17) provides commands that determine what information is available in the MilkShape window and how it is displayed. See Table 13.9 for more detail.

Figure 13.17 The Window menu.

Table 13.9 MilkShape Window Menu

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