Dipity's brief guide to rendering your character.

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Topic/Postby Serendipity » 21 Apr 2008, 21:53

Dipity's brief guide to rendering your character.

Ok, so not so brief... 1 hour 30 worth of writing.

Yeah, so it's an average Monday night. Television is shit as usual, and I actually left work at a reasonable hour. Shocking! While sitting on the 18:25, I mused to myself about a little promise I made:- a short guide on rendering your character.

Using the infernal power of google, I've worked out a few free software versions for people to use. Time limited, sure, but you can at least get a feel for the process.

Ok, that's enough rubbish, on with the fun.

1. Getting your character out of WoW.

This is pretty easy. And fun too! Your first stop is http://www.wowmodelviewer.org/. Grab yourself the viewer and install it - anywhere will do, but I use 'My Documents'. Load it up, and using the top bar thingy, select Options->Settings. On the options tab, make sure that the Model Viewer is looking in the right place for the MPQ files. If you've just selected the default install path, it'll already be correct.

Now, creating your character. I won't do anything too fancy, so if you don't have a list on the lefthand side of the screen, do View->File List at the top o' the screen. You should get a list:- Cameras, Character... Blah blah.

Select the + next to Character, and select Human, then Male, then finally humanmale.m2. This'll bring up a rather naked looking guy, with random skin tones, hair colour and face. Also, on the right it should've brought up another menu allowing you to assign items and attributes. Give him the following - Skin colour (take that American spelling!) 1, face type 3, hair colour 9, hairy styles 1, facial feature 2, and facial colour 9.

Congratulations, you now have an old man. Now, he looks a little bit.... Paladiny, so let's finish it by giving him some armour. At the top of the screen, do Character->Load Item Set, then select 'Justicar Battlegear'. Of course, every good soldier of the Light needs shoes, so select 'Boots' on the right, then Boots of Valiance. Also, his hat looks a bit daft, and he looks like he's been around the block a bit, so click on Head (on the right again) and give him the Eye of Rend. Finally, every good hero needs a cloak, so click 'Cape' (on ze right) and give him a Cloak of Warding.

Nice.

Still, he'd be a bit of a chump if he was weaponless, so a Commanding Mallet in his right hand will complete the effect. Congratulations, you've managed to create Inquisitor Graun, an RP character I never for around to leveling (shame, he was a really fun concept).

For the sake of effort, I won't put him into a crazy pose, so let's export him. Do File->Export Model, and using the Windows Explorer, create a folder, and save him inside it. This is because it exports the textures, and you don't want them cluttering things up.

2. Making the character usable.

This is fairly easy. WoW Model Viewer exports in a format called Milkshake 3D. It's a shareware model editor/convertor, and you can find it at http://chumbalum.swissquake.ch/. It's time limited unless registered (I bought it) but you get a month to twiddle if you're cheap. There may be other software floating around that could do it, but that's for you to research.

Load up Milkshape, and do File->Open, then find Mr. Graun and bring him up. In the bottom right you should see him standing there, looking grim. Now the conversion process isn't very precise, bits may be a bit.. Er... Moved about. This is a pain, but we'll deal with it later.

Do File->Export->Wavefront OBJ.. This'll save him in a rather general format that you can use in pretty much any 3d package.

3. Cleaning up and rendering.

The next step is to make some finishing touches, and end out with a nice picture. For this I use Vue 6. It's a bit expensive (though much cheaper than it was), but powerful. Vue 4 can give a similar effect, and is cheap these days, if hard to find. http://www.e-onsoftware.com/products/?page=try has some trial versions for tinkering with.

Load up the program, and do File->Import Object. Do ok, and a grump inquisitor will appear. There are 3 views, top, side and front, and in the bottom right the camera which is how the render will appear. Right clicking on the front view, and selecting Manual Zoom will help to clean up the model. Zoom far enough so the guy fills it from top to bottom.

Now, he looks ok at the mo', if a little flawed. His eyepatch is wrong, and he's not really holding his hammer correctly. On the right, click the "+" next to the character's filename. This'll bring up lots of things called 'Geosets' - basically bits of him. Now, Geoset_22, the eyepatch, is way out, so using the different views line it up with his right eye. If you click it, it becomes selected, and moving the mouse pointer over it changes the pointer into a + with an arrow at each end. Holding the left button allows you to move the model.

Assuming you've done that (Alternatively delete it! There's no real problem with it not being there.) then we have to sort out the hammer. Similar principle, just this time move it into his fist! To do this, first select Geoset 25 and delete it (just press 'del'!), then shift click Geosets 23 and 24 to select them both simultaneously. Clicking on the hammer in the view while it's already selected will bring up a little circular arrow in the bottom right. This allows you to rotate the objects. Agaion, delete it if this is too complex.

Finally, the shoulderpads. If you've tinkered with a test render, you may see they're transparent. You could delete them, but me, I like them and want them fixed! Firstly, delete Geosets 21, 20, 19, 15, 14 and 13 - they're not needed. Now, open the texture 'Graun_9' (assuming using the same filename as me, otherwise Whateveryouput_9) in MS Paint. I use Photoshop, but Paint'll do. All you need to do is save the picture again, this time using the 'JPEG' picture format. Same place, same filename, just a different extension.

Now the file is converted, we need to replace the current texture in Vue. This is easy enough. Select Geoset 18 (the right pauldron), and double click that black box in the to right, beneath the words.. Er.. Geoset_18! This brings up the texture settings. Simply double click the silver and gold one in the middle of the screen, select the little folder with the arrow coming out of it, then find the file you saved from Paint. Make sure to select the JPEG! Click OK, then delete Geoset_16 and his right shoulder will be correct. Perform the same action with Geoset_12, then get rid of Geoset_10.

Congratulations, Inquisitor Graun is ready for battle!

Do File->Save Object.... Very important this! Now... All we need is to do a decent picture of him!

I won't take you through landscape creation or anything, there are squillions of tutorials strewn through the manuals and the internet. Click on Mr. Graun and using the Main camera on the middle right, rotate around and zoom in and out until you get a nice view - the big button rotates, the little one to the left and below zooms. Then, right click on the little camera in the top right and select quality->Final, Render destination->Screen, and 640x480.

Click ok, then left click on the camera and eventually you'll get a picture! To save it, right click and select Save Picture!

Image
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Serendipity
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Topic/Postby Tiermaya » 22 Apr 2008, 01:02

Nice, will have a detailed read when it's not midnight. If I enjoy it I'll probably splash out on paid for software.

Thankees.
Serendipity wrote:****ing Royal Mail! They're about as much use as a condom made of tissue paper.
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Topic/Postby zerkesh » 19 Dec 2010, 15:49

I'll just gravedig this thread and point out that WoWModelviewer now does all of the above in the same proggie and is quite alot easier to use :)

http://home.broadpark.no/~cahe/blademaster.jpg

Here's a blademaster I made out of boredom a while back, the program has become even easier to use.
NE SXE/F W/P N A/S/L PM ME PLZ IF U R D 1 2 C 4 A BJ KTHX
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