Vertex Alpha Terrain Blending on Models?

[obsidian]

Finally got vertex blending sorted out for Lightwave and Q3. Thanks for the help g0th! So much different than Q4...

I need help in this area... using 3ds Max, I can export to ASE with vertex RGB, but it will always freeze if I use vertex alpha. Are you exporting to ASE or LWO? Do you have any information about the general process that you use to do this?

[Hipshot]

Finally got vertex blending sorted out for Lightwave and Q3. Thanks for the help g0th! So much different than Q4...

I need help in this area... using 3ds Max, I can export to ASE with vertex RGB, but it will always freeze if I use vertex alpha. Are you exporting to ASE or LWO? Do you have any information about the general process that you use to do this?

What version of max, which exporter?

[obsidian]

3ds Max 2009. The default exporter that came with the program (File > Export > save as .ase)

[phantazm11]

Finally got vertex blending sorted out for Lightwave and Q3. Thanks for the help g0th! So much different than Q4...

I need help in this area... using 3ds Max, I can export to ASE with vertex RGB, but it will always freeze if I use vertex alpha. Are you exporting to ASE or LWO? Do you have any information about the general process that you use to do this?

I don't own Max so I'm unfamiliar with any problems with Max and vertex alpha exporting problems. I'm exporting everything as .lwo. I can't even seem to find any ASE exporters for Lightwave.

Have you tried exporting as an .lwo? In Lightwave I have to change the alpha value of the airbrush to get this to work for idTech3.

[Hipshot]

3ds Max 2009. The default exporter that came with the program (File > Export > save as .ase)

Hmm, the reason why I'm still on Max 8 here is because I didn't even find any ase exporter for later Max, atleast not in Max 9.
Now I can't check this in Max 2009 until I get back to work.

[g0th-]

I've run into the same problem while trying max 9 Obsidian. I use Modo now to save out as lwo and it works.

[obsidian]

I don't own Max so I'm unfamiliar with any problems with Max and vertex alpha exporting problems. I'm exporting everything as .lwo. I can't even seem to find any ASE exporters for Lightwave.

Have you tried exporting as an .lwo? In Lightwave I have to change the alpha value of the airbrush to get this to work for idTech3.

Can I just confirm that you are indeed exporting vertex alpha and not vertex RGB? I know that Q3Map2 won't use vertex RGB for blending while other branches of the program like Q3Map2_fs will. I just want to make sure that if I can somehow get it exported, Q3Map2 will recognize the vertex alpha and use it for the blend. I may need to find a .lwo exporter for Max.

Hmm, the reason why I'm still on Max 8 here is because I didn't even find any ase exporter for later Max, atleast not in Max 9.

That can't be right, I'm pretty sure I've used Max 8, 9 and 11. Export to ASE has always been under File > Export.

I've run into the same problem while trying max 9 Obsidian. I use Modo now to save out as lwo and it works.

Can Modo export to .ase? Do you know of an easy workflow to export/import objects from Max to Modo?

[Hipshot]

Hmm, the reason why I'm still on Max 8 here is because I didn't even find any ase exporter for later Max, atleast not in Max 9.

That can't be right, I'm pretty sure I've used Max 8, 9 and 11. Export to ASE has always been under File > Export.

Sorry. I'm a son of a bitch. I meant IMPORT. I'm gonna leave this discussion.

[phantazm11]

I don't own Max so I'm unfamiliar with any problems with Max and vertex alpha exporting problems. I'm exporting everything as .lwo. I can't even seem to find any ASE exporters for Lightwave.

Have you tried exporting as an .lwo? In Lightwave I have to change the alpha value of the airbrush to get this to work for idTech3.

Can I just confirm that you are indeed exporting vertex alpha and not vertex RGB? I know that Q3Map2 won't use vertex RGB for blending while other branches of the program like Q3Map2_fs will. I just want to make sure that if I can somehow get it exported, Q3Map2 will recognize the vertex alpha and use it for the blend. I may need to find a .lwo exporter for Max.

Yeah, initially I was using vertex RGB the same way I did the blends for my Quake 4 maps and was getting frustrated because it didn't work. g0th helped me figure out that vertex alpha was the way to go with Q3map2.

[Hipshot]

I'm not gonna leave the disc just yet.

I compile with Q3map2_fs, that supports vertex alpha, I take that everyone here's talking about a way to do this with regular Q3map2?

[phantazm11]

Speaking for myself, I'm using Q3map2 2.5.16

[obsidian]

Q3Map2_fs (at least according to this tutorial) uses vertex RGB for blending instead of vertex alpha.

It appears as if phantazm11's using the standard Q3Map2 and vertex alpha.

Now if only 3ds Max will let me export a proper .ase with vertex alpha or .lwo, I'd be all set.


Edit: split topic from screenshots thread for clarity. Yay moderator control panel!

[g0th-]

Obsidian: There are .ase exporters for Modo to the Unreal that are specially made to work with that engine. I could never get that to work with q4 and I haven't tried with q3. I can do a test and see. Is it any special reason to why you rather use .ase files then .lwo? My main problem with .lwo is that I can only use one material per model, witch is a major pain in the ass.

Hipshot vertex alphas works with q3map2 or at least it works with .lwo files. Dunno if q3map2 has different support for .ase files in that regard.

[Hipshot]

This might also be of help.
viewtopic.php?p=624805

I would like to learn how to blend with regular Q3map2 though, so I don't hafto use _fs.

[g0th-]

ohh, damn you Obsidian. I was so confused, I've just wrote this in the screenshot thread and after I posted it all other posts about it just disapered

here's a copy of it:


Obsidian: There are .ase exporters for Modo to the Unreal that are specially made to work with that engine. I could never get that to work with q4 and I haven't tried with q3. I can do a test and see. Is it any special reason to why you rather use .ase files then .lwo? My main problem with .lwo is that I can only use one material per model, witch is a major pain in the ass.

Hipshot vertex alphas works with q3map2 or at least it works with .lwo files. Dunno if q3map2 has different support for .ase files in that regard.

[g0th-]

wth??

[obsidian]

Haha. If you would stop posting for a minute and let me split and merge threads, everything would have been fine! Grrrr! This forum's server being slow and unresponsive doesn't help either.

I have nothing against .lwo, I just don't have a .lwo exporter for 3ds Max so I'm trying to find one to test with. ASE files are nice in that they are plain text so editing shader paths in a text editor is easy.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but as I understand it one of the main issues with ASE vertex blending was that ASE format doesn't actually store vertex alpha. So, I'm assuming that TwentySeven's version of Q3map2 is using the vertex colour channels for alpha?

Oh. Well that explains the crashing. That also rules out the use of .ase's for vertex alpha blending with Q3Map2. However, alphaMod volume brushes do work.

[phantazm11]

Is it any special reason to why you rather use .ase files then .lwo? My main problem with .lwo is that I can only use one material per model, witch is a major pain in the ass.

You can have multiple materials per model with an .lwo model. This is a single model I threw together that uses three different materials.



I haven't really tried to blend more than two materials on the same model yet however.

[g0th-]

I tried 2 materials again and it worked, thanks phantazm11. I think I used to high image res on the materials before and that's why q3 crashed (2x1024 images). Might be that models can't have more then 1024x1024 res images on all materials combined.

[Kat]

I'm confused... are you guys simply discussing getting blending to work on a model (between models) in game? To me reading this it all sounds like you're trying to blend the model in Max/et-al and then export it, which you shouldn't be doing.

So, unless there's been an update to Q3Map2 I'm not aware of, I was always under the impression that you simply *painted* vertexes to be blended in Max/Blender/Modo/whatever and exported that out *as is*, you're not supposed to be trying to export 'transparency' with/on the model itself, it's just vertex paint (the ASE format apparently does support actual physical mesh transparency but so far as I'm aware Q3/shaders can't read it).

So once you have your ASE/LWO with vertex paint and material assignment it should then be a case of writing up the shader and/or using the alphablend brushes... that's all I ever did for the stuff I modelled for use in Q3, unless you're trying to do something I didn't, not sure

And yes, ASE is limited to two 'blends' per model, LWO isn't (can't remember if it *has* a limit or not). If you want to do complex blends with ASE you'll need to break the model up, no way around that - Blender does and can export working LWO files btw.

[Hipshot]

Can someone please sum this up, this thread is very, uhm, scattered(?)

Phantazm11 is using .lwo and Q3map2 and are using vertex alpha?
I'm using Q3map2_fs and .ase, because .ase can't handle vertex alpha I'm using vertex color, the latter Q3map2 doesn't understand so I need to use Q3map2_fs?

[obsidian]

I'm confused... are you guys simply discussing getting blending to work on a model (between models) in game? To me reading this it all sounds like you're trying to blend the model in Max/et-al and then export it, which you shouldn't be doing.

So, unless there's been an update to Q3Map2 I'm not aware of, I was always under the impression that you simply *painted* vertexes to be blended in Max/Blender/Modo/whatever and exported that out *as is*, you're not supposed to be trying to export 'transparency' with/on the model itself, it's just vertex paint (the ASE format apparently does support actual physical mesh transparency but so far as I'm aware Q3/shaders can't read it).

So once you have your ASE/LWO with vertex paint and material assignment it should then be a case of writing up the shader and/or using the alphablend brushes... that's all I ever did for the stuff I modelled for use in Q3, unless you're trying to do something I didn't, not sure

No, we're not messing with transparency on the model itself, we want it to work with the shader as you are describing. The problem is how the model formats stores the vertex colour data and how Q3Map2 reads them. If you have gotten vertex painted ASE models compiled with Q3Map2 to blend correctly, that's news to me (without alphaMod brushes).

Summary of everything so far:

• Vertex colour are the three RGB values plus the extra alpha value
• ASE format does NOT store the extra alpha value
• LWO format does store the extra alpha value
• Q3Map2 will NOT use vertex RGB for blending, vertex alpha only (which is technically more correct but leaves ASE in the dark)
• Q3Map2_fs will use vertex RGB for blending, don't know what it does with vertex alpha (technically incorrect, but makes ASE happy)
• 3ds Max will not export to LWO
• Modo and Blender will export to LWO
• I need a way of making Max export to LWO with vertex alpha either directly or via Modo or Blender.

It looks like Max will also export to 3DS and OBJ which GtkRadiant also supports. No idea if vertex alpha blending will work. 3DS is antiquated, so I'm more hopeful about OBJ. Will test and report.

[Hipshot]

Thanks for the sum, that's the way to moderate!

I have tested OBJ, but I was never able to find out how to set the materials in that format. I did what you normally do but something happens in the export. If you know how to get them into radiant with the correct material please tell the settings.

[g0th-]

MD3 is a pain in the ass to work with if your doing terrain or big sized models as the format has limitations on the model size. anything outside -512 grid units to +512 grid units on all axis will be messed up.

[Kat]

No, we're not messing with transparency on the model itself, we want it to work with the shader as you are describing. The problem is how the model formats stores the vertex colour data and how Q3Map2 reads them. If you have gotten vertex painted ASE models compiled with Q3Map2 to blend correctly, that's news to me (without alphaMod brushes).

Summary of everything so far:

• Vertex colour are the three RGB values plus the extra alpha value
• ASE format does NOT store the extra alpha value
• LWO format does store the extra alpha value
• Q3Map2 will NOT use vertex RGB for blending, vertex alpha only (which is technically more correct but leaves ASE in the dark)
• Q3Map2_fs will use vertex RGB for blending, don't know what it does with vertex alpha (technically incorrect, but makes ASE happy)
• 3ds Max will not export to LWO
• Modo and Blender will export to LWO
• I need a way of making Max export to LWO with vertex alpha either directly or via Modo or Blender.

It looks like Max will also export to 3DS and OBJ which GtkRadiant also supports. No idea if vertex alpha blending will work. 3DS is antiquated, so I'm more hopeful about OBJ. Will test and report.

Ah kk, that's makes sense. OK, a couple of points...

- ASE, OBJ and vertex colour blending in Q3 doesn't work (without the updated Urban Terror version). Don't know about LWO as I never messed with it in Q3.
- ASE should export/hold vertex colours fine from Max else there's a problem with how it's been applied to the model and/or there's an issue with the export script.
- Q3Map2 will only blend *two* materials per ASE model using alphaMOD brushes (again not sure about LWO other than knowing it supports more than two materials per modelled object).

I'm not sure what else you guys are doing but it sounds like you're possibly over complicating the issue somehow - not sure what you mean by "vertex alpha" being exported... if I remember correctly, all you do is export your sectioned ASE files (no vertex painting/anything else), place the alphaMOD brushes and then group them together so that only grouped object are effected by each other; as far as I'm aware with what I used to do, vertexblending using vertex colours wasn't possible with the default Q3Map2 - it was something I requested but it was already to late in the day - around the time of the last version of Q3map2 before yadnar moved on to other things.

I made the working files for Kat1024 available for just this situation, not sure which was linked to by goth or phantazm, but the *.map file is included with the files needed to look at it all in Radiant - http://www.katsbits.com/htm/maps/kat1024.htm