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Tut

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  1. You can find a large variety of maps on the Resources board and site: https://forum.multitheftauto.com/forum/87-resources/ https://community.multitheftauto.com/index.php?p=resources There are a lot of (mostly race) maps from Gtainside that you can also choose to pick from. Be aware that these maps include .DFF models as it's a modding site. https://www.gtainside.com/en/sanandreas/maps-all/
  2. Tut

    Car adding

    You cannot add new vehicles without replacing existing ID's, no (correct me if I'm wrong, please). I do however seem to recall someone having been working on a systhem that would sort of replicate limit adjuster (DIY), but I don't have any page or discussion that I can pull up for you to follow up on. To summarize it, no.
  3. Your question could do with more details. Check this post, might help: https://forum.multitheftauto.com/topic/121953-how-to-delet-world-objects-treesweaponsetc/?do=findComment&comment=971201
  4. Please post in either: - your own language's forum section (support area) https://forum.multitheftauto.com/forum/94-other-languages/ - our support section in an English written message https://forum.multitheftauto.com/forum/82-support-for-mtasa-1x/
  5. Click E and you'll get a more precise selection of objects. If this doesn't help, try removing the mapped object straigth out of the map file found in \resources\map-name. If you still have no luck, you may have to create your own code to remove the object. To do so: Find the object on Prineside that you want to remove, in my case, queens_04_SFS. You can use the Model search by map position feature to pinpoint the desired object's location. https://dev.prineside.com/en/gtasa_samp_model_id/model/10629-queens_04_SFS/ Then, on the object page click "Fullscreen / position export" and it'll give you the X position, Y position and Z position. You'll simply fill those into a removeWorldObject line (as below). It's possible you'll have to adjust the radius. I believe it defines the deletion radius, so if you have 10 other trees within 50 meters that you want to keep, you'll want to add a very small value if you only intend on deleting one of the trees. Or a value of 50 if you intend on deleting every tree. (that one was a mere speculation, no confirmation whether that's how it works or not) <removeWorldObject id="removeWorldObject (queens_04_SFS) (1)" radius="34.332691" interior="0" model="10629" lodModel="10673" posX="-2574.3516" posY="319.96094" posZ="12.07813" rotX="0" rotY="0" rotZ="0"></removeWorldObject> Oh and if that doesn't work either, it's quite possible that it's an object that's spawned through the "grass effect" setting on MTA video setting. They spawn on natural surfaces like grass, dirt, sand etcetera, all depending on the surface material.
  6. All 5 regardless of which you have access to, are scheduled to be removed from our ban list on January 20. For future reference please warn us of any concurrent bans you might have on different accounts, so to not have us ban your active account for evading. Please note that after I banned your 4th account (after I saw you had 3 current bans in the discord server), you should not have connected using your 5th as that's considered evading your ban. Stick to one account from now on, same goes for forums, unless you need multiple. Read more on the Rules page -> B. User Accounts Rules #5.
  7. You may want to check this page out: https://forum.multitheftauto.com/forum/188-server-list-help/ As a side note, please stick to one thread, there's no need to create duplicates.
  8. Tut

    Question

    The first one seems quite reasonable. I'm not sure of the second but then again I might not be the best to consult on this matter.
  9. Tut

    Question

    I didn't completely understand your question. Are you referring to his video about character customization? I strongly believe it's done through vertex geometry deformation shader. (look it up) It looks like the model might've been CJ, but it's possible that it was a regular ped made up of an entire mesh. I'm a modeler and am not into any of the programming languages, so my help in this section may be very limited.
  10. On topic I have very small knowledge on cheat regulations but i'd assume it's a bold no, and my common sense would urge me to avoid discussing the matter at all. Edit: answer is no, and should not be discussed. MTA offers a huge amount of scripting functions which can get you covered for whatever you need. There are code examples on most of the function pages as well to get yourself started. We also have a scripting section on forums and our discord server full of guru's to help out. I hope I was able to drag you away from your initial plan.
  11. Open world interiors is possible. The way you go about doing it is up to you. There are ways that you can retain or destroy performance. GTA 5 uses MILO for interiors. I barely have any knowledge on them, but I've done some reading and found that it might be done by projecting an image, from a camera placed at the window. When the player opens the door, they'll be teleported to another dimension while a chunk of the GTA 5 environment remains loaded. Most of these are speculations. I cannot tell how exactly it works. If your interior has props (so not just 1 whole model) I would suggest you only have them load within a small radius else you'll have a large excess of elements streamed in, which can cause issues with performance. There are some GTA SA interiors - mostly for cutscenes, which have a chunk of the map to be seen from its windows. You can do this yourself to imitate the GTA 5 interior system. I was working on an open world interior but never finished. https://streamable.com/9bk4v I just found this video and it might be exactly what you're looking for:
  12. I'm not aware of any particularly good hosts myself, but have you had a look at the Hosting solutions forum?
  13. Introduction This guide intends to teach 3ds Max users the basics, and more advanced ways, of working with (environment) animations and rigs to enhance atmosphere of the game. Animations, moving images or however you name it, they are there, everywhere in games. GTA San Andreas and its predecessors do utilize animations, however to a limited extent; most environment models were kept frozen in the dark days of PC games to save computer resources. Few objects like mechanical oil drills and food store mascots are animated. Today we're past those days and have advanced in technology to exceed limits, and integrate known resource demanding features into our games without much of a performance impact. It's important to keep in mind that the Renderware engine has various limitations associated with models/3D assets. These limitations do apply very harsh on what this guide covers. Table of contents Demo reel - Custom rigs and animations Prerequisites Recommended Character skeleton Basics to skinning Simulation conversion to bones workflow Demo reel - Custom rigs and animations Prerequisites Must have Autodesk 3ds Max of any desired version. 2017+ needed to speed up cloth rigging. Must have Kam's Maxscripts. Must have Animation Manager tool. Recommended You can use virtually any modeling or animation software e.g Blender or Cinema 4D to do 90% of the work. 3ds Max is required to export to GTA formats IFP and DFF. It's recommended to have experience in game modding and 3D modeling software of choice. It's highly recommended to use Shagg_E's anim/char helper for easy setup of bones and animation. For those who calculate bone hierarchy, add SPunknown = 4 to Root bone's object property. It's possible to use ARKTOS Tools VertexToBones for converting vertex-baked animations to bone animations. It should be noted however that this does not create bone hierarchy the desired way. It creates bones that aren't linked to each other, only the root, so it generates the animation for each bone to move, not rotate, and thus the majority of the animation relies on position keys, where SA animations only support rotation keys. Character skeleton San Andreas uses bones for its character animations. These bones are linked together, forming a skeleton with joints that can be rotated. Motion capture data can be transferred onto bones to ease the creation of character and more detailed animations. This was done for GTA cutscene models primarily. On 3ds Max, bones can be virtually anything, ranging from camera's to dummies. When exporting to GTA formats, the bone objects are automatically converted into dummies (helpers). This is how bones worked in early 2000's and/or 90's. If you desire to convert a helper or model into a dummy, follow this CGTalk post's instructions. For creating a skeleton, place all bones around the inner mesh of the model. Everything must be in a hierarchy and bones can have as many children as desired. Naming conventions are only recommended for easier overview, however they can be named according to one's desire e.g Bone_0 - Bone_12. To have the bones show the way the imported skins ones do, head to Display Panel under Links, and check both boxes. Make sure this is done for every bone. This will display joint links in correct hierarchy in viewport. Some games may use vertex baked animations, thus negating the need for bones. This is often seen on models such as all types of clothing. For game engines that do not support vertex animation or dynamic cloth, bones will be used instead. Below is a spoiler of valid bone ID's for regular ped models. There are 31 functional bone ID's, 32 with Root included. Once again, bones does not have to use same naming convenience as presented below. They also don't have to use same order of ID's or bone hierarchy, so for instance, Pelvis and Jaw ID's can be exchanged, as long as Root ID = 0. Or, the Head bone can be child of R Hand, not necessarily the Neck. Basics to skinning Although not hugely covered in this guide; Skinned models use a different system from vehicles and map objects. Besides having their 3D mesh, they have a skeleton. A skeleton is made of bone joints linked to each other, so that when the shoulder moves, the lower arm does as well. A bone will only affect part of the mesh that it's weighed to. If you weigh all vertices of the player's hat to the Head bone, then the hat will move according to the head bone. If you weigh all of the hat's vertices to the Pelvis bone, then the hat will stay static in air while the head moves. All vertices must be affiliated with at least one bone. Although a skin can have 32 bones, it'll work just fine if you weigh all vertices to only 3 bones. Not all bones require to be affiliated with a vertex. If you try to export a skinned model where 1 vertex is not weighted, the exporter will reject your request to export or your game will crash. A skin can have as few as 2 bones (root and children), so if your model has only 8 vertices, there's really no point having 32 bones when only 8 are functional. Below image (credits: IamObama) shows the basics to weighing joints to a character mesh. While this doesn't show all of the bones, it can prove very helpful as a lookup while weighing vertices to your skin. You can also load in a GTA ped to reference its miscellaneous bones e.g facial and fingers. Simulation conversion to bones workflow Note: The following process or techniques may apply for Blender/Maya users as well. 3ds Max has inbuilt cloth physics. These can simulate with help of gravity, wind, etc. and is a great way to generate animations for cloth-like elements. With help of tracking markers, you can track a bone to follow the orientation of a marker, which can then be baked into keyframes. The process is incredibly simple, you just have to understand the basics of cloth physics and object constraints. Video tutorial: Text tutorial: Create your model simulation model Be mindful about geometry and bone count when creating your model. The fewer polygons, the more rough the animation will be. The more polygons, the more cloth-like it'll look. The more bones with keyframes, the larger the file size (lots) of your IFP. For flags, one bone should never have full influence of a vertex. A vertex should always be affected by 2 or more different bones for a nice blend. It may be an idea to load in a GTA model so that you can somewhat reference the scale, if you don't have access to a dimension ruler. For the purpose of the guide (assuming you follow along the video), create a plane (primitive) with 8 segments in both directions. Make it length: 1,280 meter, width: 848 millimeters. Prepare your simulation model Convert the primitive to either editable mesh or editable poly. Polygon mode is more sustainable for modeling, but it needs to be in Mesh mode once you export it. Enable angle snap (default: A) and rotate it so it stands vertically. On the Hierarchy tab, reset transform to reset rotation values to 0. Add a Cloth modifier to your model. Go to sub-object level group of cloth modifier. Select the vertices that you want to act as solid points (e.g ones attached to flagpole). Click Drag as group mode. Simulate the model Head to Create tab > Space warps. Create a wind. Its position doesn't matter, only the rotation which represents the direction, matters. The default settings of the wind are usually too high. Try setting strength: 0,12, Turbulence: 0,8, Frequency: 0,05. Select the simulation model. On the cloth modifier, select Cloth forces and choose the wind. On the same interface, select Object properties. Select the model's name, then select Cloth, then pick a preset of your preference. Try silk or cashmere. You can optionally use Edge springs. I'm not fully sure what it represents, but I believe it's got to do with keeping the edges intact and not stretching them (which you don't want for bone animations). Try simulating the model. You may want to increase the timeline to a more reasonable duration, but be cautious as the higher it goes, the more your potato will suffer. If you aren't happy with the simulation, erase it and it'll let you try resimulate it. If you're unlucky enough to get the infamous error message dT increased/decreased you may want to start a new 3ds max project file... Create your real model In most cases you'll simply clone the simulated model, name the clone skin_mesh (name can be anything, but for easier scene management, name it something related). Remove the cloth modifier from your "real" model. For the simulated model, select the create keys button in cloth modifier. This will collapse your modifier and bake animation into keyframes, can NOT be reverted! Move the simulated model a bit away from the skin mesh, so that it'll make it significantly easier for a later procedure. Make sure to center the skin mesh to 0,0,0 or you'll get real trouble later. Convert the model to editable mesh. When you need to export later, it doesn't want it as editable poly. Create bones for your model Apply a Skin modifier to your model. This is used to carry the skeleton bones for later on. To make the bone creation and setup a whole lot easier, run Shagg_E's animation tools (link in top of thread). If you simply choose to create a set of dummies, his script won't recognise them as bones and you'll have to add all the object properties manually. So do yourself a favor and use his tool. Navigate to the Char helper section on the interface. Click create root, this'll create a dummy in center of the scene, assuming it corresponds to the model's center. Click create children, this'll create a dummy linked to the root. Drag it out from the model and title it "Pelvis" (again naming doesn't matter, can be "sampsucks" and samp modders will know once they load in your skin!). This bone is usually needed to keep part of the model's verts (abbreviation for vertices) in place, e.g flag pole attachments. Keep creating children bones until you reach your desired amount. It's a good idea to enable snaps (to vertex) so that you can magnet position bones directly onto the vertices. Select any bone in hierarchy and click Calculate for all hierarchy. This calculates bone ID's, bone index and bone type. If you were to set this yourself, you would need to understand how they work, on top of this it would be very time consuming. So we can all thank Shagg_E for making this wonderful script. Select the root bone, head to object properties, in user defined add to the string SPunknown = 4 or else your skin won't work as intended. Prepare motion tracking Create motion tracking markers. Head to create tab -> helpers -> point helper. Keep their scale at .2 or so. Spawn the amount equivalent to the amount of functional bones (excluding root and pelvis). Select all of the point helpers. Under the Animation rollout, select constraint -> attachment constraint -> select the simulated model. Go to Motion tab. The positions are based on triangle points, so you have to insert either 0 or 1 on A and B, then pick a face. It'll make more sense if you watch the video. You need to position the point helpers to the vertices where the bones are positioned at. I don't know of any more efficient way of doing this. On the model's skin modifier, add all functional bones (except root and pelvis). If you're running Max 2017+, you can use Voxel Solver to automate rigging (rough solution) and works great for simulated models. Use setting: falloff 0,2, max influence 3, max resolution 128. Try rotating some bones and hopefully they should affect the skin mesh. Now add the rest of the bones which you didn't rig to the model. If the model is a flag, then select a few vertices that you want to be solid in place, and weight those to pelvis at 100 weight. Track the motion of the simulated model Select all point helpers, click E for rotate, click F12 for rotate transforms and reset all 3 axis to 0. If you don't, some of your bones will be rotated massively (undesired). Apply an orientation constraint to all of your bones, 1 by 1, to their point helper counterpart. This tracks the rotations of the point helpers onto the dummy bones. You can add a shortcut to speed this up a tad... Select all the functional bones. Go to motion tab, click trajectories. This is where you bake the orientation constraints into keyframes for your bone animation. Settings below. Start time = 0 by default, or the first frame of your timeline End time = last frame of timeline OR whenever you desire Samples = amount of keys for the animation. If Start = 0, End = 1500, you can add 1500 samples to have 1500 keys generated, or 150 to have 150 keys generated. Don't use much more than 200 samples or you'll get in serious trouble. You'll have to optimize your keyframes at some point. You can change the keyframe tangent mode (i prefer auto or spline) to change the velocity of the keyframes. Once everything is set, click collapse. This generates keyframes. Animation is now made. Making the cloth simulation seamless/loop is another story. Finishing up Custom model and custom IFP is essentially done now. In order to export animation from 3ds Max, simply select all bones, find an IFP file on your computer and clone it, on 3ds Max run the IFP script, click "load IFP" and then save your custom animation to the cloned IFP file. You can remove excess IFP animations from the IFP archive by using Animation Manager Tool. Have fun with it! There was a recent update where MTA made a couple dozens of unused ped ID's available for servers to use. This is what inspired me to make this guide, since you could use those ID's to "add" new models, of which could be environment models to bring life to the world. Custom IFP's can simply be added into the server, they don't need to replace existing ID's. It's important to note that by changing bone ID's, you change the way that the custom model reacts to default animations. As such, models like banners will appear incredibly distorted. In those cases it's suggested to create some idle, walkstyle and run animations. It's also important to note that you can create LOD animations, since there's really no limit for how many IFP's a server can have. LOD animations may be very handy for animations that have highly dense simulations applied, so the further away the player goes, the less keyframes will be processed.
  14. you can load in your dff model to Max, clone it, give it a collision GTA COL material and name it `ship_col` for easier scene management. you'll want to isolate your collision model so that theres nothing else disturbing your overview. apply a multires modifier to stack and optimize your model like you'd do on high poly models to remove detail. the thing with collision models is that you don't want an excess of detail, in fact you'll want as few polygons as possible, and there's a strict limit on how many it can have before you'll run into game issues. if you're unable to get down to <5000 polygons for your collision model, you'll have to remodel it on your own. (it's worth noting that the primitives polygon rates doesn't matter as much, since they're calculated different from the actual mesh, although they will still add to the performance loss.) SA collisions can store multiple objects, for instance, a map object can have spheres, boxes and cylinders (I think cylinders work) as primitives, as well as an editable model for the collision mesh itself. only needed for more complex parts that a box or sphere can't handle. if you're looking for more help, please leave model details and eventually files below so that people are able to give you the appropriate help. please check out my collision guide through my signature for potentially better explanations. i'm sorry for any grammar mistakes. writing from a low battery phone --- We since spoke on discord and it looks like the project is terminated for now.
  15. Check the "Extracting game assets" section on this thread, if that's what you're after https://forum.multitheftauto.com/topic/119240-mta-modding-in-3d/
  16. Introduction This guide intends to teach 3ds Max users the basics and more advanced ways of working with Vertex Colors, in order to achieve lighting solutions for enhanced quality of game models, or blend several textures together using Vertex alpha. A lot of games utilises vertex colors to accomplish lighting or blending effects, which usually impacts the performance less than model shaders. Types of shaders such as Texture Splatting are pixel based techniques for rendering multiple textures onto a model, where each texture e.g earth, grass, gravel, has their own color on the splat map. This however may use up significantly more resources than its alternatives in some cases. As result, game developers may move their aim towards Vertex Alpha and Color rather than geometry shaders. Vertex Color works almost the same way, however it renders per vertex and not per pixel unlike shaders do. This may result in very poor results if the geometry is not subdivided at the places it is painted at. Besides texture blending, vertex colors are also widely used in games for fake lighting baked into models. This is due to some game engines not supporting Ray Tracing or other rendering, or they simply prefer using vertex colors over per-pixel lighting. In GTA:SA the only light rendering is done by vertex colors and 2DFX. In the days that the game was developed, vertex colors was a more sustainable rendering method over other options. Table of contents Different model lighting depending on game time Importance of vertex colors Importance of vertex illumination Basics of per-vertex Radiosity workflow Hard surface prelighting Faking ambient occlusion Texture blending with Vertex Alpha The vertexPaint modifier Extracting channel info Working with several VertexPaint modifiers Different model lighting depending on game time Game models use two vertex channels for lighting. Vertex color is displayed around 06:00 - 20:00. Vertex illumination is displayed outside that timeframe, that is, between 20:00 and 06:00. Between these timeframes, the two channels blends into eachother, creating a realistic daytime and nighttime visualization of the map. Remembering which channel is used for what can be a little troubling, on top of the many other things. Artists could consider Vertex Color = daytime, Vertex Illumination = nighttime. Below are various demonstrations of vertex color and illumination channels. Importance of vertex colors Below video demonstrates the effects of not prelighting game models for GTA:SA. The results are very easy to differ from prelit models, as the only depth seen on the models is made by the diffuse maps, which usually does not add sufficient shadows. That is where the artist may consider prelighting his model. As seen on the video, first footage is of San Fierro chunk without diffuse maps (textures) nor vertex colors. This results in completely white meshes. If however, the artist decides to utilise vertex colors, the model will have a lot greater depth added, without the need to bake light into textures at the expense of computer memory. The video's contents are 1:1 to how San Fierro would be rendered in-game around 12:00. No post processing or edits made to the models. Compression methods, post processing, sky and fog done by the Renderware engine will make it a tad different though. Below screenshot is taken from a Dust2 model ripped from Counter Strike. It shows how the vertex channel brings shadows and ambient occlusion into the model. If it did not have the vertex channel changes made, it would be completely flat, corridors would have no depth whatsoever, only some by the difference between the textures. Importance of vertex illumination Not all models use fancy colors like the pirate assets by Las Venturas strip. A lot of models use the same, though slightly darkened, version of vertex colors for the vertex illumination channel. The result of this is a darker object during night and brighter during day. Perhaps some has some highlights that are cast from streetlights and other light sources that appear during nighttime. Some models, notably light objects use vertex colors in conjunction with 2DFX in order to create realistic light with a real light source. Below example is a runway light. The white version is during day time, where the inner light mesh (the extruded part) is grey to represent an deactivated light. The red version is during night time, where the top surface has light reflected onto it, together with a corona image, more commonly known as 2D billboard or sprites. The corona acts as the light source and creates a bloom alike effect. (Not seen in image) Basics of per-vertex To get a somewhat understanding of how vertex colors work, below demonstration should be helpful. The triangle's top left vertex is painted blue, top right painted green and bottom painted red. This creates an RGB blend display of the triangle. The planar model has its bottom vertices painted black while the top ones are white. This creates more of a gradient across the entire model.To put the difference between per-vertex lighting and per-pixel lighting short, Vertex based lighting creates a gradient from one vertex towards the nearest one(s), and stops there. If a model has only 4 vertices, it is not possible to have circular or very detailed IES-like lighting, as the model would have only 4 points that can have light data. Pixel based lighting can have as many abstract details as artist wishes. It works as if there is a grayscale image on top of the model with a different blend mode, or dynamic lighting based on world models, hence the two are called per-vertex and per-pixel. Radiosity workflow Tired of painting vertex colors onto models with silly brushes all day? 3ds Max has an amazing light renderer, which can produce stunning renders and best of all, stunning prelights. As if it was made for GTA:SA era games! Not to forget, a 3rd party Max script was made to make the workflow a lot less difficult - can be found on: http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/vertex-color-tools-1. With this script, artists can with a few clicks create a skylight, ground plane (for AO), then render a radiosity solution in less than a minute total. No more setting up radiosity settings, only a few adjustments to your likings if needed. I use it all the time myself, and in fact, I learned to create beautiful prelights by using this tool with radiosity rendering. Before moving on, ParoXum's Radiosity tutorial and the Radiosity wikipedia page contains extra information that is not covered in this thread, for instance particular use of point lights. For that reason they may be benefitable to read through. WARNING! Pressing the AO button on the Vertex Color Tool script, ALL materials will be reset to standard. This can not be reversed! Adding to the above. Make sure to create a backup Max project file prior to working with Radiosity. Use the backup Max project file for vertex colors, leave original file for modeling! This process is covered in the guide. Hard surface prelighting Most artists starting out with vertex colors have probably grown tired of selecting faces of a model, then painting a different value onto each to replicate a hard surface look. As it turns out, this is not an efficient way. The model will look odd if the artist has not put enough time (hours with sweat) into it. That is where automating it with Radiosity rendering is a fantastic solution. To get started, download the following FBX scene https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/308956559201796097/632340906170908673/demo.zip. Each point contains a spoiler with a video clip. For those who would like to mess around with the final result of mine, download FBX here: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/308956559201796097/632559814387695626/demo_result.zip (video below) Important thing to note, when using Radiosity for prelights, the shading/lighting which is baked into the model entirely depends on the smoothing of the model. If it's set to Auto Smooth value 2 the shading will resemble 3ds Max's shading 'facets', while if the model has only one smoothing group, the shading will be incredibly smooth and generally won't have any facet shading. San Andreas models generally had very low smoothing value for its models at their creation, judging by their hard surface appearence. If a modeler were to create models that blend in with the game environment, they should strongly consider the above. Video tutorial: Text tutorial: Import the file Click the 3ds max upper left corner, at Import hover over the arrow for a drop down menu to appear. Click Import. Click the demo.FBX. Ensure to include Smoothing Groups on import, and units setup in Meters. Reset X, Y, Z positions to 0, 0, 0. At import the model is not centered. Create light Navigate to Create tab, click the gears icon, finally select the Daylight button. Max will ask if it can set an exposure control flag (not a country flag bleh), click Yes. Click anywhere, this sets the compass. Then, drag the mouse up into the sky, press LMB to spawn the daylight system. The compass position is not important. Alter light Navigate to Modify tab, change Sunlight from Standard to IES Sun. Likewise for sky, make it IES Sky. On Sun Parameters uncheck Shadows. Ensure the sun's state is On. On IES Sky Parameters it is possible to modify the intensity of the sky, as well as the sun. Some of the settings that affect the sun is whether the weather is clear or clouded. Leave default. On hierarchy list, select the Daylight001 item. While on Modify tab, click the Setup button for setting the scene weather. As the light system works like real daylight, the lower the number of hours, the darker the scene. Set hours at 9, month at 9, orbital scale at 320-360. Initiate the radiosity solution by running Vertex Color Tools Ver1.0. Press the AO button. Keep in mind, that this will remove all materials and cannot be reversed with undo. The render setup window opens. Another window from Rendering > Exposure Control is needed. On Exposure Control, change from none to Logarithmic. Tick on the Exterior daylight checkbox, which is required due to scene using a daylight system. Optionally, start rendering previews via the Exposure Control window. These previews are very low resolution and may help visualise the lighting. Or, real renders by SHIFT Q, although this may take significantly more time and processing power. On Render Setup window, reset value of Indirect Lighting Filtering. Increase the Direct Lighting Filtering to a value of 8. Under Radiosity Meshing Parameters tick the Include Skylight checkbox. Under Rendering Parameters select Re-Use Direct Illumination from Radiosity Solution. On Render Setup window, make sure to press Reset, to then start a clean rendering with the updated settings. Click Start. This may be an incredibly slow process, even on high end computers. If it gets stuck, set quality to less. It does not really have much of an impact for GTA:SA light anyway. Voila, done. The final result will be displayed in viewport. The result is equal to what is seen in-game during day hours. If something looks off, go back and tweak settings. Bake Radiosity lighting solution into vertex channel. Navigate to Utility tab, click More..., select Assign Vertex Colors. Upon scrolling down the utility tab, the Vertex Colors settings appear. Vertex Color is for day time, Vertex Illumination is for night time. Choose Vertex Color. Set light model as Lighting + Diffuse. Set Color Assignment as whichever seen fit. On Rendering options, enable Mapping and Radiosity, Reuse Direct Illum. from solution. Finally, click Assign to Selected View vertex color result in viewport. On the VertexPaint modifier, select the channel that was just modified. On the VertexPaint GUI, click the shaded box to the left. This displays the model with only vertex channel rendering, no other 3D shading will be used. Further tweaking If one wishes night time lighting, the best to do is render a new radiosity solution with less sun and daylight intensity, in order to darken the scene. Eventually change to clouded or mess with weather settings. The new radiosity solution will be equally the same as the one for daytime, although a tad darker. When rendered, assign to illumination channel. The letters can be painted for night time to look extra cool. This is where painting by buckets onto face selections of the mesh can come in handy, using the VertexPaint modifier. Odd looking shadows can be fixed up with the blur brush (VertexPaint modifier). Those who are able to get results with the above Radiosity workflow, may utilise their knowledge and take prelighting a next step with other types of lights, in order to create environment lights such as shadows for light poles, torches, buildings etc. Point lights, more specifically Free Light, were used a lot in the ship model further down the topic. Scene lighting is generally hit and miss. There are many settings which may need to be changed e.g scale of daylight and smoothing groups of models, in order to get the right look. Faking ambient occlusion Vertices can easily store ambient occlusion details, negating the need for geometry shaders. Some models may require additional geometry through subdividing the mesh, in order to achieve proper ambient occlusion details with vertex colors. The type of light used is usually skylight or daylight, this creates subtle shadows around corners and creaks, as well as maintaining global lighting. The below model has vertex AO baked by using a Skylight with the following settings. *you can eventually utilise a plane as ground for the ambient occlusion to calculate a lot better. The above practise can be used for GTA:SA assets as well, some settings may require to be tweaked first though. Prelighting in general is trial and error unless the artist has a solid background with lighting and rendering. Generally though, ambient occlusion should not be the only layer for lighting a model. Hard surface lighting as well as adding point lights is highly recommended. Without these, models with AO will still look rather flat in most cases, as there is not much definition between corners, other than soft shadows. Adding point lights to radiosity render will also give the lighting a more natural feeling, this can be done by adjusting the temporature of the light or its color. Combining point lights (free light, omni light, etcetera) with 2DFX can give stunning results. Texture blending with Vertex Alpha Texture blending on MTA was thought to only be possible by shaders, e.g texture splatmap. Instead, we can now blend textures using Vertex Alpha channel. On December 27 2019 we discovered that Vertex Alpha works without need for additional scripting (MTA Discord #modelling). We also need to thank Deniska for writing this guide (gtamaps) on vertex alpha plus creating a maxscript that exports vAlpha channel! Vertex Alpha works based on grayscale values just like alpha masks. Any vertex that's black will not be rendered - any vertex that's not black will be rendered. White is fully opaque, while the greyer it gets, the more transparency is made. Vertex Alpha will not render water behind its faces, so it's important to place an opaque object behind the vertex alpha mesh. This must be a separate model, not part of the mesh that uses vertex alpha. As with vertex prelights, vertex alpha needs geometry to work with. It's highly recommended to turbosmooth/subdivide the mesh so that you can paint in more detail. In the video below, I show how quickly the vertex alpha can be added to your models, and once that's done, you can export the model using the script from this page. Create a plane primitive. Give it 16x16 segments. Convert it to editable mesh. Give it the material that needs to blend using alpha. Set opacity of material to 98. Add a VertexPaint modifier. Select the vertex alpha channel. Use paint bucket with black color, 100 intensity, to paint entire mesh black. Add a secondary vertexpaint modifier. Grab your brush, adjust its size and strength. Begin painting a path from one end to another. Use the blur brush to finetune the semi-transparent edges of your path. Sharp edges ain't good. Looks OK? Start the export-script. You don't need to collapse your modifiers when exporting. Keep them in stack for later adjustments. Export with MMC. Remember to always set alphaTransparency enabled when replacing the model, or else only part of alpha will show. If you want to use another DFF script (for a higher quality dff), simply copy paste the sections e.g "Extra Vertex Colors" via RWanalyze. (Script will break (in which case, close script and run again) if you try to export vertex colors without having first assigned vertex colors/illumination to the model via its respective channels) List of model ID's that use the flag 68 (NO_ZBUFFER_WRITE(64) + DRAW_LAST(4)), which is required for Vertex Alpha: 2728, 3872, 3910, 4227, 4636, 4637, 7892, 9831, 9896, 9897, 11678, 11679, 11680, 11681, 13494, 13495, 13496, 13497, 13498, 13499, 13500, 13501, 13502, 13503, 13504, 13505, 13506, 13507, 13508, 13509, 13510, 13511, 13512, 13513, 13514, 13515, 13516, 13517, 13518, 13519, 13520, 13521, 13522, 13523, 13524, 13525, 13526, 13527, 13528, 13529, 13530, 13531, 13532, 13533, 13534, 13535, 13536, 13537, 13538, 13539, 13540, 13541, 13542, 13543, 13544, 13545, 13546, 13547, 13548, 13549, 13550, 13551, 13552, 13553, 13554, 13555, 13556, 13557, 13558, 13559, 13560, 13561, 13563, 16375, 16445, 16498, 16623, 16676, 16677, 16733, 16734, 16753, 16754, 16756, 16757, 16758, 16783, 16784, 17436, 17437, 17438, 17439, 17440, 17441, 17442, 17443, 17444, 17448, 17450, 17451, 17451, 17452, 17458, 17459, 17460, 17461, 17462, 17463, 17464, 17465, 17466, 17467, 17468, 17469, 17470, 17474, 17524, 18073, 18112, 18610, 18611, 18612, 18613, 18614, 18615, 18616, 18617, 18618, 18619, 18620, 18621, 18622, 18623, 18624, 18625, 18626, 18627, 18628, 18629, 18630, List of model ID's that use the flag 64 (NO_ZBUFFER_WRITE(64)) which are not tested, but might work for Vertex Alpha: 1315, 2981, 4712, 4724, 4554, 8004, 8044, 11306, 14765, Below are a few examples of how vertex alpha can be used to blend several textures together. Above image courtesy: worsas @ project tamriel (see link for more) 128x128 textures, 8192 polygons (can be a lot less!) You can probably create something a lot better than this. Time to get creative! If you're looking for additional inspiration, see the videos in spoiler. Note: The below spoiler contains information that does not apply to vertex alpha method, but instead to vertex colors. This requires shaders, since SA uses the colors for lighting, but is a decent alternative if the model use lighting shaders. The vertexPaint modifier VertexPaint is the modifier that houses the WIP vertex colors, illumination and alpha modifications. It may be accessed on Modifiers tab. While it is open, it allows the artist to do various changes to the vertex channels. Ranging from painting with the use of brushes, to refining vertex colors by blurring, adjusting hue, saturation, lightness etcetera. This is a very powerful tool, despite not having been updated for years. To get started, the modifier works with a float GUI with all of its necessary functions in it. It is worth noting that the modifier can not change existing vertex channel data, only the data that is stored in the modifier. That means it is not possible to import a GTA:SA asset and modify the hue of the vertex color channel. For an exhaustive list of what the modifier offers, check Autodesk's page on the VertexPaint Modifier. Brief explanation of what the modifier has to offer, from top to bottom: Extracting channel info For whatever reason, an artist may want to copy the vertex channel data, that is, the custom vertex information, and paste that onto their latest version of the mesh. This could be due to an irreversible action that would prevent the artist from undoing the lighting changes on present model, resulting in work lost and having to redo it all over again. Although this may seem like a promising solution to regain old channel data, it can generate problems if the two models contain different geometry counts. Below steps explains how to copy/paste data. Navigate to Utilities tab, click the More button, after which, click Channel info. At last, press the button that appeared on the bottom of the utilities tab. At first, the Channel Info GUI may seem complicated; but it really is not. The only information to look out for is the ID column and Channel Name column. The Num Verts, Faces etc. are only important to verify that the two model contains the same model geometry count. In the above example, the model has no custom channel data. The -2:Alpha, -1:Illum and 0:vc are the types of channel info's that are relevant for GTA:SA, although the Alpha data currently isn not compatible with MTA. To copy data, simply select either of the rows and press the Copy button. Then, highlight the present model, select the corresponding channel and paste. Working with several VertexPaint modifiers On more advanced tasks it may be necessary to use multiple VertexPaint modifiers stacked onto the model. Artist may find it helpful if they are doing several versions of prelighting for their model and wants to go through each result, picking the one that suits them the most. This means that each type of radiosity lighting solution will be stored in its own modifier, allowing artists to go through all of them and delete the poor ones. Having multiple modifiers on stack can also improve workflow by utilising each modifiers for each element of the model, such as Modifier1 for bonfire logs, Modifier2 for bonfire shadows, Modifier3 for ambient occlusion, Modifier4 for moonlight etc. Modifiers can also be renamed to quickly tell the artist what they are representing. The model can have as many modifiers in its stack as the artist wishes (or until the software times out), and they do not require to be collapsed when exporting the model to MTA. This means that the modeler simply needs to select the model, export it and load into MTA. Modifiers can then be collapsed to stack when job's done, however, it is strongly recommended to keep them in stack for future, in case of parts requiring rework. Below model may give a good look into just how much it helps to utilise multiple modifiers. The ship has its own modifier for virtually any type of light emmitting source. The rectangular screens to the right are symmetrical on the other side, so there is one modifier that represents those 6 rectangular emmissive screens. Same goes for the cyan U-shaped engravement, which uses its own independant modifier, and so on. This allowed to change the engravement prelight from initially dark blue to cyan, by not affecting other lights when modifying the hue, as the modifier was only used by that particular area. The stack works like so: By clicking the bottom modifier, only that one's layer will show. If clicking the one above it, assuming it is same channel, it will show both of them. Now, if clicking the top modifier, it will show all layers e.g the rest 4 that are associated with Vertex Illum channel. It will only display the channel that is selected on the right most panel. (This depends on version of Max)
  17. Hey @mucuk6547, i'd like to follow up. Are you still encountering this issue and if so, have you considered that the model is bloated with polygons? I was unable to (as stated on pm) open your file as my version of Max is 2017 release.
  18. Merry christmas and happy new year.Thank you all for keeping the community going
  19. Yes. The positions source doesn't matter, use MEd or Prineside/whatever you prefer to obtain them.
  20. Welcome to the world of mapping There are world objects which cannot be selected by map editor unfortunately, this is due to them not having a collision model. Vegetation and transparent entities namely. I suggest you use Prinseside's map-search feature https://dev.prineside.com/en/gtasa_samp_model_id/mapsearch/, with this you can mark where on the map your object is. If you're able to then find it in the generated list of objects, click on its object page. On the bottom of its page, you'll see Fullscreen / Position export. Click that and you'll receive X, Y, Z positions. You can then fill those positions into a removeWorldObject (or is it removeWorldModel?) line as usual. You might have to mess around with the radius.
  21. There aren't really any ways that you can secure your DFF through manipulating your files; there are many locks that exists, but I haven't found one that I couldn't unlock with ease. (may also want to browse Modeling forum https://forum.multitheftauto.com/forum/177-modelling/) I belive you might be able to utilise an MTA script to prevent it being downloaded to client's cache... or something along the lines. I'd rather ask that question on the scripting forum section.
  22. Please check the Vehicles section of this thread:
  23. I do not want to sound picky or discourageful to you, but here is some advise. Reformat your thread, add more paragraphs, making it more readable. I would also strongly suggest that you showcase the gamemode in pictures, for means of taster towards potentially interested players to connect.
  24. I'm not able to import this format into Max, can you please export as .fbx or .dff
  25. Can you please show your script and optionally leave the model here/in a PM? Might want to use debugscript as well, write /debugscript 3
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