Truespace 3D Modeling Tutorials

Open Truespace 7.61 beta 8 and hit the Truespace 6 tab. Now find the sphere icon and click on the left area of the menu bar to expand it. All of the menu bars in TS use this feature to keep the workspace uncluttered, however, expanding them makes using the various tools easier to access. Some menu bars are nearly hidden so look for them as tiny squares in the workspace and left click them to expand each 2 clicks are needed to expand them completely. They tend to clutter the space a bit but make using the modeling tools quite a bit more efficient and speed the modeling process substantially because they're fully visible for you the model maker.

Open the the ISDF Sabre tank in 3D Exploration; the XSI model pack can be downloaded at bzscrap.org and extracted to a folder to study the stock BZII and FE Project models. I used 3DEX to convert them to X models which can then then be imported in to TS 7.61 beta 8 and edited.

Now left click the Rounded Cube icon and left click the center area of the workspace to place the cube. Now find the Scene Editor icon and left click it to open the SE window. Now you will see an entry in the SE with your newly created cube object listed. How right click the cube and select rename and rename it main_body. The Sabre is made up of 17 or so model parts. For this simple tutorial were going to use nothing but cubes to create this model.

Now were going to copy the Rounded Cube object 17 times with the copy icon in TS and rename each cube with the parts listed in the XSI model example. Once this is is done we'll attach all of the cubes together in the SE to form on solid object representing our Tank.

All of the other cubes go under the main_body cube object. The way parts are attached in the SE is to left click drag an object and drop it on to the part we want it to go under. This is necessary to build the model for use with BZII.

The turret object has sub parts so some of the parts like recoil, so drag the recoil object under the turret object, and all of the hp_whatever hard points go under the recoil object. It would look like this turret then recoil and hard points under recoil. Once this is done then we can drag turret to under main_body. The various other cube objects can just be dropped under the main_body cube object.

As you drop objects under other parts you'll see a plus sign in the SE window representing what is called the models hierarchy or object tree. At this point we could export the model as an X model to get to ready for conversion to XSI with 3DEX, but first lets apply a simple 2D texture file from TS's Material editor on to the model.

Select the model and hit the Artist Palette icon to open the TS Material Editor. Left click the small arrow on the left side of the ME. This will expand it to show the other tools associated with the ME. Now right click the colored window to open the textures stored in the default ME texture library. Find the Caligari image and left click it a new window pops up to show the textures stored in the library. Select a cool texture and left click drag and drop the texture in to the ME editor window. To apply the texture to the model select the model and hit the funnel icon in the ME to apply it to your model.

The model is now ready to export as an X model. For this part I recommend installing a 3rd party TSX based exporter in to TS 7.61 beta 8. There's a forum posts that contains the TrueX5.TSX attached to the post as a zip folder. Extract this folder to your TS TSX folder. To install the exporter locate the Electrical Plug icon and left click it to find the new plug-in then select it and hit open. A new icon will appear next to the outlet icon on the menu bar. You only need to load it once after loading it. Now to export the model select it and left click the new plug-in icon to open the TrueX exporter dialog window. Use the search option in the window for the location of your BZII Addon folder, give the model a unique name and hit the Export Selected objects button. The plug-in will triangulate the model, play any animation it may contain and write the model to your Addon folder.

Once this is done you can just open the X model in 3DEX and convert it to XSI by right clicking the model and hitting Covert>Geometry>Softimage XSI>same folder and convert. The model is now ready for BZII after you create a custom ODF file for it. The way to do this is to open a stock ODF file from the BZII data.pak file with PakExplorer and opening it in Notepad. Then use the Save as option to create a new ODF file for you model name it with your XSI models name and then edited the new ODF to change the geometryName = to your models XSI name.

The model is now ready for testing in the BZII Map Editor. If you want to make changes to the model itself then remember to delete the MSH model in the BZII Bindata folder and repeat the steps listed above to modify the original TS model and repeat all of the steps again.

Did I leave anything out? Post any questions to this thread as a reply and I'll try to explain things a bit more.

Firstly, thank you for these tutorials. I decided I would try my hand at modelling, and followed through this tutorial. However, when I try to open my Cube Tank in BZ2, the game crashes. Is there something I've missed?

Update: Apparently, BZII has a problem using Cubes as model parts. Use Rounded Cubes instead of 6 sided Cubes.
Could you post a link to download the model? Then I could take a look at it and help determine the problem.
Common problems are model parts not named correctly, or object rotations not set to XYZ 0 0 0.

Code: Select all

ERR |               debug:717  |22:29:41|24119  |vertfeat->objCount(8) > normfeat->objCount(6): Cube.xsi

I've gotten this error if the save normals is not Xed in the 3DEX Sofimage exporter settings.

I believe the tutorial is based around the ISDF Sabre. So it should have a main_body, cockpit, turret, recoil_1, flame__1__h and flame_2__H, hp_com_1, hp_eyepoint, hp_cannon_1, hp_gun_1, hp_gun_2, and hp_special_1. Put the recoil_1 under the turret object the cannon under the recoil object the guns under the body. If you put a texture and use BZII PB 1.3.6.2 convert it with Mates BZ2DXT utility. [Export it with the Truex X exporter provided in another post.] Open it in 3DEX and convert it with the following settings.



PS: If your using the default TS X exporter then add double spaces to the end of part names in the Scene Editor to get the parts to read correctly in BZII prior to saving the model.