Question about... Owls [Solved]

i am trying to change the skin on the PotM's Scout spell to that of a regular owl and not a green glowing one. in the .mdl file there are 4 textures - sentinelspell.blp (the owl texture), dust3x.blp (which i assume is the powdery stuff near the owl's wings), green_glow3.blp (which i assume is the green glow) and one other one.

i dleleted the dust and glow textures from the .mdl, and changed the number of textures from "4" to "2". i then converted to .mdx, etc.

the problem is that UMSWE crashes when i try to place the owl unit. can i delete the 2 lines from the .mdl like i did, or is there something else that needs to be done?

many thanks.

Your problem is the parts of the model that actually USE the textures that you've deleted are still looking for them. WE crashes if any aspect of a model cannot find a texture it's been assigned. Rather than deleting textures, make the materials that use those textures have an alpha of zero. Insert this line:
static Alpha 0,

You can delete the texture the emitter uses, as long as you delete the emitter itself (and then modify the numbers of all textures below that accordingly). You can do that for all of the rest of the textures too, of course, but its a little more complicated, since screwing with geosets can sometimes get confusing.

Let me know if this helps.

ps: so far as I can tell, altering the "number of x's" lines has no effect on the model, and is there only for the programmer's benefit - if the number is way out of wack with what's actually there, there seems to be no effect.

after playing around with the .mdl file i have come to several conclusions, although i still cannot get what i want.

here is an excerpt from the .mdl dealing with textures and materials:

}
Textures 4 {
Bitmap {
Image "Textures\sentinelspell.blp",
}
Bitmap {
Image "Textures\Green_Glow2.blp",
}
Bitmap {
Image "Textures\Dust3x.blp",
}
Bitmap {
Image "ReplaceableTextures\Weather\Clouds8x8.blp",
}
}
Materials 2 {
Material {
ConstantColor,
Layer {
FilterMode Transparent,
Unshaded,
static TextureID 0,
static Alpha 0.87,
}
}
Material {
Layer {
FilterMode Additive,
Unshaded,
static TextureID 1,
static Alpha 0.65,
}
}
}


when i change the alpha of the second material from 0.65 to 0, the green glow dissapears (i found out that the green glow is like hero glow, and NOT the thing that changes the owl's color).

setting the alpha of the first material to zero makes the owl dissapear (i.e. it makes the whole thing transparent, along with its green tint).

the sentinelspell.blp texture has the colors of a normal owl (brown/tan), not a green one.

maybe there is something else that's making it green?

thanks

"static Color { 0.529412, 0.964706, 0.0588235 }, "

look for that line - it refers to geosetanim 1 which refers to geoset 0 which in turn refers to texture 0. I didn't test test see if this is it, but the green value is the high one there, so that's at least plausable. See if that helps.

Ari is correct: the following causes the model to be tinted in a specific colour...


GeosetAnim {
Alpha 2 {
DontInterp,
11000: 1,
11467: 0,
}
static Color { 0.529412, 0.964706, 0.0588235 }, <===
GeosetId 0,
}

this geosetanim represents the geoset of the owl itself. Ignore the alpha section as it controls when the geoset should appear at what frames. Just remove the static color line and the model will be reverted back to its original texture state.

assuming from your post you have already removed the green glow so I wont indulge further on that.

Good luck, its now a snap if you know what to do

PS: if you need more information about geosetanimation I suggest to open the mdl of the undead necropolis

oh and dont forget to set the materialid :


Material {
ConstantColor,
Layer {
FilterMode Transparent, <==
Unshaded,
static TextureID 0,
static Alpha 0.87,
}
}

Change the transparent into None and remove the static alpha line. Also, remove the constant color.. (and if you want to create a owl with teamcolor arena's you need a conjuction of blend and None materialid, this means it should become like this:

Material {
Layer {
FilterMode None,
Unshaded,
TwoSided,
static TextureID 1, <=tc texture
}
Layer {
FilterMode Blend,
Unshaded,
TwoSided,
static TextureID 0, <=Skin Texture
}
}

of course owl doenst have a tc texture in use so you just have to manually insert it and assign the correct id to it in the materialheader.

i removed the constant color, and the green tint went away. also thanks for the bit about team color, that was going to be my next question

i did what tou said concerning the team color, but now i have another problem. the team color works, but there is a big square of the color around the unit.

heres my code:

}
Textures 5 {
Bitmap {
Image "Textures\NightOwlSkin.blp",
}
Bitmap {
Image "",
ReplaceableId 1,
}
Bitmap {
Image "Textures\Purple_Glow_Dim.blp",
}
Bitmap {
Image "Textures\Dust3x.blp",
}
Bitmap {
Image "ReplaceableTextures\Weather\Clouds8x8.blp",
}
}
Materials 2 {
Material {
Layer {
FilterMode None,
Unshaded,
static TextureID 1,
}
Layer {
FilterMode Blend,
static TextureID 0,
}
}
Material {
Layer {
FilterMode Additive,
Unshaded,
static TextureID 1,
static Alpha 0.65,
}
}
}


note: the puple glow is something i added, i want it there.

thnks

need screenshot

here are two views of the problem. the team color squares seem to be based around the team color areas.

heres another one: