unwrap uvw animated???

I'm animating the tank i've modelled but the tank doesnt have separated wheels it has.... huh well i doesnt know how to say it in english but just look at the picture and you'll undersand ;)

I read in the art tool docs :
"Supported mapping types The UVW Map and Unwrap UVW modifiers are supported for one non-animating map channel. UVW Map can also animate when in planar mapping. The Unwrap UVW modifier(s) should be left in the Modifier Stack and not collapsed. XYZ mapping is not supported. Visual errors can occur if two adjacent vertices share the same UV. Multiple UV map channels can be used with planar mapping. Texture tiling is controlled by the material and not by the mapping. Flipping has no effect."

So HOW TO MAKE TURN THE WHEELS you can see on the image????
cuz i even tried to animate the uvw unwrap but of course in the w3 previewer nothing happens..... i dont even see how to animate the planar mapping cuz the plannar mapping apply the whole texture and not only the litttle piece of wheel....

anyone can help???

I guess the easiest way would to be to make those wheels seperate meshes, skin them with those wheels-pickies, and then rotate them in your "walk" animation.
It's how rotating wheels are usually made in Warcraft.
It will cost you some extra poly's though.
(although a way to save on some poly's would be to make al but the first and last wheels long wheels from left to right.. the middle part is hidden under the tank anyway)

Well the problem is that my model already has about 720 polygons....
But anyway it looks like it's impossible to animate it in an other way than separate meshes.... that's a shame cuz you can make really nice animation when you animate uvw....
Well at least i tried... thx man even if you didnt got out of your hat a miraculous solution!!! ;)

But if I where you, I would reduce some poly's at those cannon's for example. That's a lot of detail you've got there, and you won't be seeing any of that ingame anyway (too small). What you could do is make a high-poly model, then use the 'render to skin' in max, and then put that skin on a low-poly version. You could save a lot on those cannons.

oh.. thx :D but were is this "render to skin"? ;) in the material éditor or is it a modifier or the render panel???

It's in the render menu (I suppose you're using 3d max) (oh, and it's called 'render to texture' by the way, hard to miss). If you have 3d max including help-files all info you need should be there. Just make sure you render all parts to one file (otherwise it will make a seperate file for each mesh) and set it to 256 x 256 or 512 x 512, so you can then implement it as a warcraft skin. (3dmax usually puts rendered skins in the 'images' folder in de 3dmax folder.

Oh, but I just remembered that this render to texture can be quite tricky. You might up with every poly as a seperate picture, forcing you to reskin poly after poly.
A lot easier might just be to render you high poly model as a normal picture from front, side and top (make sure you don't leave the cannon above the tank when rendering from top, because you need to be able to see both the whole top of the tank as the cannon),
en then take the renderd pic(s) to a paint program, create a single 256x256 or 512x512 file, and copy n paste the different angles you need to this file, and then use this as a skin for a low poly model.

Huuuuum thx man :D that's a clever idée!!! i might do it if i have time cuz holliday doesnt mean 4 me only modding but also skiing :ggani: