Bowzerbro's Editing Q'n'A

Hey, I decided to get stuff I have already posted summed up in one post. Easier and can index answers. :)
I will index more properly once there is more stuff here.

I'll make a FAQ from experience once I get time to bother with it. (after I am done with the current little mdl-mod I am working on)
The Questions'n'Answers contains suggested answers too. I'll add Approved to those that I know work. If you try anything then please PM me approved or disapproved questions. Also, alternative answers that may work faster are surely of great use to everyone.
Questions I found answer to through another post will just be redirection links.

Things that may help people:
- Remember to check through tools carefully, something there may help you. I missed a few tools a few times. Though I was saved by Guesst, thanks.
- Frames must always be sorted in ascending order in the alpha list for the animation.
- Your attached model wont show up in game even though it shows up in viewers? There is a possibility that it is too far inside of your model. I believe it has to be within the radius of the bone you attach it too. This theory has not been approved and I haven't tested it. BUT, after being more careful with moving the model position in vex editor I noticed it would show up. And I got it attached at a perfect point. Thanks for the model fix Nasrudin. Fixed Dread Lord Wings .mdx


Questions'n'Answers:
Q: Animation show in MDX viewer but model wont work in WE:
A: Q: "What is the answer to life, the universe and everything?"
A: Q1, Q2: 2 Geomerge and Modeling questions things

Quote:

Originally Posted by bowzerbro I've only Geomerged a few times, but I am wondering how to geomerge a bow and arrow with animations to a footman for example. (that has archer animations) Do I have to Geomerge the footman's body parts to the archer instead? After spending a lot of time trying to manually transfer the bow and arrow etc.. I gave up on it and just put the bow there in a way I thought looked awesome. Then I remembered I'll use various bows anyway and thats why I have Q 2 added too. Q 1: Above... Q 2: Can I make an attachable bow that has animations? (of course the unit would need archer animations, synced frames? :x)

A1:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Guesst 1. There's no nice automatic way to do this that I know of. You would have to - Delete everything from the bow geoset of the archer except the bow. - Copy that geoset into the footman. - Copy the bones that the bow follows over, setting their parent reasonably and removing their animations. - Transfer the archer's attack. It should transfer onto the bow bones as well as all the normal arms and legs and stuff. ...

A2:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nasrudin As far as I know, you can't play a specific animation for attachments. You'll have to make one animated bow attachment and put it on the unit when it attacks (removing it after), and one unanimated bow for all the other animations.

Clever Remains to test it though..



New Questions
I am trying to make a skin for Villanger with semi transperant gray hair and transperent eyes, but it wont work after being converted. I can't understand what I am doing wrong. Attached .tga
VillagerMaleX.tga

For semi-transparency, you need to set the FilterMode of the material to Blend. Blend makes z-ordering issues (sometimes stuff in back will appear in front), so it's best to have the Blend material only applied to the polygons you need partially transparent.

Can just do two-sided if that z-thing happens I guess.
How do I skin certain polygons? (Polygon = Part of model, eg. Head? Or a face?(not face face.. the other type ..)
Managed to figure how to get it to work after a while, and some browsing around. Link
The thing is that I edited like I did the first time I edited a model, and that time I didn't need to save alpha layer for some reason it still worked. :p
So I went onto skinning the villangers face thinking I didn't need to save as alpha layer. But now I know.

My footman villanger mod disappears ingame, suppose it is because I have alpha layers on shaded :p (didn't restart the editor, but the unit shadows showed up ingame. I thought that I had to restart the editor and reopen and then save them map for them to show up in game.. of course that wasn't the case.)
I read that you can't have shaded texture on transparent textures. Link (so; tests doing some changes... results: it wont even work in WE -__- again, cursed be that villanger model.. Requesting fix for attached file)

Thanks

Blend works if you have a layer of filtermode "transparent" above or below (can't remember which) it... But despite experiments with totally transparent alpha textures, I haven't ever managed to get blend stuff to work totally perfect. It's a bastard filtermode, to be sure.

Q1: Best way of converting, editing and sizing textures? My model wont work with my textures even though I converted to .blp using Viewer, tried other programs as well.
A: none yet
Q2: How do I find and remove vexters flying around on their own? These cause the model to not work ingame.
A: none yet, and it doesn't seem to be the problem even though I removed a lot of unused vertexes the model wouldn't work. Probably because of Q1: problem.

I'll bother trying some more but I think there is something else monkeying around with my colored hair. :p I just skinned his face and adapted the colors properly and I'll leave it at that till I decide to make his gloves show team color. :)
Thanks


Request: List of stuff that could save you from getting a broken MDL file after lots of working in Vex or Mog's.

I would leave a valentine's message, but sorry I don't do valentine's days < - Was posted on valentine's day..

Actually I just made a version of the villanger where I only changed his skin. But it doesn't work when I change the skin, no matter how I convert and save it again. Even when I take the skin from the villanger from the MPQ mod some small parts without touching alpha layers or anything, use any type of TGA/BMP to BLP and skin the model with mog's.. It doesn't work.
This must be the work of the devil..