Tell me what you want in an auto unit card/render utility?

[Professor420]

I'm currently making a MaxScript utility to automatically make renders for a large amount of assets, specifically for the Unit Repository. The functionality is similar enough that I'd like to include the ability to render out unit cards as well.

Its been a long time since I've worked on a TW mod and I want to know what your pipelines are for making these things. The goal is to do everything "automatically" and you won't have to tediously make all those unit cards and whatnot. I want to know, what do YOU want the tool to do? The tool is for you all, and thus it should accomodate the most common unit card workflows... however, I'm largely ignorant or forgetful of this pipeline.

What should the renders be named? How to match up textures with models, since models may use multiple textures? What needs to be selectable (camera, base, etc?) And so on. Basically, if you could design a program to do this for you, what would it do?

My goal is to do this for CAS right now, since that is what works in 3dsmax... it will be easy to accomdate .max files as well so that I can help out M2TW modders as well. Hopefully if I can get a good design, it can be finished this week. I've done the hard part of messaging the CAS I/E already, so now is the fun and easier part.

Help me make your lives easier and make me your tool monkey

[Halie Satanus]

My only reference for what your offering is Photoshop actions so using that as a basis.

Import unit, (set texture path so the texture comes in automatically;inc in Verx script)

Import animation, Pose figure, (select animation frame), though to automate this you'd need a basic pose included in the script?, problem is you'd need sword man, spear man, (could be same pose), and archers. I can't think of a way to do cavalry automatically as man and horse are done separately, least I don't know how to bring them in together and pose.

I guess if you did one and then had the script run same actions that would work, if you had bunch of sword/spear men to do in one go, same as photoshop.

I've no idea how you set up cameras so can't help there, but assume you'd do that in script.

Render.

The large cards are tga's 160x210 px and the small 48x64.

Naming is different for each unit, so suggest having naming at beginning of running script, if that's possible.

[Publius]

Halie has a pretty good overview of things - the large ui entries should end with '_info' and the small ones should start with '#' (both of those obviously without the single quotes).

For the naming I think it would probably be easiest to use the model name if possible, or have a user prompt each time it runs (again, if possible; I'm not familiar with this kind of coding).

Also, there is a pre-existing file in the vanilla folders somewhere (it is called something like xxx.max I think) which already has a scene set up for ui rendering that I would use as a basis for your work here. I think it includes the camera and the grass oval.

Outside of that, format to export to is targa, though you probably know that already, and uh... can't think of much else at the moment.

[Professor420]

Thanks guys. I should have a Beta sometime this week (with everything except poses).

Current workflow is: You Import a CAS (it will import the tex automatically if it can find it, if not, it will prompt you for it), then choose whether it is an infantry or cavalry scene (sorry, chariots and elephants out of luck). It will quickly merge the appropriate scene. You can then choose the camera (unit card or info card), and the base style (grass, light scrub, dark scrub, pavement), and a number of pre-defined poses. You can then render the scene (which will save into the directory of your model and have the texture's name, plus "render.tga" at the end... sorry unless there is some standardization it looks like you'll still have to name by hand).

I'll probably do a separate version for mounts/horses since they require extra/different stuff, and I dont' want to bloat the interface since much is radio buttons with lots of options that take up room.

Suggestions or comments welcome. Check back in a few days/week for an alpha version. After that, I'll have to figure out the best way to pose them (I have ideas but haven't tried anything for sure yet).

[mdg1125]

Good god. Your a life saver. I'm tired of cutting and pasting from low res pictures. Thanks alot. This script will be a very good tool.

[Halie Satanus]

it will import the tex automatically if it can find it, if not, it will prompt you for it

Verx script has option to ''set texture path'' which you do before importing so maybe you can include that.

[Professor420]

Alright, I've found a good way to do poses, which is the last major step... hopefully be ready by the end of the weekend if nothing major gets in the way (ie, I don't suffer any crushing defeats in Roma Surrectum that compel me to play longer)

[Publius]

One more thing if you're not already done - it'd probably be good to set the ambient lighting to a middle gray tone (the default on my version at least is black, and makes for some fairly harsh lighting).

[Uranos]

Great idea Prof, waiting impatiently

[Professor420]

Grrrr my animation extraction isn't working... if anyone sees this, can you jump on MSN and send over a zip file of extracted anims? Or I guess I can just pose by hand for now.

Edit: thanks to Uranos and Halie for helping me out. However I've hit a pretty big snag with posing, due to... well when I figure it out the script should be about done for Alpha. I'm sure something to do with coordinate systems and types of rotation.