Strat map settlement models and milkshape question

[vikingchild]

I've recently downloaded the iwte tool and converted some strat map city models so I can edit them with milkshape. How do i select, for example a 'tower' if I wanted to play around with its positioning/height etc without grabbing the neighbouring parts of the model too?

[Callistonian]

If the model is already subdivided into groups, the tower might be its own group, in which case you would just double click it in the groups list. If the tower is part of a larger group, you could try hiding all other groups to make selecting the tower easier. If the model is just one big group, you will need to select the geometry (vertices, polygons, etc.) that constitute the tower individually which can be quite tricky. With the default key binds, you can hold Shift to select multiple pieces of geometry at once with multiple click-drags. I would select by vertex and use the perspective view ports. You can also hold Alt and drag in a 3D view port to select vertices.

[vikingchild]

Thanks callistonian, yeah the model was just one big group, I'll try as you suggest later after work.

For the textures, the model's walls and towers are using the same texture but because they're different scales the model looks a little weird... I tried selecting the 'tower' portion in the texture coordinator to move it to an unused part of the texture tga but it's overlaid on the 'wall' coordinates - I can't rescale or move one without wildly the skewing the other :p

[Callistonian]

Ah yes, this is a frequent problem with Milkshape's joke of a UV editor. I vaguely remember that there is a way to 'decouple' perfectly overlain geometry in the coordinate editor, but I couldn't tell you what it is. In my opinion, Milkshape is more of a viewer and isn't really setup for this type of work. Since you're already using IWTE, I would recommend saving yourself some time and using Blender or 3ds Max, at least for UV work.

[vikingchild]

Haha yeah I think milkshape could be a little better in that regard... Fortunately I was able to select a side of the 'tower' in the viewer and pull it along the X axis and that resolved the scale issue.

I saved the edited m3sd and back converted it to a cas in the iwte and put it back in my mod... Got a crash though on loading the campaign with the selected faction variant I had assigned it to. I opened the cas with notepad and searched down for the texture assigned to it but it doesn't appear to be the right one... Do I need to save the m3sh in milkshape with the dds or tga texture before converting it back to a cas or does it matter?

[Callistonian]

For strat models, yes, you must have a texture assigned in the material editor in Milkshape, there is no other place in the game the texture information is stored (unlike battle models which get their texture info from bmdb or character strat models which get it from descr_model_strat).

[vikingchild]

Success! Yeah when I first saved the m3sh in milkshape I had the wrong texture loaded up, once I resaved the model with the right texture and put it back into my mod the campaign loaded... Eventually! The log was still showing a 'missing' error over the relevant texture, I had to make a copy of the texture and rename it 'relevant_texture'.dds.dds but also keep the original relevant _texture.dds in the textures folder and then it worked a treat

[Louis Lux]

If you have the tower faces selected you can go to the texture editor and just edit the uv coordinates of those faces. It's really not that complicated.

[vikingchild]

Cheers, I'll try that! I'm still pretty much a newb to 3d modelling so all help is greatly appreciated