Advanced Models SDK

Setting up to make a UT model

Relevance

This page is relevant to:
Any UT model maker

You will need

Throughout this tutorial I'm going to be making a simple demo model called Cubic Man in Milkshape 3D. You may want to follow what I'm doing with this model as a specific example. This is one of the demo models included in the Advanced Models SDK.

Choosing the in-game names

A UT model has three names, which may be the same or different:

Before you go any further, choose some names for your model. Many modellers make all these names the same, and this is probably the least confusing thing to do. For example, Jarhead's package, class and mesh names are all Jarhead.

For Cubic Man, I decided to make the package name AMS_DemoModels and the mesh and class names both AMS_CubicMan. The AMS_ prefix is not required - I used this to indicate that these are AMS demo models.

Setting up folders

Go into your Unreal Tournament folder. Create a folder named after the package name you chose, for example AMS_DemoModels.

Inside your new folder, create folders called Classes, Models, Sounds and Textures. You'll need some or all of these later.

I have Unreal Tournament installed in E:\Games\UnrealTournament at the moment. For Cubic Man, I created these folders:

A note on materials

Player model materials

How you assign skin/material areas on your model varies depending on the 3D application and exporter you use, but regardless of this, you have up to 4 textures to play with for player models, numbered 0 to 3, and each can sensibly be up to 256x256 pixels.

Their dimensions must be powers of 2 (256, 128, 64 pixels, with 256 most likely). Unreal Tournament can only cope with up to 256x256 pixel textures and will resize larger textures to fit, so they add to the file size with no detail benefit.

If you make a separate version of your model for the selection screen, it will have to use the same 1-4 skin textures as the main model. However, it is possible to add bits to this selection model which stay the same when the skin changes, like a gun in your model's hand. In Milkshape 3D, you should set aside a material for this feature if you intend to use it. In 3D Studio Max or Maya, you can probably use additional textures (up to 4 more) for this if you need to.

For Cubic Man I decided to use 3 textures - head/neck/hands, body, and arms/legs. This is total overkill for such a simple model, but I'm using them to demonstrate how the skin system works.

Other mods

If your model is intended for some purpose other than a plugin player model, you might be able to use up to 8 materials, but ask the programmer responsible whether there are any hard-coded limits. For example, player models are limited to 4 textures by code in the Unreal Tournament corpses!


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AMSDK compiled by Simon `Psychic_313' McVittie, http://www.pseudorandom.co.uk
This page by Simon McVittie