Kitty Corp Meow Mix Forums

Hi, this is a small tuto, or tip, or whatever, so people try to have better shaders in their imports (characters or stages)

What's what I'm calling 'shader' here? Basically, the way the models react to lighting. Some people null the normals so the lighting doesn't affect the models and they look always the same. I personally don't like that for characters, while I find it useful in stages sometimes.

The main influence to the shaders are the normals. They are some vectors defining the 'normal' direction to the surfaces in the models. The good direction would be perpendicular, or normal, to the surfaces, but this isn't always happening. Those normals are defined in 3dsmax, and they can be wrong sometimes.

For example, if you import a model into 3d max and you rotate it so it looks the direction you want it to look, the normals in game will probably get rotated. This means that, when a light comes from, for example, the right side, the model is lighten from the front instead. In some cases, in some stages, this may look decent, but in some other stages with very directional lights (for example my phantom ganon's room) you may get a too dark character because of this.

I've recently fixed some characters with shader issues (Dry Bowser, Melee Mewtwo by pikazz), and even a stage (Metal Harbor by Oizen). The stage was way too dark, and the characters had some not uniformly rotated shaders. I'm gonna tell you how to fix your own things before rigging them, or at least, before releasing them.

All of this in 3d max:

- Once you've positioned your model the way you need it, attach it to a bone. You can create that bone (create->systems->bones IK chain). Create just one (right mouse click and del to delete the second one being created). Select that one, move it to 0,0,0. Rotate it in 90,0,0. Select all your models being sure you're not gonna rotate them anymore, and give all of them the same 'skin' modifier. Select the bone you've created so all the models are 'rigged' to that only bone.

- Export as dae. I suppose you know what to do about inches and centimeters. I always import in centimeters and export in inches.

In brawlbox:

- Import the dae model. Save as .dae again.

In 3d max again:

- Import the new dae. The model to work with is this one. Once finished working with it, you'll need to export it again. Only that this time, it will look fine in shader matters.

If you rotate your model, and you get it into brawlbox directly, you may get something like this in brawlbox. This is how the model looks the first time you get it into brawlbox:

(http://i.imgur.com/DZl22.png)

After importing it again to 3dsmax (where the shaders are reseted), if you were to save it into dae again, and look it in brawlbox, this would be how it looks:

(http://i.imgur.com/A3khb.png)

If textures aren't in the file yet, you must see white surfaces from all the directions (rotate the view). If it gets dark like the previous one in some direction, importing it to 3ds max to reset the shaders is necessary.

This can be done even when the rig is made and finished (if not, I wouldn't have been able to fix finished characters like pikazz's). But, if you have made some manual changes to the normals in 3ds, you'll lose them when importing the dae. That's why I recommend you to do this before rigging the model, and saving the progress always in max, never in dae.


The stuff in the spoiler is outdated since this post:

http://forums.kc-mm.com/index.php?topic=39586.msg819056 (http://forums.kc-mm.com/index.php?topic=39586.msg819056)

If you want to check your character's shaders, you can test in stages with special lightning, like my Kongo64 or my Phantom Ganon's Room. Compare how an original character gets lighten with yours, and you'll see what's wrong in them.

Now, something I noticed yesterday, and feel stupid about it. In the new brawlbox, in 'materials' you will find 'flag1'. It was 'flag6' in the older ones, and in my Material Tool too. For characters, it usually is 20.

Some people, and even I, believed it was some brightness value. If it's 255, the model will usually be very lighten up. But it's not brightness, but the light set afffecting the model. While the '20' is for characters, '0' and '1' would be for stages. I noticed it while fixing Oizen's Metal Harbor. Why the stage is getting more lightened if I'm changing the lights for characters? It was that value, which was 20 by default when importing from .dae files. So, watch out for that value.

Flag 2 (Flag7 in old brawlbox and Materiall Tool) is similar, but with fogs. Just take them in consideration.

Now, in model imports like Oizen's stage, which has lots (more than 40) materials to change, I recommend you to use my Material Tool. Material Tool has the ability to change values in all the materials in a model at the same time. With the 'to all' thingy checked, you can change flags 6 and 7 to be 1 and 0 for stages.

You can also enable semitransparency easily with a checkbox, or even force all the color nodes in the model to get some value. There's also a hidden menu allowing to change some values controling if the lights affect to the model or not (I'm not aware of how 'nulling normals' is done, but this is my way to get the effect) and some transparency-related settings, which can be applied to all the materials at the same time too.

The extra menu is accessed by double clicking on the material name, and entering a password. To get the password, just contact me (this is to see how many people gets interest on this part of the program, nothing more), and I'll tell you the basics of the extra menu.

I guess this is all. I hope reading this guide makes that shaders in imports are getting improved from now on.

i was wonderin about this for awhile, it seems pretty simple to fix. thank you for the tutorial (i like how you explain the problem gooood)

about the last section talkin about color nodes, these ive learned are very important to get good color and brightness lightning in-game. i was wonderin if you can also make another in-depth Tutorial for that (in the same post in a spoiler or something). pikazz made a tutorial but i think it runs the file size a lil bit if you have a bunch of different objects to color.

i looked into a default brawl character's .PAC and noticed they sometimes just have 1 or 2 color things and it applys to multiple objects. do ya know how to apply them in the way those are? does that tool stuff you got work with character files too and help with this?

i get a headache with preparing models in brawlbox.. these tutorials help alot

With the latest brawlbox (0.65b) the color nodes can be automatically included, even if they weren't made previously in 3dmax. Also, there's an option to have a single color node affecting all the objects instead of having separate nodes for separate objects.

My tool can edit all the color nodes in a model together. The standard value would be '808080' (mid-gray), but I guess brawlbox automatically applies that value for the newly created nodes. It works for any model, character or not.

I don't guess a new tutorial needs to be made. Colors just 'tint' the models, and can be defined by vertex in 3dsmax. Not necessary now thanks to the new brawlbox, as said before.

oh

wh00t     had no idea about a newer brawlbox. yer right, ill just download it and go from there

This is a noice tutorial, thanks. :D


Should I rename it to LightSet and FogSet? :O
How does it tie into Scene Data? Is it like an id?
Seems kinda odd that values like 2 or 19 would never be used.

So models with improper flags affect models outside of their own files... This sounds like something that needs some serious attention. Do we really not know what all the flag values are for? If not, then there's some more experimenting for me to do in my own time and never tell anyone about.

Also, the shaders reset themselves when imported to max, exported into brawlbox, and imported back to max again?

I've not looked to the scenedatas yet to see if I find some '20' in character lights or something so they are tied. That's something I should look into to be sure about why some lights affect some objects and some others not.

Also, I'm not sure about if other values, like '2', '3' or '19' are used, I should look into some of the original stages to check which values are used and such. I'll update the tutorial if I find something about both matters.

LightSet and FogSet would be good names. I still don't know what's the third flag anyway.


I guess I'm lost here. The flags affects the materials in a model, nothing more. Unless there's another model in the same location with improper values, which will get some of the material values in this model or any other model depending on the position in the brres or arc nodes. I used this property in some pokemon imports when mdl0s weren't that editable.

About the question, that's exactly what happens. And I don't know how to do this not to happen. Every time I import a .dae, normals get reseted, even if I don't want them to. This is an advantage to fix the normals, but a disadvantage if we want to keep the original normals as they were. For example, if you want to edit Fox in 3dsmax, the normals will get reseted, and when back to the game, the arm and leg will be wrong in shaders unless you edit them manually before creating the new .dae.

I tried following your steps: I exported Kirby's model into 3DS Max, set a skin modifier to contain all the bones so they didn't lose their value on export, and changed the normals on his arm. I exported that as a .dae, reimported that .dae and exported it as a second .dae (with the skin modifier change from before), and imported the second .dae into Brawlbox  and exported as a third .dae. Every dae file kept the same shading changes I had made, never changed, always appearing as the white textureless model: The only difference I noticed was that the changed normals lost their smoothing group in all daes.

Also, those flags are something I'll experiment with if I ever get to finish experimenting with srt0 unknown datas.

Which importer are you using for that? I use the one coming with max 2010, and I'm sure it resets the normals no matter what I do O.o

I'm using 3DS Max Design 2011: Perhaps newer versions of 3DS Max Design don't reset shaders, or it might be the 3DS Max Design products that don't reset. If you'd like, I could test on 3DS Max 2012 (non-design) as well.

Mewtwo.
I love you. :srs:

I think I know why the normals on the right side of the body look bad in-game if they aren't reversed though. I'm coding a fix for it right now.

I have some more info about this. Sometimes, when a vertex is affected by more than just one single bone in a significant percent, the normals get inverted in-game too. This would mean that some vertices in an already normal-inverted model would get inverted again, and the invert would need to be turned to non-inverted again in order to make normals work well ingame.

Fox looks like this. Some parts of the inverted parts are not inverted, and they are the parts with shared weights.

(http://i.imgur.com/UR0in.png)

I think it's something to do with the older versions of 3DS Max. The newer versions past 2010 don't seem to have these problems, not for me.

I followed this tutorial exactly but i'm still having problems with the face of my character.

(http://i607.photobucket.com/albums/tt157/cottenballs/batlight.png)

By the looks of the capture... Is it scaled or something? That grey tone has appeared to me before when TopN had a rescale induced by the 3dsmax importer.

If that's the case, and even with the proper scale the face still seems to be wrong, then you may need to manually edit the normals in the face in 3dsmax.

It looks as if the face was broken in 2 parts, are you using 2 different materials?

By the way, everybody, about the part in the tutorial related to this:

(http://i.imgur.com/UR0in.png)

The new brawlbox 0.65b imports the models correctly, so no normal rotations have to be manually made in 3dsmax anymore. Also, if you had some model that showed well in older brawlbox versions, but looked like in the picture for the new one, just export as .dae with the new one, and import it again. The model will be fixed automatically. You may need to edit visibility bones, metal textures or whatever again, but the normals will be perfect.

Yeah he was scaled but it's still the same result. the face is broken into parts. the ears, hair, and upper face all have the shading issue.

One thing you could do is putting together those parts, if possible. With a new texture made with the textures from the different parts, and using the UV xform modifier, you could have a single-object face. Not sure if it would fix it completely, but it would at least look a little better.

If it looks similar in 3dsmax anyway, you may need to use the edit normals modifier and edit them until it looks better.

Now that the normals import properly, it's all about that edit normal modifier. It's kind of a pain to do though...

I tried combining them and it just made the entire head dark, and how would i go about editing the normals while keeping the rigging? I really don't want to re rig this again..

Let me have a look to your 3ds file and I'll try to fix it somehow. (PM so people don't steal)

My first idea is just using the 'edit normals' modifier I told you about, but if I can't see it myself, I can't really tell if that would easily help.

I can't follow this tutorial. Just as Xiggah said, normals are not receted when I export them, and I use the one coming wiht Ma 2010. I can export import back and forth into brawlbox a hundred times and normals remain the same :/

Paste some picture showing the fbx importer screen or something, maybe you both have some option enabled that I do not O.o

This is how the exporter info looks now.
And this is the importer

I got tired of double-checking my settings so I saved the export/import settings so I can always reload them if I ever change them.

^^ Pro-tip right there. Edit button, Save Preset.

The difference may be the plugin itself. I'm using an older plugin, mine is 2009.4

I shared it with eternalyoshi in some helping thread once, I may look for it if you want to test it (it's the one that came with my max 2010)

It would be really helpful as I cannot find it anywhere

Mewtwo I got the same problem...
Here is my model in 3ds max:
(http://img4.fotos-hochladen.net/uploads/petey3dsmaxlbpuaqrifk.png) (http://www.fotos-hochladen.net)

If I import the model into brawlbox (V0.66b)
I get this....
(http://img4.fotos-hochladen.net/uploads/peteybrawlboxayn14lfqrx0.png) (http://www.fotos-hochladen.net)

If I try to export the model from brawlbox and re-import the model in brawlbox I get this:
(http://img4.fotos-hochladen.net/uploads/peteybrawlboxbtxm3qgzlo5.png) (http://www.fotos-hochladen.net)

Why this happens?
I really don´t know how to fix it.
I got this feeling that brawlbox can´t export working dae´s for me so I can´t import dae files into 3ds max from brawlbox.

please help...

Have you tried importing it to 3dsmax, and importing to brawlbox the one generated by 3dsmax after this?

I don´t understand...
Do you mean I have to export it from 3ds max and import it in 3ds max?
Dae´s exported by brawlbox don´t work for me...

Then send me your dae generated with brawlbox, I'll import it into 3dsmax if possible, and will get it back to you as a mdl0

thats nice thanks.
I can send you the model as 3ds file too If you want

I need help for editing normals.  I have Roy Koopa all rigged up, and I put in the shaders and color nodes, but it's invisible in-game.  So I'm supposed to edit the normals.  I really don't want to start the rig all over, so is there an easy way of getting the fixed normals?

I suppose using the 'normal' modifier, which inverts the normals, would make it. Try using it without collapsing. If doesn't work, then collapse, just be careful to not to collapse the skin modifier you're using for the rig. Keep a copy of the project before trying anything.

Believe me, I have multiple copies.  :P

I'll try that later.  Thanks!  :D

EDiT:  I put it in, but it went to the top of the stack.  Also, is it normal for him to be dark?  I'm trying to get the normals to the bottom of the stack, so that when I collapse it, it won't influence the skin modifier.

Just move it by holding the right button in the mouse and moving down.

Anyway, if he gets dark, then something's wrong. I mean, if in 3dsmax is looking fine, the normals shouldn't be the problem in-game. If the normals were inverted, he would look dark before using the normals thing, not after using it. Look at how it is in brawlbox, if it looks well there, it's not a normals problem. Maybe he's too big, or too small, or something.

I meant that he's dark in 3DS Max.  And also, I can't move the normal modifier below the skin modifier, due to it going over to other stuff, such as rename, paste, etc...

He looks fine in Brawlbox, but in-game, he's too bright, giving off a King Boo-like vibe.  He has the right shaders and color-nodes, but he's invisible, as I stated earlier.  DJ Lowgey told me I had to work the normals.

Too bright? Invisible? If he's bright, then he's visible, so I suppose you mean he's transparent.

Well, if that's the case, the normals are fine, what isn't okay is the shaders. You would need to edit some values in the shaders. And in the materials.

First of all, check if the materials have the EnableBlend option in true or false. In general, it should be false.

Then, look if the colors in the color folder are 128 128 128 or 255 255 255. Importing with the fourth option on should reset all the colors to 128, but if it's not the case, they could be anything. And, given the standard shader, 255 255 255 would be too bright, a small change would be needed in the shader. ColorScale should be changed to multiplyby2 instead of multiplyby4.

Anyway, if that happened, my material tool can change the color nodes to be 128 again. And importing the model again with the 4th option on would do it too.

If nothing of this works, send me your model as it is currently in brawlbox, so I test it in my wii.

I'll explain further.  (All this is in Mario Kart Wii.)

First, I put the one with shading and color node into the Character Select Screen.  When it loaded, Roy was invisible.  Then, I put the one with the standard shading, and I got a very bright Roy.  I got the shaders and color nodes from DJ Lowgey's Crash Bandicoot hack.

It is invisible in the css? I had that problem too long time ago but i found a way to fix it.
Just import your textures with szs modifier. this should work fine

I fixed the invisible error long ago.  What my shaders do now is make it absolutely bright, it's like King Boo bright.  Is this because of the character's current shader and the color node I got from Crash?

I am working on the normals for my character now.  I already did the first few steps, which was the rotating the one bone, moving the bone, and exporting it to Brawlbox.  After I exported it from Brawlbox back to 3DS Max, do I have to delete the bone and then rig normally?  A video would help a lot for people who are having trouble with shader/normals.

Yeah, that's it. The final result is just that the rotations for the model have to be 90,0,0 in max. That's why the bone is used, the change made to the bone will be applied to the model, and it will have the right rotations and normals to use ingame from that moment on.

I may make a normal fixing video or something, I've already made 2 video tutorials showing me doing things in my desktop.

I see.  I will get started again tomorrow, because when I did some rigging, the wrist got messed up somehow, and then corrupted the entire project.  However, it's okay, for I have an original rig without perfect normals, (The Roy model that is currently in the download.)  I'll do the long manual way of looking back into it...  but it's still work that pays off in the end.  :)

Edit:  Roy's arm got messed up during the rig, thus I couldn't rig it anymore.  :(

I hope the same does not apply for Iggy.