gmax/Lot Editor help...

[Shaggy]

OK I have created some grandstands for my dragstrip in gmax... When I export my stands to a SC4 model to use in the Lot Editor, I have issues...

For some reason textures show somewhat correctly when viewing from 1 angle, but from other angles some textures dont show up properly... What could be causing this?

Also for some reason some of my alpha layers show up properly on my support columns, but not on all of them...

Thanks for any help anyone can give me...

Both images are of the same model, just rotated in Lot Editor...

[Shaggy]

Well after some testing, it seems it is a lighting issue when gmax renders the stands... Using the preview it seems 2 views are darker than the other 2... The 2 views that are dark appear correct in Lot Editor, but the views that are light appear with what seems as white blocks (reason the steps are still visible)... Now to figure out how to fix this... Any ideas as I have alot of models that have did this...

[Lowkee33]

I could be wrong, but isn't this just the way light works in SimCity?  I would say test in-game, and adjust the textures from there.

[Shaggy]

It looks the same in game so i am gonna adjust the textures to fit like suggested... thanks for the reply...

[jmyers2043]

There are a number of things to say ...

Looking at the grandstand safety railings. I can see them from one side but they appear not to be there from the other side. This is probably because you made the rail using a line or rectangle then UV mapped it. You then applied the fence material. Problem with a 'plane' is that it will UV map from the viewpoint from which the geometry was created and not the opposite side.

So - Select the fence texture in the material editor - click to box '2 sided' and the safety rail/fence should be OK from both directions.

Is this some sort of sketch up model imported into gmax?    Knowing that answer will make future comments more accurate. 

More tomorrow. . .


- Jim

[Shaggy]

It is a model that was done in 3dmax originally for rFactor(game)... I have since exported the 3ds to gmax to finish the BAT session... The only changes that have had to be made was the textures converted to tga from dds and reassigned to the stands... All alpha layers are included in the tga's to make the transparency's... What gets me is some of the models I have converted work right(at least seem to) but others do what the stands did...



Edit:
I have been doing alot of testing with a smaller model this morning that has the same issues... I really need to figure out how to do textures with alpha layers... Whenever I do it, The spots that are supposed to be invisible are not invisible...

The other issue I have with it not being seen from both sides is because the models are not properly modeled for SC4 so I am doing some edits to them to fix that... Not a big deal at all, I knew it ahead of time...

The issue with textures showing white instead of what it is suppoesed to I have now fixed 2 different ways... I have darkened up the texture and it looks way better... I have also changed the texture format from tga to png and it seems to have fixed it also, but I cant save alpha layers to a png for some reason so I had to stick with the darkening of textures as a fix until I figure out the proper way to do all of this...

So sorry for the run-on sentences... I am typing as it is fresh in my mind before work today...

[Shaggy]

I DID IT!!!!