Some help with XSI mod tool?

Tangent issues

from Sins Forums

Hey, was wondering if someone with more modelling experience could help me out with something.

I'm trying to get the tangents on some of my ships to look 'smooth' specifically on the fighter cockpit glass and some of the more curved ships body.

The issue I'm having is I can't seem to work out how to make it all smooth and one colour. It ends up looking like flat polygons in game rather than having a nice smooth shape. 

modding
8,057 views 3 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

The tangent color is mostly based on rotation values. The most basic, and method of last resort is to make your tangent UV map really small, disconnect any problem triangles and rotate them until they have whatever color you're going for.

 

However, if you have access to 3ds max, I highly recommend this video Lavo made. Sadly he goes mute near the end but he shows how to properly save 3ds max autosmoothing data in a format that will carry over to XSI's tangents, which in many case will do a good enough job of them (though I haven't really tried specifically for cockpit like areas). If nothing else it should reduce the amount of polygons you have to rotate. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VYVC0RznBA

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting GoaFan77, reply 1

The tangent color is mostly based on rotation values. The most basic, and method of last resort is to make your tangent UV map really small, disconnect any problem triangles and rotate them until they have whatever color you're going for.

 

However, if you have access to 3ds max, I highly recommend this video Lavo made. Sadly he goes mute near the end but he shows how to properly save 3ds max autosmoothing data in a format that will carry over to XSI's tangents, which in many case will do a good enough job of them (though I haven't really tried specifically for cockpit like areas). If nothing else it should reduce the amount of polygons you have to rotate. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VYVC0RznBA

 

Yeah, I don't have 3ds max unfortunately. I guess I'll have to try manipulating the triangles individually... but I find that sometimes certain tri's seem to be difficult and don't go the right colour.

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Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Wintercross, reply 2

Yeah, I don't have 3ds max unfortunately. I guess I'll have to try manipulating the triangles individually... but I find that sometimes certain tri's seem to be difficult and don't go the right colour.

If you look at what Lavo does in the XSI part of the video he used some of the more advanced tool which can fix some of the problems rotating doesn't fix.