How do i make custom units?

[Montblanc41]

i want to make my own campaign in Myth II but i need my own self-made unit sets how do i make these and what programs do i use?

i have a Mac btw so any windows file wouldnt work if i needed them.

[lank]

you'll need a 3d modelling and animation program like cinema 4d, studio pro, lightwave or maya (should you be so lucky) to make, texture, animate and, finally, render your units.

you'll then need a 2d program capable of batching/automating actions (e.g. photoshop) to index all the rendered pictures to 256 colours (i'll explain more necessary details about this later).

you'll also need photoshop to create vague, blurry shadow bitmaps (which you might be able to hike out of an existing unit collection).

next you'll need amber, which is downloadable from here.

amber will allow you to import your bitmaps and organise them into sequences (the individual movements of a unit - walking, idling, attacking, etc.), as well as set hue changes (which is how you can have custom colours for your units in multiplayer).

amber will save your collection ready to use in myth, but you need to know some details first.

first of all, after you've rendered the unit, you'll need it to be saved in uncompressed windows bmp format (which photoshop will do) with 8-bit indexed colour, with the first three colours in the table (indices 0, 1, 2) set exclusive for transparency.

second, your sequences, in particular attack and drop sequences, will need key points and key frames defined (otherwise projectiles will originate from one upper corner of the unit's bitmap in game).

third, you can also tie sounds to particular frames in a sequence.

these last two are fairly straightforward in amber once you understand the interface - be sure to ask again if you have any questions.

i'm in a slight hurry, so i may have glossed over things a little, but i hope i've helped. i'll be around to keep answering questions for you as they arise.

[Montblanc41]

you'll need a 3d modelling and animation program like cinema 4d, studio pro, lightwave or maya (should you be so lucky) to make, texture, animate and, finally, render your units.

you'll then need a 2d program capable of batching/automating actions (e.g. photoshop) to index all the rendered pictures to 256 colours (i'll explain more necessary details about this later).

you'll also need photoshop to create vague, blurry shadow bitmaps (which you might be able to hike out of an existing unit collection).

next you'll need amber, which is downloadable from here.

amber will allow you to import your bitmaps and organise them into sequences (the individual movements of a unit - walking, idling, attacking, etc.), as well as set hue changes (which is how you can have custom colours for your units in multiplayer).

amber will save your collection ready to use in myth, but you need to know some details first.

first of all, after you've rendered the unit, you'll need it to be saved in uncompressed windows bmp format (which photoshop will do) with 8-bit indexed colour, with the first three colours in the table (indices 0, 1, 2) set exclusive for transparency.

second, your sequences, in particular attack and drop sequences, will need key points and key frames defined (otherwise projectiles will originate from one upper corner of the unit's bitmap in game).

third, you can also tie sounds to particular frames in a sequence.

these last two are fairly straightforward in amber once you understand the interface - be sure to ask again if you have any questions.

i'm in a slight hurry, so i may have glossed over things a little, but i hope i've helped. i'll be around to keep answering questions for you as they arise.

can i use Cararra4 or Poser 5 for the texturing, animating, and rendering?

[lank]

without a doubt!

the list i gave was by no means exhaustive.

[Montblanc41]

without a doubt!

the list i gave was by no means exhaustive.

great! this should work out just fine for me then! i thank you! ill come back later if i need more help.


-Montblanc41

[Montblanc41]

i have some more questions:

1) do i save it as an animation or do i render for each individual frame as a picture instead of a movie?

2) how can i export shadow bitmaps from already created units?

3)how many frames should each animation be?

[carlinho]

there was a great TUTORIAL named creating units the strange way.
Unfortunately I don't have it on this computer, but I'm sure somebody in this forums can point you in the right direction to get that tutorial, it has everything you need to know regarding your question.
If nobody can do so, I'll be glad in a week when I get back home send it to you by e-mail.

regarding your questions:
1)you need to export the sequence as individual bitmaps, rendering each frame as individual pictures, try not to use antialising as that would blend the blue background with the unit being difficult to index.
2)in amber you go to shadows, and select one from them and export it. then you can import it to another collection.
3)animations should at least have the 8 viewing angles (0,45,90.etc) from where you can rotate the camera and see your unit, then it's a matter of what sequence you are creating.
a standing sequence could live with 2 frames.
a running with 8 and an attack sometimes with 6-8, etc
there's ways in poser to create this frames animated and rotate them automatically so you have let's say 8 frames running animation in a 0 degrees camera angle, then 8 frames in 45 degrees camera angle...etc so when you export the sequence bitmaps it does all automatically without needing to go angle by angle...
Anyways: you should get "doing units the strange way" it explains everything.

[lank]

just a quick note:

as well as rendering as individual bitmaps, make sure you save them in some uncompressed format, as that will blur colours a teensy bit as well.

also, the point about antialiasing was an important one that i forgot to mention.

[Montblanc41]

there was a great TUTORIAL named creating units the strange way.
Unfortunately I don't have it on this computer, but I'm sure somebody in this forums can point you in the right direction to get that tutorial, it has everything you need to know regarding your question.
If nobody can do so, I'll be glad in a week when I get back home send it to you by e-mail.

i would love to get the tutorial if you dont mind sending it to me eventualy....thanks!

[carlinho]

well, I couldn't see your e-mail on project magma so I uploaded the tutorial to my web page.

here's a link to it, click on DOWNLOAD TUTORIAL UNITS THE STRANGE WAY

http://carlinho7.tripod.com/id12.html

and voila, you've got a cool tutorial I didn't do but helped me do the units I'm doing right now...

Enjoy!