8 replies to this topic

[Kwen]

Does anyone know how to make a w3d Buff object orient to the camera? I am making a new leadership buff but when I export the plane of course it is static and only visible from one angle. I've seen in other mods that their object will cam-orient but when I try to apply this effect on the export settings the plane is purely invisible and does not orient at all.

[Ridder Geel]

Is it visible (correctly) in the W3D viewer?

If not, it might be rotated wrong.

Although I will admit I have not made w3d buff objects before, but it'd be logical if it wasn't really all that different from adding a normal object (Then again it is EA, so who knows)

[Kwen]

It's simply a vertical plane that shows up fine in w3d viewer and in game. But it remains at a static angle. I don't know how to get it to remain facing the camera. I did a test by looking at TDH's object that Nertea used for his and in W3dviewer it doesn't rotate at all, it is always static facing the camera. I would normally use Wdump to look at the material settings, but for some reason my anti-virus always pops it and deleted the exe so it's unusable.

I've come up with an alternative in the meantime, but it would still be nice to know how it's done.

[Lauri]

Cam-orient or Cam-parallel, should be one of them.. Tried exporting a real mesh with those settings, to see how it reacts in-game? A simple square box, for instance.

[Kwen]

I haven't tried a simple mesh with it, but I did notice that when I exported a plane with either cam-orient or cam-parralel if it wasn't attached to a bone of some sorts then it just does not want to show up at all. I even tried making a "dummy skeleton" but to no avail.

I looked in game at TDH's effect and I notice that it seems to orient in a choppy motion. That isn't typical of a cam-orient so I'm unsure of the settings Nertea used. Or if it's just as a result of how cam-orient looks with buff objects.

I will try and see what happens with simple mesh objects this afternoon and report back.

[Kwen]

Again I've been tinkering with Buff objects, and now I'm running into an entirely different problem altogether. It seems that I cannot simply create a new mesh and have it show up in game as a buff object, it's always invisible. The only workaround that has been found currently is to have someone open up Rad's Leadership Buff in RenX (because I don't have it) and manually merge a custom object into it.

 

So this leads me to believe that there is some underlying necessary set-up to the meshes that will allow them to be visible. I tried a control test by replacing my desired buff with an already existing one (EXCripple for example), and it showed fine. Then I imported the EXCripple.w3d object, and re-exported it without changing anything. Sure enough, it was invisible. 

 

So something basic with my meshes is missing or incorrect which makes it refuse to show up in game as a buff object. Does anybody have any insight?

[Valheru]

Firstly how are you rendering the buff nugget, is it with a simple draw module(like the dwarf hero blue rings), or are you coding fxlist---> buff.ini?

[Kwen]

FXlist - buff.ini. As I said the coding is right because I can get other default buff objects to work fine. But any custom ones I make do not.

[Valheru]

I too lazy to read whole thread, is the short story you want new buff nuggets with cam-orient and your current issue is invisible asset yes? If so Ill make you one, test in game, then send to you with settings.