   Is there an easy way to convert a hi poly mesh with several materials to a gamemodel?
  Say I have a mesh with several materials and textures and I need to get this mesh to use only 1 texture and material, so that it's ready to drag and drop, ready to be put into a game, or a engine.I am using 3dgamestudio and it only supports 1 material and texture per model so I am looking for an easy way to convert my meshes so they can be used in it.I am not really worried about polygons just the materials and textures.I have a mesh that uses 5 textures and materials, I need to get them down to 1.What about deep exploration? Can it do that?I am using 3d studio max and in the material editor my meshes have 5 materials. Is it possible to get them down to 1?[edited by - mx1 on February 18, 2004 11:20:53 AM]
  I don''t think Deep Exploration can do this, but what you need to do is "bake" your surfaces.Since I don''t use 3d Studio Max, I have no idea if it supports this, but in Lightwave you can use SurfaceBaker to render a UV map for your object.  This will take however many levels of textures/surfaces you''ve got on your object and then render them to a single texture.It''s real nice because you can pre-light your models, or add really cool surface details and then bake them down to one UV texture map for use in realtime work.It also works real good for doing persistant caching of radiosity information.If 3ds Max doesn''t support this out of the box, maybe somebody has written a plugin for it?   --- - 2D/Pixel Artist - 3D Artist - Game Programmer - Ulfr Fenris[[ Gaping Wolf Software ]] [[ GameGenesis Forums ]] ;quote:Original post by FenrirWolf  ... I have no idea if it supports this..   Max can do that.  I think they added it in version 5.;  It''s in max 5. It''s called render to texture.The problem with render to texture is I dont exactly understand how to use it. If I use it on my mesh it just renders a really big texture and it looks kind of messy but I dont know maybe max can make sense of it.But what do I do after I have this big bitmap? how do I apply it to my mesh? If I assign material to selection it just looks messy and nothing is in it''s correct place.Maybe someone can explain exactly how I do this? ;  Well, doing a little Googling for render-to-texture along with bake and 3ds returned this tutorial.  I''m not sure if it answers your question, though.   --- - 2D/Pixel Artist - 3D Artist - Game Programmer - Ulfr Fenris[[ Gaping Wolf Software ]] [[ GameGenesis Forums ]] ;  the only reason it is coming up all jumnbled is because after u make the render-to-texture (only with diffuse color, well just do a complete map just incase) it should render out a perfect lil texture for you. Afterwards, apply it in the slots of one of the materials (in the diffuse map slot) Then, add a Unwrap UVW modifier, yes you have to do this.... you have to correct where each lil piece of the map belongs on the body.Um, i dont know about this (i have used it but not for games) , why cant u just use a multi/sub map thing? In max they can have up to 8 different maps and combines into one, with the advantage of not having to do the unwrap uvw (which could take a long long time) ;  Oh I see  Thanks AP that was what I was doing wrong.The render to texture does look like it will work now but I still have just 1 problem. When I do the render to texture all of the textures overlap. It looks a lot better than before but how do I make all the textures spread out and lay side by side instead of overlapping?If you dont know what I mean I can post a screenshot. ;  yes, it would be helpful to post a screenshotim pretty sure it shouldnt be overlapping, just like a week ago i tried out render to texture (texture baking) with a simple scene of two boxes and a light. I am going to be using this for a free mmorpg (www.narrowmire.d2g.com/phpbb) , please check it out, it is in early stage but it is getting there, and im Milden on there. Anyway, hehe sry to go off topic , but when i rendered the simple box it gave me each side equally, meaning no overlaps, so im not sure whats happening for urs......ill check it out tonight thoughbtw, i should really log in but i dont feel like it lol, i forget my pass and i dont feel like having it sent to me.....so...- milden ;  1   [edited by - mx1 on February 19, 2004 3:32:46 PM];  im not too sure if u can host it on here.um , villagephotos.comthey are good, after you upload it to there just give me the linkor if u want and u have aim u can just send it through there, talk to me at urnoarmedfriend 