I was playing an rts the other day and wondering how they actually make the models, like the buildings and units etc like in age of empires or empire earth... Does anyone have any clues? or any idea on how I could fidn out? I've tried googling to see if anything came up... nothing really. help appreciated :)
I suspect Alfryd can help you there, with all the work he's done on his game.
Basically you start out creating a wire fame model and then apply a texture map (skin) to the wire frame model.
There are a number of comercial software packages that you could use to do this.
Get yerself a copy of Milkshape 3d and Lithunwrap (which should still be available for download, if not, PM me,) and look a the tutorials and forums at chumbalum soft.
The essential process is that you create a set of points, which provide a framework for 3-sided triangular polygons you specify. Where corners coincide, you can 'weld' vertices in order to blend light and shading effects across different polygons, so that the surface gives the illusion of smoothness and gradient.
After you create you model- keep it under a thousand polys if you can help it, or it gets tricky to work with Milkshape- you have to assign texture coordinates for each of the polygons. This is done in Lithunwrap. Basically, you map each corner for each polygon to a corresponding point in 2d space within a texture image frame. In-game, or in milkshape, the texture will then be mapped appropriately to match the geometry of your model. (Stick to textures that are a matching power of 2 on both sides in size- 16/32/64/128/256, etc.) Now, in practice, you usually won't have to assign every single corner seperately, as a lot of polygons will have corners in common, and other portions can be replicated by performing the texture mapping first, then copying the geometry in milkshape. Copied polygons will keep the texture coordinates of their originals.
The third major step is animation. You create a hierarchy or tree structure of 'bones', which are basically abstract point-joints which you then assign the points/corners for polygons within your geometry to. When you move/rotate the joints, you'll move the assigned vertices AND any joints lower down in the skeleton tree. Again, you can usually avoid excessive hassle, since a lot of vertices are shared by different polygons.
All the vertex assignments have to be done first, then you can enter animation mode, and specify different positions for the skeleton at different 'keyframes' over time. The intermediate positions are filled in automagically within milkshape or whatever game engine you're using and/or have to write.
The major professionals do their work in 3D studio max, which is costly unless you pirate a copy. Not that I would consider doing so, that would be wrong™. I know essentially nothing about this package, but imagine many of the fundamentals are similar.
ah thansk for your help guys :) I actually solved this about 5 hours after I posted the topic. I "got my hands on" a full version of 3d studio max 9. works well. once again thanks for posting.