In this tutorial ill explain the very basics of item creation, i used an already existing model in this one simply to make it easier for you guys to understand, cos creating a brand new item requires texture mapping and many other things which would make this tutorial endless, so ill post the basic stuff and you experiment on your own later on.
The images in this one are really big so they wont fit into the forum screen so please view the image separately for full detail.
So first of all lets prepared the item, for this tutorial we are gonna make a staff out of the amazing brush wand. so first of all get out the model out of your client and then convert it with Sparks converter which can be found in the tools section
After you have the OBJ model ready were all set to go.
Run 3D Max and import the model there
Now were all set to go.
For item editing you will mostly use mesh edit, this function allows you to select actual meshes and faces of the item and edit parts of it separately. So first of all select the button that looks like a bended pipe then select the red square (refer to screen shot)
After this were ready to do some actual editing, first of all lets make the handle of the staff. select one of the 3 moving, rotating or scaling options on the top, and make sure mesh edit is enabled. then select the faces of the handle, adding additional selections in max is done with control instead of shift so be careful since shift does cloning at that way you can make a whole load of useless faces. While selecting make sure you select everything, it might be tricky at times but you'll get used to it. once you are done selecting it should look something like this:
Now lets use the scaling tool and enlarge the handle, use one axis for it and just enlarge till the size you want and then move it back into place, so you should get something like this:
Now that we have the handle ready lets add some more easy things so the staff doesn't look that much like a cheap copy. Lets select the top 2 wings on the staff now and make them a separate object. The detach button got covered up in my screen and I'm sorry for that but i marked the location, this will make the 2 wings as a separate object instead of a part of the original staff.
Now lets make a copy of those 2 wings, deselect mesh edit if its selected then lets select our new wings and click ctrl+v and clone it (crtl+c isn't needed in max) and play around with rotation a bit. i made it look like this:
After we are satisfied with our staff all we need to do is export it, you can export both to OBJ and 3DS, in certain cases it will mater which type you use so if one doesn't work well use the other:
Then to add even more originality i converted the DDS of the staff into Photoshop and did some simple color rebalancing, that option can be called up with ctrl+b in Photoshop, playing around with the settings a bit i got this:
And there your staff is all ready, convert the texture, then load up the ZMS viewer again and open our exported model from max, you can also load in the texture to take a full look at it:
Export back to ZMS, and there you have a brand new staff to give to your players, add it in game and enjoy.
Keep in mind that this tutorial is only to show you the most simple and easiest of functions, take your time, experiment, read up a couple tutorials on the net, and most importantly use your imagination, there is no limit to the items you can create.
Also keep in mind the item size when you modify models because the item size you edit there will proportionally edit in game so if you make it too small or too big it will look stupid, if you aren't sure about the size just import an another model from game and compare this way you will be sure everything is ok.
Well i hope this will be useful to someone, and you enjoyed reading
Added Texture Mapping tut here:
viewtopic.php?f=34&t=1181
Alessa
P.S. i don't have to remind you that i kill people that steal so if you post this somewhere else please add the ownership, i have accounts on all the major rose editing forums so it wont be hard to track you down if i want.