Hi, i started modeling with MED yesterday but i have a problem with the texturing of my model and that it is invisible in WED.

I am using A7 trial version

here is my problem



ok what i have done:
1. i created a 256x256 bmp texture in photoshop
2. opened manage skins and newskin
3.selected my whole model and set skin
4. then i used 6-side mapping

thats all

you can see that the 3D View shows the texture on the model but the skin manager does not.

If i start the Engine preview i cannot see my model. The same problem like in WED.

I tried to fix this problem with the official conitec tutorial but it couldnt really help me.

Maybe someone here can give me an advice. it cant be that i cannont skin a simple model like this.

greeting fanatiker

Try a skin much lighter than that black.
The 3D view shows the skin on the model.
And, the Skin Editor shows that the mesh is actually on the same picture.
This means everything is fine and, probably, you can't find the model in the engine only because the black color is invisible.


If this is not the problem, you can try this: switch to Group Mode (the mode besides vertex mode and bones mode and triangle mode), select all and click Edit --> Merge Groups

thanks Pappenheimer it works now

but i have to use bmp files instead of tga files. If i use bmp, the whole texture can be black and the Engine Preview shows exactly a black model. But if i use tga files my model is everytime invisible. I tried some colors but it never worked.

Surely i can live with bmp but it would be nice to know why tga textures dont work.

P.S Does the skin editior never show the textured model ? my model is always white.

Greetings Fanatiker




Now tga works too. Hmm i really dont know where the problem was.;)

"Does the skin editor never show the textured model ? my model is always white."

It always shows the textured model - I don't even know how to make him to show it not.

Is your tga 24bit or 32bit?
First means it is without alpha channel, means there is no 'in-build' transparancy.
Second has an alpha channel where the black parts are completely invisible while the white parts are in-transparent, and all other parts are more or less transparant depending the values of there grey.

This won't solve your problem, but seeing that you're new to MED I just wanted to sneak in some advice... Hope you don't mind.

When it comes to optimizing a game, it will also include the amount of memory the model takes, including the skin.

Now granted, if someone makes a whole level out of models with only 256 x 256 skins, it'll be pretty optimized to begin with.

But what I'd like to point out is these things:

BMP files are HUGE and with no better quality than .PCX
Use PCX over Bitmaps for skins.

However...

24 bit TGA files are better quality than PCX, and still smaller than BMP files.

An example of the quality differences is especially visible with gradients.

If you had a skin that faded from black to white for instance... the greyscale color changes wouldnt be smooth. They appear as noticable bands.

With a TGA file for the skin, gradients are a smooth transition.

Anyway, I would just get in the practice of using TGA or PCX files for everything since BMP files are so big and will really add up in the end.

- Jason