Plasma Composit Material

[andylegate]

[whine mode on]

"Would someone else please figure this out and post a 7th grade level tutorial on it, PLLLEEEEEEEAAAAASSSSEEEEE?????"

[/whine mode off]

Heh, sorry. Feeling a bit whiny right now (that or it's the blood pressure meds the doc put me on yesterday). I've been reading over the Plasma Docs on how to use the Plasma Composit Materials, and everything I make looks funky. I want to blend like we've done in Blender with one object but more than one material, and I'm tearing my hair out.

In Blender I mostly would use a stencil texture layer....and I'm thinking about doing that now in Max. But I'd like to try and do it like Cyan did it, using Plasma Composits (good examples like the cave walkway in Ae'gura. The cave has 5 textures, 3 visible and 2 alpha ramps), but even trying to follow their directions, I keep getting strange results, *sigh*.

I think part of it is: I don't know how to use Max like I do Blender, hehehehe.

[GPNMilano]

Let's see if I can break this down and explain.

With the Plasma Composite Material you'll have three materials (Or two, you can turn one off if you'd like and only use two. For the purpose of this explanation we'll go with two)

Your first material, is going to be the bottom material on your object. Since the composite material blends layers together. What this means is that the first material will be the base material that you want to show up underneath all of the blending. SO let's say you have a canyon, and the majority of it will be rock. For this you'd put the rock in the first material.

Then with the second, you want to blend grass and some dirt. So with the second material you'd set the dirt texture for the base layer, and the grass texture for the second.

Now, with blending you need alpha vertex colors. Just like we made stencils with blender, it's the same thing with max only we don't use the stencil as a layer. What we do is we vertex color the areas we want blended from white to black. (white being opaque, black being transparent) if you select a vertex color modifer on your object you can paint vertex paint the alpha layer onto the object.

Also to note, if you have a composite material that uses materials (for a max total of six layers to be blended) you can select in the composite material wether you want to have normal alpha vertex colors or inverse them (So instead of white being opaque and black being transparent, it would be vice versa)

[andylegate]

Yes, I've been using that to do my blending.

However, the problem is, while the render screen shows a very good blend in Max, once I export and link in....the OBJECT is semi-transparent. You can see the blending...but depending on the % I place on the alpha for the Vertex colors (with 100 having no blending at all), the more transparent the object becomes.

[Paradox]

I think you can also use vertex illumination colours for blending rather than vertex alpha.

[andylegate]

Using vertex illumination and there is no Blending (not sure if you use this if there is something else you must do).

Here is what I'm talking about:

Using Plasma Composit, I've got 2 textures I want to blend together on the same object. So that one fades into the other.

Now following the instructions in the Plasma Docs, it looks great if I do a quick render of the object:



However, once I link into the game, as you can see, it's making the object transparent where the blending is occuring:



The documents make no mention of this, nor if there is something you have to do to keep this from happening.

Vertex Painting will get you the same result. I've tried it (and it's a nightmare for me as Max is having a tendency to crash on me when I'm using Vertex painting....that or I get a plConvert error when I try to export).

I've got each texture UV mapped to it's own channel also.

[andylegate]

Got it!

"And now for something completely different: Andy expressing some colorful language......"

The $%&$^%$ Plasma Documents is :BLEEEP:'ing wrong about how to use the (*&!@# verticies.........!

That's the 2nd error I've found in their notes.

It says this:

1. Generate Mapping Coordinates.
2. Convert the wireframe to an editable mesh.
3. Apply a base material, select 'Alpha' for Output Blending on the Base Layer (Layers Parameters). (If your base material is a blended material, then you must select 'Alpha' for Layer Blending and 'Base alpha only' for Layer Alpha Blending on the 'Top Layer' of the blended material.)
4. For the sub-material, check the checkbox beside its button. On the sub-material's base material, select 'Alpha' for Output Blending (Layers Parameters). (If your sub-aterial is a blended material, then you must select 'Alpha' for Layer Blending and 'Base alpha only' for Layer Alpha Blending on the 'Top Layer' of the blended material.)

Bold emphasis mine.

If you make your Base Layer "Alpha" output blend, then you'll make your object transparent where you've selected the vertex, because BOTH layers are being made transparent there.

Instead, for your Base (opaque) layer, leave it set to "None" and tah-dah:



So it works pretty good and you don't have to mess with Vertex Painting. (unless you want to of course).

[ddb174]

That's great news! Even if the plugin and documentation have their bugs, you've done a great job figuring it out and creating better documentation :)

[Robert The Rebuilder]

Great detective work, Andy!

This begs the question: how do we make corrections/clarifications to the 3DS Max Plugin documentation? Should we maintain a separate version in MS Word (hosted on some publicly accessible version control system)? Or do we go through the grunt work to convert the whole thing to Wiki format?

And do we cross any legal bounds by doing so?

[ddb174]

I think the best things is to simply not point newbies to Cyan's documentation. The tutorials Andy has made are better anyway.

[andylegate]

Those notes are just a globbed together thing from Chogon.

From what Mark told me, when they were making Uru, the artist that knew how to use Max, etc, were given the programmers plugin, and a handful of notes....the artist then proceeded how to make sense of it all.
I told Mark that the plugin reminded me a Myst game: lots of puzzles to figure out. He told me that's exactly what the artist whined about to them (hehehehehehe). He said that he wishes they'd had my tutorials back then, because it would have been easier than all the back and forth between the artists and the programmers.
Apparently, there were a lot of post-it notes plastered around their work stations. And the programmers kept changing things in the plugin (sound familiar? ROFL! ).

I've made posts about the errors in the MS-Word notes over in the MOUL forum.

Now I did get asked an interesting question: "Would it be possible to take all your tutorials and make them into one document?"

I've mulled over that one. I could make a PDF file, so that all the pics are included, and then a person could downloaded it to their computer. That way they can access it offline, or print it out and have like their own book of it.....writting in their own notes.