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Reward or Takeable Clothing
NOTE: THIS PAGE IS UNDER CONSTRUCTION AND NOT READY YET. I WILL ANNOUNCE WHEN IT IS DONE AND HAS ALL THE FILES AND INFORMATION IN IT.
Credit where credit is due! This tutorial would not have been possible without the help of GPNMilano, who did a LOT of indepth work on this and provided me with much information when I started learning how to do this. Credit also goes to Austin and Mark DeForest (aka Chogon) from Cyan for the information and help given by them.
Before you get started with this tutorial, PLEASE read the following!
This tutorial is not for a beginner in Age creation. If you have just started and are still learning how to even just model and texture your Age, you may want to get more practice in before you attempt this. The process is complex. You will not be able to use this with any of the stand alone Uru games (POTS, Uru:CC), nor will this work correctly with ALCUGS or UU type servers. You must have access to a MOUL based server in order to test what you are making due to changes in the Avatar's bone structure that were made. This is mostly due to the files I'm providing as the Avatar bone structure is based upon the MOUL avatar. If someone were to change the structure to what is used in the stand alone and ALCUGS, then you would be able to use the information here. But if you try to use it, you will find that the avatar will not look right when you put the clothing on. Instead you'll look like some deformed, mutant Bahro!
This tutorial is not meant to show you how to make clothing meshes that will fit the avatar, but instead assumes that you already have those. In the files I provide, will be a set of meshes for some pants so that you can follow along and give it a try. The documentation provided comes from Cyan, and has a wealth of information in it, including how to make the clothing meshes. Textures for clothing are special too, and must be a certain size and layout depending on what type of clothing / accessory you are making.
There are a couple of things that I have discovered while doing this: I have not been successful in making certain types of clothing, such as Jump Suits. The way the bone structure is made, it does not like once piece clothing. Combining the legs with the torso or the torso with the head (like a diving bell suit) causes problems with the avatar when it animates in game. This does not mean that it is impossible (I have learned not to use that word when it comes to Plasma and the Uru Community), however someone will have to figure out a way to makes those.
Finally, this method that I am going to show you involves adding prp files to the GlobalClothing Age. Trying to place the clothing in your Age will not work, as the Plasma Clothing material type will not export into the Age. I realize that this could cause problems, especially on a server where more than one Fan Age will have clothing. However, until someone figures out a way to work around this, it is the only way I know for it to work.
Enough talking from me. Let's get to work. There is a LOT of information to get through.
Files You Will Need
You will need to download at least the next 2 files:
This is the animated bone structure of the Male Avatar for MOUL.
This is the animated bone structure of the Female Avatar for MOUL.
If you already have clothing mesh you have made and want to use, that is great! If you do not have any, then you can use this file here, which is just some basic pants: pants.max
You do not need this file, however this is what you should end up with at the end of the tutorial: PantsNeolbah.max
avatar-documentation.pdf This is Cyan's documentation on the Avatar for making clothing.
The following are python files made by Mark DeForest (aka Chogon) and can be extremely useful:
This file will allow you to let the avatar link to the Relto closet without having to go to Relto, and when they are done, will link back into your Age.
This file will save what the player is wearing to the client's hard drive before they put on whatever reward clothing your Age offeres.
This file will return the clothing that was saved to the client's computer in case they want to change back to the clothes they were wearing just before they put on the Reward clothing your Age offered.
Getting Started
Okay, before we dive right in, I want you to take a look at the pants mesh that is in the file I provided in the above link, even if you are going to try and use your own clothing mesh, there is something important that you will need to understand. When you open up the pants.max file, you will see this in the 3D Scene:
As you can see there are what looks like 3 sets of pants. In reality there are 5, as 3 of them are all sitting in the same place. The coloring of the meshes is very important, as it helps you keep track of what mesh is what:
The Red mesh, is considered High Ploy or High Faces. This will be your highest resolution of your clothing Mesh.
The Green Mesh is considered the Medium Poly or Medium Faces mesh.
The Dark Blue Mesh is considered the Low Poly or Low Faces mesh, and will the the lowest resolution of your clothing Mesh.
These 3 meshes will sit on top of one another, and must fit over top the Avatar Bone system. The remaining two meshes that are light blue and what I call Tan are Morphing Meshes. The sit just off to the side. Light Blue is the skiniest avatar, and the Tan is the fattest avatar (don't get offended.....Tan would be MY clothing color!!! heheheh).
We also need to do something before we get started. We need to make a GlobalClothing.age file and put it in our PlasmaTest export dat folder.
Open up Notepad and use this:
StartDateTime=0000000000
DayLength=24.000000
MaxCapacity=10
LingerTime=180
SequencePrefix=-5
ReleaseVersion=0
Page=Female,2
Page=Female01,4
Page=Female02,5
Page=FemaleXP2,8
Page=Male,1
Page=Male01,3
Page=Male02,6
Page=MaleXP2,7
Page=MaleNeol,11
As you can see, I have added a Page to the GlobalClothing Age, and it is called MaleNeol, you can change this to fit whatever your Age is called. Make sure you save it and put it in your dat folder of your PlasmaTest.
Merging The Files
I need you to keep this in mind: We will be using the Male avatar for this tutorial. BUT! You MUST do what you are about to do all over again for the Female avatar! You MUST have 2 versions of your clothing for the players. If you do not, and only make it say for Male, any Female Avatars will not be able to put on the clothing and vice-versa.
Open up the BasicBoneAvatar_Male.max file in 3DS Max:
In this file, I have done many things for you already and you will not have to do them. The bone structure system is animated, and the Parent to Child hiarchy is already in place (except for your clothing Meshes, more on that later). The 5 nice looking avatars you see below the bone structure are what is called the Smoothing Bases, and used to be in a separate file. Cyan used XRef to reference them. However, for our purposes, it was easier to just merge them with this file so they are always there.
The bone structure of the Avatar is not just for their body, but both this file and the female file have the bone structure for the Relto Book in place. DO NOT REMOVE THE RELTO BOOK BONE STRUCTURE!!! This can cause problems with the appearance of the player if you do!
There are 4 Dummy Boxes: one between the bone structure's feet, called "Male" (the one in the Female file is called "Female"). The 3 boxes to the left are called "High", "Med", and "Low"
Okay, let us get the clothing mesh into this scene. Go up to your menu bar and click on Plasma, and then click on Merge. Find and select the Pants.max file you downloaded. Now your scene should look like this:
As you can see, the Red, Green and Dark Blue pants are all right on the Bone system. If you used your own clothing mesh and they are not, you will need to move them so that they are! This is for later when we "Skin" the meshes to the Bone structure.
Once you get the files merged, you need to select everything in the scene and attach a PageInfo component on everything that does not have it. Change the Age name to GlobalClothing, and the Page that you made.
The Smooth Bases
