BINedit Menu Commands - The Model Menu

Unsurprisingly, the Model menu contains the commands that effect the whole .BIN model.


Rotate X/Y/Z ... - Rotates the model about the selected axis. When you select this command, a popup box will appear asking "How many degrees?". Input the desired number and press OK, and the model will be rotated.

Shown below is the result of rotating Bigfoot.bin 20 degrees about the X axis. I simply selected Rotate X... from the Model menu and entered 20 as the desired number of degrees (entering a negative number would cause the model to be rotated in the opposite direction).

The selected axis acts as the pivot about which the model rotates. Rotate X will pitch the model up or down (as shown here), Rotate Y will yaw the model left or right, and Rotate Z will roll the model left or right.


Center X/Y/Z - Centres the model on the selected axis. Center X will move the model to the exact middle on the horizontal left/right axis, Center Y will move the model to the exact middle on the vertical up/down axis, and Center Z will move the model to the exact middle on the horizontal forward/backward axis.


Center All - Centres the model on all three axes in one step.


Resize - Allows you to resize the model. Values are in feet, one foot equals 256 editor units. Selecting this command will bring up the following window:

These are the dimensions for Bigfoot.bin. The original dimensions (in feet) are displayed in the left column. You can enter the new size in right column.

To keep the model's proportions, check the "Keep proportions" box before changing a value on the right hand side. The other values will be calculated automatically.


Translate - Allows you to move the model. This one allows you to choose between entering your values as feet or editor units (256 editor units equal one foot). This command will open the following window:

Note the two pairs of radio buttons. The first allows you to choose between translating the whole model or just the currently tagged vertices. This is invaluable for putting addons on a truck, as you can insert the model, select the vertices and the translate it to the desired position.

The second pair lets you specify whether the values you are entering are in feet or editor units. Under that are the input fields where you can specify how many units you want to move the model along the X, Y and/or Z axes.


Normalize Texture - Allows you to select ONE new texture for ALL faces. Selecting this command brings up the following window:

From the left column you can select any of the currently loaded texture files - I'm just playing around with Bigfoot.bin so the only textures I have loaded are BIGFOOT1.RAW and BIGFOOT2.RAW (see the Textures menu for information on loading new texture files). Clicking on a texture will cause BINedit to show a preview of it in the box on the bottom right. When you've got the texture you want, click OK.

You will recall that the fully mapped Bigfoot model looked like this:

After carrying out the Normalise Textures command using BIGFOOT2.RAW, it now looks like this:

You can see that all the faces that were previously mapped to any other texture files (in this case the only other texture file was BIGFOOT1.RAW), have now been mapped to BIGFOOT2.RAW. Because the two texture files are totally different (BIGFOOT1.RAW contains the textures for the hood, rear body and chassis, and BIGFOOT2.RAW contains the textures for grille and lights and front body), it looks a right mess - the texture layout on BIGFOOT2.RAW just doesn't fit the way the faces were mapped to BIGFOOT1.RAW - but you can easily remap any faces.

The main use of the Normalise Texture function is for when you have a model that uses several texture files and you want to remap it to some new ones of your own. You don't want to keep the old texture files on your model, so you can use Normalise Texture to remap the entire model to one of your textures, and then properly remap the faces of the model to your textures. This ensures that none of the old textures will still be mapped to your model.


Write Textures to Textfile - This function will write the names of all textures that are used by the model to a text file. When you select this command, a window will appear that allows you to specify where you want to save the text file, by default a list (.LST) file. This file may be opened by a text editor such as NotePad.

Write Textures to Textfile is useful for keeping track of the textures a model uses, and when creating response files.


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