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I've been working on some track idea's and wanted to bring some evo prop models into it... I figured it would be a snap using BigDogge's tutorial ... not

I have ZModeler v1.05a, and have all the nessesary raw, act and smf files extracted... but when I go to Import the smf everything seems to work fine but nothing shows up in ZM? no errors or anything just nada?...

any tips would be appreciated

1.05 supposedly has a bug regarding smf (and some uv mapping things too). There is a patch on the zmod home page.

http://www.zmodeler.com/
http://www.zmodeler.com/files/zm105patch.zip

Also, some people have been hanging on to v1.03 to avoid the problem entirely. It's still available on the zmod download page. And, as far as I know, as long as you're just converting, v1.0 should still do the trick (but don't hold me to that ;-)

ZM does not like me

I've tried ver 1.0, 1.03, 1.05b and 1.05a... only diference is that v1.0 & 1.03 at least give an error,

"Error importing/exporting file: Can not read the file
Possible caused by: Version 4 is only supported."
after that error nothing shows up on screen.

or,

"Error importing/exporting file: ..\Art\AARMP.Raw
Possible caused by: Texture file missing. or according to palette (PAL/ACT) is missing"
after that error the model appears but untextured... the textures ARE in the folder, no doubt in my mind they are I triple checked...

oh well this is not the forum to be asking about ZM probs anyway, just thought Id try an get lucky

it seems to me a system incompatibility problem but I'll mess around with it a bit more and see if I can find a solution... and also light a new fire under rich to get that binedit together with the new filters functioning at least, or they'll be no fruit cup tonite lol...

I haven't tried this in a while, but are the art and models in the SAME folder? Last time I used zmodeller, everything had to be in the same folder.

An SMF that won't load in Zmod can be edited first to change the "header", to one that's known to work. This trick works many times but not all the time...

Starting with this: JY1POLE.SMF

Which has a header that looks like this:

<font color=yellow>C3DModel
2
1
opaque</font>

Change it to this:

<font color=aqua>C3DModel
4
1
0,50.000000
opaque</font>

Save it then load it in Zmod and export as: JY1POLE.BIN

Load the resulting BIN in Binedit and merge/remove vertices, center, reset all face types etc. for best results.

Your memory serves ya well Phin, The models and art need to be in the same folder for ZM, but it doesn't seem to recognize the act/raw as valid texture files and is looking for a tga?
I've never tried converting a vehicle from 4x4, is there a tga along with the act and raw when you extract the files from the pod?

WK, that worked like a charm, loaded up in ZM, binedit, Traxx, and MTM2... thank you so very much

btw Phin, ZM 1.0 works just fine for converting.

btw2, Winpod will crash if you try to un-pod a 4x4-1 track (at least the two I tried it did) but Podview works like a champ.

I'll do a few more then write up what I find then post it...

>>is there a tga along with the act and raw when you extract the files from the pod?

Nope. With the exception of the odd bmp, tri games, prior to evo2, use raw/act files exclusively. Tga's are the graphic format of choice in the development stage. Hence their appearance when using slice60. But because zmodeller spans many game formats it tends to default to tga when in doubt, so we just have to deal with it.

>>Winpod will crash if you try to un-pod a 4x4-1 track

Yes. Believe it or not, but there are at least four different kinds of pod file.

- pod (legacy : mtm,mtm2)
- epd (extended pod format)
- pod2 (fly,evo1)
- pod3

Winpod only does the first. Podview does the rest. The evo2 editor will create pod2 or pod3 (you get a choice). The epd format is used in Fly (and probably nocturne; I don't know anything about blair witch, etc). I'm optimistic that POD Tool will be upgraded to do all versions (but don't hold your breath; I've been optimistic before).

>>I'll do a few more then write up what I find then post it...

Greeet! Some fine looking models in both versions of evo.

And I don't want to speak out of turn, but I think a couple evo2 tracks would do well here in mtm2 land. Team Death was definitely an asset for that one. But I'm willing to bet converting them back will be a challenge.

NFS cars use a TGA texture...maybe the import plug-ins are mixing EVO and NFS requirements during the import procedure...

There doesn't seem to be much in the way of a "standard" for these prefix's....I have MDL and .GEO models from other games that won't work with Zmod...

Also, I've seen that "wrong version format" message when trying to load NFS3 cars...I had to convert them to NFS4 format with a different proggy before they would load into Zmod, even tho they are both labeled as .FCE models.....

I'd like to get a more universal proggy for modeling someday, but they are expensive! I needed a dragon model, and found one at a "POSER" model website (used for games like EVERQUEST, POSER lets you make models that are animated).
It was in .OBJ format (BinEdit compatible), but it's made up of 31,000 vertices!!!!! BinEdit loads the legs and then the rest of the model distorts massively...so I had to make my own, borrowing a few textures from it...I did get it to load in a 3D model viewer demo called 3D EXPLORATION that lets me export in other formats, but it didn't help...


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By the way, I'm still running Zmodeler version .99 .....if it ain't broke, I ain't fixin' it!

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[This message has been edited by ZO_BigDOGGe (edited 31-12-2001).]