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MilkShape Basics
4) Basic Tutorial for MilkShape v1.5X
Introduction
This small tutorial addresses itself to all beginners of modelling in 3d as well as to those in handling Modeliersoftware already the experiences made however gladly also within the range from Milkshape and with it connected the Gamemodelling foot to seize would like.
Milkshape is particularly conceived for Gamemodelling a polygon and vertex oriented wordprocessor. Although Milkshape does not have the function range of larger Modellers, it is suitable nevertheless to some extent good to create complex forms and presents itself with the integrated Animator, an almost complete Tool for Gamemodelling. Only " almost " because its material and Skinning, not yet fully developed functions, and other Tools cannot to be e.g. gone as the water to the Chilliskinner for 3D Studio Max.
Conventions:
After my experience, each Modeller/Software uses different names for objects, points and polygons. Additionally this point is also true from user group to user group. I will therefore use the conventions of Milkshape around an object in the course of the tutorial to describe,and try as far as possible to use the other designations besides the mark. Thus everyone can have a small overview of the entire spectrum, and are not limited to communication with others because terms applied here are Milkshape specific.
Impatient ones can make themselves fairly proficient quickly by familiarizing themselves with the most important functions.
Contents:
The bases
* General handling
* Creating Models
* Models process
* Material/Textures
* Animation
Additional function/features
1.:Exports
* UT export (example: Decoration)
The Bases:
General handling
Left mouseclick primarily selects in Milkshape , and executes operations like moving, rotating, and scaling. Zoom is Shift+Left Mouse Click. However zoom only works if you are in the Move, Rotate or Scale mode. In the SELECT mode, hold shift to select many objects, faces or vertices. When vertices or faces are selected, they appear as the color red. Only left click in the selection mode selects an object, face, or a vertex, which will select everything in the grey rectangle. If you shift+right click, you will deselect objects, faces, or vertices. Deselected vertices and faces appear as white.
Creating Forms
(primitives, vertices, faces, extrude)
The base of most Modelling Programs are the so-called " Primitives " or base forms which consist of: Right parallelepiped, ball, Cylinder, cone , Torus, etc...that allows the possibility to create a " Face " (or surfaceface/surface) by means of Vertices (points) which afterwards with use of the Extrude function " solvently " becomes extruded or pulled out.
PRIMITIVES:
In Milkshape, you add an object into the scene by selecting the proper button(box, cylinder, sphere, geoshere). Well, simple forms are OK, however, you want more than a simple box for a far more complicated model. You can do this with faces and vertices.
VERTICES & FACES:
You can use vertices and faces to interconnect around the primitives to give it life, or, to create new forms with the help of the Extrude tool. OK, so how do you create faces? In order to make a "proper" polygon face, you need three vertices. So, click on "Vertex" in the right tool window.(make sure autotool is unchecked...when autotool is checked, the program tries to decide what tool will be used next. But it can get annoying, because when you do have it checked, eveytime you add a new vertex, it switches to the SELECT tool...every time!)Click on one of the viewpoint windows, see the red dots? Those are vertices. Remember, it takes at least 3 vertices to make a face.
After you have your vertices in, click on the Face tool. Now, click on 3 vertices that you want to make a face out of until you have the form you are looking for.
 
EXTRUDE:
With the Extrusion tool, you can "pull" out a face/polygon to give it more form to work with. How is that done exactly? All you need to do is select a face(it has to be a face, the extrusion tool doesn't work properly with only vertices selected). It can be a pure surface which is, as described above, created or a face(s) of an existing object. The text fields for the Extrude tool(on the bottom half of the tool bar X, Y, and Z) are for, when pressed, which direction you can extrude in. Here are two simple examples:
FORMS PROCESS:
(selection, vertex, groups)
Now, I have created an object we all know as a sphere. For the organization of models, Milkshape has a "Groups" Tab on the right tool bar. If you have a sphere, it will be named "Sphere1"(or box1, cylinder1, geosphere1, etc..). That's not a very descriptive name. So, let's name this "Head". Click on the "Groups" tab, select "Sphere1", then, in the text window, type in "Head" and click on "Rename". I'll get into the other "Groups" buttons later on.So, what's next? We'll begin modelling something easy. So, I have the sphere, like so:
Now, I would like to shift+select 2 faces by clicking the SELECT tool. In addition, I click on the "face" button that appears when the SELECT tool is on. There are now two possibilities for selecting the two faces that we want selected(as seen in the picture below):
* We deactivate the function "ignore backfaces", and, if "by vertex" is deselected, select in the center of the polygons we would like(in this case, we want to select the sides of the "head" model, which means we need to use the left "viewport"). However, if "By Vertex" is checked, we need to drag the selction box on the vertices, not just on the faces. That's where the next possibility comes in.
* When you have the SELECT tool on, the SHIFT key holds a very special function. Select a face or vertex. Now, while holding the SHIFT ke down, select another face or vertex. Did you see what it did? Now the first vertex/face AND the second vertex/face are selected. This comes in handy when dealing with larger, more complex models. Remember, SHIFT+Right mouse click does the opposite, it "deselects" the vertices/faces that you dragged over, BUT, it keeps all other vertices/faces that were selected.
Note for "Shifting":There are two methods for "shifting": a fast and a precise:
* The Fast: You click on move and drag the selected vertex/face/group/object and move in the desired direction.
* The Precise: You click on move, and inputs in the field the parameters: X = Horizontal, Y = Vertical, Z = Depth.
Here's the result:
Our little ball is already quite promising. Reminds me of Sonic the Hedgehog somewhat. No? Oh, well. Now it's starting to look more like a head. It has ears, only it needs more of a head shape. OK, on further. Let's select the vertices in the front middle of the head and move them foward some to look more like a nose, do some tweaking and poking and pulling, so it looks somewhat like this:
The option ignore backfaces allows you to select one face, but not the face directly behind it. Say, you have a model of a head, like the one you're doing now, and you're selecting faces in the "front" view so you can tweak the nose. If you have "ignore backfaces" checked, you can select the front of the face in the "front" view, and not select the back of the head. This will come in handy for complex models. Now is the time to start thinking about Materials and Textures...Which brings us to our next section:
MATERIALS:
(textures, Skins)
Plain grey models look dull and uncool, don't they? And color alone can be quite boring, too. Most models have what what are known as "skins", which make those boring models look nice. These skins include faces, clothing, hair..you get the picture.
In addition, you can use basically any size picture, though you should note that most game engines use 256x256 size. Any paint program will do for making skins. Also not that an image doesn't have to be square i.e 256x256, but it can any irregular shape i.e 32x128.
Milkshape uses 2 types of image files for it's skins, .BMP and .PCX. This isn't exactly a professional skin, but, it serves as an example. I made a front head and a back head.They look like this:
Now, to the exciting section:
Click on the "Materials" tab, then click on "New". This is a new texture group. I recommend you rename it, but you don't absolutely have to. Click on the "none" button, and a browse window will appear. Load in whatever texture you would like to use. I suggest that you leave the ambient specular, emmisive and diffuse buttons alone until you get comfortable with Milkshape, or if not, play with them all you want!
Allright, now, select all the parts of the model that you want to attach a skin to, and click on "assign" in the Materials tab. Now the skin is attached to the model. Now, in the 3D View window, Right click and select "Textured" so you can see your skin on the model. Well....doesn't look perfect, does it? Hit "CTRL+T" for the "Texture Coordinate Editor. That should bring up a window that looks like this:
Most of the buttons in the Texture Coordinate Editor work just like they do in the main window: SELECT selects the vertices, move shifts them around, rotate is, well, obvious, scale...well, scales up and down. With region, you draw a box around the part of the texture you want the mesh(faces) to fit over, then click on remap: voila! The first drop down box contains your groups(from the "Groups" Tab in the main folder), and the second drop down box lists the ways you can display your mesh. For this head, we need to skin from "Front", since our skin perspective is from the front. I'm not exactly sure what Clamp is for yet. You want to see your skin being updated on your model in real-time while your skinning? Click on re-dram, and so shall it be done
 :
You can see, the eyes are a bit twisted. Just move the vetices in the TCE around until is looks right, you'll get it eventually.
Now it's starting to look pretty good:
Now it's all skinned up:
That's all for Materials/Skins...doing great so far! ANIMATION:
Animation is the most interesting part of Milkshape. A game model without animation is totally boring. Don't skip this section, it is very important and vital to making player models. Okay, what do we need? One model and one skeleton. First, we must click on the "Model" tab, and click on "Joint". This is the base joint, or "spine" joint as is is most often called. This is basically the focal point of the model, I would put this somewhere in the middle. Okay, we have our spine joint in now, we need to add more to make a complete skeleton. Here is my version:
So you're thinking "how do I make a clean joint hierarchy?", I will explain very briefly. Joints work in a hierarchy manner. Meaning that, everything comes from the "spine" joint. So, if you want to build a "shoulder" joint, select "spine" first. A better example: say you have a player model human, he has his spine joint in and it's near his waist. Select the spine joint and and put a joint near his shoulders, this is called "spine2". Now, select "spine2" and create a joint on the left shoulder named "shoulderleft". Select the joint "shoulderleft" and create a joint named "bicep1". See where I'm going with this. That should give you a basic understanding of joint hierarchies. Now, onto assigning vertices to joints. Vertices can be assigned to bones so that they are movable in animation. To assign vertices to bones, go to the "Joints" tab and select the bone you want to be assigned. Now, while holding SHIFT, select the vertices you want to be assigned to that bane. When you're done with that, go back to the Joints tab and click "Assign". NOTE: Assign your verts to your bones in order, from top to bottom i.e assign "spine" then "spine 2" etc... or else, you'll lose all your assigned information, and trust me, when you have 20 or more individual bones to assign individually, it's not fun to have to start ALL over again. A Tip: It's easier to select vertices to assign to bones than it is faces. Here's a small Screenie to show the buttons: 
As you can see, I have created bones for the ears, nose and neck. What will move in the model then? Stop before someone comes with the idea that ears shouldn't have bones!! Creativity cannot be limited now.......alright, moving on, enough nonsense. Now that all joints have been assigned, you can now click on the "Anim" button. Now, select the joint you would like to animate in the Joints Tab, and use the Rotate and Move tools to animate. To set the Keyframe Click Menu then Animate than Set Keyframe, or simply, CTRL+K. If you are realtively new to animation, this may not make sense. When you set the key frame, it "saves" the movement that you did. Now, if you'll go a few frames foward, and move the model another way, and then set the Keyframe, then play the animation back, you'll find that it does a smooth transition for you.
So, hit the play button and look at your pretty model looping it's animation. Have Fun. |
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