Very Simple Basic Skinning for A5 Users

By the Mad Dog

I’ve made this tut to show the way I have learned to skin an object using MilkShape.

I will assume you at least know how to build a square and a cylinder.

I use Adobe Photoshop for making my skins, but you can use any program you want.

In this lesson we are just going to use a simple bmp and build a square with a cylinder and apply the skin to it.

 You can build this as we go along and then export this model into WED to see what you’ve done.

 I have found that a lot of people, including myself when first starting to use milk simply apply their texture to their model

and don’t realize that it has to also be mapped to the model if there are different areas of your model

that require the texture to be in a certain position.

 Like I said this is going to be very simple so lets get started.

 

Create a folder to keep your files in, then make a bmp that you will be using for a skin,

 for my example here is the one I used and I call it “tee.bmp”.

    128x128 bmp 24bit color

           

 

Build a model similar to this one using a square and a cylinder.

In milk this is the view of my milk screen layout.

                                                                                                       

                                                                                                               Applying the skin

 

Over on the right click on the groups tag and you will see that there are 2 groups,

 one is a box and the other is a cylinder.

 You can rename these if you are building a complicated model with a lot of parts to it,

that way you can keep better track of the skinning details,

 however for this one we will leave as is.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Click on the “box-No Material” so that it’s highlighted then below click on “Select”

 just below where it says “Group” then do the same thing for the  cylinder.

 

Now both the box and the cylinder should be red.

 

Right click in the bottom right view window, it’s the 3D view.

 From the list that shows up click on textured so that it places a check mark in front of it.

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

Next click on the “Materials” tag and in this box click

On “New”, then just below the New where it has rename

Click in the box so you curser is in the and delete out that text and type in tee then click on rename, now at the very top of this box the materials name should be tee. Now in the 1st  long bar above New click on where it says “none” (the one on left). This will open you windows explorer, browse to your folder where your bmp is and click on it.

Make sure it’s high lighted in blue and then on the last bar of this box click “Assign”

 

 

 

 

 

Now you will see something like this in the 3D view window

                    

 

Now Mapping The Skin

 

Now what we want to do is get just the cylinder highlighted in red.

 So go back to the groups tag and if you click on the select while the box is highlighted it turns white,

 in other words just like you did before when we were selecting them.

 You will see when you use this function the first time you highlight a part of your model in this tag

 it selects it and turns red and if you click again it will unselect it.

Now it should look like this:

 

Now from the main tool bar click on “Window” and in the drop down list choose “Texture Coordinate Editor”.

 

                                                                                                                  

 

 

This will bring up the window where you have to map your bmp to the model.

Now in the first drop down make sure it says Cylinder

 in the second one choose Front.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now click on Region and with your mouse draw a rectangle in the green.

Then click on Remap and you should have this.

 

Close that window and repeat the same steps you

 did for the cylinder except this time do it for the box, except this time draw the rectangle in the red.

Then close .

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you did everything right your model is finished being skinned

 and it will look like this.

 

 

                                                                                             Now to export the model as an A5 MDL

 

 

First off all models even the ones that have no animation

 still have to have a bone and the vertex’s assigned to a bone.

 

So let’s do it.

Click on the “Model” tag then click on “Joint” on the right just above Redraw All Viewports.

 

Locate your mouse some where in the model and click,

 you will see a blue circle like this.

 

 

Next click on the “Joints” tag up at the top right, it will open this window.

Make sure the joint is highlighted.

 Then click on “SelUnAssigned” all the vertex’s should turn to red.

 Then click on “Assign” and they should all turn back to white.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next click on the “Groups” tag and select the parts again so that they are both red, then click on “Regroup”,

 and now you should have just 1 item instead of box and cylinder.

 

Now you can export as A5 MDL.

You must have  the QC Script made up before exporting.

 I hope this has helped you.

Enjoy,

The Mad Dog

Created  9-21-02