I’m helping out with a game mod for Battle for Middle-Earth II called Special Extended Edition. (S.E.E.) This is a treb model I’m making to replace the crappy one EA made.
(The soldier is an EA model, not mine.)
The modeling is done, and this will be my first serious texturing job. After texturing I’m going to have to figure out how to UV map and rig in Gmax, as I export DXF from Blender and import that into Renx for the mesh itself.
The trebuchet minus the operator(s) is 738 triangles.
That is Fairly low polly… but the model looks sound and very good for 700 tris… i havent played any games for the last few years (sad when you think about it… i have so many…) but id say that would come out good… that person model looks serious low poly… maby 10 or 20… (i thaught ea were cool…)
Joe
Things are pretty low poly because the game is a RTS. Most detail comes from the textures.
BTW, the soldier is 272 tris.
well if done right… one massive highly detailed wood texture would be all yould need for UVing the wood parts… if the texture is large enough you could have each face at different parts and angles of the wood to remove any chance of a repeating look to it yet still keep it nice looking and really cut back on your texturing work.
the modeling looks great… few inconsistancies but for a game engine its wonderfull… good luck with the rigging and animation… especially with the ropes.
well… in that case it will probily end up amazing… i dont think ive seen your texturing before… but if its anything like your hipoly work… ittle be amazing…
Goodluck… and i always find with wood… overdoing it is easy… but make it subtle… little knots and waves…
Hey LOTRJ, i really like that game, can you post a link to the mod or so?
And is this for the expansion, (Wraith f the Lich King) as well?
The mod currently isn’t for RotWK, but it’s a possibility in the future to make adding the Evil Men faction easier (Rhun and Harad.) Here’s the site for the mod: S.E.E. Be sure you have patch 1.06 for BFME II before you install it.
One of my favorite features is that you can control all of The Nine when playing as Mordor.:evilgrin: And they have Grond.
[Edit]
Heh, that’s why I’m using edited photo textures.
well… make them good ones (look… ive turned into my gran…)
Does the DXF format include UV coordinates? It imports into Gmax beautifully, but if I have to re-do the UVs then I’ll try my hand at exporting to .3ds, and I have read not-so-great things about Blender’s .3ds import/export scripts.
That’s a fantastic treb design, I can’t wait to see the textured model
The design is that of the ones in the ROTK movie, as for a texture test, speak of the devil… Heh, lots of cylinders and cubes were easy on this texturing noobie.:o
I think the only changes I’m planning on is to make the metal a bit rustier, and to give the counterweight bucket a rim. Now to get it all to fit in 1024 square…:spin:
Note: All textures are photographic, not painted.
So your texturing is as good as your hipoly… thats quite amazing…
i think (even if it will add pollies) you should make the bucket top bumpy… or have a wooden cover… because that does look a bit dodgy…
only thing i can see though… great
Joe
wow LOTRJ! am a fan! it looks good! looks realistic, and didn’t see any tiling pattern 
Thanks. My only really big worry right now is getting this exported with UV coordinates intact. Every tutorial I have seen so far for UV mapping with Renx seems to indicate that it is limited to planar projections, which would be a MAJOR pain after already having unwrapped successfully in Blender. I tried .3ds export yesterday, but I simply get a 22 kb file that does nothing when imported into Renx. I tried exporting with both 2.45 and the latest SVN. 
As I said before, I can export the geometry to DXF and it imports fine, but it is ONLY the mesh. Please help, this is a major problem. Armature export would be a bonus, but not necessary.
@joeab: I see what you’re saying about the rocks not being bumpy, but I really don’t want to add to the poly count. Remember, there are people who build upwards of 10-15 of these and have them all on screen at once, not to mention all other on screen units = lag. And my poly count is already about 300 tris above the EA model.
Any help? I’ve got a bunch of modders drooling over this skin at the3rdage.net and I would hate to tell them I can’t get it in-game.
Here’s a test for adding some rust to the metal.
Model and texturing finished! Joeab, I asked the person who was running the mod I’m making this for, and I was able to implement your suggestion.
After this I’m handing it off to another modder for re-mapping in Renx (BIG help), and then he’s handing it back to me to rig (also in Renx.)
Note: Soldier texture is also made by EA.
I would suggest exporting to .obj format and then import it into 3DS. Obj format supports UV and Normals, just what you need. I have never used a 3DS plugin that imports .obj but both Maya and Lightwave have one, so why wouldn’t 3DS.
Here is a quick link I found with a .obj import plugin for 3ds. http://www.sharewareconnection.com/obj-import-for-3d-studio-max.htm Good luck!
Edit: Then maybe you could save your 3ds file from there.
And beutyfull it look s too…
perfect…
Joe
Great looking model for the poly count! My only crit would be that maybe the wheels look slightly too small (if they are wheels that is), but I can’t find a reference picture of one in a similar shape to yours, all the images on a trebuchet search on google are a far taller (rather than wider) version, so I may be wrong about that. Nice texturing job too, the metal areas have really brought it too life
Thanks tef, that would be helpful if I had Max. I only have Gmax and Renx. Fortunately getting the UVs exported seems to be a moot point now, since another person is re-mapping it for me in Renx.
@paulsgruff: I would have preferred to leave the wheels off, the only real reason I added them was so there was a plausible way for the model to move around.
[Edit] It has been a HUGE help to be able to mark UVs in edit mode using the latest SVN. I think I would’ve gone crazy if I kept on having to switch between UV face select and edit mode for every single piece.