Your kart looks much better like that ! The shape is cool, now let's see how it will be textured !
Funto {l Wrote}:maybe I will have to reduce it [number of polygons], not sure how hard this will be :/
This is not very fun to reduce the poly number, that's for sure
. If you change your exhausts so the number of side faces is only 8 or 6, and do the same with every cylinder shaped part of your kart you could gain 100 or 200 faces without a lot effort. But looking to your kart I think this is the character who has the higher number of faces. With a bit of luck, maybe with a subdivide modifier and a couple of vertex arrangement it would be fine ... This would definitely solve your problem I think. After having finished the emule kart, I've learned that with UV texturing and STK's lighting models don't need to be detailed a lot : angles are well hidden !
Here is a little checklist of things you have to do before exporting :
- Make sure modifiers (as mirror) are applied.
- Make sure your objects are oriented correctly : when you hit Numpad 1 on blender, you should see the back of the kart.
- The kart should be located just above Y axis, as if it was the road, and centered on the Y and X axis (this last part is not required for STK I think, but this is nicer like this
).
- The dimensions of the kart are approximately between 0.7 and 1.
- The rotation & scale of your objects must be reset.
- Textures files' size are 256x256 or 512x512.
- You'll maybe have to merge the two models to have them animated with only one armature, with 2 animated meshes I wasn't able to make it work. EDIT : tests revealed STK 0.7.1RC1 can handle two animated models, but STK 0.7 cannot.
- Your armature bones have a 0 roll.
- Your armature is parent of your mesh (beware if you also use the "Armature" modifier, transformations may be applied twice to your mesh)
- The wheels objects are named : from "WheelFront.R" to "WheelRear.L" so STK will be able to apply transformations on it : rotations when the kart turns, suspensions, etc..
- You have an icon for the minimap and the rank zone.
- You have a shadow file.
To make a nice shadow easily :
- Take a top-view screenshot of your kart, with a green background, and making sure you will be able to see the (-1, -1, 1, 1) square of the (X,Y) plane (I used the side of the screen and a dialog window to do it).
- Then, open your screenshot with the GIMP for instance, crop your image following the square limits (must be a perfect square).
- Use the magical wand, clic on the green, invert selection, feather it a little (you may grow it a bit too).
- Create a transparent layer, and fill your selection with black opacity 50%.
- Then, resize your image to 256x256, hide or delete your green layer, and save the image as a PNG file.
EDIT : English mistakes