Adding Illumination to a model in Starfleet Command using

3d Studio Max

a tutorial by

Alec Theorhaven

November 21,2003

Well, this has turned into a tutorial. :)

What I'm going to do here is to add illumination to a shuttle by kreeargh, The Galileo 5. This comes in TMP (ST:V) and TNG versions and is just a difference in skin. No matter, in this case, we're adding illumination to the TMP version.

We start off with a basic step, pulling the mesh into 3dsMax. To do this, you need to have the Taldren MOD plugins installed in your copy of 3dsMax. Once they're in, go to Import, go to the directory your mesh is in, then select the type, and change it to .MOD (or quick tip, once you're in the directory.. type *.MOD in the filename area and it'll show you all the .MOD files in there, and handle the import once you've selected the shuttle. (Hint, don't start with the break MOD, concentrate on the main ship.. you'll find it easier to work with in this example).

Now that we've imported the .MOD into 3dsMax, we need to get those illuminations in there. Now, where do we start? Well, you'll notice that we have materials on the shuttle, but no materials are defined in the Material Editor.. and that'll be where you'll be working for most of this. So we need to import the materials off the shuttle into Max. To do that, select Material 1 in the Material Editor, and then select the medicine dropper under the circle thusly:

As you can see from the example here, this is almost ready to go.. you just have to select the object now. And voila..

We have our materials defined. Fantastic... but what now? Well, we don't need to worry about the main textures, but those pesky illuminations need to be added in. Well, let's select one of the materials to add them in..

Now that we've selected one, we need to select where we're going to add illumination. That's done via "Self-Illumination" as above. :) So select it, and we'll get something like this:

The important thing here is to notice the Type: button near the Top right. That needs to be changed from NONE to Bitmap, and then you navigate to the directory where the illumination textures are stored, select the one you need for the main texture you are working with, and then open it. You'll then get the screen looking as above. :)

And what difference does illumination make? Well, how about this?

And now, another tip.. colour is a wonderful thing.. :D

Once it's all in, then you're pretty well done.. and you can get results that look like this.

And that about ends this tutorial... the procedure is pretty basic once you get the hang of it, and is what is typically needed to convert over a mesh from SFC 1 to either SFC 2 or 3.