Creating Complex AImeshes

by Joker, edited by Dnamro

Level: Advanced -Experience with 3dsmax is needed to
follow this tutorial.

Tools: 3dsmax 9 is used in this tutorial.

This tutorial will explain some techniques to create AImeshes for complex objects. In this we will explore the process of making an AImesh as one complete objects that meets all the AImesh rules of being one closed mesh.

Note that an AImesh can be made up of separate parts as long as they are all closed and do not intersect each other, but that is for another tutorial.

In this example,
For example, Operation\_road\_rage level. Even
at first sight it is cleary visible that this map is "hand-made" in
non-DICE style. One of the worst things - is some objects have not closed thier
collision meshes. So, while generating navmesh you cleary see it in log. It
looks something like "Object ..... has broken data.", "Object is
self-intersecting!", "Object is not a closed mesh!"
It makes certain problems. For example,
"xp2\_interchange\_02" object on generated navmesh looks like a huge
cube. It's not neccessary to wait end of generating navmesh. We need only
log-file with these objects.
We'll extract them. We need (this example)
xp2\_interchange\_02.con xp2\_interchange\_02.tweak from booster\_server and
xp2\_interchange\_02.staticmesh from booster\_client. We don't need .collision
mesh cause it made by curved-hands.
We import it in 3ds. It looks like this.

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Next, we draw a shape closed line with the
same number of vertices of main object edge.

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Convert it to editable mesh.

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Attach it to main object

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and move vertices. I just copy the x,y and z
coords of main object vertex and past them in the same vertex of new poly.

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Next, select 2 vertices and choose
Weld-Selected

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So, we close one of the edges

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When it will be fully closed, next step is add
other small things to main object.
Cause the interchange\_02 is complex object, we
need to make 2 different collision mesh for infantry and vehicle. For example,
there's a couple of stones. It's not a problem for vehicle, but infantry will
get stuck in some places.

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For vehicle collision mesh we could select and
delete or detach them.

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Next, we need to merge main object and support
poles. It can be done with ProBoolean.
Example, we have a cube and cylinder.

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With cube selected we choose
Create-Compound-ProBoolean, set Operation parameter to "Union", press
"Start picking" and select the cylinder.

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The same thing we'll apply to our interchange
object.

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After all, when we have fully closed
collision mesh, it's time to check it out for errors. So, we 're select object
and in modifier stack select "STL Check".

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If everything allright, we can export it into
bf2. If not, the problem polys will be red highlighted.

AIedit\_image040.jpg

I
forget one thing about polygons. After importing in 3ds, object consists of
separated triangles. I have not any idea why. So, i just have select them all
and weld.
When all bad objects are fixed, we need to put
them back (our fixed object\_name.collisionmesh) into booster\_server.