Created by: Rex Hill

 

Required tools:

3D Studio Max

Photoshop

 

  1. Have a scene in 3D Studio Max with just your vehicle
  2. Apply a material to your vehicle that is pure white and has it’s self-illumination value set to the maximum (100)
  3. From the top view, select your vehicle and render it with the box selected option
  4. Uncheck “Constrain aspect ratio” and choose 128x128 or less
  5. Save your image in the .tga format
  6. Create a 1x1 segment plane that covers your vehicle as near as possible
  7. Save your scene if you need to close Max to open up Photoshop
  8. Open your top view rendered image with Photoshop
  9. Select all the contents of the image
  10. Create a new channel (Alpha 1)
  11. Select the new channel and paste
  12. Go back to your RGB channel (select it)
  13. Change the secondary color on the color chooser to a almost pure black
  14. With your image contents still selected, hit the delete key
  15. Now you can go back and edit your alpha channel if you want to change the amount of transparency (opacity) and blur as needed
  16. Save your completed image in the .tga format in 32bits (limit your file names to 8 characters maximum)
  17. Go back into Max and load up your scene file
  18. Select your 1x1 plane and apply your shadow texture to it
  19. Apply planar UVW texture mapping if necessary
  20. Flip the normals and export the .3ds mesh to replace the correct shadow in the game (the shadow objects usually have sh at the end)
  21. Planesh.3ds is for the fighter, plane2sh.3ds is for the bomber
  22. When you import the shadow object into the mapmaker, make sure to use a null .3ds texture for the collision model (I haven’t tested with one so the affect is unknown)

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