Mounting a cavalry unit

How to mount a cavalry unit

in 3ds Max

Before going any further, I recommend that you complete the first tutorial, "Lesson 1. Making an Infantry unit card", to familiarise yourself with the various actions and procedures in 3ds Max.

Here's a list of what you will need.

1) The CAS importer/exporter plug-in from Vercingetorix. ( found in tutorial pack 1)

2) A model for both mount and rider. (.CAS files)

3) A texture file for both models. (.dds files)

4) A .MAX file template, found in the Barbarian Invasion expansion. ( found in Rome - Total War\bi\data\ui\unit_info\huns )

5) An animation file that puts the unit in the correct pose. ( also a .cas file )

To save time, you can get all the above, including a custom template from the following links.

tutorial pack 1	This pack contains the .cas import/export plug-in for 3ds Max and everything needed for Lesson 1
tutorial_pack_2	This pack contains everything else needed for this lesson

For this tutorial I used a model out of the Extended Realism Mod v3.3.4 for which I re-designed, amongst others, the Tarantine light cavalry info card.

The Extended Realism Mod v3.3.4 can be found on the TWC forums here

First, start up 3ds Max and activate the cas importer/exporter. Then switch the Perspective view to fill the screen and click on the "Left face" of the cube in the top right of the scene. You should end up with this view.

Next, import the cavalry unit, zoom in on him and import an appropriate animation for the type of unit you imported.

We also need to increase the scale of the unit by 20%. This is because the RTW engine boosts the size of the human units by 20%. So all human units in the game start off 20% smaller than the horses.

To do this, type 120 into the x, y and z fields in the Select and Uniform Scale tool.

If you used the unit and animation from tutorial_pack_2 you should see something like this.

Zoom back out and adjust the scene to look like this.

Now do the following..

1. Select the unit and move him straight up to the top of the scene.

2. Import the horse cas. It should appear directly below the unit

3. Import an animation for the horse

The scene should look like this

Next, open the Material Editor and load the texture for the horse into the first slot and the texture for the cavalry unit into the second slot.

Set the alpha channel for each one as described in the tutorial for making info and battle cards under the section Setting the Alpha channel.

Select the horse, select the texture for the horse in the first slot and click on the Assign Material to Selection button.

Do the same for the cavalry unit using the texture from the second slot













The scene should now look like this

Select the cavalry unit and lower him down onto the horse. Circle around the scene and make sure that he is positioned correctly before saving the finished scene which should look something like this.

All you do now is to load the cavalry card template.max file, go to the File menu, select Merge and load back in the scene you just saved.

If you have an older version of 3ds Max, you will have to load the alternative template file, heavy_cavalry.max, which seems to be compatible with older versions. Be aware though that you will have to delete the unit already in the scene and just ignore any messages about missing files.

When you see this...

Click on All and then on OK

Then you get this

Look familiar ?

Before resizing, Group the new "blob" that has just appeared. You can give the group any name.

Now go to my other tutorial, "Lesson 1. Making an Infantry unit card" and proceed to the section on Scaling followed by Positioning and Orientation