Vigilsoft

Why yes, I am going to teach you how to make a room for IMVU using Unrealed. For this tutorial I’m going to be using good old classic Unreal G.O.T.Y. Also we are going to need some software that can convert unreal’s t3d brushes to obj file format. Which you can find on this site.

http://darendash.home.comcast.net/~darendash/Converter.html

Primarily we need the UnrealtoOBJ

http://darendash.home.comcast.net/~darendash/UnrealToObj.exe

also you may need the OCX files included here

http://darendash.home.comcast.net/~darendash/UnrealToObj.zip

Or you can download it directly from me here:

http://www.vigilsoft.net/UnrealToObj.rar

Alright now that we got the necessary files we need, we can go ahead and open unrealed.

Now I won’t be making a big expensive room for this tutorial, something rather simple should be enough to get you started. I would highly recommend you use your own textures for this and not the textures built into unreal for copyright reasons. Also it makes the conversion process much easier if your textures are already on the map in unrealed when exporting.

So first thing is first i’m going to load in a few of my own textures i made for a ship room i was working. You can use them too if you wish.

http://www.vigilsoft.net/shiptex.zip

Once you have unrealed open go to the texture browser.

After the Texture Browser Window pops up, you’ll want to hit File >> Import. Your Imported Textures need to be in PCX format. So I’m going to go ahead and import a few textures of mine (you can import multiple at the same time by highlighting all the textures you want to import in the Open file dialog). When you hit OK a little dialog window comes up requesting information.

For Package just put whatever you want your texture pack to be named, For Group you can give this any name you want, basically it will organize all the textures by group which makes it easier to sort. Since i’m only importing a few textures i’m going to just group it under all. The Name area will be the name of the first texture you selected you can change it if you want to, the dialog box here will popup for every texture you imported. you can however just simply hit OK All and your done.

Alright now i have my textures loaded into Unrealed i’m gonna go ahead and save this as a utx file so i can easily use it later on. Just go File Save, it should have automatically filed out the filename for you and located you in the textures folder. So just go ahead and hit save and we will proceed to the next step.

Making the Geometry

You know i just love CSG (Constructive Solid Geometry) and BSP (Binary Space Partitioning). Basically the idea behind it is if your unfamiliar with it. Is to take one solid primitive shape and either use that to carve or add a shape out of another primitive shape making more complex geometry. Well, enough of me talking about it, let’s just get to it.

So first thing is first I’m going to create a square room to start it. So let’s go ahead and hit the Cube brush icon.

When you click cube you should see it added a cube shaped brush into the field. This is great and all but we want to specify what dimensions the cube has. So go ahead and right click on the cube icon which should bring up an info box like so.

go ahead and change the dimensions to whatever you want really since we are going to have to rescale the map anyways before it gets into imvu it really doesnt matter what size so long as you keep it concise.

I’m going to make it a rather wide and long room. i’ll just enter 700 for width and breadth and hit ok. You’ll notice your brush changes size. now we need to actually build some geometry. Since the default space in unrealed consists of pure mass we need to carve out empty space into the mass to create our room. To do this we are going to hit the subtract button.

which in turn carves out our room like so,

Yay we made a room in unrealed haha. But perhaps we want a hall that goes to another room. so right click our cube brush button again this time make the brush’s width about the same as its height and make its breadth really long.

If you notice in our other views the room we created is shown as a maize or dark yellow colored brush and our hall brush is shown as a red brush. Now we want to move our brush out to and edge of a wall and subtract again. To move the brush in any one of the views hold down control + the left mouse button and move the mouse.

I moved it to the edge of the room like this.

and then i hit subtract to carve the hall out of space and our bigger room.

Now we have a hallway. Now we just need to make another Room at the end of the hall. so go ahead and change the dimensions of your cube brush to that of a decent room then move it to the end of your hall.

And then subtract it.

This will work for our basic room, if you need to learn how to make much more complex rooms than this you could search for unrealed tutorials.

This here is a good place to start learning how to use unrealed.

http://unreal.gamedesign.net/tutorials/ued.shtml

Ok our next step is to texture the floors and celing and perhaps make a few walls different. So go ahead and click the texture browser icon and select one of the textures you imported. I’m going to select one of the floor textures i made.

Now we are going to use our 3D view and click on the floor using the left mouse button, which should have highlighted it like so.

Then we want to right click on the selected floor and hit apply texture.

Which should change the texture. go ahead and re-texture the whole room until your satisfied. If you really want to get a feel for how it looks with lighting applied to it go ahead and right click in various areas and click add light. Then you can hit either build all or build lights to get a nice dynamically lit room.

Here is my room after re-texturing and adding lights.

The next step now is to export our geometry out of unrealed and into 3dsmax for further editing. So the next step now is we need to highlight all of our brushes in the scene. What we have to do is to create a gigantic cube that covers the entirety of the map. something like 2500×2500x2500 was big enough for me.

Now we want to click the intersect button on the left under Add.

this should have caused the brush to take the shape of the entire map. Now the last thing we need to do is tell the brush that this BSP needs to be converted to actual geometry (CSG) since BSP is mostly just a fancy rendering trick to emulate CSG without the time consuming geometry cutting involved. So now we need to right click our red brush in preferably one of the 2d viewports. We want to tell it to transform permanently This will force it to become geometry and not just a collection of boolean brushes.

Then we have to go to Brush >> Export, now go ahead and export your brush make a new folder if you can and stick your exported brush in there, because we will also have to export the utx file used in this map in that same folder with the brush.

Once you have your brush exported open the texture browser and make sure you are on your texture pack. then you want to go to File >> Export change the file type to all files and save it as a bmp instead of PCX. This can actually take a while to export all these one at a time. fortunately there is an easy way to batch export all the textures in a utx file using UCC.exe

To do this open command prompt and change the directory to your unreal tournament system folder. then in command prompt enter

ucc batchexport myutxfilename.utx TEXTURE BMP C:\path\to\my\unreal\brush

change the utx to your texturepack utx file and then change the directory on the end to where your exported brush is located.

This should export all your textures to the folder your brush file is located. Now we need to open the UnrealtoObj converter.

go ahead and select your t3d brush file. Then just hit Go if all your textures were present you should not have gotten any error messages.

Now a great way to size the room up and align it for imvu is to download and use IMVU’s example room mesh

http://avatars.imvu.com/Developers/example3droom.zip

Now let’s open the example room in 3ds max

Right now that we have the example room loaded let’s go ahead and delete that silly backdrop out of the scen and import our unrealed map. So go to File >> Import and select your OBJ file and hit ok.

Ok you should see just a big box, this was the cube we surrounded the entire map with. We don’t need this cube anymore so go ahead and go to edit mesh modifier  select element mode and on the map and highlight and delete each side of the cube.

Now you may have noticed the room is sitting at a 90 degree angle. so we need to go ahead and rotate it so the ceiling is facing up and scale it so the example avatars fit neatly into the room

I’d recommend then angle snap tool for rotating as it will help you rotate it exactly 90 degree counter clockwise.

Now we just need to Scale up and position the map.

there we go that looks pretty good. Now we just need to add the textures back on to it. Go ahead and click from the menu Rendering >> Material editor.

Once you have the Material editor open we will want to select an empty material and then click the eyedropper tool to grab the material on the map we imported.

Once you click the pick material eyedropper icon go ahead and click on our map, which should if we are lucky created a multisub object AND loaded all of our textures in all in one shot.

Pretty slick huh? this is why i said it would be easier to use your own textures in unrealed opposed to re-texturing it in 3ds max. Now all we have to do is rename the materials to follow imvus naming convention and make the materials visible.

Well that was easy, and btw to make them visible in the viewport just click the Show map in viewport icon

Ok so if you wanna just cut to the chase and see it in IMVU go ahead and rig this map to the root node provided in the example room.

Now just export the XSF skeleton file and the XMF mesh file along with your materials and your all set!

And there you have it!

Just so you know the converter isn’t perfect so you may find a few polygons here and there with the wrong Mat id so you may want to keep an eye out for that.

Happy Meshing!

In this tutorial i will be showing you how to make a simple static pose for IMVU. first off you will need the idle pose master file IMVU offers, which you can get here http://www.imvu.com/creators/education_center.php?tutorial_id=2225012 or alternatively you can directly download the files.

• RiggedAvatarMASTER.zipFemaleAction.ZIP
  MaleAction.ZIP

  CooperativeAnimation.ZIP

  Biped Animation Rig
  Biped example 01
  Biped example 02
  Biped example 03
  Biped example 04
  Biped example 05

For this tutorial we will be using the MaleAction.Zip go ahead download that and extract its contents somewhere. Go ahead and open the Male03_Anime01_IdleStandingPoseMASTER.max file that came with the archive.

Once you have your avatar loaded you’ll notice instead of being in a semi T-bone pose he is now standing normal with his arms at his sides.

Fist before we do anything we want to freeze the mesh. This is handy for animating as it will allow you to click bones freely without accidentally selecting the mesh. to do this click on the Display Tab on the menu to the right. Scroll down the rollout menu until you find the freeze section.

Now with your select tool up top click a body part and then click freeze. What this does is locks out that mesh from being selectable. Go ahead and do this for each mesh body part. Once your mesh is completely frozen let’s select all the bones on the avatar by dragging a rectangular marquee selection over all the bones.

You’ll notice there are several keyframes below.

Now what we want to do is make sure the keyframe slider bar is on 0 which it should already be at. then we want to drag another selection marquee around all the keyframes below by clicking and holding down the left mouse button inside the timeline and dragging the mouse to select all the keyframes. Once you have them highlighted press delete to remove them.

Once the keyframes are gone now its time to make a pose. For this tutorial i will be creating a static pose from the ginyu force.

For starters i’ll pick recooms pose.  What we want to do is put the keyframe Auto Key active. To do this just click the Auto key button located to the far right of the timeline.

Once that is activated use primarily your Select and Rotate tool  and start rotating the bones to get them in the position you want.

Once your finally satisfied with the pose we need to export it.

Go ahead ans select File >> Export and then in the file dialog select Cal3d Skeletal animation file. Xaf

Make sure to type the extension Xaf!

On the nest screen it will ask you for the skeleton file. You need to select Female04_Anime01_SkeletonMASTER.xsf skeleton file if it isn’t already in there. It typically comes with the male or female rigged avatars. Once you have the correct skeleton go ahead and hit next.

The next window should show a list of all the bones in the scene. make sure all of them are checked and hit next again.

Now on the next screen it will ask you for some info on our animation. Since poses only have one frame enter 0 on the start frame and 1 on the end frame. make sure Displacement is at 0 and click Finish.

Now its time to load the previewer. So we need to scour the catalog for some animation we can derive from.

I’m going to go ahead and use this product as its fairly inexpensive and its derivable.

http://www.imvu.com/shop/product.php?products_id=1060093

Once we have the previewer open and a derived product ready we need to go to the actions tab.

And we want to add a new action. So click Add. In the Tigger section type a word they will say to activate the pose.

Then set the Type to Avatar, Set the # esembles played to 0 this will cause it to play infinitely And then After Player change to pick same ensemble.

Now down below in the Ensembles we need to set Stop After [Longer effect ends] then add your animation .xaf file in the Skeletal animation spot. After that make sure to change the Composition to Replace, otherwise other animations will still play if its set to average or left blank.

Once all the info is entered hit Apply Changes, now you can test your pose by clicking either the Play Action Button or typing the trigger word in the chat. Depending on your version of the previewer typing the command may or may not work. Just make sure it works at least with the play action button.

Save, Submit and your all done!

This is a pretty simple process, but for some of you who don’t know how to create one there is a couple ways you can do it. The first is to simply open up notepad and copy this XML below and save it as an XRF file.

<HEADER MAGIC=”XRF” VERSION=”919″ />
<MATERIAL NUMMAPS=”2″>
<AMBIENT>149 149 149 0</AMBIENT>
<DIFFUSE>149 149 149 255</DIFFUSE>
<SPECULAR>229 229 229 0</SPECULAR>
<SHININESS>0</SHININESS>
<MAP TYPE=”Diffuse Color”>mycolortexture1.jpg</MAP>
<MAP TYPE=”Opacity”>myopacitytexture1_opac.jpg</MAP>
</MATERIAL>

you can simply just replace the texture filenames with the one’s you will use and you have an Xrf file with opacity. The otherway to do it is to export it from 3ds max.

Go ahead and open up 3dsmax.

Once you have 3dsmax open go to the menu and click Rendering >> Material Editor

Once you have the Material Editor Open select a blank material. Give it some name you’ll remember.

Now Once you have given it a name scroll way down until you see a section named Maps and Expand it.

After you expand it we want to Click on The button next to Diffuse color that reads “none”

Then we are going to select bitmap from the list of materials, and then locate our texture file and load it

RED HAIR TEXTURE I CHOOSE YOU!

Ok after the texture is loaded we are done here. we can select the Material Stack Drop down menu to go back to the top layer.

Ok, this time we want to select the button next to Opacity instead of Diffuse in the Maps section.

We are going to do the same thing again, Select Bitmap from the Material list.. but this time select your opacity texture.

This is my opacity map for the hair. Now that you have your texture loaded we can go ahead and export our Material file. So go to File >> Export. Select Cal3d material XRF file as the filetype. Give it a name and make sure to type the Xrf extension e.g. ZOMGMATERIAL.XRF

Then hit Save.

The next Window that pops up will present you witha  list of Materials to export. If you just opened 3dsmax this list may be relatively small but if you have a lot of multitextured models or materials it may be bigger. Anyways we want to locate our material.

hit next then Finish and your done!

YAY

In this tutorial we will be making a jacket for the IMVU male avatar. Making clothing can sometimes be tedious since it has to conform to the model’s body shape. However i will show an neat technique to quickly make clothes for the Avatar.

First we need to load 3ds max and the Male avatar
Male03_Anime01_WeightingPoseMASTER.max

Now that we have our Avatar loaded up what we want to do is clone his chest. So let’s go ahead and click our select object tool

Now go ahead and select the avatar’s chest and click Edit >> Clone

It should bring up the clone object window. We want to make sure its set to copy and give it a new name so we can easily find it from the select-from-list tool.

Go ahead and hit Ok. Now we want to click the modifier tab then right click on the physique modifier and click delete.

Ok now that we have removed the bone weights we can start modifying the mesh. Go ahead and Expand Editable Poly then click vertex to activate it.

Alright first and foremost the ends of the arms are going to be our sleeve cuffs, but the model doesnt look exactly rounded on those ends. So what we want to do is to move the vertices using the positioning tool in a way so the ends line up like the cuff of a sleeve.

We want to do this with both sides. Go ahead and spend some time making the ends of the sleeve line up the way you want to. this is pretty much what i ended with.

Now that we have our sleeves the way we want them, i want to now make this jacket open in the front. So go ahead and pan the front view over to the chest. If you notice from the modify tab there is no Face selection since we are using Edit poly. We want to be using edit mesh. So Fisrt go ahead and click on edit poly so it takes us out of any editing mode it may be in, then from the modifier drop down menu select edit mesh.

Now lets expand edit mesh and click on Face also scroll down your rollout menu until you see ignore backfaces and check it, we don’t want to accidentally select polygons on the otherside of the model.

Now in the front view i want to select faces along the center downward where the opening will be in my jacket.

It helps alot to also check it in the perspective view to make sure they are all selected, it doesnt have to be perfect at the moment since the polygons are irregular going doward we can adjust ther vertices to straighten it out later. Now lets just go ahead and delete those faces by pressing Delete.

Now that we have a nice cut in the front of our jacket we really don’t want the jacket to be skin tight. We could just simply scale it, but the problem is you’ll find the model doesn’t line up correctly. No what we want to use is the push modifier, this will push out all the vertices along their normals making it bigger and allowing it to fit correctly. So go ahead and click Edit Mesh to turn off the editing mode. Then from the modifier drop down menu let’s select push.

If you notice the only option in the rollout menu is push value. Go ahead and click the up arrow and hold the mouse button down while dragging the mouse up. You’ll notice your jacket is getting thicker and actually looks more like a jacket.

Go ahead and go crazy with it lol, or at least get it how you want it to look. here is how mine looks.

Cool, once your satisfied let’s add another edit mesh modifer to the stack and align those vertices in the center. I just use the postioning tool and move it along its X axis until i have it looking decently straight. You don’t need to make it look perfectly straight in fact it should have some slight variance since its semi-loose clothing.

Ok next couple things we want to add are cuffs and a collar. Alright so first we need to line up the vertices to make a decent cuff. So Pan over to one of the Sleeves and move the vertices 2nd from the front to make the front of the sleeve like so.

Try to get the front and the back sides of the models to look the same as well as the left and right sides. After you have that lined up we need to select the faces around the cuff.

Then we want to extrude it out just a pinch. You may need to switch the extrude mode from group to local for it to extrude outward along the faces normals.

Go ahead and do the same for the other cuff. So it should look reasonably the same as this:

Great all we have left to do is the collar. Now while your still in Face editing mode go ahead and select all the faces around the neck.

Now we want to Bevel these faces out as well. Make sure extrude/bevel is set to local and extrude it out only slightly, then bevel it inward.

Next let’s select Edge from the Edit mesh list. We want to select the top-middle edges around the collar like this.

You may have to use the perspective viewport to catch all the edges. It can be a bit tedious, having ignore backfaces box checked can make the job a little easier. Once you have the edges selected we will want to extrude them. Make sure this time the extrude mode is set to group. Now extrude it, it should go upward along the Y axis like this.

I’m hoping they went up along the Y axis for you as well. now the next thing we want to do is in the top view using the scale tool ,  scale the edges out along the X & Y axises. Which should have made the collar look like this.

Now using the positioning tool we want to move those edges downward along the Y axis, which should in turn create a nice collar. You may need to go into Vertex mode to adjust some of the vertices so the collar rests upon the shoulders nicely.

Sometimes going into face mode and selecting the collar’s faces can help you see if a face or vertex is going into or through another face. Especially when everything is the same color. Anyways once you have your collar the way you want it we do need to go to face mode and select the collar’s faces like the above pic. Then we want to scroll down the rollout menu to the material section and assign the (Set ID) to 2.

Now with Face still and Face editing mode still on we want to add UV Mapping from the modifiers list. This will allow us to map the collar and nothing else.

Hopefully the Orange Gizmo Plane lays flat over your collar like this. If not you may need to Expand UV Mapping and Select Gizmo, use the rotation tool and rotate it until it lays flat over your collar. Once you have it set that way or if it already was then we need to add unwrap UVW modifier. Scroll down to the rollout menu and click Edit..

It should have opened a window with a flat view of your collar. these are the faces coordinates on your texture image. For now this is fine we don’t need to modify this.

Now i think its time to go ahead and collapse our Modifier stack down. Right click on Unwrap UVW then hit collapse All, then again hit Yes tot he warning window that pops up. Depending on your machine you may see 3dsmax Wig out for a sec when collapsing, this is normal on the IMVU model. there are many hidden modifiers applied to the model and thats why it seems like it flips out when collapsing. just wait it out it will finish up after a few seconds.

Alright once 3dsmax is done wigging out lol, we want to expand Edit Mesh and click Face. Scroll down the rollout menu to the Materials Section. We want to enter 8 in the Select by id then click the button. Since we used the avatar’s chest which already had the material 8 assigned to it we can select all the faces except the collar just by selecting by material ID. This is also a handy way to select certain faces when working with models.

Now what we want to do is have only the chest area selected and not the arm. So click your select object tool, go into preferably the front view Hold down Alt and select one of the arms. You should have noticed it deselected it. What we want to do is deselect the arms so only this portion of the model is selected.

Alright let’s go ahead and scrolldown our rollout menu to the materials section and enter 1 in (Set ID) then press enter.

Now while your faces are still selected and your still in Face editing mode lets add the UVW Map modifier to the stack.

This time we want to use cylindrical mapping.

Ok what this will do is unroll the mesh like unrolling a carpet onto a flat plane. But we need to specify where it splits the mesh there is a green line that goes down vertically with the cylinders sides. this is the seam or slice it will make when it starts to unroll the cylinder. Since our jacket already has an open spot in the front we can use that as our seam.

So go ahead and expand the UVW Mapping modifier and select gizmo. Click the Rotation tool look for the green line going vertically down the cylinder and rotate it to the front. If it halps you can use snap angle so it will rotate on snap points which help in keeping things lined up.

If you right click on Angle Snap you can set its properties. It currently defaults to snap at every 45 degrees which is adequate for what we are doing but if you want more refinement when rotating use 10 or 5 degrees. This helps keep the rotation from getting into float numbers like 43.4753475 degrees opposed to just simply 45 degrees.

So lets find that green line and rotate it to the front.

Another thing we need to do is scale the gizmos so it encompasses the mesh properly. Go into the top view and scale it so it fits right.

Once we have it fit correctly and the greenline is in the front, let’s go ahead and Add the Unwrap UVW modifier. Scroll down and click Edit.

If all’s well it should look something like this, both ends of the jacket opening should be on the left and right while the rest flows into the otherside. This is a great way to create seamless jackets.

Alright everything looks ok, if you want to modify it a bit like pulling out the collar vertices a pinch so you can get more detail in there than go for it. After your satisfied Let’s right click Unwrap UVW modifier and click collapse all again.

It may still wig out on you. After its Done expand Edit Mesh and click Face again, Scroll the Rollout Menu down to Material again and enter 8 in Select ID then press the button, you should notice that it only selects the sleeves now.

Since the Sleeves are both at odd angles we can’t cylindrical map them at the same time or it would look odd. So we will need to Deselect one of them by holding Alt and Selecting one of the sleeves in the viewport.

Go ahead and scroll down the rollout menu to the material section and enter 3 as the (Set ID). Now let’s go ahead and add UVW Map Modifier again to this. Select Cylindrical mapping. Now we need to Expand UVW Mapping and select gizmo. Wedont want to rotate it into position just yet, first we need to line up the green line so it sits under the sleeve. this would be the least visible spot for a seam to be at, with a good enough texturing job you may never see it, especially if you use the offset filter in photoshop. So lets go ahead and rotate the cylinder gizmo so its flowing along the X axis and the green line is facing down.

Next we want to scale it along its X axis in the front view so its long or even longer than the sleeve, we also need to scale it down on its Y ixis because it seem to be a bit wide on one side.

Now we can turn off Angle snap to help line up the gizmo in the different viewports. You may even need to use the positioning tool to line it up correctly. This is how i have it set.

Go ahead and add the Unwrap UVW modifier and click Edit, you should see something similar below.

Now we are going to be putting both sleeves on the same texture so highlight all the vertices and scale them so they all fit on the top half of the box like so.

Now Right Click on Unwrap UVW and click Collapse all again. We are going to yet again go back to Edit Mesh - Face Scroll down to the material section and enter 8 in Select ID then click the button. You should have noticed the other sleeve is now highlighted. Now go ahead and enter 3 in (Set ID) and hit enter. With it still selected Add the UVW Map modifier once again. And basically Follow the same previous steps as the other sleeve on this arm.

Once you get it UV mapped nicely on the other sleeve. Now its time to again add Unwrap UVW and click edit. This time we want to scale and put the UV coordinates on the bottom half this time.

Well thats that hit collapse all. Now its time to use Texporter to grab our Texture maps.

So go to the tools section and click more.. Texporter.

Use these settings listed

Make sure Only ID is set to 1, click Pick object and then select your jacket. It should generate a texture like the one below, click the disk icon and save it somewhere.

Go ahead and change (Only ID) to 2 and do the same Pick object then select the jacket, it should have spit out our texture map for the collar. Save it and repeat the process again for ID 3 this will be our sleeves and then save it again.

Now that we got all of our texture maps its time to add our material. so go to the menu above and click Rendering >> Material Editor.

Now we need to set The Material to Multi\Sub-object which is what Cal3d exports to. Do do this select a blank material Click the Standard button to the left and hit Multi\Sub Object

IMVU has a particular Naming convention it uses for its materials. If you read my last tutorial on how to make a sword

I explain the naming system. Once we have multi/sub-object material set up we need to add our chest in material slot 1. Click on the first slot material. Rename it to Chest [0], then click on the Diffuse color button and select Bitmap. Find your Chest Material and load it in. Make sure to click Visible in Viewport Button

Do the same for the Collar and Sleeves. Just make sure to add 1 to each material Id so it reads e.g.

• Chest [0]
• Collar [1]
• Sleeves [2]

Once you have all your materials in go ahead and apply it to the jacket, make sure the jacket is selected and then click the Assign Material to selection button.

Now we have our jacket all textured and ready to go, we need to weight it to the Avatar skeleton. This time around we are going to use the physique modifier.

Now go to the modify Tab and add the physique modifer to the Jacket model. Down below in the rollout menu you will want to click Initialize.

Since our jacket is only weighted to the top half of the avatar our base node should be the Pelvis node and up.

You will want to either locate PelvisNode from the Select from list tool or click on the node near the avatar’s groin to begin initializing the physique modifier. Once you select it a window will pop up like this. Just click initialize.

Physique can be a tricky devil to get the weights to not only weigh to the bone, but also deform correctly when the bone’s move. So let’s check to see how many vertices are not attached. Expand Physique and then click Vertex. You want to click the red and green plus icons to deactivate them leaving only the blue plus active. Now drag a selection square over the entire model. if you see any blue vertices that means those vertices are not weighted to the model.

So there are two ways to do this, the first way is to edit the envelopes which is preferable, binding the vertices using envelopes you will have more smoother deformations of the mesh when the bones move. The other way is to while in vertex mode just simply weight the blue vertices to a bone. Which will cause less smooth deformations, so lets try fixing this with envelopes. so click on Envelope and select the scale tool. the click on a bone where you saw the blue vertices. more than likely the arm. Lets go ahead and scale that envelope up. you’ll notice as you scale it up vertices will highlight red, this means they are fully weighted to the bone. You can switch back and forth between Vertex and Envelope to check how many vertices still need to be weighted.

You may run into problems with one of the attachment bones to remove the problem just click the bone line going to it and shrinks its envelope to non existence.

Once you have it so that silly bone is gone, you may even need to use the positioning tool and move the envelope waaaay off screen somewhere out of the way so it doesnt influence your model . If all the blue vertices are gone try moving a few bones around to make sure it deforms properly. Make sure to undo any bone movements you do or it won’t export right. Getting Physique to look right is tricky. even though you think you may have everything weighted it can show up goofy in the previewer. If you have to keep adjust envelopes until you finally get it weighted properly.

If everything looks good its export time. Usually the IMVu model comes with a pre exported skeletal file. So all we need to do is Export the Mesh and the Materials. So with your jacket selected go to File >> Export and then select the Cal3d Mesh MXF filetype, Save the File as whatever you want just make sure you manually type in the xmf extension. Hit save, it should ask you for the Skeletal file. Make sure its Female04_Anime01_SkeletonMASTER.xsf then keep hitting Next and then finally Finish.

Now all we have left is to export our materials, which is super easy. Just go to File >> Export, Select Cal3d Material File Xrf. Let’s Export the Chest portion first, So Name it Chest.xrf (make sure you type the extension)

Then on the next window locate your material for the chest.

Hit next and then Finish, do the same for the Collar and Sleeves and your done!

Since this is a clothing item your going to need to supply a body part for instance the chest along with your model. Since attaching the Jacket to the chest and then re-physique-ing the model would have been a chore and a half i decided to skip that part and show you an alternative way to combine the two models in notepad without having to go through the trouble of re-weighting the chest. So go ahead and click to select the avatar’s chest. Then export it as an xmf file. like avichest.xmf

Go ahead and hit Next again and again and then hit finish. Now browse to the avatar chest file and jacket file right click on the Avatar chest file and and then select open with.. choose notepad.

Since we are combining the two XMF files we need to change the Number of submesh from 1 to 1 + # submeshes in the other file. If we open up our jacket file in notepad you should note the number of submeshes is 3

So we need to change the NUMSUBMESHES from 1 to 4 in the avichest file.

Then we now need to copy the submeshes from our jacket file into the Avatar chest file. So we need to Highlight and Select the First submesh in the jacket file and Scroll to the very bottom and hold shift and click right after the last submesh.

Now hit Edit >> Copy, We want to paste it into the Avichest file right after the last submesh.

Now after it’s pasted in Save and your ready to import it into IMVU. Remember this is clothing so derive from a shirt or something NOT an accessory.

If you ever run into a problem where a material didnt load. check the XMF file for these Header lines

<SUBMESH NUMVERTICES=”238″ NUMFACES=”401″ NUMLODSTEPS=”0″ NUMSPRINGS=”0″ NUMMORPHS=”0″ NUMTEXCOORDS=”1″ MATERIAL=”0″>

if the MATERIAL = -1 then that means there was a problem when it exported. you can easily remedy this by changing the -1 to the material number that body part is supposed to have. For example if it was the IMVU chest change the MATERIAL to 8 save then reload it.

And here it is in the Previewer

Just remember the hardest part is probably going to be getting physique to work right. If your still having troubles try looking online for some good tutorials on how to work with physique.

Alright, for this tutorial we will be creating a sword product for imvu. First and foremost we need to load 3dsmax. Once you have 3dsmax loaded please open either the
Female04_Anime01_WeightingPoseMASTER.max or Male03_Anime01_WeightingPoseMASTER.max depending on which gender you are making the sword for.

Once you have the correct file open you should see the avatar int he multiple viewports on the screen. For now we don’t really need the reference model as it will only get in the way of modeling our sword. So go ahead and go to the menu up top and click Edit >> Select All

Which should highlight everything in the scene. Now if by some chance you opened the file and got stuck in fullscreen viewport mode you can toggle between fullscreen and multiple views by clicking the Maximize viewport toggle button located at the very bottom right hand side of the 3dsmax window.

Ok with our model still selected we want to head over to the Display Tab located on the right side of the window

From here we can hide the model and all its parts, which we will use later just not at this time.  So go ahead and scroll down the Rollout menu until you find the Hide section. Go ahead and click Hide Selected.

Alright, now we are ready to start modeling a sword! Ok so first thing we want to do is go back to the Create Tab.

Swords are actually quite easy to make, I found several easy tricks to making very cool looking swords. but for this tutorial we will make a typical bastard sword. So you should be in the Create Tab with the Geometry button highlighted.

Now you want to Select box from the list of primitives.

Now what we are doing is drawing the blade of the sword. So find the top view, if you don’t have a Top view you can make one of the views a top view by right clicking on  the viewport’s name and then selecting Views >> Top

Make sure the Box Primitive is selected, then begin drawing a long rectangle. the longer end going vertically and the shorter ends going horizontally. This will be the basic shape of your blade..for now. once you release the mouse it will have you continue to draw its depth, you can see this in other viewports as you move the mouse we want to create a standard depth to our sword so click the left mouse button when your satisfied.

If for some reason you can’t see the box in the other views while drawing it you can click the Zoom Extents All button which should fit the drawing area in all the viewports to the same Zoom and Position.

Once you have your sword at the right height,width, and depth we need to start editing to vertices to mold its shape.  So now we want to click the modify Tab.

Make sure that your box is highlighted by clicking on it, you should see this after you click the Modify Tab.

Now what we want to do is Add the Edit Mesh Modifier to it, to do so click the Drop down box that reads “Modifier List”, Locate Edit Mesh and click it. you should see this.

Now we want to expand the + next to Edit Mesh by clicking on it, You should see a list containing:

• Vertex
• Edge
• Face
• Polygon
• Element

We want to click on Vertex which it should highlight Yellow or Some Highlighted Color depending on the Skin you are using on 3dsmax. Mine shows up Blue, but the default is yellow if you not using any skins.

You should notice that Your Box mesh in the viewports to the left have their Vertices highlighted with Blue dots. What we want to do is alter the Blade so that toward where the hilt will go its wider than it is toward the point of the blade. To do this Click the Scale Tool on your menu bar up top.

Now Click and hold the Left mouse button in an empty spot to the left of the Bottom most vertices in the top view and drag the mouse across creating a selection chain. We want to select all the bottom most vertices.

The Vertices you selected should have highlighted red. You should have also seen an Axis Appear showing X & Y Directions. Since we want to make this end thinner than the top we want to scale these vertices inward along the X Axis. To do this hover your mouse over the X Axis, You should notice several changes in its appearance as you hover over the Axis, The Inner Yellow Triangle Shown in the Image Above Means that All 3 Axises X,Y, and Z will be used to Scale. The Bar right above the triangle that connects X & Y Axises if this is highlighted yellow this means it will only Scale Along the 2 Shown Axises X & Y. What we want is Only the X Axis Bar highlighted like so.

Now hold down the left mouse button and drag the mouse inward toward the center of the Axis, you should see the Vertices move closer together causing the angle of the sides to the top of the box change.

Go ahead and scale it to where you feel its best. The next step will be Extruding the tip of the blade from the edge of this box. I typically like to use the Perspective Viewport when selecting Faces. So First We need to Select Face.

Now in the Viewport we want to make sure its set to Shaded with Edged Faces, this just makes selecting faces so much easier. To do this just right click the Perspective Viewport Name and select Smooth + Highlights, and then also make sure Edged Faces is checked.

Now we want to Rotate/Zoom/Pan so that we can see the blade tip. You can Alter the View by clicking these buttons and dragging the mouse in the viewport.

Now once you have the tip of the sword blade facing you we want to click the Select Object Tool.

Now Click on the Front of the Tip, you should notice it highlights red, we want to click on both faces to do so Hold CTRL and click this will allow you to click another face without deselecting whats already selected.

Now Scrolldown the Rollout menu to the right and click Extrude.

Now in Either the top or Perspective view click on the selected faces, you should see your mouse icon change when you hover over it, Click the left mouse button and drag the mouse a bit. You should see the end of the mesh Extend outward after where the faces were. Extrude it out a littlebit like this

Ok this chunk of the block will be the sword’s point which we will change that right now, go back and select Vertex mode in your edit mesh modifier list. this time we want to select the bottom most vertices of this new box you extruded from the front of your blade. So go ahead and click the Scale tool again and select the very bottom vertices in the top viewport.

Now instead of scaling on the X axis like we did last time we want to Scale on all 3 axises, so hover over the Axis until the middle triangle is highlighted Yellow click and drag it until all the vertices come together as one point like this.

now we have a point on our sword, but we aren’t done yet, even though we made a cool point.. that cool point still consists of sever vertices. We want this to be one vertex only. So what we want to do is weld these together into one. Scroll down your Rollout menu until you find the Weld section.

Depending on the Size of the model your working even though you squeeze vertices together and they appear as one, they might not be close enough to be welded together. So we want to change the distance next to the selected button from 0.1 to 1.0, this should seek far enough to weld the vertices we have selected together. go ahead and hit the Selected button. You may or may not notice a change but if no window popped up telling you the vertices are not within the weld treshold then they should be welded. Another way to know for sure if all of them were welded is to scroll up a bit it will display how many vertices you have selected.

If your selecting multiple vertices it say XX vertices Selected, in the case of the image above i had 4 selected, After i welded i only had one vertex selected in which case it tells me which vertex id i have selected instead of how many.

Now we want to make the edge of the blade which is thinner than the center of the blade, so we will want to extrude out both sides of the blade. Go ahead and select Face from the edit mesh list. Click the Select obj tool from the top menu

now we want to highlight only the sides of the mesh, now you can either do this in perspective mode which can take a little while or you can make use of alternate views. Go ahead and go into the left or right view. if you dont have one right click on one of the views and select Views >> Left. Now we want to drag a the selection rectangle through the center of the model right up to near the tip.

When you release the mouse only the side faces should be highlighted.

Although the back of the model’s faces are still selected. rotate the view to the back Hold Alt and click on the back faces you should see them deselect without deselecting what you already have selected.

If your having troubles selecting or its selecting the wrong face, you may need to check ignore backfaces from the rollout menu to the right. this will prevent you from clicking on faces that aren’t facing you such as the otherside of the blade.

Once you have the correct faces selected we want to then click extrude. Go ahead and extrude out however far you think the blade’s edge should be from the center body.  You may notice when extruding shapes with multiple angles that it gets a little weird and mal-proportioned, if this happens go ahead and hit Edit >> Undo, under extrude you should see a couple radio buttons reading Normal: Group & Local. We want to select Local so that all sides move outward toward their local normal direction, not an averaged group direction.

Here is mine in the top view after extruding:

Yours should look similar to this in the top view. You’ll notice it looks a bit funky in the perspective view, this is because we need to collapse and weld our outer vertices together to make a thin sharp edge to our blade. So go ahead and go back to Vertex in the edit mesh list. Click the Sel Obj tool again

This time we want to select all the outer vertices except for the back. using the top view and holding Ctrl please select all the outer vertices like this. Make sure Ignore Backfaces is unchecked, this can prevent you from selecting the vertices on the other side of the blade.

Now in the Left View we want to scale all of these downward toward each other so they form a flat edge. Select the scale tool then in the Left or Right view we want to scale it down on its Y axis

to this

Then go Down to Weld and click Selected Button. You’ll notice the tip of the blade looks kind of razor-ish, we want the tip to angle downward like the sides, so we need to select the tip and the old tip vertice then scale them together and weld.

to

Now we want to move the tip down a little bit, seems a bit short. To do this just select the Select and Move tool from the top menubar

Just like scale you can drag the mouse and move the vertices position opposed to scaling them. So in the top viewport go ahead and drag the vertex down along the Y axis to make the tip longer.

If you think your blade is too thick you can always select all the vertices and Scale it down on its Y axis in the Left/Right/Front views

Now we are going to want to Uvmap the Blade of our sword, If your unfamiliar with UVmapping it can be one of the most vexing things about modeling. UVmapping is setting the coordinates of a Face on a  2d image to show a section of that image on the face in 3d.

Since our blade is rather Planar as far as its shape goes it will be relatively easy to UV map, other more complex forms of geometry are harder to UV map and it is a good idea to think ahead about how you will map it before modeling it. Ahem*

Anyways, First Go ahead and click Edit Mesh to deselect any editing modes you may be in. Then we need to select UV Mapping from the modifier drop down list where we had previously selected Edit mesh.

If you noticed there is a Orange Colored flat square around your blade in the viewports.

if this is the case then we are good to go, if the square is not visible or not covering the sword, its possible you added the UVMapping modifier while leaving the Edit Mesh edit mode on. You must make sure that nothing is highlighted on edit mesh before adding UV Mapping modifier, otherwise it will attempt to map only the parts you left select, which is useful but not what we want right now. If that was the case just right click on UV Mapping and Delete it. Unhighlight edit mesh mode then reapply the UV mapping modifier.

Now what we want to do is collapse the list of modifiers back down to edit mesh, since the model is UV mapped now we can move on to the next piece. so Right Click on the UV mapping modifier and select Collapse All.

You’ll get a warning like this

Basically this means that after its collapsed we cant go back and edit the UV map we will have to reapply the UV map to change it. Go ahead and click Yes. You should have noticed that the modifier stack has collapsed back down to Edit Mesh again. What we need to do now is specify a material ID for the blade of the sword. Since IMVU uses material IDs for the Model the sword blade can be on its own texture seperate from the rest of the Model.

So go ahead and expand Edit Mesh and select Element. Elements are parts of the model that are fused together via vertices. For instance if you make 2 cubes as one mesh you can select one or the other cube in select element, however if you weld vertices from one cube tot he other cube they are now one element.  since the sword is one element we can easily select all its face just by clicking on it via element mode.

So click your select obj tool and click on the sword. It should have highlighted in red. Now we want scroll down to the  bottom of our rollout menu until we see Surface Properties

Right under where it says Material: Type a 1 in the box next to Set ID and hit enter. The blade of our sword is now set to use Material ID 1. We are finished with the sword blade for now, next we need to create the Crossguard. Go back and click the Create Tab again.

Now we want to make another box for our crossguard. Select Box and drag it in the topview parrallel to the end of your blade and make it a little thicker than your blade like this.

Ok for this next part im going to show you a cool feature, CSG (Constructive Solid Geometry). CSG is a very powerful feature. you can take one Convex Shapes (Convex meaning all faces point away from all other faces).  So lets go ahead and create a Cylinder. Select Cylinder from the primitives list to the right.

We don’t need a high poly cylinder as this is our cutting mesh, so go ahead and set the sides to 12 and the height segments to 1. now go ahead and click in the top view where the center point of the cylinder circle will be then drag out the circle so part of it overlaps the crossguard. The height can be anysize so long as its taller than the crossguard.

I want the arc of this cylinder to have more of a subtle curve from one end of the crossguard to the other. Select the Scale tool and we want to scale it down in the top view along its Y axis. You may need to switch between the Scale tool and the position tool to line it up. But this is the end result i’m looking for.

As you can see the curve of the cylinder flows evenly along the side of the crossguard. Now you also want to make sure the height of the cylinder passes through the geometry of the crossguard vertically like this in the left/right view.

Ok now let’s cut this cylinder out of the guard. Now on the Create Tab right under it you should see a drop down menu that says Standard Primitives. We want to select Compound Objects.

You should then see a new list of creatable stuff. The one we are looking for is Boolean. Now click the Select obj tool and click the crossguard box to highlight it. Now click Boolean. You should see some stuff appear in the rollout menu below. Look for Pick Operand B.

Click on Pick Operand B and then click on the cylinder POOF! the cylinder is gone and now there should be a nice cylinder shaped cut in the box where the cylinder once was.

You may need to use the positioning tool to realign the crossguard with the blade. It should look something like this:

Now we want to Bevel out the sides to give it a slight rounded edges. To do this is generally the same as Extruding. What you need to do is Go to the Modify Tab and in the crossguards modifier list you should see boolean. Right click on boolean and hit collapse all. This should convert it to and Edit Mesh modifier. Now expand Edit Mesh and select face edit mode.

We want to bevel out the two sides of the hilt. A really easy way to select both sides of a shape like this is to click the Select object tool up top and drag the selection rectangle through the top and bottom of the crossguard in the top view but make sure the left and right sides of the rectangle selection box are just before each side of the crossguard like this.

Which should select everything BUT the two sides on each end. After this you can go to the menu Edit >> Select Invert and it will select the sides and deselect everything else.

Now with each side selected scroll down your rollout menu where you last found Extrude and you should also see a button right below it that reads Bevel

make sure the Normal is set to Local and now click and hold the left mouse button on the selected face and drag your mouse. You should notice it works the same as extruding, but when you release the mouse it wants you to push the geometry outward or inward. We want to push it inward a bit until you get it to look something like this.

Now let’s go ahead and Select Edit Mesh so that Face editing mode is off. Now go ahead and add the UV Mapping modifier which should have made a nice orange box around your crossguard.

Ok go ahead and right click on UV Mapping Modifier and Select Collapse All again. Then go ahead and expand edit mesh select element and click the crossguard. Then Scroll down the rollout menu until you see Surface Properties again. this time enter 2 in Set ID and hit enter.

Yay, just about done with the modeling portion of this! Now we just need to make the hilt of the sword. The hilt is really easy, it’s nothing more than a dolled up cylinder. So go ahead and go back to the create Tab change the dropdown menu from Compund objects back to standard primitives and click on cylinder.

We need to create this cylinder in the front view, if you don’t have one just find a view right click on its name and hit Views >> Front.

We want to click in the very center of the sword as the center point of our cylinder and then make its diameter the same width as the hilt’s thickness, then drag it out so it looks long enough for a hand to grab it.

You’ll need to use the positioning tool to move the hilt into the right spot. Most hilts aren’t exactly perfectly round, usually they are longer on one side and thinner on the other. So in the Front view use the Scale tool to Scale it down a bit on its Y axis and scale it up on its X axis.

Also the Bottom of the hilt is generally thinner than the top where it connects to the crossguard, so for this we will need to click the modify tab. Right Click on the Cylinder Modifier and hit Convert to: >> Edit Mesh.

Now expand Edit mesh and select Vertex edit mode.

We want to select the bottom vertices of the hilt in the top view and scale them down a bit on all 3 axises

Good, now its time to add the last piece the butt end of the hilt. So under edit mesh click Face select everything in the hilt except for the very end edge.

Now in your Menu select Edit >> Select Invert. what we are going to do now is Bevel out the end of the hilt. So scroll down your rollout menu and select Bevel first extrude it out about an inch then bevel it outward this time instead of inward

Next we are going to bevel it again but this time bevel it inward.

And there you have it a Sword hilt. Now on to UV mapping it, select edit mesh so that Face editing mode is not highlighted. then in your Modifiers drop down menu select UV mapping again. This time however we don’t want that orange box, Since we are using a cylinder we want to select cylinder mapping. Down below in your rollout menu find cylinder and click it.

This time an orange cylinder appears, it may or may not encompass the entire hilt. if this is so we need to modify the orange cylinder gizmos. Expand UV Mapping and you should see in the new list “Gizmo”. Click on Gizmo as we will need to edit it. Go ahead and click the Scale tool, we should be able to scale the gizmo on its axises to fit the hilt properly.

Once you have it lined up with your hilt go ahead and right click on UV Mapping and hit Collapse All. Then yet again expand edit mesh click element and scrolldown to Surface properties and enter a 3 in Set ID

Alright we are getting down to the last tid bits of making the sword. The next step is to attach the model together into one mesh. So go ahead and click Edit mesh to deselect Element mode. If you look below in your rollout menu you should see a button that says Attach. Go ahead and click it so its highlighted and then click each part of the sword.

The sword pieces should all be one solid color and all be highlighted as one model. In fact if you click edit vertex face or any of those editing modes you will be editing the entire thing now at once.

Next we need to generate the sword’s textures. If you don’t have Texporter i suggest you download it here. Pick you version of 3dsmax and install the plugin files. You will need to restart 3dsmax so save your file now as something you can remember.

If you have Texporter installed then click on over to the Utilities tab (which may have a different icon on the default UI skin)

Its usually the last tab in the list. Once your in the utilities tab click on the more.. button and look for Texporter.

Ok now we need to export our textures. Sometimes when attaching models the Material Ids get goofed up. To easily correct this go back to Edit mesh select element and click on a part and see if the material id is there. if not fill it in for each part thats missing one. Anyhoo back to texporter. You need to set the options like i have here

So Lets get the first texture click the Pick object button then click on your sword.

It should generate a texture window containing your sword’s UV map for the blade. Go ahead and click the disk icon and save it somewhere.

now change the Only ID to 2 in the Texporter rollout menu and then click Pick object and select your sword. Save it and do the same again for ID 3.

Ok now its time to make an IMVU compatible material. So up in your Menu Select  Rendering >> Material Editor

Which should have opened this window.  So we need to create a new material for this sword. So click on one of the empty materials.

Then off the right hand side below we need to change the material type from Standard to Multi/Sub-Object

Alright next we need to setup our material list. After you have chosen Multi/sub object you should see a different area below like this

IMVU is very particular about its naming conventions, Since we are only using 3 materials they need to be named  matname [matid]

For example click on the top material

Clicking this will expand it into a another material editor rollout menu like so

You need to replace the material name with anyname you want followed by the material number. IMVU’s material range starts at 0 unlike 3dsmax which starts with 1

Since out blade is assigned to material 1 i’m going to name this material blade [0]

Now we need to add our exported texture to it. So now click the button next to Diffuse and Select BITMAP and then browse for your sword texture and load it in

Now select the Show Map in Viewport button, this will allow you to see the texture on the sword once we apply it. Now click the Drop down box to the left of the Show map in viewport button select the top item to go back to the list of materials.

Now do the same down the list for the next two textures, make sure you add 1 tot he material ID as you go down so it should read

• blade [0]
• guard [1]
• hilt [2]

or something similar at least.

once you get your materials done we need to apply it to the Sword. Click on the sword and make sure its highlighted and also make sure your on the top level of your material like int he picture above. Then click Assign Material to Selection.

You should see your sword in the viewport is textured.

Ok now we are ready to attach this sword to the Avatar’s hand. So go back tot he Display Tab, scroll down and click unhide all.

You should see the Avatar reappear now in the viewports. Using the Position tool, Scale tool, and Rotate tool (which is next to the position tool) Try to line up the sword in the hand you wish the avatar to hold the sword in.

Once you got the sword in the hand you want click Select by Name tool

Selecting by Name is really handy when you need to select an object that is hard to click on.

Scroll down the list and look for Either lfhand or rthand depending on which hand you put the sword in. I put mine in the right hand so i’ll select rthand.

hit select. Now we want to make a clone of this bone since in this Tutorial we will be adding the sword as an accessory. So after the rthand or lfhand is selected go to the menu and hit  Edit >> Clone, On the window that pops up make sure its set to copy and not instance then name it whatever you want, just remember the name.

Ok next we need to weight the sword to that bone. Click on the sword to highlight it, then go to the Modify Tab to the right. Then in the modifiers drop down box we want to pick Skin this time.

Now scroll down the rollout menu and Click the Add button, Then from the list select the bone you cloned.

Now click Edit envelopes above the Add button to activate it, then check the vertices checkbox right below that.

Now in one of the views select all of the vertices in the sword by dragging the selection rectangle over the entire model. The vertices should have shown up as a bunch of white squares.

Once you have all the vertices selected scroll down the rollout menu some more on the left until you find weight properties. Next to Abs. Effect type 1.0 in the box and press Enter. You should have noticed all the white boxes are now filled red.

Now that the sword is Weighted to the bone its EXPORT TIME!

so go ahead and click the Create tab to deactivate any editing modes. First we need to export the bone. So click Select by Name and select your bone you weighted the sword to. Then Click File >> Export, Set the file type to XSF Cal 3d Skeletal File. Then give it a name and don’t forget to type in the xaf extension otherwise it will save it in an unsuable binary format. Hit save then hit finish.

Now you need to Export your sword. Select your sword and hit File >> Export. Change the file type to XMF Cal3d Mesh file and make sure to type the .XMF extension and hit save.

It should show the corresponding skeletal file as the one you just exported. if not make sure you set it to it. Then just hit Next >> Next >> Next >>  Finish. And your ready to import these into IMVU.

Yogg-Saron +0 Strategy by Stars - From http://www.mmo-champion.com/
digmouse took the time to translate the strategy used by Stars to kill Yogg-Saron with no guardian helping. (Originally posted on ngacn.cc)

He did a fantastic job and I’m sure a lot of people want to know everything about the kill so I’ll just post it on the front page, thanks again to digmouse for the translation.

Q:Why do people think Yogg-Saron +0 is “No Patch No Down”?
A: Known to all, the hardest thing of this combat is how to deal with Phase 3, so this post will be mainly focused on Phase 3 strategy. According to several posts from EU/US forums, players thought it needs 6 mins and more to kill Yogg-Saron with the help of one Keeper.Take damage tanks took and Shadow Beacon into consideration, we need 4-5 tanks and 5-6 healers, meanwhile the raid dps will be decreased by 10%. This means, regardless of Shadow Beacon, we aren’t able to take down Yogg-Saron within enrage timer. That’s why almost everyone thought even with full lv239 gears, it’s still mission impossible.

Q:Is it really “No Patch No Down”?
A: We got this world first kill last night, so it’s not. Of course there were hotfixes from Blizzard, I’ll talk about this later. After we killed Mimiron we did a theorycrafting, we thought with 10 warlocks we could bring down Yogg-Saron in 3 mins and reduce Beacons to 3 or less.
After trying over and over again, familiarity with this combat and improvement of gear helps to increase dps. Most Have-To-Face-Yogg classes managed to double their damage, so finally we got this world first kill without an extreme comp.

Q: Why do we say affliction warlocks are MVPs?
A: Phase 3 is the most special combat throughout Azeroth, you have to turn back every 11s-19s to avoid Lunatic Gaze so for a normal class maybe you only get 2/3 time to dps. But affliction warlock is a exception.
Another important reason is that, Phase 3 starts at Yogg-Saron with 30%HP left, affliction warlocks with Death Embrace can obviously reduce Phase 3 combat time with 16000-18000 drain soul per tick.
Also in Phase 2, spamming dots makes warlocks much more powerful than other classes. We take 5 warlocks with us, actually this number is less than what we thought to be.

Another class is rogues with Honor Among Thieves, with 2 pieces of T8 significantly reduce energy cost of Fans of Knives and a damage boost against targets less than 35% health . Our rogues say they could manage 9000-10000 dps, but because of restriction of Phase 2 and interruption of Phase 3, we didn’t take Honor Among Thieves rogues.

Of course, rogues and warlocks are greatly capable of AE, so they could reach a high dps during this combat. Maybe you can see a death knight managed to be NO.1, this can’t prove anything, the core of dps deck can only be warlocks and rogues.

Warrior: Protection/Arms, dps boss, Battle/Command Shout.
Mage: Remove curse, dps boss, AE on Shadow Beacon.
Priest: Disp heal/Shadow dps Beacon.
Shaman: Dps boss, totems.
Death Knight: Strongest tank, aoe Ebon Plague.
Paladin: Healer MVP/Ret dps boss and blessings.
Rogue: AE MVP.
Hunter: Dps boss and pull Phase 3 adds.
Druid: Flexible healer/tank.

Q: What’s the difference among +0,+1,+2,+3,+4 Yogg-Saron?
Strategy:
The first thing people mentioned is Phase 3 adds can’t be killed without Thorim, and every 45 sec there would be a Shadow Beacon(with Mortal Strike that is 375,000 hp during 20 sec and cumulative).
The monsters damage is based on hp, 1% is about 2,000, but 100% is around 35,000. So if they gain hp from Shadow Beacon, they would bring down tanks extremely quickly and say W~I~P~E to us. So how to separate the monsters is the hardest and most important thing.

Improvement of Gear
Damage decrease by 40%, 20% more damage taken, 20% healing reduction and 20% less HP compared to +4 Yogg-Saron, this brings not only DPS pressure, but also tanking problem. We used to take down Yogg-Saron +3 without Thorim at the middle of June, felt that it’s easier than pre-nerf Mimiron, this would tell the improvement of gear is very important to Yogg-Saron +0.

Soft Enrage
Phase 3 of +0 combat is different from others.Normally we got a 15 mins Enrage timer, but in +0 Phase 3, the 4th Shadow Beacon is almost the limit of raid, this 180 sec soft enrage time may stop many guilds.

Q：So what strategy does Stars use in Phase 3?
A：The strategy we used in Phase 3 was very highly tuned. We can even say, the 3 Tanks, 4 Healers and the 2 Hunters are the key to the encounter, they push a wrong button, we wipe. Maybe there would be a more efficient way to do this but this is exactly the way we win the battle, and we are proud of it.

First let’s check out the Shadow Beacons. Every 45s after P3 starts, Yogg will place Shadow Beacons on 3-5 random adds (the first wave should be 3, but it will definitely goes to 4 or 5 the second time). The Beacon looks pretty like Hunter’s Mark, and will explode after 10 secs, all enemy creatures within 20yd of the explosion will gain a stackable HoT which heals 750K HP in 20s. So the strategy goes to 2 basic rules:

1. Keep all 5 beacons 20yd away from each other.
2. Keep all beacons 20yd away from Yogg.

The general procedure we execute it:
1. Formation: similar to the easy mode, all melee around the boss to deal with adds and interrupt all Siphon Life. The rest of Melee DPS attack Yogg all the time.
Tanks: We use 3 tanks here to take hands on new adds one by one (1 per 10 sec), to make sure all tanks receive nearly same numbers of adds. (Actually this is sooooo hard to achieve, we missed lots of adds).
2. After Yogg apply beacons to the adds, the tanks move as below

The first Beacon. This is not hard to handle since there is only 5 adds around and the newly spawned ones will not be marked, so it will definitely be the 1st, 2nd and 3rd adds that spawn to be marked. The tanks will only need to easily move to pos A, B and C, and get back after the Beacon explode, and certain damage dealers burn them to keep tanks safe.
2) The 2nd Beacon. This will happen after 90secs. There should be 10 adds around and 4, 3, 3 on each tank. We still pull them to A, B and C, and Hunters standing at the green spot use Distracting Shot to move all 5 marked adds safely away. However the most difficult point comes, there will be multiple ways the Beacons spread among pos A, B, C:

Very difficult to handle, mostly a wipe if happen:
(3.1.1)(1.1.3)(0.3.2)(2.3.0)(0.2.3)(3.0.2)(3.2.0)(2.0.3)
Pretty easy to handle, and will happen more likely:
(1.3.1)(2.1.2)(2.2.1)(1.2.2)(1.1.2)(2.1.1)(1.2.1)

The hunters need to figure out the Beacons fast and choose the right add to DS.

The advantages to handle Beacons with Hunters: DS will force the add to follow the Hunter for 6 secs and since the adds move extremely fast, they will move out of 20yd range in 3secs to avoid being effected by the explosion, and the threat will immediately restore after 6secs so the add will go back to the tank to let the damage dealers burn them. Furthermore, Hunters can deal significant damage to the boss itself, even bit with Rogues and locks, so we can get less tanks and more DPS.

3) The 3rd Beacon happens at 135secs, similar with the 2nd, there will be more adds on the tanks, and it will be more and more difficult. We only managed to deal with 3rd Beacon twice among all our tries, the first, 1.8M left, the 2nd, we kicked his ass.
3. Burning. Some of the damage dealers burn the adds (Rogues and Shadow Priests are best, and a Unholy DK for the 13% spell vulnerablity), for efficiency we AEed them, all of the raid goes burning adds on 3rd Beacon.

So, the key and most difficult points of the encounter:
1. Tank pulling: The tanks should be extremely concentrated on pulling adds, since they spawn randomly.
2. Tank healers: Newly spawned adds will hit the tank for around 35K, but we use 3 dedicated healers + 1 assisting healer, sometimes you cant fully rely on the healer, instead you need a good communication with the tanks and proper use of CDs.
3. DPS: all damage dealers must make around 5500-7500 to burn him down in 3mins provided you can not face the boss in around 1/3 of this phase. It’s extremely hard even on +1/
4. Handling with Beacons: the Hunters must choose adds and DS in a perfect rotation, and hope it is not the worst situation like (2.3.0)(0.2.3) or (3.0.2) (after theorycrafting we found that we only get half chance to get a ideal situation), but anyway those are not totally impossible to deal with, we get a (0.3.2) on our kill, and the excellent performance and luck of our DK tank helped him to survive many, many fatal attacks, made him the strongest tank.

Other little details:
1. Use a Aura Mastery Chain to avoid Deafening Roars, or the Tanks can not hold too long.
2. Use Bloodlust/Heroism at the beginning, burn the boss fast to 20% and start Execution, there will be no time for you to do this any more.
3. Don’t just turn round every time upon casting of Lunatic Gaze, turn yourself after 1 hit to make sure you maximum your DPS uptime at the cost of 4% sanity once.

Q: The damage meter?
A: The Unholy DK did impressive damage, actually they are really, really powerful in this encounter, and keep 13% spell vulnerability is another great benefit for the raid, however they AEed a lot of 1% adds so they did many wasted damage. The exact main AE class are Rogues and Shadow Priests, their powerful and stable AE are the key to the burning of adds. The most considerable is the damage dealing to Yogg itself, this is the real key to this encounter, and not many raids can achieve this.

Q: What about the difficulty of this encounter? Is this the best ever?
A: Definitely, this one is harder than any other bosses in the history of WoW, the Sunwell is not even comparable with it. On whether is it the best, I have to say, this encounter is certainly well designed, but a good encounter should not make any class too OP in it, and locks are extremely powerful in this battle, if you get 8 or 10 locks it will goes easier but it’s boring, in my personal opinion, it is less interesting than Mimiron.

Q: The situation on this kill? Are there any good luck with you?
A: First we got some human resource issue so we only have 5 locks, it’s not a very extreme comp. Second we had 2 members dropped during the fight, one died too early and encountered a very rare (0.3.2) spread Beacons; so I think we have a lot of room on this encounter, also a certain outcome for our practice in months. However we got blessings, our DK tank miraculously survived 4 adds with 2 stacks of HoT.

Q: Did Yogg +0 get any nerf? Does the nerfs affect the meaning of the kill?
A: Yogg was tuned several times after Ulduar ships:
1. P1 and P3 adds health nerf
2. Sara’s health nerf
3. Death Ray will not affect DCed targets any more.
4. Corruptor Tentacles spawn faster, and Blink/Shadowstep can be used now.

And this is the most recent change:
5. The hidden protection mechanic of Sanity increased to 40%

The 1st and 5th changes affect Phase 3, and since the healing mechanic of Beacons and adds’ damage are relative to percentage of HP, so the 1st one exactly increase the difficulty for the tanks to survive at the cost of less DPS pressure, so is not considered as a nerf to +0 (however it’s a good new for +1 raids which choose Thorim). The 5th change is the most recent one, this significantly smooth the sanity situation into Phase 3, definitely increase DPS (we can consider 1% sanity = 1s facing DPS time), if not, some of our raid member will get mind controlled earlier, but this will not greatly change P3, so this kill is certainly worth remembering.

It’s good to see Blizzard has finally done something about shaman totem’s this has been an issue pretty much as long as macros in wow have been around. Hopefully next up in line are Warlocks and Hunters.

Details on Shaman changes below:

Well it’s about time engineering was looked into. I never thought Jewelcrafting needed a buff, but other professions needed buffs to be more in line with the epic that is jewelcrafting. below is what to expect in the upcoming patch.

When the next major content patch launches we will be introducing epic quality gems and updating the perks for each profession. Please keep in mind that any of this information may see further changes before the patch launches.

The design recipes for cutting epic gems will be made available for purchase with Dalaran Jewelcrafter’s Tokens and there are several ways to obtain raw epic gems:

• Prospecting Titanium Ore
• Alchemy transmutations
• Purchased with Honor
• Purchased with Emblems of Heroism

Coinciding with the implementation of epic gems and the gain that Blacksmiths will receive through their perk from these new gems, we have gone through all of the perks in every profession and increased their values to match up accordingly.

Alchemy

• The Mixology benefits from Northrend elixirs and flasks have been increased
• Added a new pattern for Flask of the North, usable by players with a high alchemy skill. The recipe is purchased from the honor potion vendor. The Flask of the North increases your spell power, attack power, or Strength for 1 hour, and is usable in arenas. It is not consumed when used.
• Endless Healing Potion and Endless Mana Potion no longer usable in arenas. Amount of health and mana has been increased, and the cooldown reduced. They are still usable everywhere else.

Blacksmithing

• No changes will be made to this profession; it will continue to have the 2 additional prismatic sockets (which can hold the new epic gems)

Enchanting

• Values on Northrend ring enchants increased

Engineering

• Increased benefits from Hyperspeed Accelerators, Hand-Mounted Pyro Rocket, and Reticulated Armor Webbing glove modifications

Herbalism

• Increased healing from Lifeblood (Rank 6)
• Lifeblood now scales slightly with maximum health
• Lifeblood no longer affected by global cooldown

Inscription

• Master’s Inscriptions increased

Jewelcrafting

• Dragon’s Eye gems stat bonuses increased

Leatherworking

• Fur Lining values increased

Mining

• Toughness (Rank 6) provides more Stamina

Skinning

• Master of Anatomy (Rank 6) provides more critical strike rating

Tailoring

• Embroideries improved

Wow Damn i must say this ought to be an interesting patch, new battlegrounds, new dailies.. but what i’m really looking forward to is seeing Shaman and Paladin Raid Healing reworked so they are more viable to bring along. Also I would like to see Hunter and Warlock PvP looked into as they are falling behind in nearly every bracket. Mages outside of the RMP (rogue mage priest) combos are not doing so well in PvP either.

Below is a highlight of some cool new feature to expect in the next patch!

With the release of the Secrets of Ulduar, the Argent Tournament opened its doors to heroes from all over Azeroth and saw champions arise from the ranks to take on the challenges before them to prove their worth. In the next upcoming content patch, Call of the Crusade, the Argent Tournament will be expanding its influence and players will be able to experience all-new dailies, rewards, and areas of interest.

Two New Quest Hubs
A new Cult of the Damned camp now sits overlooking the Tournament grounds and spying on the activity below.

Located on an island north of Icecrown, the former tuskarr village known as Hrothgar’s Landing is a mist-shrouded staging point for Sea Vrykul raids upon the ships of the Silver Covenant and the Sunreavers in the waters between the island and Icecrown.