Tutorial: How To EZ Turn An Image File Into A 3d Model For Your Nifs

[SickAlice]

Here I will show you the simplest way to make a 3d object for your Nifs using an image. You can download stock PNG's with transparent pretty much anywhere on the internet. These days with Blender, Photoshop and many other programs you can turn an image into a 3d model. This is typically for 3d printing. But if you have a program you can easily do it yourself or watch a tutorial on Youtube. I said the easiest way so here we go.

Download this stock image of Captain America's USO Shield from the MCU found on the Marvel Wiki site.
https://thelitterbox.freedomforce4ever.com/temp/MakeObject/Captain_America_Shield_2.png

Make a copy of it right away. See? The background is transparent. Also have the texture you are going to assign on hand as I have here.



Open your copy in your at program. I am using Photoshop for this, which again can actually make 3d models by itself but we want the easiest way. Now that we opened the copy set it's bright values all the up to absolute white. In PS this Edit > Hue/Saturation > Lightness. Save the copy. This is going to act as a stencil.



Open the original image and the image you intend to use as a texture. Copy the image to the texture. Feel free to resize it so it isn't taking up all the space. Save the texture and close the image program if you want to.



Easy so instead of using a program we will use a free website. There are more sites that convert images into 3d models, especially for making 3d printed STL's than you can throw a stick at. Here is one.
https://imagetostl.com/

Usually there are a lot of choices on conversion sites so make sure to set it so it is PNG to "3d object format". I will use OBJ since that is the format Nifskope uses and it is easy to texture and save the texture coordinates.



Scroll down to a huge button that says "Upload a file", click it and upload the copy of the PNG. The shield that we made all white. Now there are all sorts of options where the site will use this image as a height map to create a 3d model. We can make a thing that is real detailed which would be ideal if we were printing, say a weapon for an action figure. But we want very low poly stuff for Freedom Force. So follow my settings here. Notice I set everything to one to keep this flat. Press to Convert.



A preview of our 3d model comes up in what looks suspiciously like the 3d program included with modern versions of Windows. Download the 3d model and import it into the program you use to assign textures. I assume you know how to assign textures. If not this is a tutorial you need to go take somewhere. I will be using Milkshape as it's what I prefer for texturing.

Here is my imported model. It is very tall. We can either this 3d model or just make it flat. Whatever you're feeling. I'm going make it short.



 At this point I assume you learned how to assign a texture. I assigned the texture we put the image of the shield on earlier in this tutorial. Here we are in Milkshapes texturing window. Since I want to texture the front of the shield for this tutorial I have selected to map it by "Front", which is the view in the image of Milkshape in the bottom left side window. It came out big in my program so now I resized it. In fact? Resized it so it fits right on top of that picture of Cap's shield we put on the texture. And because we used the same exact image and same exact shape it fits perfectly like so.



And now we have Caps shield which we can resize and import into a Nif of Captain America or save for use in a 3d printer for our Captain America action figure. And with next to no knowledge of 3d modelling at all.




Now obviously we do want to go back and map the backside but just so you got the basics of creating well, much of any part for any character. Want Namors belt buckle? An X-Men belt buckle? That cool scepter, staff, sword, gun, amulet, tiara and so forth? That cool looking map object? Just get a PNG with a transparent background of an image of that and you are good to go. And of course you can always just use pretty much any 3d program with a modern version to do all this as well.

[spydermann93]

Very cool, SA!! Had no idea such a thing was available.

[cranlox]

Excellent job, really explaining well and simple.
Question is there somewhere to easily assign texture?

[SickAlice]

Excellent job, really explaining well and simple.
Question is there somewhere to easily assign texture?

Texturing is another tutorial online and I guess based on what program a person uses. Same as just making this stuff in any modern 3d program or Photoshop. Which they will teach it better than I. Personal I use Milkshape for texturing. I always have. In my opinion has the easiest to use texturing functions. I'll even make models in other programs but otherwise texture them in MS3d. Any 3d program though can be used to assign a texture to a model and it's usually one button click away. Customizing how it is mapped is a different thing though.

[Randomdays]

Nice work SA and very helpful. I'll go over it in more detail this weekend.

[SickAlice]

Nice work SA and very helpful. I'll go over it in more detail this weekend.

TY. With any hopes if I've done it right there won't be any detail to go over. I have at least another three planned. And I've had an idea to an entire index on my site. Most stuff that we use in this game is rather simple and mostly programs do all the work for us. Being it's all low poly and the game engines are very stringent. Like how I use the words Alpha channel, Stencil and Extrude often. Those are all basic one button press things that don't actually take any artistic training or skill to create a thing.

2 Alpha channel tutorials and an Extrude are next. Same as before just struggling with this flu and being able to see straight and such. Otherwise that would be a quick task to complete. And I'm open to any other technique anyone would like to know the fastest way to do. Weather is awful here, somehow in the Mojave desert, so I'll have a lot of free time for it lest something comes up and I get shipped across the country again. God willing that doesn't happen yet of course.

[Randomdays]

My main interest would be how you said milkshape could do a poly reduce on an stl and keep its uv intact.

[SickAlice]

My main interest would be how you said milkshape could do a poly reduce on an stl and keep its uv intact.

There not much to it. In MS3D you go the Tools dropdown and select DirectX Mesh Tools. Download the plugin if you don't have it of course. A pop window with a preview of the model shown by face in black in white shows up. It has a couple button options and a slider. Pulling the slider back and forth changes the face count and the result displays in the preview window. When you have what you want you hit the Save button.

The program itself takes care of calculation the texture coordinates for you thus keeps the UV intact. You don't have to do anything which is pretty handy.

[cmdrkoenig67]

So wait, can you make object NIFs for the  and  games with this technique, SA?

Dana

[SickAlice]

So wait, can you make object NIFs for the  and  games with this technique, SA?

Dana

Yes. Well the 3d models import into the Nif of course. It's a variation on the Extruding from Texture technique. I'll get to a tutorial on how that's done soon as well.

[cmdrkoenig67]

Oh, that's cool!

Dana

[UnkoMan]

Amazing stuff, SickAlice!
Glad to see you're still coming up with cool outside the box ideas.

[SickAlice]

Ty. Just techniques I used over the years but I've been slow ever getting them online into a tutorial.