Publishing your own models¶

Tutorial:Virtual Worlds Made Easy Publishing Your Own Models
Time to complete: 5 minutes approximately
Summary:This will guide you through the pipeline of exporting a model and publishing it for use.
Aim: Learn how to Publish your own content to use in Vastpark.
Required application: VastPark Publisher¶

If you haven't read the Publisher documentation yet it may pay to have a quick read through to get a basic outline of the Publisher interface. It is also important to download and install the 3ds Max Plugins from here.
If you're using another 3D application or prefer different plugins you just need to be able to export your model to .X.
You will also need a 3D model so if you don't have one but want to follow along with the publishing process you can use the .X file and supporting textures here.

If you are using 3DS Max and you have a model ready, go to the export menu and in the file type select TV3D 6.5. When exporting you want to export your model to the same directory as your textures.
In the next screen select one of the X File Data Formats, generally I select a binary option to reduce file size, if you have animation data check the box at the bottom then hit export.

We're now ready to publish, so go ahead and open up the Publisher tool, click the "New" button and find your .X file in your selected directory. The item tab is the first tab by default and will automatically use the file's name as the item's name. If you don't want to use the same name as the file it can easily be typed over. Give it some content tags and a description and then your ready to move on to the Asset tab.

Clicking on the Asset tab will bring up a number of fields which can be field out to describe the author of the content. Author name, email, URI and license details can all be added to the items MetaData.

The next tab is the Maps where you will notice that there is support for normal, bump, detail, alpha, emissive, light and specular maps. If you have been following along with the supplied crate go and add the jpg called "crate-grey-01_NRM.jpg" to the normal map slot.

If you want to see your item before you publish it you can check it out in the Preview Tab. To rotate around your item hold the left mouse button down and move the mouse, zooming in and out can be done with the mouse scroller.

Open up an empty park in the Creator and add in a light. To find the item you just published do a search in the Library for the name that you gave it when publishing. The item should appear in the item library, add it to the scene and you should now be seeing your item in the Design viewport.