Step 1: Extracting from Model Viewer
Arrange a character (or npc) in Model Viewer the way you want it to appear. Select all gear and find a suitable pose. When you have your model dressed and frozen, click “Set to MQO” just under the action drop box.
If any part of your character has an alpha map (or you suspect it might), use the “DAT to MQO” button to extract those parts individually. If you don’t know what an alpha map is or what it does, I’m not going to explain it! Go see Phabin. :D
Step 2: Tweaking in Metasequoia
This section assumes you have an extremely basic understanding of how Metasequoia works, though most of the instructions are self-explanatory.
First and foremost, you will need to apply any alpha maps. Always start with this step in case you need to edit the mesh…trust me, it makes a mess if you do it backwards. Go to Panel > Material Panel and double-click the section you need to apply your alpha map to. These are arranged in exactly the same order as Model Viewer (face, head, body, hands, legs, feet, main, sub, ranged).
Click “Ref” on the Alpha line and browse to your alpha map file. Repeat this process for any other sections of your character that need alpha maps, then click OK.
To start with, I always like to hide the lines so I can clearly see all parts of my character. In my picture here, you can see I’m having some technical difficulties with my taru’s head…the hair and ears clip right through the helm!
There are two ways to deal with this, and depending on your particular model you may need to use both. First, turn on your lines so you can see where the polygons are. Next, click “Select” in the Command > Edit section, then choose “Joined face”.
This will allow you to select all related parts of a single polygon, making it easier to remove them.
See how the whole ear is selected? Now all you have to do is hit Delete and away it goes. Simple, yes? Unfortunately, it doesn’t always work out that way. See what happens when you select part of the protruding hair:
Looks like the hair is fully connected to the rest of the face. We can’t just delete all that, so we’re gonna have to take a different approach here. First, click “Unsel All” in the Edit panel. Next, click “Del” in Command > Face and your cursor will be an arrow with a box. This tool lets you delete polygons one at a time. Now it’s just up to you to use your judgment. Click and drag with your right mouse button to rotate your character all over the place and make sure you get every single polygon. If you mess up and delete something you wanted to keep, just click “Undo” in the Edit panel. Keep at it until it looks like you got it all. There may be tiny slivers of polygons occasionally visible as you rotate your model around, but you may not be able to get to them to delete. Don’t worry about these…if you can’t delete it, it won’t be noticeable in the final render.
Now all that’s left is to save the model. Use “Save As” instead of just Save.
Step 3: Importing to 3D Studio Max
Finally, the part we wanted in the first place! Open up 3DS Max and go to File > Import. Browse to the folder you saved your models in, select “Metasequoia (*.MQO)” from the drop-down box, and select your model. Note: Make sure to select the whole model and not just one of the parts you saved to create alpha maps for.
There you have it…your FFXI model is now ready to work with in 3D Studio Max.
Step 4: Rendering
Now that you’ve gone to all this trouble to import a model, let’s render it. Open the “Rendering” menu and select “render”. (or press F10) There’s really only two settings you need to worry about for now: Output Size and Viewport.
You can manually set your W/H or pick one of the presets for Output Size. Viewport just asks which angle you want to render from. This menu will always default to the last viewport you worked in (in this example, see the yellow border around Front). If you’re doing multiple renders and always want to use the same viewport, choose that one and click the lock icon next to it. Now just click “Render”. Note: On older versions of 3D Studio Max you may get a “Missing External Files” error. 3DS 8 used to do this to me but 3DS 9 doesn’t. If you run into this problem, just click “Browse” then “Add” and find the folder your project files are in; then click “Continue”.
And here we are at last, a rendered model.
If you’re satisfied with the final render, click the little disc icon and save it however you choose.