Exe w/ Animated Meshes, MuzzleFlash+Moving Guns,&Detail

Post by **hellcatv** » Sun Aug 31, 2003 12:31 am

Ace123 uploaded a binary with all the features people have been requesting...
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/users/ace123
so let me list them for you:
a) I have now enabled detail textures that fade in slowly as you get close...
the way to enable these is to make a mesh with the following tagline:

<Mesh texture="combine4.bmp" texture1="combinePPL.jpg" detailTexture="grid.png" scale="30">
<DetailPlane x=".02" y=".02" z="0"/>
<DetailPlane x="0" y=".02" z=".02"/>
<Points>
... ... ...
</Mesh>

So let me explain what this means
First of all--the detail textures are applied through multitexturing--so they no speed hit for cards with multiple pipelines (anything decent these days) The other thigns require passes because simply they cannot just add up--they need to multiply with each other--so the speed hit from detailTexture is limited and will be able to be turned off easily.
Secondly... the DetailPlane... what is this?
ok well given that I can't expect everyone to edit all the models and retexture them with insane detailed detail textures--we have to pick a formula to apply the texture on the model so that it will look decent. these numbers were the first numbers I tried on the star fortress-and lo and behold it looks snazzy...
let me go into a bit of detail about how these planes work

first of all notice .02 ... that's how BIG the detail textures are... the smaller the number the bigger the detail texture and the earlier it will appear to the user. right now we're saying that the texture is 1/.02 or 50 units long. for a star fortress that's pretty small.
ok so why specify 2 and what are the x,y,z
well each detailtexture you wish to apply needs 2 DetailPlanes .
if you specify 4 then your starbase will have 2 layers of the detailTexture you chose.
the formula is.
the horizontal coordinate of the texture is determined by the first DetailPlane. It's the pointx*x+pointy*y+pointz*z where the point is the point of the polygon being textured
same for the vertical coordinate--but the second DetailPlane....
basically choose the magnification first...
then choose the most important plane of your ship...if your ship is a flying sauser with a huge xz plane then have your detail planes instead:
<DetailPlane x=".02" y="0" z=".02"/>
<DetailPlane x="0" y=".02" z=".02"/>
so that the xz plane is emphasized

make sense?
and change .02 to whatever you think the player will be seing when he/she's clsoe

the last two config variables you'll need to worry about are:
"graphics","detail_texture_blankout","3"
"graphics","detail_texture_full_color","1"
if you want the detail texture to stay at full intensity for longer make 1 a higher number
if you want it to black out faster make 3 a higher number

these are in vegastrike.config

Now we move to animated meshes...
this will sound similar to LODs because I use the same code

w00t

<Mesh ... ... >
.....
</Polygons>
<Logo>
...
</Logo>
<Material ...>
...
</Material>
<LOD meshfile="secondframe.xmesh" framespersecond="5" size="1"/>
<LOD meshfile="secondframe.xmesh" size="1"/>
<LOD meshfile="secondframe.xmesh" size="1"/>
<LOD meshfile="secondframe.xmesh" size="1"/>
<LOD meshfile="secondframe.xmesh" size="1"/>
</Mesh>

that maeans the animation will run at 5 fps...first using the first mesh then all the meshes listed inside it.

Ok so this is how detail textures and animated meshes work...what about muzzle flash? well that's just an animated mesh put on a gun...just make a file in meshes/weapons/laser.xmesh and meshes/weapons/laser_flare.xmesh
the flare will be your muzzle flare...you need to design that yourself.
first get the laser itself appearing...
unfortunately the meshes do need to be modified to have visible weapons
you need to make the weapons 1 unit long...
then modify the
<Mount size="....".. ... ... xyscale="5" zscale="10"/>
that will make the gun stick out 5 wide and 10 long

on your particular mount...each mount can have a different sized weapon.
the weapon will animate when it's being fired (use animation technique above)

not before not after.

now the one problem with animations is that LODs and Animations are mutually exclusive--but this is the one way I could accomplish both without slowing the whole (unanimated) engine down

so I hope you enjoy--no one seems to use lods anyway

Post by **hurleybird** » Sun Aug 31, 2003 12:48 am

"graphics","detail_texture_blankout","3"
"graphics","detail_texture_full_color","1"

where is this supposed to go in the config?

peteyg · Post by **peteyg** » Sun Aug 31, 2003 1:01 am

in the regular graphics section.

Post by **hurleybird** » Sun Aug 31, 2003 1:05 am

d'oh! should have known that

Post by **hurleybird** » Sun Aug 31, 2003 1:21 am

this isnt working for me, its just crashing VS whenver i try to start it...

my VS config looks like

...
<section name="graphics">
<section name="mesh">
<var name="testvar" value="-4"/>
</section>
<var name="detail_texture_blankout" value="3"/>
<var name="detail_texture_full_color" value="1"/>
<var name="shield_texture" value="shield.bmp"/>
<var name="reflectivity" value=".8"/>
<var name="pan_on_auto" value="false"/>
...

any ideas?

Post by **hellcatv** » Sun Aug 31, 2003 3:17 am

it was my bad
I mixed up the width and height when computing mipmaps
so any texture that was passed in would have the wrong data read! whoops!

ace123 updated the exe
download it again after this post

it should work dandy

Post by **hurleybird** » Sun Aug 31, 2003 3:44 am

Editing the values in the config file seems to do nothing for me. Also, it appears as if the detail textures are always renered and dont fade out.

BTW, what kind of blending are you using? or do the textures have to be partially transparent? It seems like much to white is on screen.

peteyg · Post by **peteyg** » Sun Aug 31, 2003 4:01 am

Dan told me that it's a blend=ONE ONE deal, so more black = more transparency. I had to make the detail textures that came from your package MUCH MUCH MUCH darker before they started to look any good.

Post by **hurleybird** » Sun Aug 31, 2003 4:12 am

ok, thats good to hear. can you host the new ones by chance?

peteyg · Post by **peteyg** » Sun Aug 31, 2003 4:17 am

dude!

well, if you REALLY need me to darken all those detail maps for you, I probably could.

Post by **hurleybird** » Sun Aug 31, 2003 4:20 am

Somehow i feel like i've just been insulted

mainly i was thinking about other people who would want to download the detail textures though.

peteyg · Post by **peteyg** » Sun Aug 31, 2003 5:03 am

dude!! (note: this 'dude!' translates as follows: "Please sir, do not overreact to my good-natured jibe. I value you too much as a person to be so insensitive as to needlessly insult you.")

Anyways, I did it. They may not be all dark enough... but they're going to be a LOT better this way.

http://students.washington.edu/peteyg/b ... l_dark.zip

Post by **hurleybird** » Sun Aug 31, 2003 5:19 am

hellcat, would it be possible to make it so that the lighter colors became transparant instead of the darker colors?

Post by **ace123** » Sun Aug 31, 2003 7:08 am

A new binary has been uploaded with fixes for animated meshes.

Use

Code: Select all

   <LOD ... ... size="X" framespersecond="15" />
   <LOD ... ... size="X" />
...
...
   <LOD ... ... size="X" />
</Mesh>

to take advantage of this new feature.

Also you can make animations get triggered (like transforming) by assigning a key (maybe capital-G) to "ToggleAnimation"
and adding a
NumAnimationStages="X"
attribute in <Description ... /> tag in the unit file.
The X is the number of stages, and it will evenly divide up the animations in the mesh into X parts)

Now you can make something like in spaceballs, where it turns from a big huge long capship into a maid with a vacuum cleaner.

Post by **dandandaman** » Sun Aug 31, 2003 10:14 am

ace123 wrote:A new binary has been uploaded with fixes for animated meshes.

Use
Code: Select all
   <LOD ... ... size="X" framespersecond="15" />
   <LOD ... ... size="X" />
...
...
   <LOD ... ... size="X" />
</Mesh>
to take advantage of this new feature.

Also you can make animations get triggered (like transforming) by assigning a key (maybe capital-G) to "ToggleAnimation"
and adding a
NumAnimationStages="X"
attribute in <Description ... /> tag in the unit file.
The X is the number of stages, and it will evenly divide up the animations in the mesh into X parts)

Now you can make something like in spaceballs, where it turns from a big huge long capship into a maid with a vacuum cleaner.

cool.......is it possible to have both lods and animations though? I would imagine that you could simply do it by saying that "if the framespersecond variable is present, then it's an animation..but if it isn't present, then treat the meshes as LODs"

I think that would allow us to have both? unless it's a deeper internal thing of VS which would need changing to allow both :-/

Dan.a

Post by **hellcatv** » Sun Aug 31, 2003 10:24 am

we were only equipped to have either LODs or Animations
cus then each frame would need LODs and you'd have n^2 meshes...

so no it's not possible

basically limit animation to when you need it...not some trivial thing you use on every huge honkin mesh out there to make it wiggle a bit...

it's very deep inside VS...and to keep LODs for each frame would require tons of memory and a different organization.... in the future it may be possible but not recommended.

etheral walker · Post by **etheral walker** » Sun Aug 31, 2003 11:47 am

ok then, but is there a way to trigger an animation? some of my vorlon ships really needs to deploy themselves. I found a way but putting the animated parts as a weapon, but if I swith to another weapon the mesh come back in its first position.

pincushionman · Post by **pincushionman** » Sun Aug 31, 2003 5:22 pm

Anims are per-mesh, correct? So If I just cut off the part that needs animating and make it a separate mesh, I could LOD-ize the rest of the ship?

-pincushionman

Post by **hurleybird** » Sun Aug 31, 2003 8:55 pm

Mr. Horn, I say again, would it be possible to make it so that lighter colors in the detail texture are faded and darker ones are not? otherwise the detail textures i provided will not work right in VS.

Post by **hellcatv** » Sun Aug 31, 2003 9:45 pm

if you can tell me a blend mode that will do that...I'm really not sure I know of one that will add lighter and subtract darker.... but maybe it exists on video card...sure I could do it with pixel shaders but that's totally overkill and would quarter framerates wahahaa for those cards that support it...

I'll look around a bit... to see if detail textures can subtract...but I just don't know a blendmode that'll do it ....

as for pincushion man ...sure that's correct! it's per mesh--per material...just divide up the ship into the animated parts and the unanimated parts---like guns and rest of ship (guns are handled separately as well anyway)

As for making it have modes... look at ace123's post you can set the number of stopping points are the <Description NumAnimationStages=""/>
then bind a key to
ToggleAnimation
and voilla--you can transform into modes
I'll make the AI do it randomly if you wish

Post by **hurleybird** » Sun Aug 31, 2003 10:25 pm

jdoom (using doomsday engine) uses the Opengl extension ARB_texture_env_combine.

The rest of my post can be found here: http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/forum ... =9567#9567 since it has very big images in it.

Post by **hellcatv** » Sun Aug 31, 2003 11:31 pm

you know what...I found this out myself before you mentioned it

GL_ADD_SIGNED, baby! it works like a charm!
may take some hacking to get a windows build up since windows has ungodly old GL.h files...but I'll get it up before the day is out so you all can have fun

Post by **hurleybird** » Sun Aug 31, 2003 11:56 pm

and fun i shall have

Post by **hellcatv** » Mon Sep 01, 2003 2:06 am

same place, different day

http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/users/ace123

ok so a detail texture of all 128/256 (50% gray) will add NOTHING to your ship.
darker will subtract...lighter will add

happy?

can you give me some detail texture for the new rlaan and aera?
thanks

Jadel · Post by **Jadel** » Mon Sep 01, 2003 6:21 am

kewl

Are animations interpolated or only in distinct steps?

edit: I are good speeler.