edge hardness in bfxm/xmesh

esgaroth · Post by **esgaroth** » Thu Jun 22, 2006 11:31 am

A question to the modellers: when I make my models I usually make some edges hard and some soft in wings. However, when I export the model to xmesh or convert it to bfxm this information seems to get lost and all my edges are soft, leading to very "organic" models. E.g., my Antares class freighter (here in wings)

looks quite different after converting to bfxm and insertion in vegastrike

.
Any way how to change/avoid this ?

Zeog · Post by **Zeog** » Thu Jun 22, 2006 11:40 am

Yes, just cut your mesh where you don't want the edges to be smoothed. This will result in some duplicated vertices but the triangle count will stay the same.
You have a really nice ship there, by the way!

Post by **dandandaman** » Thu Jun 22, 2006 2:27 pm

Or export to obj and then straight to bfxm, rather than doing the in between xmesh step (that's where the smoothing information is lost)

Dan

esgaroth · Post by **esgaroth** » Fri Jun 23, 2006 4:49 pm

Strange, I did export to obj (from wings) and then to bfxm via mesher....
Cutting is maybe a solution, but it takes enormous time, there are a lot of angles I dont want to be smoothend. But if that is the only way, I will try it.

esgaroth · Post by **esgaroth** » Fri Jun 23, 2006 8:23 pm

Having rethought, it is not that easy. i usually exported to obj, then converted to bfxm. However, the bfxm model was shining like polished metal (reflexivity high), and because of this I converted to Xmesh, changed reflexivity, added emission etc. and converted back to bfxm. Is there a way to change the reflexivity and to add emission textures directly, without the xmesh intermediate step ? I have to confess that I dont have the slightest idea about the bfxm format ....

Halleck · Post by **Halleck** » Sat Jun 24, 2006 4:43 am

esgaroth wrote:Is there a way to change the reflexivity and to add emission textures directly, without the xmesh intermediate step ?

Yes! Edit the mtl file that accompanies your obj file. The latest versions of mesher interperet the material information you set here... it can also be useful for setting damage, glow, and specular maps.

Ks is the specularity (reflectivity) of the material. Here are the maps that klauss told me work with VS:

Code: Select all

MAP_KD <diffuse map>
MAP_KE <emissive (glowmap)>
MAP_KS <specmap>
MAP_KA <damagemap>

esgaroth · Post by **esgaroth** » Mon Jul 03, 2006 7:32 pm

Thanx a lot ! I guess the 3 values behind KS in the obj mat file are the reflexivity values for the three colours ? I will experiment a bit, and if it works this will save me a lot of future work !

Oblivion · Post by **Oblivion** » Tue Jul 04, 2006 5:41 am

Seeing, I cant comment on the smoothing probs, as I don't know nuthin' hehe. Just squeaking to say that ship is very nice.

GAlex · Post by **GAlex** » Thu Jul 06, 2006 5:50 pm

used map_Ke in my last model, but it does'n work (the model doesn't emit light at all).

why

Post by **klauss** » Fri Jul 07, 2006 12:50 am

Ugh - sorry. I didn't have time to test anything.
I'll get to it sometime tomorrow, probably. Now I need some sleep.