ShoCkwaVes *slow learner class* making ships in VS

[ShoCkwaVe]

I have given up all hope in trying to figure out how to load in a ship
due to the fact that I have no clue how to convert my model from milkshape3d/ lightray/3dsmax/or wings into whatever the hell this xmesh is.

Its a very frustrating format & I am hoping either 1 of 3 things here..

1: some1 cool enough to download my model could do it all for me

2: add me to your buddy list via yahoo messnger my screenname is
shock3rwav and I would love any assistance from any of you experienced
moders or users who are firmiliar in making ships .

3: the devlopers adds a more user friendly & less complicated mesh
format for models such as milkshape3d.txt into the VS game.

((( shakes fist ))) DaMn YoU XMesH!! DamN you tO hELL!!! DOH!!

my 3d art is good and I would be more then glad to make you anything you like just help e figure out how to do this

I have tried reading threw the forums to figure out how to get a simple ship loaded in but have'nt found anything that was helpful enough for my
brain to relate to. :\

Below is a picture of my current shp I have spent a few days now trying to get into the game

**me & chewy are starting to get pissed OFF!! **

WRRRAAAWWR! .


let me know if you would like to help me & and I will send you the model

Thanks, **sniffle**

[/img]

[Halleck]

Align your ship along the z+ axis, and center it. Export your mesh as .obj and use "mesher.exe" found in /bin/ to convert it to BFXM format. You'll then have to make a folder for it in /units/ that contains the bfxm and texture files, and then add the relevant shipdata to /units/units.csv.

You may find my redeemer thread helpful in some instances, although it deals with replacing an existing ship instead of creating a whole new one.

[ShoCkwaVe]

firstly thanks for your quick response,

Align your ship along the z+ axis, and center it. Export your mesh as .obj and use "mesher.exe" found in /bin/ to convert it to BFXM format.

ok , I tried to open the mesher.exe in the bin folder & it opens the command box then sudenly closes that mean its broke? or that maybe im doing something wrong?

You'll then have to make a folder for it in /units/ that contains the bfxm and texture files, and then add the relevant shipdata to /units/units.csv..

DOH! did'nt know that 1 heh, thank you!!

You may find my redeemer thread helpful in some instances, although it deals with replacing an existing ship instead of creating a whole new one.

ok thanks ill go check it out .. though i just replaced the llama tags with mfalcon name and already added the folder mfalcon to the units directory along with the textures but cant get the .obj to covert into xmesh yet

ok what axactly are ALL the names of all the files i need to add 1 ship into vs?

I am using crimson editor so I do understand this code for the most part but I am guessing maybe I have'nt located all the neccassary files to alter yet :\

Reguards,

[Halleck]

mesher is a dos application, so you need to open a dos console. Start Menu->Run and then type command.com , and cd to your vegastrike folder /bin.
Run mesher from here, and it will dump a list of commands. Drop your obj file into /bin/ and try running mesher with these params:

Code: Select all

mesher yourfilename.obj yourfilename.bfxm obc

Might not work though, play around if it doesn't.

If you're replacing the llama, put your new bfxm into the llama folder. Be sure to change units.csv to point to your new bxfm.

[ShoCkwaVe]

ok, I think I follow you now

thanks alot bro you are very helpful , Ill give it a try. & let ya know when I geet it all squared away .

[pincushionman]

Don't forget that the VS engine SHOULD be able to load the .obj file (make sure you have all of its associated texture files too). You'll still have to jack around with the units folder and units.csv, but you shouldn't really need to worry about .bfxm conversion until you're convinced you have it done.

[ack2000]

once you able to load your model in the game. bfxm format you may notice certain textures didnt load. You will have to edit the bfxm with a hex editor(or something, i like hex editor) to resolve this.
Also once you happy with the way it looks in the game. You will want to do a export to xmesh to have all the tag x/y/z for mount cockpit etc.

[jackS]

once you able to load your model in the game. bfxm format you may notice certain textures didnt load. You will have to edit the bfxm with a hex editor(or something, i like hex editor) to resolve this.
Also once you happy with the way it looks in the game. You will want to do a export to xmesh to have all the tag x/y/z for mount cockpit etc.

I find it much more convenient to convert from bfxm to xmesh and use a text editor than to use a hex editor on the bfxm.

[ShoCkwaVe]

I "FINALLY"!! Got "Millenium Falcon" Corellian YT-1300 Transport mesh Loaded in Vega Strike thanks to all of your help .

I had to make a new ship tag rather then replace the llama
because all hell broke loose & the game did'nt like that 2 much..
I actually had to backup the mesh folder uninstall the game then re-install
and re go threw each file and re alter code then it finally loaded in.

so I must have made some error somewhere.

but other then that I have been nonstop @ this for " 6 " days now
and im finally satisfied for the most part now that me & chewy can
transport cargo in our Corellian (( WRRraaawrR !!)).

so again I say THANK YOU !! especially to Halleck

*though* the ship looks a wee too liquid type shiney and the glow from the internal thruster is supposed to be dark blue

but the light blue transparent thruster exaust looks fine

guess I also need to make the engines somehow work for this ship 2

But hey!!,.. the ship iS pointed in the right direction ..
*thats a plus* ! ! lol

ok now all I have to do is figure out how to create a small top & bottom turret as default that has 4 gun mounts each then make a cocpit

hmmm.. this may take some time.

Anyways, hers a pict of the mfalcon beta stage

[Halleck]

Awesome. And your ship is too shiny because it doesn't have a specularity map. look at other models- modelnamePPL.jpg seems to be the spec map for most of them. Basically, the layout is identical to your texture, but it's a greyscale map where white is mirrorlike reflectivity and black is totally nonreflective. If you take the texture, convert to monochrome, fiddle with contrast and brightness, you will wind up with something halfway decent. You'll then need to link it to your bfxm file.

As jackS insinuated, the easiest way to do this is by using mesher to convert your bfxm to xmesh, editing the xmesh by hand, and then reconverting the model to bfxm. Add this attribute to the end of the mesh tag (after texture="yourtexturehere.jpg")

Code: Select all

texture1="yourspecularitymapPPL.jpg"

and you should be good to go.

As for engines... you might want to see my short tutorial on them. I don't think any of the default engine types would work well for the falcon, though.

[jackS]

Basically, the layout is identical to your texture, but it's a greyscale map where white is mirrorlike reflectivity and black is totally nonreflective. If you take the texture, convert to monochrome, fiddle with contrast and brightness, you will wind up with something halfway decent. You'll then need to link it to your bfxm file.

Actually, last I checked, it's an RGB spec map, not gray scale - you can tint the color of light coming off the ship - but it's been a while. If you're feeling lazy, you can always just put a duplicate of the ship texture in the specular map image slot, and your ship will tend to be quite matte.

[Halleck]

Really? All the spec maps I've examined have been greyscale.
Either way, greyscale will certainly work whether RGB specmaps are supported or not.

[chuck_starchaser]

Really? All the spec maps I've examined have been greyscale.
Either way, greyscale will certainly work whether RGB specmaps are supported or not.

Is this feature available for planets also? It would be great to use colored specular maps for oceans, which have blue-green tint in diffuse, but a bit orangish in specular.

[Guest]

You might want to flip your falcon's right side to left side before you commit to much:

[Halleck]

Oh snap!

[hellcatv]

Han Solo has come to town

see if he can match my schroedinger!

see if his falcon can beat my franklin in a race!

[ShoCkwaVe]

ok, just so you all know I made that lil hunk a junk falcon as my first test
ship in the goal of trying to get my first ship in game.

HERE is what I am attempting to actually "Somehow" work but the poly count is really high & something like 190,029 faces and has crashed my 3d software includng wings,milkshape3d, and even lightray3d.
(((CRaSh DuMP))) Grrrrr!

3ds max is the only 1 that can handle the data on all this detail
but its truely amazing nun the less.

so now im wondering whats the poly count limit? lol

I came across this model from this webite and im doing all of the ones they have "if i can"

If any of you want to see some nice starwars model work head there by clicking here.
http://wolf359a.anet-stl.com/warmesh.html

I converted the mesh from .prj to .3ds then impoted it into wings and it takes 5 mins just to freaking load in ...

and I am on a p4 dual hyperthread and ovreclocking my cpu 2.95Ghz with 512 mb of ram. :S
in other words .. waY TOO much detail here!
even han sits in the cocpit and the landing gears go up & down



ok this is where I am stuck in trying to get my ship to show the picture in the hud. I cant figure out why is doing this but I am assuming I have saved it as a .png the wrong way or something

heres a picture of the problem some1 help!

[ShoCkwaVe]

Han Solo has come to town

see if he can match my schroedinger!

see if his falcon can beat my franklin in a race!

did you here that chewy ??
I Beleive th man challenged us to a race..

(((WraaaAARRRr !! )))

the falcon did the kessel run in under 12 parsecs !!

I look forward to leavng you behind as you see nothing but a
blurrrrrrrrrrrr after my engines kick in !

BRING IT! anYtime .. "Any" solar sector .

OwaiT !! That's assuming I can even figure out how to get the
above mesh to load in. DOH!

download that mesh, **Do all the work for me**
then gimme it so I can Smoke you in a race

[Halleck]

You should look into LOD (level-of-detail) meshes. I hear you can have high-poly LOD's and still use a relatively low-poly model and have it look great and more complex the closer you get to it. Not quite sure how it all works though.

[hellcatv]

that hippie texture is what loads when your hud image isn't power of two

Vega STrike has no poly limit---
if it's got only one texture you're in luck and can use the 3ds2xml script directly
otherwise you should go ahead and use the wings exporter

I strongly recommend using the mesher to convert to bfxm so it loads faster in game

[klauss]

Also, if you're not using a single texture, you should: Try to make it use a single texture. Otherwise, no card will be able to handle that poly count. Most modern cards are so fast that the driver can't handle the load, so by using a single texture you can send the entire mesh in a single (or a few) driver calls: and this saves a lot of CPU time. So, what I'm saying, if you have a bunch of 32x32 (or 128x128) textures, put them all together in, say, a 1024x1024 (or, preferrably, a 512x4096 - since the y dimension is limitless but, on some cards, the x dimension must be smaller than the screen width )
That's called an atlas. Use the atlas. It's good. Mostly if you have that kind of high quality meshes.

Perhaps you should take a look at http://download.developer.nvidia.com/de ... tlases.pdf

[klauss]

And, hellcatv:

What I usually do to support non-power-of-two sprites is to load them inside a bigger texture which is power of two, and scale the texture coordinates of the quad that renders them. That should work fine. Wastes some memory, though. Perhaps it could be added to the low-priority todo list?

[hellcatv]

When you support non-power-of-two textures in GL1.x you lose texture compression-- which gets you 6:1 compression
so even if your texture was 65x65 and you had to store it in 128x128 you'd be better off than an uncompressed 65x65

I think GL2.0 mandates similar treatment of non power of two and power of two˙

[pincushionman]

Yes, I don't see any reason the game _can't_ handle that poly level. BUT it's probably too much to be really useful. You'll want to make several similar meshes varying from really low-poly to one with a whole lot, but not nearly that many.

BUT

With that level of detail, you could make a REALLY good normal map. I think there is work being done to implement normal map support in the future.

[ShoCkwaVe]

ok, I have to figure out how to make my models have only 1 texture then.
I Noticed that all of the meshes have 1 texture chopped up
and placed into a sort of map how is this done exactly?

I have been tryig to figure that one out for a long time...
is there some sort of plugin tool within your 3d software that can
somehow combine all the textures and export them all into 1 map texture?

thats why I could'nt resolve the problem of the ship looking too reflective shiney by making a specularity map... I am using many .jpg's ..
1 for top, 1 for the side.. etc. so thats infact what I have been trying to figure out for the past week.

I have been using 3ds max for a long time now and still find myself saying
... " so thats what that does! " so maybe I should read up some in the texturing tutorials as it is completely frustrating me at this point.

anyways, I sooo thank you guys for helping me in my newb training
I cant tell ya how much your help means. and in the long run I hope it
pays off when I donate my own mod to the community
I have TONS of meshes all star wars type verying from high detailed
people to hangers then all these ships just beging to be added:

thes are the meshes that I will be doing not in any order
all Mostly in extreme detail:

Rebel: A-Wing, B-wing, Y-wing, X-wing, Naboo N1 Starfighter, Mfalcon,
republc cruiser, Blockade Runner Corvette, B-Frigate RC,
calamari cruiser.
Imperial:
Tie Interceptor with pilot ,Tie with pilot, Tie Bomber,
Imperial Shuttle,Star Destroyer, Destroyer Executer,
Death Star

Other: Boba fett's Slave 1

and hope to combine all of them into 1 mind blowing Universe..
So heres the next project just waiting to added to VS