^ - -^ Origin's original documentation.

Discuss the Wing Commander Series and find the latest information on the Wing Commander Universe privateer mod as well as the standalone mod Wasteland Incident project.
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

AzureSky wrote:You might want to talk to John Cordell first; I think some of the new screens for PGG were rendered from 3d studio files.
I want to model full interiors, though; not just the parts that are visible when looking in the right direction. My intent is to have real time 3D bases, not renders. As for modelling, it would take no time at all, anyways. The real work is with texturing. What I'm thinking of doing is using dual uv's in Blender: uv-map from view, with a closely matched view, apply the original screen; then another uv-map using orthogonal projections, and have blender generate the latter texture from the projected; to use that as a basis for the real texturing work.
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Post by Kangaroo »

Grand! Should I start immediatley? I'd pesonally like to start with the one in the attachment.
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

Hey, Kang! Yeah, go for Oxford, or with whatever you have the inspiration for. We'll need it all: Interiors, exteriors, Priv and WC. Well, the Priv stations are pretty good as they are, but I meant like the landings and stuff: those exteriors. I'm still working on the power-of-two scaling part of the software. I hope I'll get it working today. I'm getting close to finishing writing code and start testing. If it works like I hope it will, should make high quality, hi rez pics out of lo-rez ones. I'll start testing it with privateer and WC screens, in fact.
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Post by Dilloh »

If the interiors will be retextured, they'll look great! I wonder if the pics will be usable for everybody, or if they'll be limited to the author's permission like in Gemini Gold. I'm asking because I'm looking for artwork to implement into Parallel Universe, and therefor into Privateer Remake 1.2.
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Post by Kangaroo »

What I've done today (so far 2,9k polys)
Don't know about others' work, but I want mine to be under GPL.
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Post by snow_Cat »

^ - -^ not bad.
^- - ^ just to show that I've not been completely idle.
  • The Hha'ifra, Prince Thrakhath's flagship
    Image Image Image Image Image Image
  • Barracks,TCS Concordia.
    Image Image Image Image Image
^- - ^ Remaining data from WC2 will be posted upon my completion of the first episode; then I'll skip ahead to Privateer.

edit:
^ - -^ on second thought I'll just post sets of images once I have them in context, more interesting for me that way. Also, some (8-30 kB) images have broken (1-8 MB) thumbnails, those have been linked directly.
^- - ^ sets of images are in GIF containers because Firefox no longer supports MNG, PSD/PSP/UFO, UGA, AVI, MOV, FLC, FLI/FLX, MPG, etc... as browser-embedded types... no we need to get third party extensions for each of those... ^ - -^ or alter the headers slightly and have the mutant files magically work.

^ - - ^ Apologies to persons using IE or Simg, some GIF files are human compressed and therefore unreadable. I refer you to the afore-mention broken thumbnail issue before you complain why; And point to the fact that the thumbnails are reduced in resolution and machine compressed.

^- - ^ Interesting, PhotoBucket seems to have altered the headers in the GIF files I've uploaded, creating a strobe effect. I'll have to look at this carefully as it seems to have also changed the frame times.
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Post by DualJoe »

Ah nice screens snow_cat, appreciate the effort especially after doing my own research and emulator screencaptures for wc1.

Kangeroo there's a new modifier in blender for projecting images onto your scene. You select a camera apply the modifier with an image and it turns the camera into a projector. Using the new baking feature you can just bake the resulting texture. Doesn't mean you can't just make your own textures from scratch though.
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

@Dilloh: Of course interiors will be textured, --bumpmapped and lightmapped too. The trick will be getting the engine adapted for 3D interirors. We'll have to cross that bridge when we get there.

@Kangaroo: So, how's it coming along? Working on the Oxford bar?

@Snow Cat: Animations! Amazing. Which TCS Concordia is that? I suppose it's the second one, right? The Confederation class?

@DualJoe: Good to know; so one doesn't need to use dual UV's, any more, to get a baking from a projection?
This is precisely why I'm working on this software; I want to be able to do ultra high quality texture scalings, so as to project a really high rez texture on a scene, to get a decent baking.

Still working on the software; I'm debugging now; getting some pretty weird numbers in some places; bug somewhere...
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Post by Kangaroo »

@Dual: Thanks for the tip. The textures I have there are just procedurals.

@Chuck: Yes, I chose Oxford bar (I assume Oxford is a planet :) ). I haven't done anything more yet, and probably won't today, I need to do some schoolwork.
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

Ah, you haven't played Privateer yet! Yes, Oxford is a university planet. You should play Privateer Remake through to get familiar with its bases. When you land in Oxford, you see your ship on like a big airport with a hangar behind, and a train up on a hill on the upper right. You click on the train, and it starts moving along; then you see like a university park from a high perspective, with a train station at the bottom of the screen, the square plaza in the middle; an ivi-covered, old building at the top, being the library; a tent-like building on the right that is the commodities exchange; little houses on the left, including the bar (you worked on) and the Merchants' and Mercenaries' Guilds. Would be nice to model it all so you could see the train approaching the station from above, and as the doors open, the camera returns to the player's eyes, --first person perspective-- getting off the train and onto the platform; and then you could walk off the platform, and from there to the park or to the buildings, --or just click on a building for a shortcut.
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Post by snow_Cat »

^ - -^ *reading* ... meow.

^ - - ^ Yes, that is the barracks from the Confederation class Concordia;
^ - -^ Though I have neglected a few barrack sets because I have let my files into disarray.

^- - ^ It will be a while before I get around to mining Privateer.


^ - - ^ bragging:
^- - ^ The animations (Hha'fra) and trucks (not uploaded) are unique; that is to say that they are not stored in any of the WC2 (1992) files as they have been 'optimized' for accumulative playback.
^- - ^ The [currently] uploaded files are my first attempts at establishing a method to 'extract' these images and show how poorly my technique was in their glitches, irregular commenting, and excessive size.
on the subject of 'Methodology for extracting animations from WingCommander II' Snow_Cat wrote:
  1. capture avi-screenshot from game
  2. extract raw data using HCl's WCNav from gamedat
    • twice because I am too lazy to fix the no-true-transparency issue
  3. import into Ulead GIF Animator and use palette editor to make backgrounds 'transparent'
    • twice for each set of images
    1. merge both data sets w/ transparencies
    2. break into elements
    3. import 'key frame' from avi
    4. position layers
    5. create background from layers
    6. generate frames
    7. remove 'background' from frames using complex colour mapping
    8. save
  4. at some point in the process realize you have accidentally over written the wrong file
  5. attempt back stepping
  6. after a futile effort delete the whole mess
  • repeat
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

Wow, Snow Cat; that's a lot of work! Hopefully my little software will be able to make really high quality 4x scalings of a lot of this extracted stuff. See neigboring thread, "texturizer".

Kangaroo, sorry I had not seen your attachment for some reason. Looks gorgeous. Only problem I see is the bar is not the same shape as the original. Well, it doesn't need to be, but it would be nice if it feels like exactly the same place. Also, the positioning of tables and chairs. Thing is, when there's fixers in the front tables (or in the back tables too), the original game reuses some of them, and the positions of the fixers are fixed, so all the bars have the bar, tables and chairs in matching locations.
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Post by snow_Cat »

^- - ^ so...?
^ - -^ every bar in Privateer is essentially operated by one syndicate that has prescribed a standard format for every chair, table, counter top and patron:
^- -^ Under penalty of death ?
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

snow_Cat wrote:^- - ^ so...?
^ - -^ every bar in Privateer is essentially operated by one syndicate that has prescribed a standard format for every chair, table, counter top and patron:
^- -^ Under penalty of death ?
Well,
I wrote:it doesn't need to be, but it would be nice
I've long experience with WC fans that want nothing at all changed. It's not my policy; I do want to change things, if they are going to improve the game, but where there's no overriding concerns, I'd rather have things be as close to the original as possible.
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Post by snow_Cat »

chuck_starchaser wrote: ...[change] nothing at all ...
snow_cat wrote:... Under penalty of death [!]
^- - ^ WC fans are very much like star-trek fans in that regard.
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

Snow_Cat wrote:^- - ^ WC fans are very much like star-trek fans in that regard.
I agree. I once called the hardcore ones "Retros", and the label was gaining popularity, and ended up getting banned from the CIC for it. Don't underestimate the Retros, ...
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Post by Kangaroo »

I downloaded Privateer 1.2 and will play it for some time to understand the whereabouts of the game. Need to pick some information about the background.
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Post by Shissui »

chuck_starchaser wrote:Don't underestimate the Retros, ...
However, shooting retros is great for making fast improvements in your public relations.

[Edit: This message transformed me from a "bounty hunter" to a "confed special operative".
This advice is therefore strictly off the record!]
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Post by snow_Cat »

^- - ^ I've been truant, busy with other goals.

^ - -^ I've been trying to get HCl's WCNav to open my blahSHP.pak files without crashing. Evidently blahSHP.pak files consist of .shp files; who 'ave guessed, given blahPAL.pak files consist of .pal files.

^- - ^ So I've been hand-unpacking the .shp files and trying to match palettes and scenes together, neglecting the data in the blahPAK.iff which contains the proper files names tidily stored in interchange file format, for reasons unknown.

< . .> ...
^- - ^ Also, contrary to what you may have seen on another forum in a 'picture Snow Cat thread' NSF(me) I am a male who is not into S&M.
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

Nice to see you back, snow cat. No, I never saw that thread you mention; and can't find it either :D. Sorry, I once, long ago, had a suspicion you were female, for some reason; but later I changed my mind.

Just thought I'd try my scaler on a texture other than Lynch...

Image

Image

Gonna make it much easier to model and texture ships, to have these tiny screenies enlarged... Just got to implement batch mode, but I need some kind of directory browsing library, to traverse a tree of folders and enlarge everything.
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Post by snow_Cat »

^ - -^ not bad.

^- - ^ The whole 'I am a guy' thing is wearing thin,
^ - -^ even in person there are girls who I am unable to modestly convince of this truth.
^. .,^ And others who immodestly assert that I am not.

^ - -^ moving on.

^ - -^ I will start uploading the sets for Privateer as soon as I have them unpacked.
^- -'^ And the rumours of 'nude' sprites are not greatly exaggerated; it is standard (and good) practice to draw nude figures then 'hang' clothes off of them.
^ - -^ Sadly (probably due to time constraints) Privateer shipped with ancillary sprites that only had their clothes painted on using false colours.
<- - > Though- The many 'juggling' demonstrations have another reason altogether-

^ - -^ This is also why early distributions of WC1 have subliminally etched Spirit into the psyche of geeks everywhere in the second between loading her, and her clothes.

^ - - ^ That being said, if people start pestering me for 'nude pics' I'll start with the men.
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Post by Kangaroo »

Sorry, folks, I couldn't have imagined how much information I have missed in school during my injury. The fact that exams are coming doesn't bother me, but now other problems are growing like mushrooms after rain for me. And yeah, I've been very lazy lately.

Well, here is an improved table layout. I've noticed something weird in the source image - I just couldn't match it's perspective with my own. More then that, this render was done with a lens of 26 degrees.
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

Perfect! You're probably right that perhaps there's inconsistencies to the perspective; the bases are just hand paintings, after all.

EDIT:I notice your render is 1024 x 600. That's a 128 : 75 aspect ratio, or 1.7066666666666666666666666666667. The original is 320 x 200, or 8 : 5, or 1.6... Could that be it? Try rendering to some 8:5 ratio, like 800 x 500.

EDIT: Made a color-enhanced and scaled pic of the original, for texturing inspiration or whatever it's worth, here:
Image
I can't do any better with so much noise in the original. Well, I could try and implement a despeckling front end...
But you could still try projecting that from the camera, then baking a texture, and use it as background in Gimp. You could also bake one with your procedural textures and then combine them with Gimp. I imagine you could make grayscale procedurals, bake them, then bake the projected texture, and overlay its bake on top of the procedural bake with "color" blend mode.
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Post by Kangaroo »

Chuck, Blender doesn't stretch the renders because of aspect ratio, but yeah, I'll use 8:5 next time. Thanks for the picture too, it'll be a good replacement for the original.

If I understand right, the geometry and the projectable image should match if I want to bake textures?

By the way, I have no clue about the dark shade under the chairs nearest to the camera (on the left side). That shade doesn't make any sense to me. Does anyone else think that it's out of place?
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

Kangaroo wrote:If I understand right, the geometry and the projectable image should match if I want to bake textures?
Roughly. If you use camera projection, as Dual Joe was suggesting, yes, you need a perfect match. But if you use dual UV's to do the projection, you can put the texture as background on the UV edit window, and then manually tweak the projected geometry to match the background texture.
By the way, I have no clue about the dark shade under the chairs nearest to the camera (on the left side). That shade doesn't make any sense to me. Does anyone else think that it's out of place?
I noticed that too. Well, my theory is that they must have originally put a table there, and then decided to delete it, or something along the lines. Possibly they first thought of having the player meet fixers at Oxford's bar, so they thought they needed a table, but later changed their minds and had you meet Masterson at the library. I'm just guessing, but probably right: That must be the shadow of a table that was going to be above that section of floor, in front of the nearest chairs; but in the end they never made you meet any fixers at the Oxford bar, so they never put the table in there.
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