Vega Strike Forums

I've been tampering with adding ships, and I've gotten to this point (some of you may recognise the basic shape ).



How do I go about adding a texture(s), engine glows, lights etc to it?

Also, how do I set where the guns, missiles etc are mounted (or, more accurately, where the lasers will visibly come from)?

Thanks in advance.

All mounts, subunits, docks and engine torches are set in .../data/units/units.csv - and you really can turn mount models on, it's just that most of them need a rebuild due to horribly wrong scale and/or orientation.

Having looked around, I think I'm going to need to get used to 3DSMax again. I'd been using Sketchup to make models because of the simpler way to paint things, but it really doesn't like transferring into Obj in a way that lets the textures port across (don't know why...).

It's a shame you can't use ALO models instead of bfxm. Just stick a bone on the original model, and then attach (and rotate, reisze etc) any mounts using XML.

The majority of the 3d work for VS was done with blender. 3DS Max should work though but it is easier to find modeling tutorials for VS work for blender. I think most of what you need is in the art forum.

In my experience, Blender and Gimp are a great combination for making ships in VS. VS apparently only uses .dds format images, and Gimp has a plug-in that allows you to export to .dds. Save in one of the compressions, usually the top-most one (I can't remember off hand what it's called but it has a 1 at the end of it. =\ ) Make sure to turn on mip-mapping, as VS won't display the texture unless it contains mip-maps.

Second, in Blender after you have made sure you've got your UV mapping right, export the model into .obj format, like you have done, but inside the .mtl file, that's where you tell VS what textures to use. This is how I do it:

BLAHBLAHBLAH
BLAHBLAHBLAH
NUMBERSNUMBERSNUMBERS
NUMBERSNUMBERSNUMBERS

map_Kd ship_DIF.dds <-- diffuse texture
map_Ks ship_SPEC.dds <-- specular texture
map_Ke ship_EMIT.dds <-- glow map
map_normal ship_NOR.dds <-- normal map

Then, after you have edited and saved your .mtl file, you convert using Mesher into .bfxm, then into .xmesh, then back into .bfxm (why? I have no idea! =D ) It should be noted, that I always rename my .dds files into .jpg files. Why I do this, I have no idea...but it's what all the other contributors have done with VS files, so I guess I have no choice. =D

Hopefully this helps a little!

Dan

actually all dds, jpg, and png files are saved in either .image or .texture now and last I checked there was no need to convert to xmesh unless you need to edit the mesh for some reason or another.

Ahh! Good to know. =)

Also, please do not put "<--- diffuse textures" and whatnot in the .mtl file. Who knows what will happen to poor computer?