Mesh animations, glow/damage maps and then some...

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tiny paintings
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Mesh animations, glow/damage maps and then some...

Post by tiny paintings »

Quite frankly, I've got a load of questions :)

* "Mesh animations" - are they possible today? If so - how?
I'm not necessarily speaking about meshes with multiple frames (which would be nice as well) but also just being able to translate and rotate entities.
What I'd like to have is scriptable "mesh animations" - i.e. I'd like to add hatchenclosed pits that open and raise the turrets inside when they are needed, satellite dishes that rotate to face their target, slidedoors that slide open to let out departing ships, gun-barrels that recoil, ... you get the picture.
IMO that would totally kick ass (eyecandy wise at least) :)

* Glow/damage maps - how do they work, more specifically?
Should the glow map just be a texture that's transparent except for "the glowing parts"?
I added a damage map to a turret I made. The damage map was just a variant of its texture with some scorches painted on it - I expected it to be faded in over its original texture or something like that, but I couldn't see any difference.

* Normal or bump maps.
The wiki says normal maps will eventually be supported - confirmation? Does anybody know for when the feature is planned?
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Post by hellcatv »

if you want a rotating thing you can export 2 meshes and use the subunit interface to make them work... roating items must be nammed accessory


you can also export your ship with 100 frames as 100 .obj files... and then there are tools we have which can probably weave them together--it'd be a bit tricky but for a nice enough model we'd consider it ;-)


The glow map is a map that has no transparency channel but is pure RGB... the brighter it is, the brighter your model will be regardless of the light in the system.... it adds on to the rest of the mesh...

as for the damage map--it indeed fades in as the ship takes *hull* damage... perhaps you had only taken armor damage when you looked at it

also it may not work perfectly at the moment--we're in the middle of considering an engine rewrite--so don't worry about it too much....
just pretend the texture has an alpha that approaches 1 as the ship gets hull damage---

eventually it will only fade in where the actual shots hit if I get my wishes

bumpmaps/normalmaps
we really hope to support these by the end of summer--- I can't believe how much summer has passed already without these things--but I'm still hoping :-)
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jackS
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Post by jackS »

so, if you want sensor arrays to track targets, that's pretty easy, and if you want spinny things that aimlessly spin - that's also pretty easy.

If you want intelligent scripting of mesh animations, while possible, as described above, it's too painful at the moment for us to really reccomend.

Bump maps are worth doing because we _know_ they'll be supported, even if they aren't right now.

For interesting mesh animations, wait until after the next major engine revision, OGRE or otherwise, as we won't be settling what needs to be done for our animation formats until then.
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Post by tiny paintings »

jackS wrote:so, if you want sensor arrays to track targets, that's pretty easy, and if you want spinny things that aimlessly spin - that's also pretty easy.
I'm still clueless of how to actually do that, but knowing it can be done is very reassuring! Thanks!
Is there anywhere I can look, learn and copy? I don't think I've seen any subunits moving except turrets (on a side note, are their AI coded in the negine or in python? If it is in python I guess I can tweak their behaviour to suit my needs).

EDIT: Been searching the forums a bit more and think I found out how to make them spin aimlessly. I will try it when I get back home. Directions on making subunits track targets or similar is still accepted though.

@hellcatv:
Thanks a lot! :)
I guess it's the engines fault my damage maps weren't showing then, damn you ;) I'm pretty sure they took hull damage since they blew up before I gave up trying to spot scorches :)

I'll see if I can add the glow/damage map information to the wiki since it seems to be missing.
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Post by MamiyaOtaru »

To make a subunit that tracks targets, you could try making a turret without any guns ;)
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Post by tiny paintings »

MamiyaOtaru wrote:To make a subunit that tracks targets, you could try making a turret without any guns ;)
Hey, that's a good idea! Not exactly what I was looking for since it will track the turret target, but that should look neat too. I might try it out... :)
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