Model Creation Guidelines

Thinking about improving the Artwork in Vega Strike, or making your own Mod? Submit your question and ideas in this forum.

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Ryder P. Moses
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Model Creation Guidelines

Post by Ryder P. Moses »

Everyone keeps talking about the need for 'em, but nobody's put 'em into a single accessible location that can be referred to, and those who oughta actually know insist on referring to various rules that exist only in their minds or to some random dead link instead of any place it's actually practical to refer to. So here's it, until one of yas comes along and does a better one. Since I'm working off of incomplete information, and it seems like a lot of this stuff doesn't even exist in any authoritative form yet, most of this is gonna be me pulling stuff out of my ass or elaborating on stuff I heard. Add/correct/update/bitch as needed.

Technical Spec

Model Filetype: BXFM
Seems to be 'official', although it shouldn't be. The converter crashes like crazy, there's no documentation for any of its features (no information on creating LODs, for example, or even turrets), and the file format is apparently not getting carried over to Ogre. Eventually, something like this will be useful, but right now I'm going to recommend everyone stick to Xmesh anyway.
Xmesh format can be achieved by downloading the Wings export plugin or this crazy OBJ>xmesh converter thing. Or you can just write the bleeding thing by hand in Notepad, if you are insane and a total geometry nerd.
BXFMs can be made by Mesher

Maximal recommended polycount: >4k
Actual technical feasibility ranges from ~4k to ~20k and beyond. But 20K is... incredibly wasteful for anything, you're doing something very wrong if you need that many, so shooting for around 4000 polys maximum is recommended, but exceeding that limit is acceptable. However, anything over 1k polys should have multiple LODs down to the 500-1000 mark.

Texture Sizes: 256x256; 512x512; 1024x1024; 2048x2048
Texture Format: PNG/JPEG
Must be square, apparently, and a factor of two. For simplicity's sake, and to avoid confusing those who failed basic math, I'm keeping it to the four most common resolutions, which should give sufficient range for most normal-sized vehicles. Really really big stations at point-zero range might need something larger, and tiny pieces of space trash might not even warrant a 256x256, but anyone dealing with stuff like that will probably be competent enough to figure out their own sizes.
The format should be self-explanatory; those are the compatible file formats that are actually portable. PNG has alpha maps and is a fatter file; that's the major difference. Animatable textures are possible by writing an .ani file referencing multiple 'frames' of .png or .jpg files (ref. existing game data for how).

Visual Spec

General
Minimal/Maximal scale: 100m-3km
Buggered if I know, I know there's several multi-kilometer ships ingame, and 100m sounded about right for the Plowshares and such. If a ship's gonna be bigger or smaller, such will likely be specified in the design spec.

Confed/HomSec
Dull gray fascist designs, tending strongly toward rounded cubic shapes. Heavily armored, little exposed detail aside from big honking steel(?)plates, UN-style utilitarian decals. Of the two, presumably Homeland Security vehicles are the most actively depressing-looking.

Reference: Okay, so hhalf of the human ships are like this and the rest are mostly white cubes and stuff. But so?

Rlaan

Rounded, segmented designs vaguely evocative of marine life, including those wierd finlike structures they apparently use for propulsion. Large military may have vaguely skeletal shapes, while civilian ships are kinda bulbous. Purple. Scaly.

References: I can't find an "official" one anywhere, and I'm away from the computer that has all the game-data on it. So you get this instead.

Aeran

Single-body construction, lots of fins, rounded shapes blended together smoothly, slick greenish-gray surfaces, use base-3 triangular/prismatic structures as architectural basis in contrast to our base-4 cubes. Engines are just strips of light flush with body.

Reference: ...Aren't they usually green, though?

Highborn

Armed yachts and pleasure craft, construction ethos more oriented around aesthetics or highly formalized 'duels' than any practical concerns or combat usefulness. Sorta the space equivalent of a James Bond Porsche.

Reference:Here.

Purist

The space equivalent of a pickup truck with a gun rack on the back and Confederate flag flying from the antenna. Ugly practical designs built for minimal cost and maximal effectiveness, splashed with lots of ugly decals, cutesy crap, hillbilly slogans, and crude anti-metahuman slurs. Somewhat outdated and second-rate technology is compensated for by sheer number of guns they're willing to bolt onto a single spaceframe.

Reference: Uh.

Forsaken

Crude vehicles made out of... well, any junk that happens to be lying around. Turrets torn from ruined ground assault tanks, hulls built out of old containers welded together, engines handed down from centuries-old colony ships. Generally just look like trashpiles nailed together any old way that works without attention given to form or stability.

Reference: Graaaaaaar!

Mechanists

Sturdy, industrial designs, notably lacking in cockpits or crew habitats.

Reference: Let's pretend there's a rocket coming out the back.

LIHW

Light, angular designs, often like the Robin mimics of other factions' successful vehicles.

Reference: Yes it's mine, and yes it's old and crappy. But it's more or less the idea.


That do?
Last edited by Ryder P. Moses on Thu Dec 29, 2005 11:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Model Creation Guidelines

Post by klauss »

Ryder P. Moses wrote:Model Filetype: BXFM
Seems to be 'official', although it shouldn't be. The converter crashes like crazy...
Only when you do something wrong... believe me. If not, you either have an old version, or Satan at your side.
Ryder P. Moses wrote:Model Filetype: BXFM
...there's no documentation for any of its features (no information on creating LODs, for example, or even turrets), ...
Turrets have nothing to do with bfxm files. That's specified in units.csv, where the statistics and other info about the ship is given. Bfxm files carry only model information (the mesh, material, etc...)
Ryder P. Moses wrote:Model Filetype: BXFM
...and the file format is apparently not getting carried over to Ogre.
True...
Ryder P. Moses wrote:Model Filetype: BXFM
Xmesh format can be achieved by downloading the Wings export plugin...
I'd export to OBJ, and from OBJ then go to XMesh, BFXM or .mesh (Ogre's format - it's the best option, easiest, produces the highest quality models, etc...)
Ryder P. Moses wrote:Model Filetype: BXFM
...or this crazy OBJ>xmesh converter thing.
Ehm... I think that's mesher, but older.
Ryder P. Moses wrote:Texture Sizes (...)Texture Format: (...)
Must be square, apparently, and a factor of eight.
Wrong. Needs not be square, but dimensions (either width or height) must be a power of 2 (only options: 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192... see the pattern? But don't go over 4096... and use 4096 at your own risk - the engine will downsample it most of the time to accomodate less-than-magical hardware).
Ryder P. Moses wrote:Model Filetype: BXFM
PNG has alpha maps and is a fatter file (add: and lossless); that's the major difference.
Ryder P. Moses wrote:Minimal/Maximal scale: 100m-3km
No hard maximum/minimum, but huge sizes bring precision issues ou should be aware of: divide the size by 2^20=1048576, and that's the minimum feature size you can dream of accurately reperesenting. For instance, a 20Km-long ship shouldn't attempt modelling any feature smaller than 2cm (I'd say that's enough - but don't forget).

Ryder P. Moses wrote:Visual Spec
I'll leave that for the Minister of Information (tm).
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Post by Ryder P. Moses »

Really I guess the min/max belongs in visual spec, but it didn't occur to me to fit that in somewhere.

And yes, I most certainly have Satan at my side when it comes to this game. However, that doesn't change the fact that since I have problems with these stages it's quite possible other people do- and there's really no reason modders would need to use the bxfm converter, since all that stuff should work just fine in uncompressed xmesh, right? Why complicate the mod-making process with an unnecessary extra step?
BXFMs are fine for final-product ingame stuff, but there's no final product around yet- throwing them in now just snarls up the conversion and modification chain. And in the next couple builds, all those BXFMs people spent so much time on are going to become useless. So I don't recommend 'em.

Textures thing is edited. Turrets thing... that's next step, a centralized source of tutorials that actually tell people something. I don't know this shit, and I've been digging deep in all the documentation and fiddling with the game for a good while- that should tell you something about how well information is getting distributed by the current setup.
Last edited by Ryder P. Moses on Thu Dec 29, 2005 11:39 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by klauss »

Ryder P. Moses wrote:However, that doesn't change the fact that since I have problems with these stages it's quite possible other people do, and since any model actually going into the official build is going to be taken and poked at by the Official Model People anyway, there's no reason to unnecessarily complicate the process production-side.
Very true.
Handing us models readable by the popular (free) modelling tools, like Wavefront OBJ, Blender, Wings, etc... should be more than enough. We can take care of the conversion. I know I can take care of OBJ/Blender->whatever.
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Post by Ryder P. Moses »

Should we set one of those to official format, then? Makes no difference to me, I just like to take my stuff for a test drive ingame before I distribute it, lets me catch a lot of problems can't necessarily be seen in MAX or Wings- and, of course, what a ship actually does and what it looks like are closely related, so I like to be thorough. Not that that's worked for me lately...

Also, doesn't OBJ not handle quads? Bleah.
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Post by klauss »

Well... mesher usage for converting blender-exported OBJ into bfxm files:
(works the same if target is xmesh, so make your choice):

First, export the .OBJ. Make sure material names make sense to you, because you'll have to edit the material file by hand.
Now, open the .obj file with a text editor. Find the lines that say:

Code: Select all

usemat <filename>
and delete them all. Be careful not to be confused with the ones that say

Code: Select all

usemtl <material name>
Actually, I'm not even sure of that. The trick is to delete the ones referencing files and not material names (delete the ones referencing files).

Now, open the .mtl file, and add the texture lines to each material (it should be easily readable).
MAP_KD = diffuse
MAP_KE = glow
MAP_KS = specmap/ppl reflection
MAP_KA = damagemap (I know, doesn't make much sense).

You can omit any texture, of course, if you don't use one.

Now, you're set. Use mesher:

Code: Select all

mesher <input .obj> <output .bfxm> obc
Or...

Code: Select all

mesher <input .obj> <output .xmesh> oxc
And that's it.
If you don't see the model correctly lit or textured (odd, since I fixed that in CVS - use the mesher in CVS), you may need to either flip normals (add -flipn), or texture coordinates ( -flips or -flipt ).
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Post by klauss »

Ryder P. Moses wrote:Should we set one of those to official format, then?
I'd set blender as official, but we really can't.
Rather, I'd say blender, wavefront obj, or wings, those seem to be the most devly supported tools.
MAX is out of the question. I don't think any dev can afford (a legal copy of) MAX, and there aren't many tools (or any reliable one) for converting its files to something manageable.
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Post by Ryder P. Moses »

Which is why Xmesh is a nice compromise. Everyone who can do anything useful for the project at all can get to it one way or another, and it doesn't have the problems of proprietary formats like OBJ or 3DS.

We all have our preferred programs- you don't have MAX and like Blender, I use MAX and wouldn't touch the OBJ format with a ten-foot pole. But Xmesh is kinda the basis of the entire modding effort, so it bypasses all program-based problems.
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Post by Halleck »

XMESH files are ultra slow to load- BFXM files are compiled, and therefore load faster and support multiple xmeshes with LODs. So no, I wouldn't consider xmesh the best format.

This argument is moot, though, since we will be moving to .mesh anyway. Also, it seems as if jackS prefers different formats for different purposes (with BFXM and .mesh being classified as 'presentation' formats).

By the way, the definitive model guideline page is here: http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/wiki/ ... Guidelines
Evidently, OBJ is the preferred source format at the moment.
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Post by klauss »

Nice. Made some changes.
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Post by Paslowo »

Actually, my models are usually around 1k along with some sexy textures.
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Post by Ryder P. Moses »

Halleck: Cool; I never saw that.


Paslowo: Same here; that's really all one should need given quads and good textures. But the option for more is nice.


'Course, the part that was supposed to help me, the aesthetic spec, still ain't solved. But eh, at least there's progress.
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