FACTIONALIZING EXISTING SHIPS

[Oblivion]

Thank You!! Thank You!! For Those Files!

Can you share any special techniques for how you made the Rlaan, Aeran (and Human too possible) textures? I know it was a long way back, but anything at all would really help other modles stick to your style in modelling.

Your ships are actually going to be the standards, and it's actually kinda difficult to imitate them . Please if it's not that much trouble.

Thanks A Lot!

EDIT:..Too bad they didn't make it tho.. I'll try to recreate some of these if I can.

EDIT: I'm weeping... Why did the leo never make it? HED, we're both in max, do you have ANY, ANY remnants of those files...? probably not. But really TERRIFIC modelling and texturing.

[Oblivion]

Okay, I've finished linking up Damage maps, and standardizing the PPL maps for the Rlaan ships (I mean, adding colors to the PPL, instead of the previous mostly-white.

folders are here.

need these committed please.

Note:

Please also change the units.csv entry to point to the appropriate file name.

The shield meshes (if present) are also renamed, so please keep that in mind.

The meshes are now converted correctly (LOD's not anymore being included but correctly appended).

RLAAN SHIPS
Compare the previous and current file sizes to be sure, tho.
http://www.filecage.net/download.php?fi ... 469bc8458b
ruizong
http://www.filecage.net/download.php?fi ... afae33e0f5
shizu
http://www.filecage.net/download.php?fi ... e7a7e95180

taizong

http://www.filecage.net/download.php?fi ... 8be373ebce
shundi
http://www.filecage.net/download.php?fi ... 2c77d9a465
zhuangzong

NOTE:

The hud images show weird aliasing ingame. I did not change them, so I may need to render new alpha mapped hud images for these ships.



Also did some rework of the ejection pod:

EJECT
changed the ppl a bit in accordance to JackS will.
http://www.myfileupload.net/download.ph ... bc040cb77b

only the PPL is changed. BFXM remains eject.bfxm tho the maps have been renamed to ejectpod.

Also I've been working on stations and these files are ready.. I think. I'm confused by their directories and whatnot but I managed to change what needs changing in the units.csv.

The glowmaps are applied correctly as well as the PPL and DMG now, but have a look at it ingame here:



Added some glowmaps to the mining base. STill WIP. But looks better ryt?

glomaps now added correctly linked to the following stations




PPL looks too shiny, but otehrwise okay for the medical base



The basic change is that the glowmpas now glow more brightly.


WARNING: DO NOT COMMIT THESE STATIONS YET!
I just would liek to know if I did something wrong with these files. As stations differ significantly from ships. Suggestions on handling stations?

Does it still follow the FACTION_UNIT rule?
Please take the time to DL these and test them ingame and/or break down my reworked mesh files and see if I did something wrong..
http://www.filecage.net/download.php?fi ... f946230c59
Relay

miningbase
http://www.filecage.net/download.php?fi ... 3114f8a90a
fighter barrracks
http://www.filecage.net/download.php?fi ... 7dea7f3951
medical
http://www.filecage.net/download.php?fi ... b84419b4e1


And a Bonus.

A proposed New Icon for VS (Which I noticed is using an icon with a ship that doesn't exist in VS)

http://www.filecage.net/download.php?fi ... 5a5ed92621

Well. I'll post with more ships and others next time.

[Howard Day]

What Version of max you running?

[Oblivion]

3dsmax 5.1 .... or something, lol.

[klauss]

Interesting resolution choice for the bases.
So... you use the 2k version for glow, 1k for base, 0.5k for ppl.
Did you try 2k base maps? They look really great. They only take a while longer to load.

Oh... and open your vegastrike.config, search for "reflaction", and change it to "reflection" - it was a typo that messed up a nice lighting effect. You'll see new PPL stuff with it.

Ehm... BTW: stations too use the FACTION_NAME scheme. All units do. Even mountpoints. Just bolts and beams don't, AFAIK, and I'm not certain about sparks.

What else... for stations you may want to use all the higher-res artwork, and have LODs. I've been toying with that and without some work it can't be used as it skyrockets loading times, but it's really good-looking and could be left as an option. So... if you want to humor me, you could have two bfxms: one with high-quality textures (upper-res + LODded), and one with only low-quality textures (mid-res, no LOD).

The idea?

High Quality: Mesh uses blah_high.png for all textures, balanced according to content, obviously. If a station had 2k versions of all, you'd use 2k diffuse, glow, damage and ppl maps. That's for LOD0 (top level). LOD1 uses a simpler mesh, same textures. LOD2 uses an even simpler mesh, and downsampled textures: blah_low.png - diffuse/dmg at 256x256, ppl at 128x128, glow too at 128x128 (or no glow, if it's only windows).

Normal Quality: Mesh uses normal mesh-LODs, but all textures are the same: blah.png. Base/dmg/ppl/glow at 1k at most, balanced according to content (that is, some may be downsamplable without information loss).

Separate unit.csvs could be mantained according to detail level selection, pointing to one mesh or the other.
The result is that you get über looks up close, but when stations are far away they use the smaller textures and thus don't use up all the VRAM.
The problem is that both sets need to be loaded in ordinary RAM, so load times skyrocket. I've used the scheme with the GTIO, and worked great (load times don't skyrocket as much since the GTIO doesn't have 2k textures - for ships, I'd say any ship with 1k or more should use the technique by default).
Just think of it: 1k dif + 1k dmg + 1k ppl + 1k glow = 8MB (compressed in VRAM), but 1/4k dif + 1/4k dmg + 1/8k ppl + 1/8k glow = 320k (compressed in VRAM). That's orders of magnitude more efficient, and there's only so many ships/stations you can have onscreen at a distance that forces the use of high-quality maps. So that way you drastically optimize (video) memory usage.

[Oblivion]

actually it was HED's idea I think (HED still the one who modelled those stations?). It's the way the maps were I think when I stumbled upon them in the twisty twisty rocky road of the VS units folder.

2k basemaps, you can easily do that, especially with the master files thoughtfully provided by the modeller (hey, why not include some documentation among the models. like a small text document listing the makers, would help in asking questions later )

two bfxms: one with high-quality textures (upper-res + LODded), and one with only low-quality textures (mid-res, no LOD).

umm, that would really fatten the VS units folder size. How about doing it the way of factional textures?

i.e. add another tag to the maps, like Hi_pirates_dirgePPL.png and Lo_pirates_dirgePPL.png?


OH EDIT:

You mean this can become a VS setting? Players could choose between

a)faster load times and mid-quality unLODded models.
that is - Normal Quality?

b)slower loading times, fully scaled LODs and corresponding maps (top level meshes with 2k maps, next LOD at lower res, the next at lower still, and so on..), and better performance(?) ?
that is - High quality?

hmmm... okay will try it. Anything you say boss! will try it and post two bfxm's next time... I'm unsure as to how to make the LOD's tho..

Mesher automatically generates lod's right?

[jackS]

actually it was HED's idea I think (HED still the one who modelled those stations?). It's the way the maps were I think when I stumbled upon them in the twisty twisty rocky road of the VS units folder.

FYI, the stations pictured above would be Strangelet's work.

hmmm... okay will try it. Anything you say boss! will try it and post two bfxm's next time... I'm unsure as to how to make the LOD's tho..

Mesher automatically generates lod's right?

Nope. Afraid not. Making good LODs is still an art and not an automation.

[klauss]

Ogre has auto-lod generation, and I probably could try to use Ogre's tool to "fake" obj->bfxm autolod.

But it doesn't work that well, so I don't think it's that useful, and so I don't think it's worth the work either.

About LODs, where the transition to lower-res lays is a tweakable point, highly dependant on the model. When you know the on-screen size in pixels, you can easily make that judgement, so it's a no-brainer.

More than one texture-lod, though, doesn't work that well.
Anyway, if you're unsure as to how to assemble that, take a look at the GTIO in SVN - de-bfxm it into an XMesh and take a look at the LOD structure.

(BTW: using the faction-ish naming scheme crossed my mind, but it has some implementation problems: the combinations explode a bit, and so it could harm texture loading times even if the feature isn't used, I've seen it happen in Priv1.2 with uncached sprites - THE best option would be to add a flag to bfxms specifying the presence of an optional hi-detail texture dataset, but that would be dataset-breaking. All in all, the best compatible way was two bfxms, and it adds the possibility of using higher-quality meshes also, though we don't have any).

[Oblivion]

I'll try to use 3dsmax's optimize function, though it messes up the uv mapping a lot. But well, it wouldn;t matter that much if the station is too small to discern and the map is a merely 256x256 anyway.

Sorry haven't yet tried it. I'll start with something smaller. Two fiestas in a row is bad for work, lol. The last time it was the feast of San Agustin, the patron of Valencia, now its the feast of San Vicente Ferrer the patron of our town and the neighboring (actually a submunicipality) university town... but the dates vary, our fiesta always fall on Sept 15, their fiesta always fall on the nearest sunday to Sept. 15.. 2 fiestas... gurkk...

Still got a hangover..

GTIO uv mapping corrdinates do not carry over when I convert it to obj and import it to wings, or blender, or max. dunno why... . I'll try it again tho. WHAT does GTIO mean anyway? The model is great but the engines look too much like turbines...

Got time tomorrow and I'll try it with the human mining base.. btw. Klauss would you like this feature for stations only or would you like it for ships too? Planets...

[jackS]

WHAT does GTIO mean anyway?

Look up what GTO stands for, and I bet you'll be able to guess what the I stands for in the context of a "Muscle Ship".

[klauss]

WHAT does GTIO mean anyway?

Look up what GTO stands for, and I bet you'll be able to guess what the I stands for in the context of a "Muscle Ship".

Still no clue.

BTW: It would apply to ships, but differently. As I stated before, only if the ship has a >=1024x1024 texture, otherwise it's not worth it.

[Oblivion]

argh. The "free time" got eaten by some last-minute assignments dumped on our laps. And I'm in the middle of our pre-finals this week. But will try my best.

Okay, ships too.. tho The large ones mostly have 512x512 maps making them a bit indistinct on the details on close-up, but I'll see if I can modify them a bit in the process (and YES, I'll keep back-ups, lol).

Re: GTO

hmmm.

Gran Turismo Omologato? surely not?
It's the nearest to the "Luxury Racer" context of GTIO.


Something about Ground-To-Orbit probably?

now "I" would not fit... interstellar,
interplanetary,
insane,
innocious,
innocent,
increasingly-inane-guesses

Now, that's a mystery that's going to bug me for days.