Proposed Model for a Docking Bay

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Oblivion
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Proposed Model for a Docking Bay

Post by Oblivion »

Tried to follow Klauss's suggetsions when texturing big things, so anotehr experiment. Not yet finished (The rorqual is not abandoned, but will be retextured sometime after I finish setting up factional colors)

I plan to animate the textures of this stuff. Is that possible?
The displayscreens and some running lights inside the dock.

Take note: Most of the small parts share a texture. the hull, anotehr texture and etc. The viewscreen and dock each have their own textures in preparation for animation.

I'll make the small parts (mesh and textures) available as additional greebles for otehr modellers when I finish this.

I'll test it ingame sometime this weekend.

Image
Image
Image
Image
Image
Image

Aint the dock cool? 8) lol

Here're are brighter renders of the same stuff:
Image
Image

Note schroedingers for scale:

PLANS FOR THIS:

This can function as a stand-alone model, but it's best integrated into really large stations as a docking area for small ships. Like the harbor station.

Feel free to use it anywhere in your own models, As soon as its finished. :roll: Still have to factionalize ships..
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Oblivion
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Post by Oblivion »

Okay The meshes first:

There are lots of meshes here, and it remains a question wether ahve to merge them or not.

VIEWSCREEN - 2 kind. Small and Big and each with its own texture.
TURRET SPUR - Map shared with the ramp and DOCK FLAG
DOCK FLAG
RAMP
Image
Above is a sample of a single map in use for 3 greeble objects.
MAIN HULL - has its own map, with proportions tweaked. So detailed areas ahve a larger unwrapped surfaces.

1)Here is the texture for the screen. I plan to change it to show different ads. or even animate it to show changing screens and only one .ani texture. Yet how do I do it so they will not change at teh same time, and will this take a lot of processing time?

Image

2)Another texture I plan to animate. Notice the arrows alterante in glowing in the 2 maps? I plan to create an ani file for these 2. Is this possible/feasible?

Image
Image
3) And (NOT POSTED) I also plan to include their glow maps of course, and more if possible, for the animations. Is this possible? How?
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Post by Kangaroo »

Glowmaps can be applied in xmesh, (not desirable though, smoothing data gets lost there) and in the .mtl file, under the line map_kd <diffuse texture name> write a line map_ks <glowmap texture name>. The Hornet thread has some information about this too, if you want. Don't know about the animations, though.

Do you have any special techniques for making hull textures? I am just wondering how can you make such great models in such short time.
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Post by Oblivion »

AAARGH!!!!!!! :evil:

POSTING ERROR!!!!

Sorry Kangaroo22, I had outlined an overview of my workflow, and it was quite lengthy.. Only to encounter the Cannot Find PAge error when I pressed the submit button... :cry:

Okay I already know about how to apply glowmaps.

The question was for animating glowmaps along with the other maps. :wink: thanks anyway.

promise tho, i'll post a short tutorial of how I work here (mostly the texturing part) next time. ;)
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Post by Kangaroo »

:oops:

Misunderstood your question. :roll:

I think that placing the light animations like blink.ani, but modified to be anything you want (numbers, pictures, ads, etc) woulnd't eat that much cpu as an animated glowmap.

Well, that would be a long job on the other side.
Sorry, Oblivion, can't help you in any other way.
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Post by klauss »

Animated anything takes up as much memory as all frames in it, but not really, as only one of them needs to be on the GPU anytime. But... if not all of them may be at the same time in GPU memory (video memory), then swapping will be required, and it is a slowdown.

If it's worth the trouble, go ahead, but never animate (as in a few FPS) a huge texture, always small ones. For low animation FPS, you may be able to animate 256x256 textures - but that's about it. I wouldn't even try with bigger ones. Well... maybe 512x512... but sparingly.
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Oblivion
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Post by Oblivion »

okay, the map was 512x512.. maybe in the future then.

BTW: Glowmaps can't be included in the animation?

@Kangaroo:

I use premade metal textures most of the time, I use inkscape for the hull lines, then use a graphics editting tool with layer options to create the glowmaps, specmaps, and whatnot.

I neglected to bring with me the sample texture, and I'm a bit tired today.. ;)

Basically the reason why I finish models so quickly is that I don't finish them. lol

well.. I get tired quickly of working on one model so I need to finish it rapidly. :wink:
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Post by Kangaroo »

Ahh, Inkscape...

I used only Gimp's path tool :roll:
Now I got it.

Then you must have a big metal texture library. 8)
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Post by Oblivion »

Nope, actually I use the basic metal texture I used in the Hawking Model (Did you DL that?) It contained a grey almost black metal map, I use that (using layer transparency of course) over and over for each face of the map (NOTE: Not the entire map, but EACH face), so you get nice details on each. Then I add the windows and stuff. Inkscape is a bit easier since adding lines and stuff is easier, much like in plain old MSpaint *which I miss sorely).

Here's a weird thing:

I only learned how to use GIMP's path tool yesterday... :oops: hehe.

My metal library is not that extensive but enough, I think. And of course you can always re-use VS's textures, tho not too much..

And grab Strangelet's texture generator it's in the texture database thread here somewhere. Also very useful fro greebles, hull, and radial textures.

BTW: Have you tried TerraGen? If you need backgrounds for bases and etc. Try that one, it's awesome! 8)
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Post by dandandaman »

Oblivion wrote:BTW: Glowmaps can't be included in the animation?
As far as I know they can, same as ppl maps can be animated :-)

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Post by klauss »

Yes, they can.
I wasn't sure how to specify them, though, but after some checking, it's
animation1/2/3="bleh.ani" in the xmesh.

Anyway, my real point was that animating a full glowmap is usually overkill. You can have the screen as a separate submesh (that is, use a separate material) that uses a tightly-mapped separate texture with only the animated portion. Glow/PPLmap animations may look cool, but they're often a big waste of video RAM - the effect rarely justifies the expenditure.

But... feel free to use them, if you're careful with what you're doing.

BTW: Also feel free to use highly optimized glowmaps, and create a separate unwrapping for the glowmap, if you see you'll reduce texture size a considerable amount (which is often true). There's a technique for rendering specially unwrapped glowmaps (in the current engine) whose only drawback is a nasty graphical glitch on 16-bit z-buffers, but I think dandan fixed that z-buffer issue on macs (which made them use 16-bit z-buffers all the time - nasty).
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Post by Oblivion »

create a separate unwrapping for the glowmap
I thought unwrapping in different UV channels is still a no-no in VS?
:?

Heven't yet tested it tho.. :wink: But will see.
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Post by klauss »

It is a no-no, but there's a trick for glowmaps only that lets you get away with it.
You export two versions, one with the first uv map, the other with the second one, and a little editing lets you get a bfxm which looks lit by the glowmap - the only drawback is that the file is a tad bigger and the model renders a tad slower - but that's it.
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Post by Oblivion »

:shock: oops.. so that's why one of the top level meshes of the stations only had the glowmap as the texture... :shock:
...well... on second thought maybe not.. the glowmaps looked UV mapped the same way as the rest. But still.. I wonder why it was that way.. maybe one of those meshes as redundant or something..

I don't think I'm ready to try that tho. Wouldn't having two meshes produce the moire effect I saw in the previous trouble with the clydesdale?

..btw: where the heck did the clydesdale's towers go? :P
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Post by dandandaman »

Oblivion wrote:But still.. I wonder why it was that way.. maybe one of those meshes as redundant or something..
Having two meshes was the workaround at the time the stations were put in, to a bug that meant glow maps were pretty much not working.

Feel free to get rid of the redundent mesh and put the glowmap on the main one if you're going through the stations :-)

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Post by klauss »

Oblivion wrote:I don't think I'm ready to try that tho. Wouldn't having two meshes produce the moire effect I saw in the previous trouble with the clydesdale?
Only if you loose precision and the vertices end up in different positions (least-significant-bit-differences are enough to make things go wrong).
I know tricks... with hex editors... to avoid that kind of stuff. But I could make a mesher option for doing that automagically, if you want.
Oblivion wrote:..btw: where the heck did the clydesdale's towers go? :P
¿What?

(extra ¿ for emphasis)

Don't tell me I borked the clyde.
(I've been touching the mesh)
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Post by Oblivion »

@Dan

Will do :P

@Klauss:

umm maybe I'll try this for the really massive stations, or the rorqual...

But wouldn't the amount of processing time that can be saved by a smaller glow map be negated by the loading of 2 bfxm's?

well.. that's a lot on my plate to try already. lol. so i'll see if I can :arrow:
¿What?
:P hehe. Well, I noticed that the old (PeteyG's?) splash screens show the clyde with two towers that look like smokestacks, and in my experience with converting the clyde and viewing it in max, wings, and ingame, there are just no towers anymore... :wink: Maybe it got packaged as a separate mesh (clyde has 3 top-levels, so it could have been the fourth)... i dunno really. but a clyde without the towers is uninteresting. Take a look a t my screenshots on the factionalizing ships thread.. no towers there, ryt?
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Post by jackS »

Methinks those "towers" you're thinking of are actually just the turrets on a pre-scaled model pointing straight up (which is what's there in the "missing ship" splash screen).
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Post by Oblivion »

:P duh. and there I was thinking something went wrong. :wink: I think I did remember Chuck mention in one of his posts about the "proper" way the windows should be scaled in the clyde's "towers". So I'm not sure. Maybe he meant the fins. But anyway thanks for the clarification. :D
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