[pecenipicek]

crazybump is... wonky to me. xnormal is basically a renderer.(mighty good one)

[KewlToyZ]

all textures need to be .bmp's
at least for the step in truespace. as for the canopy, i have no idea how that works, i'm guessing its just an unwrapped model, not connected to the ship with the base texture being basically solid colored with a transparent alpha channel.

IMPORTANT, when exporting from TS 7.6, save object as truespace 6.6 or lower cob. PCS2 doesnt read the UV data correctly from the 7.6 cob. If you forgot how to do it, i showed a very... step by steppish guide in my thread which is stickyed.


also, your EngGlow0x-0x are wrong.

they should be like EngGlow01-0x. also... why the triple ****ing hell do you have so many subobjects?


in any case, if you wish for it just to be transferred to pof, you can send the model to me, my e-mail adress is in my profile.

I'm still just trying to figure out how much should be separated with the subobjects.
They were bmp's, and after opening Lithunwrap to look at the assembled model I found out they all got corrupted somehow.
Why I have no clue?
I was trying to figure out the textures so I left everything as separate pieces to do each texture.
I didn't know if I should make them each separate or children of the main object for each system.
Or join as many objects together as possible and just make decal maps of the exterior.
I'll send you a file to give me a few pointers about it if you can. I was really surprised by the offer m8, thanks again.
What format of file should I send?
I can't beleive how long this is taking me to get it right.

I forgot about the version # cob....duhhhhhhh     thanks man

[pecenipicek]

whichever file truespace or cinema 4d read. (3ds, obj, cob, scn, wrl, x, fbx, dae,...)

[Scooby_Doo]

Unforunately crazybump is no longer free, so I've swtiched to Xnormals.

Thanks Pecenipicek
What is really driving me nuts is getting TS to read the textures when saving to cob.
I open the in Deep Exploration, all textures, transparency shows up.
I open the cob in PCS2 and it is a dark grey blob   
I put in the Autogen Thrusters (EngGlow01-01, ect..) like the tutorial says, no thrusters....
I'm drawing a blank,
but it seems TS wipes out all transparency data for the canopy when it saves the cob file or anything is changed in hierarchy?
And TS decides it isn't going to use any textures when making the cob.

As already said, it's EngGlow0X-0Y  where X is the glow bank, and Y is the glow point.  Fighters usually have just one glow blank (X) but can have more than one glow point (Y).

Also get rid of all those subsystems, I've found out that pcs2 doesn't like too many of them.  Also detail1 should be detail0.
As for textures, transparency doesn't matter in truespace, fs2 won't use it anyways. The transparency is dependant on the texture alone.  If you look at my Additional-required*.vp file theres a glass.dds file.  For the rest of the textures, you'll probably have to reassign them within truespace. Hint: you can paint a group of objects all at once. 

[KewlToyZ]

Thanks guys! As usual great help and many thanks gentlemen!
I'll get some things together tonight. I may just use my web space to post the files.
(another project I never got back to, I have 4 domains and a full web ASPNET server with SQL 2005 I was planning to do DotNetNuke forums on.
Once I get the hang of a few models I'm diving into the FS2 open code to see if I can volunteer to help out development with the tedious logic.
In the mean time I'm going to make an ftp area on there for some of these models, I'll let you gents know in case you want some model upload/download space available, or in case the community needs to have some extra space on an update rush I'll help and make some bandwidth available. No sense in it lying dormant all of the time.)

I will have to learn how to paint the transparent textures in TS 7.6 then. ...sigh.... that interface is just tough to deal with.

[Water]

I will have to learn how to paint the transparent textures in TS 7.6

Why? Unless you plan on doing renders in TS. Otherwise just do what is suitable for PCS2/FSO, which is using the alpha channel on the diffuse map.

[Colonol Dekker]

My normal maps are showing as dodgy'ish. I used the NVidia-photoshop plugins. Any setting preferences as my map is kinda blue, i noticed the assets.vp maps are kinda green hence the question.

[Water]

My normal maps are showing as dodgy'ish. I used the NVidia-photoshop plugins. Any setting preferences as my map is kinda blue, i noticed the assets.vp maps are kinda green hence the question.

Herra Tohtori covered this in his first post in this thread --> http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,55854.0.html

[KewlToyZ]

I will have to learn how to paint the transparent textures in TS 7.6

Why? Unless you plan on doing renders in TS. Otherwise just do what is suitable for PCS2/FSO, which is using the alpha channel on the diffuse map.

???? I need to set the alpha channel in my paint program or which program????
If I missed it I apologize, I couldn't find the alpha channels in PSP 7 for a bmp.

[Water]

I will have to learn how to paint the transparent textures in TS 7.6

Why? Unless you plan on doing renders in TS. Otherwise just do what is suitable for PCS2/FSO, which is using the alpha channel on the diffuse map.

???? I need to set the alpha channel in my paint program or which program????
If I missed it I apologize, I couldn't find the alpha channels in PSP 7 for a bmp.

BMP can't be saved with an alpha channel. So you would need to save as either tga or dds. TGA is better for testing - less messing around.

[KewlToyZ]

OK, Lithunwrap reads only BMP from what I see, so I save the BMP in PSP as TGA with the alpha channel set for transparency and edit the image file referenced in TS or any other program able to edit the texture name like Deep Explorer 5?

[Water]

OK, Lithunwrap reads only BMP from what I see, so I save the BMP in PSP as TGA with the alpha channel set for transparency and edit the image file referenced in TS or any other program able to edit the texture name like Deep Explorer 5?

I think you are mixing texture issues with conversion problems. Ignore tranparency for now - sort out the conversion problems first.

[pecenipicek]

you only need bmp temporarily for truespace to actually import the UV data. you can alter the texture name in a pof editor later. your bmp files can basically be a 1x1 blue/black/whichever color you fancy.

[KewlToyZ]

The POF editor never seems to have the textures when opening the cob file but I see them in TS?
Do I have to add them manually?

[Water]

The POF editor never seems to have the textures when opening the cob file but I see them in TS?
Do I have to add them manually?

No. Excluding any problem with TS, try this

In PCS2 - Options> Preferences.  Type in the box  ./   and then hit add.

This means any textures in the same directory as the cob will be found by PCS2 and loaded. (Making it difficult for new pcs2 users is a side goal of the software)

[KewlToyZ]

LOL!
Well so far I have elected to not use TS at all. Too much time spent with it and it has yet to do the job.
Deep Exploration is making a cob I can view and modify and brings in the textures to PCS2 everytime.
I can manually create the rest in PCS2, no more difficult than anywhere else.
I may try using object names and geometry for AutoGen in Rhino now that I am seeing some of these objects come through finally.

I am however crossing my fingers that the cob actually compiles to a pof.
What are the possible texture ID's for the glow points?
And do I just put in Thruster instead of Engine for the little manuevering thrusters on the thrusters section?
How many banks do I use in Thrusters & Glow Points?

[Water]

And do I just put in Thruster instead of Engine for the little manuevering thrusters on the thrusters section?

Open up a bsg viper fighter pof and associated table, it's a good way to learn.

[KewlToyZ]

I did, and the little thruster plumes are no where to be seen in the pof file so it must be part of the vp files?
Unless the Vipers I opened were 3rd party 
Here is a download link for my model files.
I cannot get PCS2 to make a POF, it always just sits tying up my dual core at 95% going nowhere everytime I try to save.
http://www.kewltoyz.com/downloads/ViperMkV-Model.zip

I'll go ahead and upload my most recent cob too with the textures included.
I never see the lights when it imports from TS so I didnt bother making all of the glued lighting groups with Deep Explorer either. But I did finally get the grouping the way I wanted it.

I'll post a link for that cob shortly. Maybe you guys know why it won't compile.

[Water]

I did, and the little thruster plumes are no where to be seen in the pof file so it must be part of the vp files?
Unless the Vipers I opened were 3rd party 
Here is a download link for my model files.
I cannot get PCS2 to make a POF, it always just sits tying up my dual core at 95% going nowhere everytime I try to save.

I'll go ahead and upload my most recent cob too with the textures included.
I'll post a link for that cob shortly. Maybe you guys know why it won't compile.

First - the parts I checked don't have a uv map. So thats not a pcs2 problem. Forget the thrusters till you solve this issue. They are special fx anyway.

Does Rhino do uv mapping?

Also fighters tend to have one map only. HTL ones go up to three - main + cockpit + glass.

[KewlToyZ]

Rhino doesn't with its core application.
It reads them fine though once mapped. It will do textures applied to surfaces.
There are some advanced texture features I haven't figured out yet but I'll get there.

I got it mapped fairly easily though with Lithunwrap.
As far as making the POF's:
I found the Canopy was killing me on poly's as well as the objects I tried to combine to reduce the subsystems. Instead grouping items before saving to cob, then tweaking the cob was much easier with DE.
Dont have to mess with the light nightmare of TS either.
I'm using Deep Explorer, TS serves no purpose for me whatsoever.
Download the pof files here:
http://www.kewltoyz.com/downloads/VipMkV.zip

Now I just have to figure out the texturing for the transparent canopy.
I tried saving a transparent background image in PSP7 and it made it white everytime.
I even tried painting it black since that is supposed to be what aplha reads as transparent, and the thing still turned white during conversions. Not sure why yet. Next I add a nice dash and start upgrading texture details.
I'll try to place them all on one texture soon. Not sure how I merge objects in Lithunwrap and still map the shapes all on one image yet. Just starting to understand it. So far, Lithunwrap, Rhino, Deep Explorer are the only things I needed though. Just takes time to figure out my tools quirks. I really am glad I have you guys willing to help me get a handle on it, thanks!
Check out the pof and let me know if it is too horrible.....