[peterv]

I cannot realy help here (my OPENGL is not working) but the glass is not a seperate model in the Truespace order.

[Vasudan Admiral]

No, the puregreen transparency only works for 256 colour PCX's and is a relic of a hack present in the original game.

The DDS transparency for the terran and vasudan cockpits here work just fine.

[peterv]

The maps for the cockpits are made from a masked TGA file with 256 colors. There is no puregreen transparency here

[blowfish]

No, the puregreen transparency only works for 256 colour PCX's and is a relic of a hack present in the original game.

The DDS transparency for the terran and vasudan cockpits here work just fine.

I'm talking about being able to see the radius through the model (it's a good indicator of when problems like this are occuring).  This has nothing to do with textures.

[Vasudan Admiral]

Err, no no - there I was referring to Droids post where he was saying the green that we were seeing in the cockpit was caused by the switching textures technique for the terran/vasudan pilots, since pure green used to be used by the engine to designate transparency. The DDS textures peterv has used don't have that problem.

You are completely correct that the radius being visible through the cockpit like that indicates transparency problems. As I said before - it's a handy technique.

[peterv]

Will it help if i post the truespace file?

[blowfish]

Err, no no - there I was referring to Droids post where he was saying the green that we were seeing in the cockpit was caused by the switching textures technique for the terran/vasudan pilots, since pure green used to be used by the engine to designate transparency. The DDS textures peterv has used don't have that problem.

You are completely correct that the radius being visible through the cockpit like that indicates transparency problems. As I said before - it's a handy technique.

OK.  Just wanted to be sure

For anyone who is still unclear on what I am talking about, here is a picture.

[Vasudan Admiral]

Will it help if i post the truespace file?

No that's fine - I've got it in Blender already and am nearly there thanks.

[Droid803]

Err, no no - there I was referring to Droids post where he was saying the green that we were seeing in the cockpit was caused by the switching textures technique for the terran/vasudan pilots, since pure green used to be used by the engine to designate transparency. The DDS textures peterv has used don't have that problem.

You are completely correct that the radius being visible through the cockpit like that indicates transparency problems. As I said before - it's a handy technique.

OK.  Just wanted to be sure

For anyone who is still unclear on what I am talking about, here is a picture.

Yes, what I mean is, the green in that picture, right there, is the "hidden" Vasudan model.
That's the 'transparency issue' you speak of.

[blowfish]

Yes, what I mean is, the green in that picture, right there, is the "hidden" Vasudan model.
That's the 'transparency issue' you speak of.

Yes, but that has nothing to do with pure green transparency.

[Droid803]

I was never talking about pure-green transparency.
Well, that's one misunderstanding cleared up.

[Vasudan Admiral]

Indeed - what's happening there is that you can see through most of the back of the cockpit - you're not seeing the hidden vasudan model.

[Vasudan Admiral]

Well, that'll teach me not to dismiss possible bugs so easily without looking closely at them. :\

Droid - you were completely correct. Due to the insane difficulty FS has with rendering transparencies, it's not currently possible to have both terran and vasudan options in the cockpit, because the outline of the invisible model makes a hole right through the ship. Until the transparency stuff is changed, texture replacement techniques for this simply do not work - so I've had to cut the vasudan out.

Anyway, I've corrected some mapping, set up the smoothing, fixed some geometry, built the LODs, made the debris and a new normal map, and after too many hours and FAR too many reconversions, it's at last complete and ready to go into the MVPs:







Here: http://game-warden.com/starfox/Non_SF_related_stuff/MVP3610BETA/HTL_Ulysses1.0.zip

If anyone encounters ANY bugs with it, please post them here so they don't carry over into the final MVP release!

[Skarab]

Many thanks for the fine work... I have only one problem and that is the normal maps won't show up for me on this fighter.  I checked other ships and the normals show up fine for them, such as on the Sobek and Loki.  Also, I'm not sure where to put the .ibx and .tsb files.  I did a search and the only place either of those file formats show up is in /cache so I put them there.  Does that have anything to do with the normals not working for it?  Aside from that one issue, the ship looks amazing, and the lack of normals is likely something going on here and not in the model itself.  Hats off to you guys for yet another upgrade to one of my favorite games ever.

[blowfish]

The glowing areas on the ends of the wings look a bit odd to me (IMO they should be more like they were in the original MVP textures)...  But otherwise it looks amazing

[Mongoose]

The normal maps seem a bit...chunky to me, but I'll go with the assumption that they'll look great in-game.  Not that it matters much to me anyway, since I don't have a card that would display them in the first place.

[peterv]

Thanks VA, hope you're willing to do the same for my next one 

Is there any chance to release it before the next MVP release? 

edit: just realized that you already did. Thanks again.

[Herra Tohtori]

There are no normal (or height) maps in that zip file, and the textures don't look so good to me. Blurry on detail edges and looking like PCX on many places...

The model looks fine, but IMHO it needs better texture to be an upgrade... although it's somewhat difficult to judge without the normal maps available, they sometimes make a lot of difference.

[Skarab]

There are no normal (or height) maps in that zip file, and the textures don't look so good to me. Blurry on detail edges and looking like PCX on many places...

The model looks fine, but IMHO it needs better texture to be an upgrade... although it's somewhat difficult to judge without the normal maps available, they sometimes make a lot of difference.

The lack of normal/height maps explains my problem, and I'd have to agree that their presence could make an already good looking model look a whole lot better.

[Herra Tohtori]

Another thing - shinemap and glowmap are half the resolution of diffuse map. Why?

Especially on the case of shinemap, that's not very smartsince the lower resolution of the shinemap tends to wash out the detail in the diffuse map. And low res glowmaps just don't look good on top of higher resolution diffuse map either.


Cockpit map could benefit from higher resolution as well, but only marginally.