Hard Light Productions Forums

Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The Modding Workshop => Topic started by: TrashMan on October 15, 2002, 09:33:17 am

Title: Pcs
Post by: TrashMan on October 15, 2002, 09:33:17 am
How PCS tends to screw up even the most simle of all faces is a mistery to me. I made a fighter, edited it and it look good in Modelview. In the techroom, it has 3 faces missing. I split those faces in two smaller ones (triangles), converted and edited again - but those faces are still missing - not only that, a few other faces on the other side of the ship are now all screwd up too?!

A TRIANGLE?! For god's sake, if it can't convert that o.k., how the hell can it convert anything!

And PCS allso screws up the turrets on my battelship (has 94 turrets), changes their possition (turretMain01 turns out to be [when I look in modelview] turret39), and so on!:mad:
Title: Re: Pcs
Post by: KARMA on October 15, 2002, 11:32:30 am
Quote
Originally posted by TrashMan
How PCS tends to screw up even the most simle of all faces is a mistery to me. I made a fighter, edited it and it look good in Modelview. In the techroom, it has 3 faces missing. I split those faces in two smaller ones (triangles), converted and edited again - but those faces are still missing - not only that, a few other faces on the other side of the ship are now all screwd up too?!

if you already divided em in triangles check
1-if they are flipped
2-if the are interceptions (personally i never had such thing with interceptions, but..)
3-verify the verices (sometimes old versions of truespace does odd things adding eges, in my case at least)
anyway its difficult to check the problem w/o seeing the mesh, you may at least use cob2fs2 and see if you get same probs
Quote

A TRIANGLE?! For god's sake, if it can't convert that o.k., how the hell can it convert anything!
Quote

And PCS allso screws up the turrets on my battelship (has 94 turrets), changes their possition (turretMain01 turns out to be [when I look in modelview] turret39), and so on!:mad: [/B]


isn't there a subobject limit (lods included) of about 89?
Title: Re: Pcs
Post by: karajorma on October 15, 2002, 02:10:28 pm
Quote
Originally posted by TrashMan
And PCS allso screws up the turrets on my battelship (has 94 turrets), changes their possition (turretMain01 turns out to be [when I look in modelview] turret39), and so on!:mad:


Stop posting about it. We've already told you that FS2 can`t handle more than ~70 turrets already several times. If you keep sticking your hand in the blender don`t keep coming to us about pain in your fingers.
Title: Pcs
Post by: Anaz on October 15, 2002, 06:19:08 pm
speaking of blenders, do not under any circumstances use blender when going to convert using PCS. If it works it is equivalent to getting a royal flush without using any wildcards in poker...
Title: Pcs
Post by: LtNarol on October 15, 2002, 07:35:39 pm
While these can all be attributed to user errors and it may be tempting to say that human stupidity is the source of the errors, PCS v1.2 _is_ more sensitive and unstable when compared with earlier versions.  My suggestions are as follows:

1. If you are using blender, use something else.
2. If you are using the 3ds format, be aware that for models over 100 polys, the format tends to flip faces at random.
3. Find an earlier version of PCS, if you can't find one grab me on one of the instant messengers and I'll pack it your way :D

Good luck with your models
Title: hhhhh
Post by: TrashMan on October 16, 2002, 02:33:02 am
Thanks. I actually had 89 turrets, but decided to dare it!(personally, I think the ship is WAAAY to powerfull even with 70 turrets) I still don't understand what that has to do with changing turrets. I didn't even tried the ship in the game, the turrets are screwd up in modelview!? Oh well... I'll try trimming a few turrets down, but if thez flip again, you'll hear from me.
Converting the fighter in cob2FS2? Well, I could try!
Title: Pcs
Post by: IPAndrews on October 16, 2002, 02:56:32 am
I for one am using an earlier more stable version of PCS.
Title: Pcs
Post by: TrashMan on October 16, 2002, 03:03:07 am
If anyone knows where I can get it, please tell me!
Title: Pcs
Post by: karajorma on October 16, 2002, 06:03:14 am
Try The Alliance Productions FreeSpace 2 Kit (http://alliance.sourceforge.net/FS2Kit.shtml)
Title: Pcs
Post by: aldo_14 on October 16, 2002, 06:24:55 am
Quote
Originally posted by LtNarol

2. If you are using the 3ds format, be aware that for models over 100 polys, the format tends to flip faces at random.
 


Never happened to me.
Title: Pcs
Post by: LtNarol on October 16, 2002, 07:09:31 am
Quote
Originally posted by aldo_14


Never happened to me.
Maybe it was just the way Rhino saved in 3ds...never actually used Max, couldn't get too far without my computer locking up on me.
Title: Pcs
Post by: StratComm on October 16, 2002, 05:34:19 pm
I've had the general problem with PCS giving me faces that exist until you are within 50 game units of them and then dissapear (on a triangulated hull no less) but I've never had it remove faces completely.  It's a pain, especially since PCS will convert models that nothing else will, but sometimes you just have to live with it.
Title: Pcs
Post by: karajorma on October 16, 2002, 06:04:15 pm
I`ve had PCS create ships that are completely solid at the front and fly through at the back dispite being triangulated. What's worse is that the same model when converted with cob2pof works fine.
Title: Pcs
Post by: KARMA on October 17, 2002, 05:05:14 am
Quote
Originally posted by karajorma
I`ve had PCS create ships that are completely solid at the front and fly through at the back dispite being triangulated. What's worse is that the same model when converted with cob2pof works fine.


this is related i think to the way collision is detected in models converted with pcs (i think its something that has to do with bounding box...i've read on an old post that pcs uses a different system than cob2fs2)
i had, as many others, the same prob
and to be honest freespace2 itself already has some problems, much less than other games like tachyon, but it has some problems (if you rotate a ship that hold position, and while rotating hits another model, often they intersect)
Title: Re: Re: Pcs
Post by: IPAndrews on October 17, 2002, 06:05:54 am
Quote
Originally posted by KARMA

isn't there a subobject limit (lods included) of about 89?


You can have working ships with 100+ subobjs but PCS doesn't quite know how to handle them. As a result the list of subobjs appears in the wrong order and auto-turret assigns the wrong subobjs to your turrets. Fix these problems though and your ship will work.
Title: Pcs
Post by: tomcat on October 17, 2002, 07:11:37 am
that is because last version of PCS is older than Source Release . So now kazan could make a PCS tahta ctually use POF info and data structs from the source code
Title: Re: Re: Re: Pcs
Post by: KARMA on October 17, 2002, 10:40:55 am
Quote
Originally posted by IPAndrews


You can have working ships with 100+ subobjs but PCS doesn't quite know how to handle them. As a result the list of subobjs appears in the wrong order and auto-turret assigns the wrong subobjs to your turrets. Fix these problems though and your ship will work.


doh i didn't know that
but you are talking about offical or scp version?
Title: Pcs
Post by: Vasudan Admiral on October 17, 2002, 04:44:45 pm
Quote
that is because last version of PCS is older than Source Release . So now kazan could make a PCS tahta ctually use POF info and data structs from the source code
well, it's possible, but Kazan i don't think will be doing it:
http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,10455.0.html

Quote
speaking of blenders, do not under any circumstances use blender when going to convert using PCS. If it works it is equivalent to getting a royal flush without using any wildcards in poker...
:lol:  lol, i must be the luckiest guy here then. i've never had any problems unless i screw something up. and i use only blender to model, truespace to texture and do heirarchy etc.
Title: Pcs
Post by: EdrickV on October 17, 2002, 09:25:08 pm
FS2 can have problems with triangle shaped (and any other shaped) faces if those triangles happen to have 3 verts on one side. I saw that first hand. If anyone wants to send me a model that has a problem they haven't been able to figure out, I could take a look at it. My format of choice would be Wavefront object (.obj) and anything else would have to be converted. (I have LithUnwrap for converting files.)

A little tip: If possible, I would try avoiding the use of TS1/2 for things like testing the hull of an unfinished ship. LithUnwrap can save cob files too and can texture them better then TS1/2.
Title: Pcs
Post by: IPAndrews on October 18, 2002, 03:31:29 am
Quote
Originally posted by EdrickV
if those triangles happen to have 3 verts on one side.


Please explain how can a triangle have 3 vertices on one side?
Title: Pcs
Post by: Fry_Day on October 18, 2002, 10:41:31 am
Black Magic
Title: Pcs
Post by: EdrickV on October 18, 2002, 12:46:10 pm
Quote
Originally posted by IPAndrews


Please explain how can a triangle have 3 vertices on one side?


Well, technically it wouldn't be a triangle. But it could look like one so that if you didn't know that 4th vert was there, you would think it was a triangle. I ran into that problem myself on a model I thought was pretty well triangulated. (Not sure if I just hadn't triangulated that face or the program skipped it because the overall shape was a triangle.)

(http://members.aol.com/ArisKalzar/Triangle.jpg)
Title: Pcs
Post by: Fry_Day on October 18, 2002, 01:19:07 pm
That fourth vertex makes it a quad.
you should have said 'One straight line with more than two vertices'

I figured that was what you meant in the first place, it probably means the modeller has too much caffeine in his blod stream if he missed it :)
Title: Pcs
Post by: EdrickV on October 18, 2002, 03:27:12 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Fry_Day
That fourth vertex makes it a quad.
you should have said 'One straight line with more than two vertices'

I figured that was what you meant in the first place, it probably means the modeller has too much caffeine in his blod stream if he missed it :)


I talked about triangle shaped faces because that's what the original poster mentioned and I know that splitting faces can result in lines with 3 or more verts in a row on them on a face that looks like a triangle. :) That 3 verts in a row thing could also explain why other faces suddenly stopped working. Fortunately for me Wings3D has menu items that let me select every face that has either 5 or more verts, or 4 verts. So I can easily double check to see that my triangle shaped faces really are triangles, now that I know what to look for. :)
Title: Pcs
Post by: aldo_14 on October 18, 2002, 04:01:43 pm
Quote
Originally posted by EdrickV


Well, technically it wouldn't be a triangle. But it could look like one so that if you didn't know that 4th vert was there, you would think it was a triangle. I ran into that problem myself on a model I thought was pretty well triangulated. (Not sure if I just hadn't triangulated that face or the program skipped it because the overall shape was a triangle.)

(http://members.aol.com/ArisKalzar/Triangle.jpg)


That seems a bit odd, to me, if a program does that..... if you use a diagonal across the corner of those faces (top left to bottom right corner, say), its a LOT better (2 faces instead of 3, and less vertices and edges)

Oh, BTW - I NEVER had any problems with Blender models when I use dPCS.  In fact, i have more probs with Max models than I did with blender.
Title: Pcs
Post by: EdrickV on October 18, 2002, 05:32:27 pm
Quote
Originally posted by aldo_14


That seems a bit odd, to me, if a program does that..... if you use a diagonal across the corner of those faces (top left to bottom right corner, say), its a LOT better (2 faces instead of 3, and less vertices and edges)

Oh, BTW - I NEVER had any problems with Blender models when I use dPCS.  In fact, i have more probs with Max models than I did with blender.


The program didn't do that example, I did that. And on the model I was talking about, I wasn't sure whether I'd triangulated the problematic faces at all. (I might have skipped them 'cause they looked fine. I rarely triangulate an entire model.)  Sometimes I like to triangulate my models on my own since Wings3D doesn't always triangulate them the same on both sides. I also dislike having faces along the center line of a ship having a simple slash split. I like symmetrical models. :) (So when I can avoid it I don't triangulate them or triangulate them something like the above, but better.) That'll all be irrelivent anyways 'cause from now on I'm going to try to have a line along the center of the ship, it'll help in texturing. :)
Title: o.k.
Post by: TrashMan on October 19, 2002, 08:39:20 am
I'm using TrueSpace 4.2, and PCS from the Freespace Allaince Pack 2. I trimmed the turret number to 85. It still tends to switch them. (22 are twin-barreld, all others are normal turrets).
It could be do to the fact I named them like:
turret01, ..... turret50 - normal turrets
turretB01,.....,turretB12 - beam turrets
turretMain01a, ......, turretMain22a - multi-part turrets

There are NO turrets on other LODs!
Title: Pcs
Post by: Solatar on October 19, 2002, 08:42:20 am
That should work, but isn't the turret limit 75? Not 85?
Title: Pcs
Post by: karajorma on October 19, 2002, 10:40:07 am
Quote
Originally posted by Hades
That should work, but isn't the turret limit 75? Not 85?


I`ve given up beating my head on the brick wall of telling him that. I`d suggest doing that too.
Title: 75?
Post by: TrashMan on October 19, 2002, 04:19:12 pm
The last I heard was 89! 75!?
That isn't much - I'll have to make the battleship smaller, with that little turrets It won't have a good cover area. Well, I'll guess that 5km should be enough.
The Main guns and the beam cannons I won't touch - that means that I'll have to trim at least 10 anti-fighter turrets.
Title: Re: o.k.
Post by: Anaz on October 19, 2002, 04:26:56 pm
Quote
Originally posted by TrashMan
I'm using TrueSpace 4.2, and PCS from the Freespace Allaince Pack 2. I trimmed the turret number to 85. It still tends to switch them. (22 are twin-barreld, all others are normal turrets).
It could be do to the fact I named them like:
turret01, ..... turret50 - normal turrets
turretB01,.....,turretB12 - beam turrets
turretMain01a, ......, turretMain22a - multi-part turrets

There are NO turrets on other LODs!


don't do the b01 stuff, just continue after 50, so B01 becomes 51, follow?
Title: Re: o.k.
Post by: Vasudan Admiral on October 19, 2002, 10:11:57 pm
Quote
Originally posted by TrashMan
I'm using TrueSpace 4.2, and PCS from the Freespace Allaince Pack 2. I trimmed the turret number to 85. It still tends to switch them. (22 are twin-barreld, all others are normal turrets).
It could be do to the fact I named them like:
turret01, ..... turret50 - normal turrets
turretB01,.....,turretB12 - beam turrets
turretMain01a, ......, turretMain22a - multi-part turrets

There are NO turrets on other LODs!
well, one potential problem there is that unless you are using DTP's version, fs will only accept 10 rotating turrets. :(
Title: Pcs
Post by: Anaz on October 19, 2002, 11:34:55 pm
really? well....learn something new every day...


(:D :D900 POSTS!! w00t!!!!!!:D :D)
Title: Pcs
Post by: EdrickV on October 20, 2002, 03:02:51 am
A few "max" things that modellers may be interested in knowing about, straight out of the freespace2_public source code:

#define MAX_ROTATING_SUBMODELS 10
#define MAX_TFP  4  // maximum number of turret firing points
#define MAX_MODEL_SUBSYSTEMS 128     // used in ships.cpp (only place?) for local stack variable when reading in ships.tbl
#define MAX_MODEL_DETAIL_LEVELS   8
#define MAX_POLYGON_MODELS   128
#define MAX_DEBRIS_OBJECTS   32
#define MAX_MODEL_TEXTURES   64
Title: Pcs
Post by: Vasudan Admiral on October 20, 2002, 04:39:48 am
just to clarify: the 4 TFP limit is for missile turrets only. for laser turrets it's 3. :(
and just a question, does the max polygon models refer to the max # of ships in one mission, the max # of sub-objects a ship can have, the max # of ship entrys there can be in the ships tbl or the max # of any poly models in a mission (jumpnodes & asteroid fields etc)
Title: Pcs
Post by: EdrickV on October 20, 2002, 03:04:09 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Vasudan Admiral
just to clarify: the 4 TFP limit is for missile turrets only. for laser turrets it's 3. :(
and just a question, does the max polygon models refer to the max # of ships in one mission, the max # of sub-objects a ship can have, the max # of ship entrys there can be in the ships tbl or the max # of any poly models in a mission (jumpnodes & asteroid fields etc)


I think the max polygon models is for the POF files. (Max number of subobjects + the main object.) I'm not sure though, I only saw it after I posted. I do recall seeing a max number of ships that was set at 130 in another file.
Title: WHAT?
Post by: TrashMan on October 20, 2002, 03:13:21 pm
Only 10 rotating turrets?
Are you APSOLUTELY SURE?
I put 75 turrets and now they look o.k. im Modelview (I still name them the same...turretB01a and so on).
I still have 22 rotating turrets, and it looks good in FRED2.
In the test mission I made, I fly around the ship for a minute or two, and then the game chrashes (but then again, it sometimes does that with ships that have far less turrets), and I allso tested a battlecruiser (has 14 rotating turets), and it works fine!
Title: Pcs
Post by: EdrickV on October 20, 2002, 03:42:11 pm
That max is for the original exe and any SCP ones that do not have the limit raised. I have no idea what the limit might be right now in the fs_open version. I'm not entirely sure what happens if you go over the max, but it might end up overwriting some other data which could cause crashes in the game, with Windows, or do other stuff. (Or then again it may just not show all the turrets.) ModelView32 wasn't made from the source code and may be more tolerant then FS2 actually is. POFView on the other hand is about as tolerant as FRED2 and seems to use the same graphics engine.
Title: Pcs
Post by: Vasudan Admiral on October 20, 2002, 04:38:57 pm
have you made sure that all 14 turrets work? cos i've breached that limit before and what happens is that everything works fine untill (any?) one of the rotating (and in some cases the unrotating) turrets is supposed to fire/rotate. then fs crashes with the usual lack of an error message.
also try renaming the "turretB01" as Analazon said.
Title: Pcs
Post by: StratComm on October 20, 2002, 05:47:08 pm
The functional limit always seemed to be 89 subobjects, including LOD's, debris, turrets, barrels (seperate from turrets), subsystems, etc.  It doesn't surprise me that it will accept a few more, but 22 dual-axis turrets is 44 submodels, plus the hull and the other 60, and you have a minimum of well over 100 submodels.  Add in the finishing touches and you are way, way past the limit.
Title: jezz
Post by: TrashMan on October 21, 2002, 02:26:44 am
Isn't the max rotating suobjects for things like radar dishes?

Anyway, how can I get all of my turrets to work? Is there a exe file I can download or something?
Title: Re: jezz
Post by: EdrickV on October 21, 2002, 03:02:13 am
Quote
Originally posted by TrashMan
Isn't the max rotating suobjects for things like radar dishes?

Anyway, how can I get all of my turrets to work? Is there a exe file I can download or something?


As far as I can tell, the data for regular subsystems and turrets use the same structure to store their info and the game doesn't seem to care whether a rotating submodel is a turret or not when it comes to the maximum. That max number is used in collision detection code, so going over that might screw up collision detection. (And that in turn could cause a crash.)
Title: Re: Re: o.k.
Post by: tomcat on October 21, 2002, 07:00:33 am
Quote
Originally posted by Vasudan Admiral
well, one potential problem there is that unless you are using DTP's version, fs will only accept 10 rotating turrets. :(

That is a WRONG Information. FS2 accept more than 10 rotating turrets..Check the EA Nova from TBP 16 rotating multi turrets.
Title: Pcs
Post by: TrashMan on October 21, 2002, 10:52:13 am
Does anyone here know ANY way to get my 22 rotating turrets to work?
Title: Pcs
Post by: Vasudan Admiral on October 22, 2002, 01:07:18 am
well, thats the info i got from looking at the source code. and that can't really be inaccurate. do all 16 of those rotating turrets rotate and fire? (if anyone will test this, make sure to use the regular fs2 exe)
as for the turrets, have you tried renaming them yet?
and if you use one of DTP's fs2.exe versions, i think they would work for the rotating turrets. do a search for it.
Title: Pcs
Post by: tomcat on October 22, 2002, 01:30:34 am
damn ...didn't actualy play TBP?:) try and see.. Nova has 12 masive rotating turrets + 4 point defense turrets all with multi barel and rotating.
that 10 rotating objects is refering to Radar dish, solarpanel, rotation section . Turrets are a different thing.

and we are not using ANY modified EXE..yet.
Title: Pcs
Post by: Vasudan Admiral on October 22, 2002, 06:13:38 am
hmmm, intresting, looking through the code that actually calls/uses that, it seems you could be right. although wether by chance of design, no :v: ships have over 10 rotating things. be them turrets or otherwise.
although this:
Code: [Select]
// Don't check it or its children if it is destroyed or it is a replacement (non-moving)
if ( !child_submodel->blown_off && (child_submodel->i_replace == -1) ) {

would to me imply that subsystems can have children glued to them. afaik this is only possible with rotating turrets-the arms. correct me if i'm wrong someone? :)
Title: hmmm
Post by: TrashMan on October 22, 2002, 07:31:54 am
The battlecruiser actually had 10 turrets - my mistake.
I made 12 turrets on the Iowa non-rotational (the other 10 rotate around the y axis). Did the same on the Vanguard (it has 8 rotating missile launchers and 10 turrets, so I kept the missile launchers).
Now they both work fine.
Title: hmmm
Post by: TrashMan on October 22, 2002, 07:35:44 am
The battlecruiser actually had 10 turrets - my mistake.
I made 12 turrets on the Iowa non-rotational (the other 10 rotate around the y axis). Did the same on the Vanguard (it has 8 rotating missile launchers and 10 turrets, so I kept the missile launchers).
Now they both work fine. Have to test more.
I designed the Iowa so that it can attack 2 targets, focusing 75% of it's firepower on the first, and 25% on the second target. But that is only possible with ALL the turrets (and it looks damn cool).
If they don't work, then I'll search for some exe file or something...

I'll put all my ships for download over the next weekend.
Title: Pcs
Post by: IPAndrews on October 22, 2002, 09:02:57 am
80. 100. 53. 10. 995. 2000.
Title: ????
Post by: TrashMan on October 23, 2002, 03:23:02 am
What is that?
Title: Pcs
Post by: IPAndrews on October 23, 2002, 05:02:23 am
I thought I'd just chuck some more useless random numbers into the conversation.