Hard Light Productions Forums

Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The Modding Workshop => Topic started by: Sesquipedalian on January 27, 2002, 07:01:00 am

Title: Hopefully helpful for Modders!
Post by: Sesquipedalian on January 27, 2002, 07:01:00 am
Since I got into the online FS community, and started with the user campaigns and Fredding my own stuff and downloading mods and even dabbling in a bit of modding myself, I have noticed one sad thing.  Several times now I hvae downloaded some beautiful new ship to fly, fast and sleek, or lumbering and deadly, or anything else the modders have imagined, only to find that these lovely works of art are desperately lacking a proper ship selection ANI for the briefing loadout screen.  

I can understand why.  My only foray into ship modding was making the Nahema a player-flyable ship, complete with loadout screen and icon, but I stopped short of making an entire ANI file for it because it just seemed like more work than it was worth.

The hard part isn't really so much getting the images of the ships to put in the ANI file, it's that blasted grid in the background that makes it such a pain in the rear end.  So yesterday I decided to do something about it.  As the light of dawn breaks, I have produced what I hope will be a boon to modders who want to give their ships that truly polished feel.

Basically, I've reproduced blank copies of the background grid for all frames used in fighter and bomber ship selection ANIs.  I haven't taken all the work out of making a ship ANI, but with these grid backgrounds, it can reasonably be done now.  In a nutshell, all that is required now is for the modder to plunk down images of his ship as seen from different angles on top of the grid in each frame, and he has a  (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/v.gif) quality ANI.  I've submitted this to HLP, so it ought to be available in the FreeSpace Tools section soon (or somewhere like that  (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/smile.gif)), and can also be downloaded here (//"http://253943.home.icq.com/index.html").  I've written a detailed set of directions to go with the files, which took perhaps even longer to write than the files did to create, but should be quite helpful.

Now I'm going to bed!  (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/biggrin.gif)

P.S.  If anyone wants a very nicely done (if I do say so myself) player-flyable Nahema bomber, you are welcome to it.
Title: Hopefully helpful for Modders!
Post by: aldo_14 on January 27, 2002, 07:12:00 am
Eh?

Are we talking about the (normally) spinning techroom animation here?
Title: Hopefully helpful for Modders!
Post by: Fozzy on January 27, 2002, 07:36:00 am
if anyone uses "corel draw" you will know how easy it is to make "8bit paleted" animations. to make a ship loadout ani take a screenshot of your ship in fred or your chosen modeling program.

Shrink the ship so that it fits inside the first frame.

Ajust the hue so its sort of light blue.

then copy that frame to the next and ajust the colour

once all frames are compleate convert it to 8bit palited again.
Title: Hopefully helpful for Modders!
Post by: LAW ENFORCER on January 27, 2002, 02:36:00 pm
Dude, I D/Led this kind of thing months ago??? was it you who made it and are really slow or did you do something that was already done?
Title: Hopefully helpful for Modders!
Post by: Sesquipedalian on January 27, 2002, 04:41:00 pm
   
Quote
Originally posted by aldo_14:
Eh?

Are we talking about the (normally) spinning techroom animation here?

Well, the techroom actually uses the pof file itself, I believe.  But yes, the normally spinning animation.  The final result of using these files should look just like Volition ANIs

Fozzy, the point of this thing is to allow the modder to be able to put the spinning image of his ship onto the green background grid like in the Volition ANIs, and do so with relative ease.  The zip contains all necessary images of the grid without any ship on top of them.  Corel rocks the Casbah!

Law Enforcer, whatever you have wasn't by me.  I have not seen anything like this before, so I made it up.

[This message has been edited by Sesquipedalian (edited 01-27-2002).]
Title: Hopefully helpful for Modders!
Post by: Bobboau on January 27, 2002, 05:44:00 pm
I have no problem makeing these thing's I use Truespace, bright, PSP, and a batch file.

------------------
Bobboau, bringing you products that work.............. in theory
Title: Hopefully helpful for Modders!
Post by: LAW ENFORCER on January 27, 2002, 05:47:00 pm
yes, but you seem to know what your doing...
Title: Hopefully helpful for Modders!
Post by: Sesquipedalian on January 27, 2002, 08:57:00 pm
Well, the ani for the Kato only has one frame in it.  At least, the version I have is like that.  So yeah, there is a picture of it, but not a nice moving one that looks like a Volition created one.

[This message has been edited by Sesquipedalian (edited 01-27-2002).]
Title: Hopefully helpful for Modders!
Post by: Sesquipedalian on January 27, 2002, 09:10:00 pm
Maybe I'm just a perfectionist or something.

It sounds like nobody is interested in these.  Oh well...
Title: Hopefully helpful for Modders!
Post by: Sushi mk. 2 on January 28, 2002, 03:48:00 pm
Actually, I am... I've run into the same thing, where I just wanted that frickin grid. I've gotta admit, I don't plan to make a full moving ANI, but I think a 1-frame ANI that looks right will do nicely. Thank you!
Title: Hopefully helpful for Modders!
Post by: Anaz on January 28, 2002, 06:12:00 pm
w00t! Thx Ses, I might actually finish something for one of my fighters now...
Title: Hopefully helpful for Modders!
Post by: Sesquipedalian on January 28, 2002, 08:17:00 pm
Oh! Great! No problem guys.    (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/biggrin.gif)  I'm just glad someone finds this useful.  

I figure that with these it ought to take only an hour or three to make a full quality moving ani (well, okay, probably closer to three than one  (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/wink.gif)) if you follow the instructions I included.  It is all pretty much copy and paste.  I don't know how long it takes you 3d modellers to make a model, but I figure this should be a drop in the bucket in comparison.

[This message has been edited by Sesquipedalian (edited 01-28-2002).]
Title: Hopefully helpful for Modders!
Post by: LAW ENFORCER on January 29, 2002, 08:30:00 am
45 mins to make basic model (of a super destroyer) 45 mins to texture (including production)and group + destroyed parts + turrets etc Cnverting takes 15 - 60 mins compiling takes 2 seconds and doin all the turrets docks paths takes hours...
Title: Hopefully helpful for Modders!
Post by: CP5670 on January 29, 2002, 10:04:00 am
Wow, why didn't I see this before? This is awesome; just what I needed! Thanks! (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/smile.gif)
Title: Hopefully helpful for Modders!
Post by: Galemp on January 29, 2002, 12:45:00 pm
Yummy. Now how do we get the green glow on the underside of the model?

------------------
"An evil mind is a constant comfort."
Revisit the Great War at The Freespace-Freespace 2 Port Project ("http://www.angelfire.com/games4/freespace/")
Title: Hopefully helpful for Modders!
Post by: Anaz on January 29, 2002, 05:32:00 pm
In the render...put a colored green (green colored?) light under the ship...
Title: Hopefully helpful for Modders!
Post by: Galemp on January 29, 2002, 05:34:00 pm
Can't render. No expen$ive rendering programs...  (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/frown.gif)

------------------
"An evil mind is a constant comfort."
Revisit the Great War at The Freespace-Freespace 2 Port Project ("http://www.angelfire.com/games4/freespace/")