Hard Light Productions Forums

Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The Modding Workshop => Topic started by: Bobboau on March 17, 2004, 04:27:57 am

Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Bobboau on March 17, 2004, 04:27:57 am
the high poly fenris KARMA made and Vasudan Admiral textured is now in a state that you can play with it in game.
http://freespace.volitionwatch.com/blackwater/HTLFenris.zip
you bunch of slakers whould know this if you would have read the other thread (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,20020.0.html)

but you didn't...
now download and be amaized at it's awsome highpoly wonder,
also for those of you claiming submodel shadeing problems look at the radar and big turret, nothing has been changed, nothing has been fixed, I told you it worked!
auto-facet build same one that's been up the whole time

also try a slightly better version of the environment mapping build (http://freespace.volitionwatch.com/blackwater/fs2_open_env2.zip), I just quickly added the four functions that run it, becase someone wanted subspace to render corectly with it, though I never actualy tested to see if it worked now that I think of it.
god damnit I wanted to go to sleep over half an hour ago!
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Petrarch of the VBB on March 17, 2004, 04:28:58 am
Post some pics then
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: kasperl on March 17, 2004, 04:29:02 am
'night.

this should go into a media VP ASAP.
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Bobboau on March 17, 2004, 04:32:31 am
after it gets it's LOD and debris.

actualy someone do that today, will you
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Vasudan Admiral on March 17, 2004, 06:38:38 am
err, what happened to the nameplate polys?
i put 2 rectangular polys as subobjects on the back that you could apply text to with a puregreen BG, ingame it would appear as tho the text was painted onto the hull, and the SCP change texture function in fred would mean you could have multiple fenris' with different nameplates in one mission. if you didn't want a nameplate you could just set the texture to a 1x1 pure green pixil.

and i may be able to do the lods and debris on the weekend, where i'll also add the nameplates again :)
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Bobboau on March 17, 2004, 10:00:26 am
I just didn't convert them with it, there still in the sceen
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Raptor on March 17, 2004, 11:31:47 am
For simplicity's sake, why not use the orginal LODs and Debris?  Saves a lot of work.  Your not going to see any detail on the LODS (could use original hull as LOD1), and the debris rarely stays around long enough to look at.

Oh and Bobboau, the turrets on the rear hull have their normals half wrong.  They have their X-axis element inverted.

Splendid work VA, I've been waiting a long time for this!
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Petrarch of the VBB on March 17, 2004, 11:50:13 am
Anyone tell me which version of ModelView I need to view this thing? All the ones I have claim "Too many normals defined"
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Lightspeed on March 17, 2004, 11:56:19 am
Does the build have Kazan's multi code in it? :D
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Taristin on March 17, 2004, 12:32:05 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Petrarch of the VBB
Anyone tell me which version of ModelView I need to view this thing? All the ones I have claim "Too many normals defined"


do a search on the forums for modelview, and make sure it's one that VA posted.
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Petrarch of the VBB on March 17, 2004, 12:37:56 pm
Effort
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Taristin on March 17, 2004, 12:45:53 pm
Yes.
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Flipside on March 17, 2004, 12:55:48 pm
Petrarch, just PM VA in Sectorgame and ask him to give you the link, I'd upload it myself but.....effort ;)
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Trivial Psychic on March 17, 2004, 01:20:36 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Raptor
Oh and Bobboau, the turrets on the rear hull have their normals half wrong.  They have their X-axis element inverted.


Actually, all but 3 turrets have inverted normals, being "-" when they should be "+" and vice versa.  Only the forward dorsal, primary forward, and the turret on the ventral mast have correct normals.  In addition, the rear ventral turrets and forward flank turrets have their sub-objects too far off the hull (unless the version here is different from the one Bob posted in the other thread last night).  Also, I'm sure you are already aware that the destroyed sub-objects are identical to undestroyed ones, mainly the dish and ventral missile turret.  Finally, this is minor, the dockpoints should be moved back just a bit, to match up with the circles on the hull... but that's just my opinion.

Later!
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Bobboau on March 17, 2004, 01:32:06 pm
it was a quick conversion job...

useing the orional model for the LODs is what I had in mind, but the debris should be made specal.
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Raptor on March 17, 2004, 01:32:49 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Trivial Psychic


Actually, all but 3 turrets have inverted normals, being "-" when they should be "+" and vice versa.


Yea, I noticed the other two, after I posted. ho hum.  Didn't notice the other stuff you mentioned, apart from the destroyed submodel versions.

Expect possible new turret versions (mainly for the Lev, but maybe for the Fenris) some time soonish, once I've sorted out this latest idea of mine.  Redone Plasma Weapon stats...
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: diamondgeezer on March 17, 2004, 02:23:46 pm
Forgive me if I go a bit n00bish here:

OMFG!!!!!!!111111112

That is simply astonishing. So we're wating on some fixes, yes?
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Flipside on March 17, 2004, 05:08:50 pm
(http://www.aqsx85.dsl.pipex.com/images/HPFenris1.jpg)
(http://www.aqsx85.dsl.pipex.com/images/HPFenris2.jpg)

That new build works well, though there seems to be a slowdown in loading times, but this may just be my computer, I'll see if it happens more often before reporting it as a bug.
One little thing, when your ship get's destroyed, it shows your death in 'cinematic' view, it actually looks bloody good ;) EDIT : To avoid confusion I mean the lens angles not the fact the external view exists, I've died enough times to be well aware of that ;) hehehe

(http://www.aqsx85.dsl.pipex.com/images/FilmEnding.jpg)
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Fineus on March 17, 2004, 05:10:06 pm
:eek:

Now that is the way forward!
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Petrarch of the VBB on March 17, 2004, 05:14:27 pm
Christ on a bike.

*send a link to this thread to dictionary.com under "ownage"*
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: karajorma on March 17, 2004, 05:50:55 pm
One thing. To anyone using this who has FS1. Get the fenris textures out of the .vp and put them in maps along side this thing. Using the default 256x256 maps on this thing is just wrong :D
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Taristin on March 17, 2004, 06:38:19 pm
Yes, the 'really friggin huge' ones make everything look so much better. Too bad my PC can barely handle it.


SCP should be happy to know it runs on a PC with 128 Mb Ram. ;)
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Flipside on March 17, 2004, 06:38:43 pm
Heh, and I just realised that was with anti-aliasing turned off :D
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Rictor on March 17, 2004, 11:33:16 pm
Woo and also Yeah.

Awesome, awesome. This is one of those screenshots which should be shown to the "4 year old DirectX 7 game" people. Then you flip them off cause they're so wrong.
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Carl on March 17, 2004, 11:50:04 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Bobboau
after it gets it's LOD


well that shouldn't be too hard. just use the original pof's LOD 0 as LOD 1, it's LOD 1 as LOD 2, and so on. just move everything down one.
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Bobboau on March 18, 2004, 12:37:50 am
yes that is the easy part, but it needs new debris, the old debris won't look as good, we need some ubberised debris to go with it, and destroyed submodels, I just made a copy of them to work as place holders for now, but there should be some truely mangled metal looking destroyed submodel to go in there
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Vasudan Admiral on March 18, 2004, 01:22:18 am
i've done exactly that for all TI ships so far. :D - better debris. when the ship blows, nothing vanishes. it cracks up and throws pieces of it'self everywhere. looks amazing :)
what gets annoying tho is that even when the pieces are huge, they shoot off at 200+ m/s and are gone fairly quickly. would it be possible to add some sort of debris size:speed ratio thing to the SCP? so that the larger it is the slower it goes?
i tried something like this by editing the max speed of the debris in the SC and blowing up a bunch of ships at once, but only the pieces from some ships obeyed.... :wtf:
the place did look like a ship graveyard tho from the parts that stayed :D

and i think i'll see about the rest of it to karmas scn now :)
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: ChronoReverse on March 18, 2004, 02:04:01 am
Yeah, that would be quite nice... after the code freeze is lifted when 3.6 is released.

I've always found it annoying when I burn towards a juggernaut, fire the finishing blow at it, only to be crushed by a giant piece of low-res textured debris moving far faster than I could (although that does make sense since it's exploding afterall) :(
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Vasudan Admiral on March 18, 2004, 02:19:58 am
oh yes, for those who can't see it in modview (too many normals or whatever errors) follow these instructions:

1) make sure you have the latest modview (beta 05 build 28 - http://www.geocities.com/vasudanad/modv32b5.zip for those who don't have it already)

2) and then paste the exe in this: http://www.geocities.com/vasudanad/modviw32.zip
version over the one in the DMTOOLS\MODVIW32 folder
it's exactly the same as the regular 05, except it has most of the limits i could find bumped really high :)

also, the textures in the zip Bob posted are slightly edited from the original high res ones, since there were some parts that just didn't work with the model and needed editing (ie, the windows on either side of the front and the engines. ) so you shouldn't see the low res ones even if you don't have the FS1 high res ones...if that makes any sense ;)

and one last thing - if anyone wants higher poly turrets, make em and i'll add them (not more than 50 or so polys plz. they're too small for much detail at all, and also, keep the shapes approximately right :) )

edit: ok, done all the heirarchy & turrets set up (the easy bit), now just need to do debris sometime soon...

edit 2:
(http://www.sectorfiles.com/ti-file-dump/VasudanAdmiral/FenrisNameplate.jpg)
Title: Re: KARMA's fenris
Post by: KARMA on March 18, 2004, 08:12:01 am
If you want to have some fun, download the model (or convert to cob from the pof), select the subobjects individually and press the decompose into objects button.....


Quote
Originally posted by Bobboau

 
also for those of you claiming submodel shadeing problems look at the radar and big turret, nothing has been changed, nothing has been fixed, I told you it worked!
auto-facet build same one that's been up the whole time

 


ahem, bob...
both the turret's and radar's shading is screwed, as you can see in those shots taken from the pof you built:

(http://www.3dap.com/hlp/hosted/swfs2/wips/snap199.jpg)
(http://www.3dap.com/hlp/hosted/swfs2/wips/snap200.jpg)

I haven't built the debris since I was thinking about using the originals, but you are right that it would be better make em from scratch.
unfourtunately I don't have time to do so, sorry

As said, for the textures credits goes to Vasudan Admiral, he did a great job, I tryed to build the model so that it could use the original textures, but nonetheless it shouldn't have been that easy.
I don't know if he modifyed the original textures, btw they are present in the .zip
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Bobboau on March 18, 2004, 10:25:39 am
that is model view, not the game, look at it in game
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Bobboau on March 19, 2004, 09:45:38 pm
did you look at it in game yet?
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: KARMA on March 20, 2004, 09:39:55 am
no because I had to leave to start my military service (I'm in an internet point now), and I wasn't able to do it before starting

BTW Aldo had screwed subobjects in modelview, which remained screwed in game althought using PCS with autofacet.
You should really ask him for the model.
My testing abilities are limited 'cuz spec doesn't work for me at home, so this prob is hard to notice on my system, but I think I've seen some of those strange shadings sometimes ago.
Also the screenshot Sticks showed us about per pixel shadings looked like if the model was affected by the same problem, and the shot was from the game
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: KARMA on March 20, 2004, 09:46:46 am
btw bob the autofacet build is giving problems to me in game too when I want to smooth full rounded objects, like the tie's spherical hull. Althought partially smoothed I can see in game the borders of the polys, which suck, and will suck more with spec.
I tryed many angles (up to 120°) and smoothgroups too, with no effect, the only way to have correctly shaded spheres was to use cob2fs2.
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Havock on March 20, 2004, 10:05:27 am
GL with your military training karma, I know it's quite tough from experience :)
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Flipside on March 20, 2004, 10:13:41 am
Well, from what I've seen there seems to be no lighting problems in game with this model :)
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: jdjtcagle on March 20, 2004, 11:40:18 am
Could FRED have an option on all ships were you can put a nameplate by default and yu can choose what to name it."GTC ****" ect.  
That would be extremely usefull:)
 (http://www.sectorfiles.com/ti-file-dump/VasudanAdmiral/FenrisNameplate.jpg)
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Flipside on March 20, 2004, 11:59:52 am
You can do this from Fred already in a way, just create several 'nameplates' and use the texture change ability in fred to assign the right nameplate to the 'square' on your model.
Of course, this only works with models designed for it, but it's workable, and pretty easy to do :)
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Lightspeed on March 20, 2004, 12:31:28 pm
The back of the engine seems to be lacking a texture, which makes you see through it in the tech room and in-game (if disabled).
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Vasudan Admiral on March 20, 2004, 04:52:37 pm
did you put all the textures into the maps folder? cos that's what it will be - you're missing the "VA-ripped01.jpg" texture from Bob's zip.
if you've done that and it still won't work, i'll send the pcx that i use :)
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Setekh on March 21, 2004, 06:15:01 am
Man, the specular brings out those great details like nothing else. Well done, Karma and Vasudan Admiral and Bob. :)
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: jdjtcagle on March 21, 2004, 11:44:53 am
I hate to point out this, but.....:)

(http://www.fattonys.com/images/upload/JoshCagle446.jpg)

Looks great other wise....
And plus you cant notice it, really.
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Vasudan Admiral on March 21, 2004, 02:42:17 pm
i think Bob just took the turrets and their locations from the regular fenris and just stuck em on for this one :)

i'm nearly done with the final version (and this is one of the things i fixed) - just finishing off the debris before compiling into a pof.
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Taristin on March 21, 2004, 03:00:03 pm
Woo. I'll wait for the Official Vasudan Admiralâ„¢ version. :nod:
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Vasudan Admiral on March 25, 2004, 11:09:36 pm
ok, nearly finished it now. all heirarchy works, and it works in-game.
however it seems that all versions of this particular mesh will crash fred and fred_open (latest HTL one). i've tracked the problem down to Code\Model\ModelsInc.h - third and fourth lines from the bottom:
Code: [Select]
#define MAX_POLYGON_VECS 1100 //6500 (7x)
#define MAX_POLYGON_NORMS 2800 //6500 (3x)
it seems that whatever this MAX_POLYGON_VECS is, it won't let the fenris into fred. :confused:

on the other hand, i added 3 zeros to the end of both the above limits (overkill probably), compiled and ran, everything the same as before, and it worked perfectly in fred and ingame, with no noticable drawbacks.
so unless a coder can spot what i can't, could someone with SCP fred access bump those limits for the next fred release plz? thanx :)
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Goober5000 on March 25, 2004, 11:56:11 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Vasudan Admiral
i added 3 zeros to the end of both the above limits (overkill probably)
Oy. :eek2: That's far too much.  Find the lowest possible increase and try again.
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Bobboau on March 26, 2004, 12:10:18 am
those valuse arn't used anywere in the lates HTL builds, try this one (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,22347.0.html)
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Trivial Psychic on March 26, 2004, 12:47:35 am
Bob, I'm not trying to insult you or anything, or trying to say that I know more about this kind of thing (since I'm not skilled at pretty much anything you are), but I think Vasudan Admiral was refering to limits in FRED2 and not in FS2.  I only point this out because the thread you linked to discusses FS2 and not FRED.  I just assume you made a quick scan of his post and picked out a few words but didn't get the exact gyst of it.  I've done it myself sometimes.

If I'm wrong or being rude or anything, just delete or modify this post.
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Bobboau on March 26, 2004, 01:25:17 am
ah, yeah he did say that didn't he...
have you tried the OGL build of fred? it uses HTL to reder the ships (IIRC)
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Trivial Psychic on March 26, 2004, 01:50:48 am
Quote
Originally posted by Vasudan Admiral

ok, nearly finished it now. all heirarchy works, and it works in-game.  however it seems that all versions of this particular mesh will crash fred and fred_open (latest HTL one). i've tracked the problem down to...
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Vasudan Admiral on March 26, 2004, 02:53:36 am
i've tried most versions of fred i could find. all of them crash because something about the model breaks that limit. :\

and what exactly is it that's breaking this limit anyway? ie, what's a poly "vec"? Vector?

and Goober: what does having it set that high actually do? i didn't notice any framerate reductions or other bugs, and the fred i compiled worked fine.
but i'll try to find the min anyway. :)
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Vasudan Admiral on March 26, 2004, 03:09:29 am
well well well, look at this:

Limits at
MAX_POLYGON_VECS   4100
MAX_POLYGON_NORMS   5800
gives this:
(http://www.sectorfiles.com/ti-file-dump/VasudanAdmiral/FenrisInFred1.jpg)
The old shards of death.

Limits at aforementioned
MAX_POLYGON_VECS   1100000
MAX_POLYGON_NORMS   2800000
gives this:
(http://www.sectorfiles.com/ti-file-dump/VasudanAdmiral/FenrisInFred2.jpg)

no shards of death. and all that has been changed is that one limit. the higher limit one also ran much faster and smoothly :D

edit: oh yes, and this is just changing the limit in bog-standard fred. however it's actually managing with a 6000 odd poly model here. much larger than the original exe could hope to cope with. :D
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Taristin on March 26, 2004, 08:25:39 am
Well, that's handy...
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Bobboau on March 26, 2004, 09:12:31 am
setting it too high sucks vast quantities of memory, the vect are used for normals and points, it turns out there has never been a poly limit, but there is a point limit.

with just the defpoints alone that's going to take up 64 megs of memory, what you did. it's probly closer to 156 megs, becase the defpoints are copied sevral places
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Flipside on March 26, 2004, 02:08:41 pm
Well, probably the limits can be tweaked a bit, but at least we know it can be fixed :D
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Vasudan Admiral on March 27, 2004, 03:12:23 am
hmm..... ran some tests, and the minimum limits i could find it will work with are
Code: [Select]

#define MAX_POLYGON_VECS           7700 //1100 (7x)
#define MAX_POLYGON_NORMS           19600 //2800 (3x)
which is in ratio with the originals (x7)

however, this is seven times what the original limits were. so what in the world is it about this particular model that breaks the limit by so much?

keep in mind tho this does not appear to greatly affect framerates in fred, and it can still allow 149 of them before deciding the ship limit has been reached.
the framerates with about 8-10 of them on screen at once are slower than with the old model, but that was sorta expected with HTL models, and especially when using non-HTL (no SCP enhancements at all) fred ;)
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Flipside on March 27, 2004, 02:47:02 pm
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.... well, these are pretty obvious questions, and I know how experienced you are as a modeller, so you've most likely already checked, but have you made sure you have merged all the vertices together? That might account for the massive number of vecs?

Only asking coz I've forgotten to do this before ;)
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: KARMA on March 27, 2004, 08:13:01 pm
well, in order to reduce the facecount, the main object is made of ~130 submodels, which mean that the vert/face ratio in a triangulized model is surely higher than the ratio of a solid object, like the :v: models
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Vasudan Admiral on March 27, 2004, 10:27:48 pm
hmm... that's probably it exactly Karma. :) and since there's no way to change that other than merging them and getting a 10-20 000 poly model, or deleting them, it's probably best to up the limits in FS_Open i think?

btw Flip, that would be a potential cause true, but i'm pretty sure it isn't in this case - most models with that problem have severe clipping problems, and so far this one has been perfect in fred and ingame in that regard. :)
(although it's now decided to keep crashing when loading a mission for some reason - something not right in the pof data i think)
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: KARMA on March 28, 2004, 03:42:51 am
if solid it would be around 10-12k polys: I made the solid object first, then splitted it in submodels whenever it let me save faces, until I reached a reasonable facecount and a stable result (a longer process than expected)
As for the clipping problems, this strategy would create huge clippings in vanilla fs2, but it works fine in fs2open since Bob enhanced the z-buffer. Personally I think that the z-buffer is the best thing SCP made so far:)
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Turambar on March 28, 2004, 07:10:04 am
That's all very good, but I am persuaded by the quality of your work, Karma, to respectfully request that you make more

Thank you        -Turambar
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Vasudan Admiral on April 09, 2004, 09:44:10 am
*bump* (but for a reason ;) )

(http://www.sectorfiles.com/ti-file-dump/VasudanAdmiral/HTLFenris2.jpg)
(http://www.sectorfiles.com/ti-file-dump/VasudanAdmiral/HTLFenris1.jpg)

finally completed the HTL fenris - fully working as far as i can tell. :) however, due to that weird limit thing, only the latest FS Open build will run it - (since Bob only recently bumped it up in the SCP (thanks for that BTW :) ) ) and that latest build is currently this one or later: 3-28-04 build by Bobboau (http://freespace.volitionwatch.com/blackwater/fs2_open_Bobboau_3-28-04.zip) - post bugs here (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,22476.0.html) or in Mantis. (http://mgo.maxgaming.net/mantis)

The Fenris itself:
HTL Fenris (http://www.sectorfiles.com/ti-file-dump/VasudanAdmiral/HTL-Fenris-final.zip)
(PCX textures, glowmaps and shinemaps included - the shines slightly edited versions of Lightspeeds amazeing work, and the glowmaps by GE IIRC)

and since i wasn't quite sure which texture format most people prefer for running in FS Open, i made 2 packs of the textures in TGA and JPG formats:
TGA Format textures and glow & shine maps (http://www.sectorfiles.com/ti-file-dump/VasudanAdmiral/HTL-Fenris_TGA-textures.zip)
JPG Format textures and glow & shine maps (http://www.sectorfiles.com/ti-file-dump/VasudanAdmiral/HTL-Fenris_JPG-textures.zip)

there's also the GTC Orff nameplate in there, as a template for any custom nameplates people want to make. :)

finally, i don't think we should really continue making ships of *this* level of detail unless we're willing to leave a lot of graphics card owners out of the loop. even with HTL on a moderately powerful machine, this ship took the framerate from 120 when looking at stars down to a fluctuating range between about 15 and 30 FPS :(
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Col. Fishguts on April 09, 2004, 09:49:13 am
PWNAGE
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Setekh on April 09, 2004, 09:56:52 am
:eek2:

Dude... into the highlights with you. What a fantastic effort, well done. :)
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Vasudan Admiral on April 09, 2004, 10:01:34 am
lol, in the highlights less than a minute after posting it :lol: - that's gotta be a record :D

Thanks very much indeed. :)
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Turnsky on April 09, 2004, 10:03:05 am
:eek2: :eek2:

awesome
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Petrarch of the VBB on April 09, 2004, 10:03:14 am
Sweet Georgia Brown!
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Setekh on April 09, 2004, 10:05:37 am
Quote
Originally posted by Vasudan Admiral
lol, in the highlights less than a minute after posting it :lol: - that's gotta be a record :D

Thanks very much indeed. :)


I was quite proud of how quickly I got her in there myself. Awesome work dude, well deserved to both of you. ;)
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Kazan on April 09, 2004, 10:06:04 am
wait until we remodel and retexture all of the FS ships for HTL

Volition is going to look bad
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Petrarch of the VBB on April 09, 2004, 10:12:30 am
As is everyone's framerate. ;)
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Setekh on April 09, 2004, 10:18:10 am
Quote
Originally posted by Petrarch of the VBB
As is everyone's framerate. ;)


If everyone's framerate goes through the floor, then we can truly call FSO a "modern game". :)
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Kazan on April 09, 2004, 10:18:56 am
not mine
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Petrarch of the VBB on April 09, 2004, 11:14:10 am
Oh yes. I forgot you're the only one who matters.
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Flipside on April 09, 2004, 11:17:15 am
Awesome work as always VA :) Looks just about perfect :D

Flipside :)
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: .::Tin Can::. on April 09, 2004, 11:19:04 am
Fantastically fabulous. Love it love it love it. So then, how would this run on a 9600 XT? My framerates are always at 60, and never go up NOR down. Not even durring big things. It's just at 60... but what would this bring it down to? Which graphics card were you using?

Other then that: absolutely fantastic.
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: jdjtcagle on April 09, 2004, 11:20:14 am
Does this mean that there will be no more High Poly ships?? :confused:

Or is there a cure for the poor framerates
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Flipside on April 09, 2004, 11:20:53 am
You need to disable the Vsync in the launcher if you want your framerate to run at more than 60.

Yes, I would say your card can handle this model :)

Jdj, alas, the cure for low frame rates is the same as it always has been. Faster video card, which, obviously not everyone can afford. You could always turn off some of the more time-consuming effects?
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: jdjtcagle on April 09, 2004, 11:22:25 am
What excactly would happen if you turn off that effect??
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: kasperl on April 09, 2004, 11:23:53 am
ok, try running FSO without -spec and or -glow
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Flipside on April 09, 2004, 11:24:31 am
The Vsync limits the maximum framerate of the game to the framerate of your monitor, and won't go above it Turning this off will make your framerate run higher, but may cause 'splitting' halfway down the screen occasionally, which isn't terrible, but is noticeable sometimes :)
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Nico on April 09, 2004, 11:25:04 am
It really needs custom maps, the originals are too blurry :(
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: jdjtcagle on April 09, 2004, 11:25:38 am
I can hadle it on my card perfectly, but I just hope this doesn't stop us from making more of them :)

Quote
Jdj, alas, the cure for low frame rates is the same as it always has been. Faster video card, which, obviously not everyone can afford. You could always turn off some of the more time-consuming effects?
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: IceFire on April 09, 2004, 11:26:19 am
Yay for high poly ships!  That looks fantastic!
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Setekh on April 09, 2004, 11:27:15 am
Tin Can, you're only running at 60Hz refresh? Up that thing to 100 or something, it'll be much better for your eyes. :)
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Kazan on April 09, 2004, 11:56:16 am
tin can: turn off VSync
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Ashrak on April 09, 2004, 12:13:42 pm
a bit TOO high poly
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: StratComm on April 09, 2004, 12:27:16 pm
It looks good, but...

Bounding box?

EDIT: That's a subsystem, nevermind.  But why is the engine subsystem on the front of the conning tower?
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Taristin on April 09, 2004, 12:55:14 pm
Some of us don't have monitors that support refresh rates that high. :doubt:
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Rictor on April 09, 2004, 01:53:52 pm
Oh dear, I just know I'll get lynched for this, but I...barely notice the difference. Not to insult your work KARMA, I think its the textures. I remember you posted an flat textured WIP once and the little details were much more noticeable.

Well, bravo. I hope to see many more great high-poly ships in the future.
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Unknown Target on April 09, 2004, 01:57:49 pm
Methinks some self-casting shadows would really help make the new changes noticable :)

but not until after 3.6 :D
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Carl on April 09, 2004, 03:48:12 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Vasudan Admiral
(http://www.sectorfiles.com/ti-file-dump/VasudanAdmiral/HTLFenris2.jpg)


brings a tear to your eye, don't it? :)

God created specular highlights with the fenris in mind.
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Taristin on April 09, 2004, 04:42:08 pm
Truly. There has never been a more beautiful sight. :rolleyes:
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Ace on April 09, 2004, 04:51:28 pm
I hope that the default ship won't have the nameplate, it'd be odd to have everything with "GTC Orff" on it ;)
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: IncendiaryLemon on April 09, 2004, 05:42:08 pm
Its rather fantastic Karma
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Fineus on April 09, 2004, 05:53:54 pm
Before:
(http://freespace.volitionwatch.com/techfs/ships/Fenris.jpg)

After:
(http://www.sectorfiles.com/ti-file-dump/VasudanAdmiral/HTLFenris2.jpg)

Who'd have thought it....

:eek2:
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: KARMA on April 09, 2004, 07:12:45 pm
nice shot!:)
and again...nice work VA!

btw.. I admit I hoped in a lower performance hit: IIRC those who tested the model when it was untextured reported good framerates (are you sure the textures are 8bit?), I can only suppose that high res textures + the various map processes can kill framerates with an high poly model. This force me to reconsider some of my precedent beliefs.

Also, it would be many times better with custom, better maps than those :v: ones, you could highlight some details like the extrusions between the head and the vertical body and some other stuff, but I don't have time to do em, sorry, and knowing this I tryed to build the mesh (using more modelling time) so that it could be possible to almost use the original maps.

I think that part of the problems comes from the spec effects btw. Oh, it's nice, but from that pic in the neb, it seem that the dark parts are totally non specular (except the sides of some extrusions). The specmaps for this model should be modifyed: the dark parts should be less specular than the normal plating, but it is important, with high detailed ships, to see a lot of light transitions, to make more evident the different details. Also, specmaps can be used (from what I've seen in other shots) to simulate some sort of bump-map like effect, which would be extremely cool in some areas.
I'd like to work on this personally, but unfourtunately spec doesn't work on my system, so I can't be of help in this.

There's another thing btw: haveing used many submodels, the model has less shading problems, but nonetheless it'd be benefit of few smoothgroups, where there are indents and hard edges, because there are some (minimal) shading distorsions in some points
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Singh on April 09, 2004, 07:24:12 pm
*sees fenris*
*jaw drops
*picks up jaw
*jaw drops again
*just.........stares :shock:
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Singh on April 09, 2004, 07:28:14 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Carl


God created specular highlights with the fenris in mind.


Soooooooo true. LONG LIVE THE FENRIS!!
*quites down and goes to his corner, still staring at the fenris.
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: WMCoolmon on April 09, 2004, 07:51:54 pm
Looks nice :D

Too bad it utterly kills my FPS ingame. :(
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Vasudan Admiral on April 09, 2004, 07:57:17 pm
wowsers, lotsa replys

Tin Can: i was running on a GF FX 5200, which isn't great, but was as cheap as i could find, and has worked perfectly well so far. a 9600 XT will most definitly run it :)

jdjtcagle: there will certainly be more high poly ships. i'm working on a lucifer and triton atm, (the lucifer won't be done until after TI's Operation Raganorak is done) and i have plans to do a fair few others over time :)
the only thing is, they won't be quite this detailed in future. still much better than the originals, but not 6000+ polys combined with four high res textures, as i don't think even the HTL engine will handle too many of these sorts of ships.

Nico: i used the FS1 textures as bases here, and they're pretty large.

Ashrak: quite possibly a bit too high, but the main slowdown here is that there are multiple textures, since i don't know of a way to combine them into one texture other than baking, and that would kill the look anyway, since it shrinks the parts a lot :(

StratComm: the bounding box works fine, but i have no idea why [v] put the engine in the conning tower. :confused:

Rictor: look at Kalfireth's comparrison. still no difference? :p

Unknown Target: propper shadows like that would most certainly look fantastic, but combine them with bump mapping, vertex lighting, glow points, glowmaps, spec maps, evironment mapping, high res textures, HTL models and all the other things that go on during gameplay and......well, you can probably guess what would happen. :( we need quantum computers. :D

Ace: either replace the nameplate in modview with a puregreen texture or "invisable", or make a custom nameplate for any fenris' in your campaign. that was the whole idea of it :D

KARMA: well, i've gotta work on TI, so i don't really want to work on this anymore. i can upload the final scene if you or anyone else wants to fix those bits with the smoothing, but it's not really noticeable ingame. the performance hit is because of the 4 high res textures as far as i can tell. and i've only tested it with PCX, not JPG, so i can't say what speeds will be like with them.

WMCoolmon: what card do you have? for all those having severe performance hits, it may be an idea to set the second LOD to kick in much earlier than it used to in the table, so that you only see the really high detail areas when really close.
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: KARMA on April 09, 2004, 08:13:32 pm
yeah I was wondering too if the problem lays in having 4 different high res maps instead of only one
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Nico on April 09, 2004, 08:28:16 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Vasudan Admiral

Nico: i used the FS1 textures as bases here, and they're pretty large.


I know, but they're still not enough imho.
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Ransom on April 09, 2004, 11:04:51 pm
:eek2: Whoa. That thing is incredible. Runs without a noticeable framerate hit on my Radeon 9800, but then I guess it'd be a sin if it didn't. The day when all the ships are this detailed will be a good day indeed (for the people who can run them all playably, that is).
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Wes on April 10, 2004, 01:20:59 am
Looks great in game. I was afraid it would look out of place compared to all the other default ships but it fits in well with the difference being that when you fly in close you can see tons of detail rather than large flat polygons. Runs great on my computer as well.

I hope you keep making ships like these. At the rate computers are improving soon everyone will be able to use detailed models like these (and until then there is nothing wrong with the default models :)).
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Setekh on April 10, 2004, 01:36:58 am
Quote
Originally posted by Kalfireth
Before:
(http://freespace.volitionwatch.com/techfs/ships/Fenris.jpg)

After:
(http://www.sectorfiles.com/ti-file-dump/VasudanAdmiral/HTLFenris2.jpg)

Who'd have thought it....

:eek2:


:nod: :eek2:

And why not look back even further...
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: diamondgeezer on April 10, 2004, 03:49:21 am
Well, I just fired up FS2 and had a look at this thing, and two words spring to mind: ****ing hell

Absolute tip-top work guys. More please!
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: karajorma on April 10, 2004, 06:49:53 am
Quote
Originally posted by KARMA
yeah I was wondering too if the problem lays in having 4 different high res maps instead of only one


I remember seeing someone (I think it might have been bob or nico ) saying that it was very easy to combine several UV maps into one. Now's the time to see them prove it :D
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Nico on April 10, 2004, 07:03:40 am
Was bob. but having all the maps of the feniris on one single file, would either lead to a huge file, or a crappy map.
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Black Wolf on April 10, 2004, 07:09:47 am
That is...awesome. And the custom nameplates are going to own, though I personally would sugest having plain green as the default one as opposed to GTC Orff - it'd make more sense to have to force people into adding nameplates than into removing them.
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Raptor on April 10, 2004, 07:15:48 am
Quote
Originally posted by Vasudan Admiral
(http://www.sectorfiles.com/ti-file-dump/VasudanAdmiral/HTLFenris2.jpg)


:eek2:
*eyes start to water...*

Time to crank out a few nameplates...
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: karajorma on April 10, 2004, 07:20:44 am
Quote
Originally posted by Nico
Was bob. but having all the maps of the feniris on one single file, would either lead to a huge file, or a crappy map.


Cutting it down to 1 or 2 1024x1024 or 2048x2048 would probably speed things up for everyone. And if I remember Random Tiger's thread on the matter correctly most peoppe could handle both of those anyway.
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: KARMA on April 10, 2004, 07:48:37 am
it was me too saying it is easy
and it is
just open photoshop (or anything else) and merge the little textures in one larger map
open lithunwrap and merge all the different materials into a single new one associated with the new map
move/scale arbitrary the group of polys in the new map.
it's a 10 min of boring job (without the reconversion and the hierachy editing)

The problem here is that IIRC the fenris use some bastard sizes (not square textures) and I'm not sure if you can easily merge the individual maps into a single map.
BTW I'm not going to do so
it's pretty easy to do and it could be a way to let other people learn how to do so (which is a nice excuse for my lazyness:D)
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Vasudan Admiral on April 10, 2004, 08:28:00 am
it's possible, just very long and boring as Karma says. i've done it to an extent with the HTL sigurd - 18 or so 512 to 1024 res maps welded together into 4 large main maps. however, all of those were square. no idea how it would be patched together with the different sized ones.
i may do it sometime in the future, but as for now, i'm enjoying making this HTL triton :D

btw, whoever modeled and textured the triton really deserves to be eaten alive by Carl. it's the most horrendus implimentation of a good idea i've ever seen. it's proving difficult to detail according to canon, since there's no detail at all to go off. :\
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Raptor on April 10, 2004, 08:46:31 am
Quote
Originally posted by Vasudan Admiral
btw, whoever modeled and textured the triton really deserves to be eaten alive by Carl. it's the most horrendus implimentation of a good idea i've ever seen. it's proving difficult to detail according to canon, since there's no detail at all to go off. :\


Can't be as bad as the Aeolus...

BTW, FRED crashed when I tried to use this new model.  I assume there is a newer verison of FRED around that can handle it, yes? (Will check 'latest version' thread in SCP)

FRED2_open_r
Version: 3.5.5
Created: 28 Febuary 2004

EDIT:Found it.  Too bad it dosn't display the wireframes or waypoint paths...
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Vasudan Admiral on April 10, 2004, 09:00:35 am
check over the previous pages for the reason it won't work in any fred but the one i bumped the limits for (for me at least).

actually, has anyone gotten it to work in any fred?
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Corsair on April 10, 2004, 10:00:28 am
:eek2:
Guys, that's awesome.

I was right in the middle of trying to render it...and I was putting the finishing touches on when Photoshop crashed. Now I've got to go do the whole thing again. The whole morning down the drain. :mad:

Ah well...I'll work on it again tonight I guess. This is just too good to pass up.
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Nico on April 10, 2004, 11:03:59 am
Quote
Originally posted by Vasudan Admiral
it's possible

Of course it's possible, it's just some UV mapping job :p ( and not specially complicated one, there ), but who'd do it? Nobody? Well, voila :p
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: karajorma on April 10, 2004, 12:24:49 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Nico
Of course it's possible, it's just some UV mapping job :p ( and not specially complicated one, there ), but who'd do it? Nobody? Well, voila :p


Fair enough but anyone who knows how to do it loses the rights to complain about the framerate hit it causes :p
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: KARMA on April 10, 2004, 01:59:47 pm
guys, I think I discovered the cause of the slowdown
the maps are
1) 512x668 (+glowmp and shinemap at the same size)
2) 512x1004 (+glowmp and shinemap at the same size)
3) 512x679 (+glowmp and shinemap at the same size)
4) 512x407 (+glowmp and shinemap at the same size)
5) 118x390 (+ shinemap at the same size)
6) 256x256 (+ shinemap at the same size)
7) 256x256 (+ shinemap at the same size)
and
8) nameplate at 420x61

this means something like 14 maps (including shine and glowmaps, 15 with nameplate) with a bastard size
You *must* have textures with sizes power of 2, which mean 2,4,8,16,32,64,128,256,512,1024,2048...., elseway MAJOR slowdowns will happen, like in this case. It is even a surprise that those maps don't kill completely the framerates, like what it happen in other games when you use textures with bastard sizes.
I made the same error with the corellian corvette because I didn't know that when I made the maps:/

I doubt I'll have time for even THINK to fix this for at least a week, the faster solution btw is probably that someone with max or lightwave bake it
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Nico on April 10, 2004, 03:00:31 pm
fixing the size of the map is a two minutes job, that, anybody can do. Resizing the maps ( say, first one to 512*512 ) will not mess up the UV
Looking at it, the whole thing could fit on a single 2048*2048 map.
Bah, send me the fenris in 3ds format, and once I'm done with my eze, I'll take a look at it ( maybe I'll try and redraw the maps actually ).
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: KARMA on April 10, 2004, 04:56:45 pm
you are right, doing this way is surely very fast, but I've noticed in the past that scaling not proportionally may add some artifacts and distorsion, expecially in the diagonal lines..nothing too weird, but it'd be better a deeper job
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Ulala on April 10, 2004, 05:09:08 pm
:eek: :eek2: :eek: :eek2: :eek:

*demands more high poly capships*
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Raptor on April 10, 2004, 05:56:20 pm
Quote
Originally posted by KARMA
You *must* have textures with sizes power of 2, which mean 2,4,8,16,32,64,128,256,512,1024,2048...., elseway MAJOR slowdowns will happen, like in this case.


But are textures with, say, size 512x1024 alright?

I agree with Nico on this, one MIGHT be able to get all those maps onto one single map.  Might do it myself shortly.:doubt:
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: StratComm on April 10, 2004, 06:00:45 pm
I think the game still scales them square.  But doubling the side length is much easier to do than scaling it by an irrational factor, so it wouldn't be the end of the world.  Remember, they don't have to actually be proportional to the model, so you can save the processor and scale the images before they go into the game.
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: .::Tin Can::. on April 10, 2004, 09:51:20 pm
How much are we talking here, about framerate drop? Like, if I always had Freespace 2 running at 60 FPS, no more, no less, never changing, and it ran on my Radeon 9600 XT, (better than 9700 Pro, less than 9800 Pro) and I saw this High Polly totally *****en Fenris, where would my framrate go from there?
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Rictor on April 10, 2004, 09:54:46 pm
Indeed. Where would the framerates go if we had ALL hi poly ships, or at least cap ships. High-res textures, maybe Omni's Earth model, spec mapping, ambient maping...hmm.
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Kazan on April 10, 2004, 09:57:12 pm
Tin Can: turn off vsync and increase your monitor refresh rate
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: StratComm on April 10, 2004, 10:01:06 pm
Probably very little when it's just the Fenris, though you really need to turn off vsync to know what framerates you're actually getting.  The issue is much more relavent to the lower-end user still slugging it out with a card 3+ generations removed from the cutting edge, a P3, and not so much RAM.  The point is that it is wasteful in terms of available resources to use non-standard texture sizes whenever they are used, and inevitably it will make some difference for someone between a game that is playable and one that is not.  Always, always, always make sure all media falls into the 2^n on a side category.

EDIT: Well that was pointless, thanks all for getting this before me :rolleyes:
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Vasudan Admiral on April 10, 2004, 10:07:28 pm
it might be safer to convert it from pof. i seem to have a very mixed up textures folder, so i can't tell if this will work on other ppls systems, but here's the scn and it's textures. do whatever you like with them. :)
http://www.sectorfiles.com/ti-file-dump/VasudanAdmiral/HTL_Fenris-SCN.zip
(not 3ds format because i don't have 3ds max to test with, and 3d exploration didn't show any of the textures anyway. :\ )
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Raptor on April 11, 2004, 08:18:48 am
Please don't kill me for this...

But I've already been doing some tinkering.:nervous:

(http://www.angelfire.com/space2/raptorsnest/Fenris.jpg)
Just changed the turret setup slightly.

Got to get that main ventral turret working...:mad:

Then I might see about those textures...

On a related note:
(http://www.angelfire.com/space2/raptorsnest/Vidar.jpg)
This is a modified version of Hammonos Ticogo..... His big heavy cruiser.  Minor changes to hull, overhaul of turrets.  Haven't finished texturing all of the turret maps yet.

Someone needs to do to this what was done to the Fenris...
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: KARMA on April 11, 2004, 09:48:37 am
this is the 3ds: http://www.3dap.com/hlp/hosted/swfs2/wips/htl_fenris.3ds
I just converted the pof->cob and converted again to 3ds
shaders will be almost surely screwed
BTW I'm a bit embarassed if you really want to draw new textures, I mean.. I know how good you are and do it if you want and really have time to, I'm sure the result will be astonishing, but I'd have made probably a different (better) model in that case.
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: KARMA on April 11, 2004, 09:57:34 am
btw, about framerates, I remember a discussion from another game (BC) where IIRC in a model with many k polys and many 1024x1024 textures a single ~300x300 animated texture killed completely the framerates.
I think that the only slowdown here is cause by the engine rescaling the textures (14), and probably isn't too serious, but obviously if you have the maps already at the right size, you'll save many operations.
Actually you should be able to test it by yourself in few minutes, scaling on your own the maps for a simple test (which would be interesting)
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: JarC on April 11, 2004, 10:37:01 am
Quote
Originally posted by KARMA
guys, I think I discovered the cause of the slowdown
...[SNIP]...
You *must* have textures with sizes power of 2, which mean 2,4,8,16,32,64,128,256,512,1024,2048...., elseway MAJOR slowdowns will happen
:eek2: than you haven't looked at the maps in the media vp's lately I presume? there's not a single one that has both dimensions in this category
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Taristin on April 11, 2004, 11:10:40 am
Which is why the framerates are killed. If someone got bored and resized them, they's have a better gaming experience.
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Nico on April 11, 2004, 11:53:18 am
Quote
Originally posted by KARMA
this is the 3ds: http://www.3dap.com/hlp/hosted/swfs2/wips/htl_fenris.3ds
I just converted the pof->cob and converted again to 3ds
shaders will be almost surely screwed
BTW I'm a bit embarassed if you really want to draw new textures, I mean.. I know how good you are and do it if you want and really have time to, I'm sure the result will be astonishing, but I'd have made probably a different (better) model in that case.


I'm not planing on changing anything on the Fenris, I like it as it is.
If you don't mind, tho, maybe I can tweak the mesh a bit to adjust some parts ( making mapping easier )?
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Taristin on April 11, 2004, 12:31:45 pm
Funny. This Fenris runs smoothly. The vanilla Hercules and Ursa kill my framerates. :p

Maybe it's because I resized every map to 1024x1024...?
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: KARMA on April 11, 2004, 01:22:04 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Nico


I'm not planing on changing anything on the Fenris, I like it as it is.
If you don't mind, tho, maybe I can tweak the mesh a bit to adjust some parts ( making mapping easier )?

sure:)
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: kasperl on April 11, 2004, 01:27:52 pm
Quote
Originally posted by JarC
:eek2: than you haven't looked at the maps in the media vp's lately I presume? there's not a single one that has both dimensions in this category


yeah, that issue really, really should be solved somewhere around a month ago. the issue is remapping all the original textures, IIRC. Have fun.
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: StratComm on April 11, 2004, 01:39:39 pm
Nope, the issue is just scaling the darned things.  As long as the relative positions of features on the textures remain the same, mapping will hold flawlessly.  It's probably in interface-related stuff that the problem comes up, and that's not quite as critical.
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: kasperl on April 11, 2004, 01:44:41 pm
interface stuff is ok, but someone should go through all the in-game maps, including the spec and glow ones and change it. it will require human attention to figure out the best size to round to.
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: JarC on April 11, 2004, 01:51:54 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Raa Tor'h
Which is why the framerates are killed. If someone got bored and resized them, they's have a better gaming experience.
somehow I doubt that is going to work, for one thing UV goes out the window...just tried it, doesn't work...to get the desired size there's bound to be distortion...thus relative positions will change
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: KARMA on April 11, 2004, 01:53:06 pm
no way, if you just scale the uv's will not be screwed, since they are relative and not absolute
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: KARMA on April 11, 2004, 01:59:49 pm
about the media vp, how many textures are we talking about?
because it is possible - I'm not sure - that you can create a batch operation in photoshop to scale automatically to a defined size.

assuming that these textures are squares, you could run that batch operation to all the textures together that will be scaled 512x512, then another batch operation to all the textures that need to be 1024x1024, etc.
It will work if they are not squares too.
The human attention will be spent then only in making the groups of textures, to scale manually the textures out of the groups, and to check the final result
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: JarC on April 11, 2004, 02:11:16 pm
forget it, the textures are not square, just resizing so at least  one of the sides is a multiple of 2, would still require the engine to rescale...(if it even does, coz again, UV is gone then) and when I tried resizing so both sides are multiples of 2 the UV was gone too...
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: KARMA on April 11, 2004, 02:17:01 pm
no jarc, as said, the uvs are relative, and they are never screwed if you just scale a texture, proportionally or not.
It is like if you automatically scale the UVs whenever you scale the map.
Also, I'm not completely sure if the textures are always scaled to square, or if the sides are scaled only to make em of a size multiple of 2. We need a coder to tell us that
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: JarC on April 11, 2004, 02:47:06 pm
you must either not read correctly or something else, I tried just now, rescaling so both sides are multiple of 2 gives for me a complete screwed mapping, it looks completely wacked, besides that, it borked regular fs2...
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: StratComm on April 11, 2004, 02:54:40 pm
How did you scale it?  Did you just add black or whatnot to the edges?  Because that will screw up mapping.  You have to scale the image, not just enlarge the canvas.
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: JarC on April 11, 2004, 03:01:35 pm
nope, did a complete resize, not just adding borders (Duh, I ain't that daft ;)), the result was a completely striped model in modelview and in FS2 it borks about missing textures and FS2_open just shows an invisible ship (textures placed in maps folder)

screenie
(http://freespace.kicks-ass.net/_images/fs/weird.jpg)

texture is bomber05-01a.pcx from mv_zpack.vp resized to 1024x1024
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: StratComm on April 11, 2004, 03:06:26 pm
That really shouldn't be happening, as the size and shape of the map has no bearing whatsoever on the UV coordinates.  I'd like to see both a screenshot and the resized offending texture if that's possible.
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: StratComm on April 11, 2004, 03:39:27 pm
I'll check into it.
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: KARMA on April 11, 2004, 03:56:19 pm
as I already said, scaling never had effect on uvmaps, the problem should be something different, which atm I can't say
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: StratComm on April 11, 2004, 04:01:24 pm
It works fine for me, although GIMP isn't as clean in its anti-aliasing when scaling as Photoshop is.  Make sure you're saving as the old 8-bit pcx, as the map already there is 8 bit.  That's a format issue, not a mapping one.
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: AqueousShadow on April 11, 2004, 04:03:43 pm
Well, I suppose I never got around to reporting this. It might be just me, but...

My FRED2O crashes every time I put the HP Fenris in mission. I have yet (yes, still to this day) to see the Fenris in action. The error message I get when FRED crashes after I ctrl+click to stick the Fenris complains about...Turrets. I think it's that the ship.tbl is messed up or something. I dunno...it's been hard for me to really get everything running smoothly, I suppose mostly because I have so many different MODs together at once...and it's not working like it should. So umm...anyone have any idea how to fix this? I believe I must tweak my ships.tbl somehow. I also haven't been able to find any missions to see the Fenris in. I think my techroom doesn't do a good job of showing it off.

Also, I'd appreciate it if someone were to tell me what I must do to have all my MODs running together smoothly (I guess I have to merge my tbls, but uhh..dunno what to do there). I haven't had much, if any, success with the Select Mod function in FSO. Thx
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: JarC on April 11, 2004, 04:14:08 pm
Quote
Originally posted by StratComm
It works fine for me, although GIMP isn't as clean in its anti-aliasing when scaling as Photoshop is.  Make sure you're saving as the old 8-bit pcx, as the map already there is 8 bit.  That's a format issue, not a mapping one.
it was 8 bit and still is 8 bit...and this should not be an issue with fs2_open...

@Karma:
resizing is an issue, it was said that resizing would work, but resizing means that the ratio changes, which causes displacement of detail, which ****s up the UV mapping...

FWIW, I just also tried rescaling so ratio did not change, still caused FS2 to bork about missing textures, and it and FS2_open still not showing a thing (and yes, texture is in maps folder)
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: KARMA on April 11, 2004, 05:04:22 pm
as said uvs are relative, which mean relative to mapping size.
If you change ratio or scale or whatever of a map, the relative position of an uvmap always remain the same.
uvmaps are relative, and not absolute.
to cause displacement of details, you have to crop or add row of pixels or other similar operations
I admit that I'm not sure if I tryed to resize not proportionally in the past, but IIRC yes, many times ago, and everything worked fine, but as said I'm not sure.
What I'm saying is mostly from what I know about uvmaps, and as Stratcomm is saying, it's working fine for him, so..
Let me also say that a detail displacement should look different than what you have in the pics above

@stratcomm
there are issues with FREDopen and this model, you have to check page 2-3 of this thread to find a solution, thanks to Vasudan Admiral

@venom:
http://www.3dap.com/hlp/hosted/swfs2/wips/fenrisnouv.3ds
this is a non uvmapped version of the fenris, with all the submodels not merged, some minimal mesh differences in a couple of details and probably a cleaner model (I think that VA added some edges and changed some very minimal things to make it easyer to unwrap, he also reduced the depth of the windows under my suggestion), dunno if it could be useful to you
Just be careful if you want to make some deep modifications, cuz I spent a lot of time before having a stable version (no crashes, no flythrough)
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Nico on April 11, 2004, 05:53:12 pm
Thanks, Karma.
JarC, test it ingame, modelview and fred won't show properly maps larger than 256*256. And I know resizing works fine, coz I've done it countless times.
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Lightspeed on April 11, 2004, 07:05:23 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Nico
And I know resizing works fine, coz I've done it countless times.


dito.
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Taristin on April 11, 2004, 07:14:33 pm
All of my maps are 2^... and all ships... except the ursa... run smoothly on a GF2
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Bobboau on April 11, 2004, 08:14:48 pm
Ursa has two maps on it incedentaly.
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Taristin on April 11, 2004, 08:46:15 pm
Yes. And? The fenris has 4, and it runs smoother.
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Vasudan Admiral on April 11, 2004, 08:59:39 pm
AqueousShadow: yeah, i don't think it works in any version of fred due to those limits i talked about on the previous pages. you can play the 'mystery of the trinity' mission (sm1-05) or 'The romans blunder' (sm1-03) to see it in game (those are where these screenies are from incidentally :D )

i thought i'd uploaded this already, but apparently not, so: http://www.sectorfiles.com/ti-file-dump/VasudanAdmiral/Fred2-HTLFenris.zip
this is the version that will let you see the fenris in fred, but it doesn't have any of the SCP's fred enhancements. :(

i'll also see if i can test framerate differences when the textures are rescaled to power of 2s, to what they are now.
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Setekh on April 12, 2004, 12:40:45 am
Quote
Originally posted by JarC
screenie
(http://www.dsv.nl/~raj/weird.jpg)

texture is bomber05-01a.pcx from mv_zpack.vp resized to 1024x1024


:wtf:

Strat, did you ever figure out what happened with these models? Or is it a local problem on Jar's side? :nervous:
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: AqueousShadow on April 12, 2004, 01:12:17 am
Quote
Originally posted by Vasudan Admiral
AqueousShadow: yeah, i don't think it works in any version of fred due to those limits i talked about on the previous pages. you can play the 'mystery of the trinity' mission (sm1-05) or 'The romans blunder' (sm1-03) to see it in game (those are where these screenies are from incidentally :D )

i thought i'd uploaded this already, but apparently not, so: http://www.sectorfiles.com/ti-file-dump/VasudanAdmiral/Fred2-HTLFenris.zip
this is the version that will let you see the fenris in fred, but it doesn't have any of the SCP's fred enhancements. :(

i'll also see if i can test framerate differences when the textures are rescaled to power of 2s, to what they are now.


Wow, thx a lot for your help. unfortunately, I'm not at home right now. I'm on my Spring Break, and my parents decided to spend it with my cousins in Texas. Soo...I won't be home for another week, and I obviously cannot do anything with FSO and FRED2O. Once again...I appreciate the help. Almost thought people were ignoring me :D
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Black Wolf on April 12, 2004, 02:52:42 am
Quote
Originally posted by JarC
nope, did a complete resize, not just adding borders (Duh, I ain't that daft ;)), the result was a completely striped model in modelview and in FS2 it borks about missing textures and FS2_open just shows an invisible ship (textures placed in maps folder)

screenie
(http://www.dsv.nl/~raj/weird.jpg)

texture is bomber05-01a.pcx from mv_zpack.vp resized to 1024x1024


That looks to me suspiciously like one of Modelview's half arsed attempt to render a 16 million colour texture.
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: WMCoolmon on April 12, 2004, 02:54:32 am
You can't have multiple versions of ships.tbl running around, if that's what you mean.

As for the mod function, I don't know exactly how to use it but you should just be able to move all the mod stuff to a different folder and then use -mod "foldername" to use that mod.

Check the wiki, it should tell you what you want: http://dynamic4.gamespy.com/~freespace/fsdoc/index.php/HomePage :)

Edit: D'oh, wonder how many times I've done that.
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: karajorma on April 12, 2004, 04:47:26 am
To those having problems with the HTL fenris.

Unless you're using the texture replacement system for a name plate why not just create the mission with the standard fenris model and add the HTL one afterwards?

Am I missiing something? :confused:
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: JarC on April 12, 2004, 05:43:57 am
Quote
Originally posted by Black Wolf


That looks to me suspiciously like one of Modelview's half arsed attempt to render a 16 million colour texture.
difficulty reading? I have stated a couple of times already the texture is 8bit...
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: JarC on April 12, 2004, 05:46:42 am
Quote
Originally posted by Nico
Thanks, Karma.
JarC, test it ingame, modelview and fred won't show properly maps larger than 256*256. And I know resizing works fine, coz I've done it countless times.
read back a couple of msgs....I tried but if y'all don't read what I post...
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Nico on April 12, 2004, 06:25:28 am
Well, there was something wrong. I've done it many times, and it always worked ( for exemple, I've taken all the FS1 shivan maps and resized them to 512*512 for FS2 ). Have you made sure there wasn't a format change when you saved the file ( like switching to 24 bit pcx )?
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Vasudan Admiral on April 12, 2004, 06:33:24 am
worked perfectly for me with PSP7.
(http://www.geocities.com/vasudanad/Ursa.txt)

all i did was open, size up to 1024x1024 on each, and save. so something was wrong, as Nico says.

edit:
Quote
texture is bomber05-01a.pcx from mv_zpack.vp resized to 1024x1024

never heard of 'mv_zpack.vp' before. where's it from?
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: kasperl on April 12, 2004, 06:54:05 am
that's the media vp, all the texes for FSO combined, including the high res FS1 ones.
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Vasudan Admiral on April 12, 2004, 08:30:20 am
ah, found it, thanks :)
didn't realise there was another one out, so  i had to search for it.
i've been using ''fs2_open356.vp" which i take is an older version?

edit:
:wtf: err, it doesn't appear to have 'bomber05-01a.pcx' in it, or at least not the version i have (just d/led from the media vp thread 3/4 of the way down the page).
there's


and it's certainly not any of them (checked). :confused: weird.
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: JarC on April 12, 2004, 09:58:21 am
all,

to cut a long story short, the program I used (Satori PhotoXL) does sometin funny to the pcx format...result is that FS and modview get confused...dunno what it is, resaved the lot in PSP and it works ok now, rescale/ aspect ratio destroying resize, the lot...uhmmm...so got my work cut out for me...this means that I'm going over all the maps and rescale/resize them all to the nearest multiple of 2....
does it make a diff if they're not square ? some are dimensioned such that their sides are close to 2:1 in ratio...

on topic of maps, just started one about a glow maps question been wondering about (same goes for shinemaps I suppose...) if y'all wouldn't mind venting some founded comments there I'd appreciate it...(not all of us are comfortable with graphic terms...could guess from the name what they're for but didn't knew how to create one, do now though :) )

@VA: If you took the last VP's then the reason why these textures are missing is prolly because all the textures for FS1 ships have been taken/left out in later versions to reduce size
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: StratComm on April 12, 2004, 10:34:47 pm
The question of squareness still hasn't been answered as far as I'm aware.  I still maintain that it's less-resource intensive to double a side though than to scale it by some random amount.
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Bobboau on April 12, 2004, 10:56:33 pm
power of two is all that's needed, if its 1024X256, it should be fine
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: StratComm on April 13, 2004, 12:04:21 am
Cool, thanks Bob :yes:
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Sandwich on April 15, 2004, 04:04:31 am
Quote
Originally posted by WMCoolmon

Check the wiki, it should tell you what you want: http://dynamic4.gamespy.com/~freespace/fsdoc/index.php/HomePage :)

Edit: D'oh, wonder how many times I've done that.


Use the {wiki}Newbie{/wiki} and {scp}{/scp} tags (just replace the {}'s with the usual square brackets).
Title: KARMA's fenris
Post by: Kazan on April 15, 2004, 08:47:00 am
interesting
[wiki]Newbie[/wiki]

[scp][/scp]