Hard Light Productions Forums

Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The Modding Workshop => Topic started by: TopAce on March 17, 2004, 03:16:45 pm

Title: A freighter - Unconvertable
Post by: TopAce on March 17, 2004, 03:16:45 pm
I worked much with this freighter, but PCS fails to convert it(as always).

(http://www.nexus.hu/harace//Freighter00.jpg)
(http://www.nexus.hu/harace//Freighter01.jpg)

I am posting two pictures about it. I know it is not professional, but oh, oh, oh. I am not a modeller.

If you want to give me critics, do it on a non-aggressive way. Thanks. ;)
Title: A freighter - Unconvertable
Post by: aldo_14 on March 17, 2004, 03:20:46 pm
Where is the front?
Title: A freighter - Unconvertable
Post by: Flipside on March 17, 2004, 04:19:25 pm
It looks like you have intersecting polygons on the 'front' of the top picture between the 3 square parts? Looks like theres one big intersecting polygon running behind 2 of them, that could be your problem?

Looks good, be interested to see it textured :)
Title: A freighter - Unconvertable
Post by: TopAce on March 17, 2004, 04:31:43 pm
Do you think that is the problem? Can you diagnose it from the white texture is a bit stripy? How can I fix it? It IS triangulated.
Title: A freighter - Unconvertable
Post by: mikhael on March 17, 2004, 04:35:51 pm
That's exactly the problem Topace: that stripy texture is z-buffer contention. The best way to fix it is to select the faces and delete them, then recreate them by hand--at least, that's how I'd do it in Lightwave.
Title: A freighter - Unconvertable
Post by: TopAce on March 17, 2004, 04:39:35 pm
By hand = Connecting vertices?
Can you show me a typical 'intersecting poly' error? Wireframe image, please, if possible. Thanks.
Title: A freighter - Unconvertable
Post by: magatsu1 on March 17, 2004, 05:25:27 pm
I wouldn't delete faces in TS, replacing them can be tricky.
I'm not exactly sure what an "intersecting poly" is myself, so if anyone fancies providing an explanation ?

I like the spines down the flanks BTW, but you need to shape a proper nose and rear end section (maybe engine pods ?)
Title: A freighter - Unconvertable
Post by: Flipside on March 17, 2004, 05:34:20 pm
An intersecting poly is where two polygons are physically touching, so the engine doesn't know which one to show, hence you get a 'flickering' effect on the polygon. This often happens if you try to Boolean stuff together.
You 'might' find it is as simple as selecting that one polygon and deleting it, but it is rarely as simple as that :( I use Lightwave as well, and I'd do the same as Mik, just delete the things and rebuild them, but maybe someone better versed in Truespace can make a suggestion?
Title: A freighter - Unconvertable
Post by: magatsu1 on March 17, 2004, 05:42:37 pm
you mean these ?
(http://www.uploadit.org/magatsu1/Freighter00[1].jpg)

Hard to say if it is. Depends how Top Ace made those raised edges/blocks
Title: A freighter - Unconvertable
Post by: Flipside on March 17, 2004, 05:54:29 pm
(http://www.aqsx85.dsl.pipex.com/images/Freighter00.jpg)

Theres might be more, but that's the most noticable to me.
Title: A freighter - Unconvertable
Post by: magatsu1 on March 17, 2004, 05:59:00 pm
Ah, yeah. I see it now.
Yeah, I'd delete the blocks, use add vert and add edges (or poly draw) then maybe sweep.
Easier to do than to explain:sigh:

where's the "Flipside:D " BTW ?? :p
Title: A freighter - Unconvertable
Post by: Flipside on March 17, 2004, 06:02:55 pm
LOL

Here......

Flipside :D
Title: A freighter - Unconvertable
Post by: StratComm on March 17, 2004, 10:52:35 pm
Yeah fixing that in Truespace is going to be a nightmare.  I don't know the best way to go about it.  You can get a start on it by deleting all of the faces on the plane containing the poly flipside highlighted, as well as those under the front ribs and some others around the meeting faces.

(http://www.duke.edu/~cek6/deleteme.jpg)

In other words, delete all the faces I've colored red, as well as the backsides of those front ribs.  That should give you one continuous hole.  Once that's done, fill the hole with the add face button and add in edges until it looks like you want it to.  You shouldn't get rid of any vertices doing this, so you should be able to recreate it exactly.
Title: A freighter - Unconvertable
Post by: Bobboau on March 17, 2004, 10:56:25 pm
after all these years you think they would have heard by now,

make it out of __one__ subobject
Title: A freighter - Unconvertable
Post by: mikhael on March 17, 2004, 11:11:50 pm
If you'd like, I can load the file up in Lightwave, track down all the offending polys and send you back the model as a single object.
Title: A freighter - Unconvertable
Post by: c914 on March 18, 2004, 02:26:20 am
this ship looks kile container  not like freighter, mayby if add to him bridge...yep he needs bridge:nod:
Title: A freighter - Unconvertable
Post by: KARMA on March 18, 2004, 07:26:06 am
intersections shouldn't be a problem to convert in pcs (never gave me problems so far...) but there could be problems with overlapping edges/faces, which seem the problem right now from those pics
Title: A freighter - Unconvertable
Post by: Flipside on March 18, 2004, 01:09:16 pm
Yes, it's my use of language at fault here, I say intersection, but I mean overlapping polygons, i.e. 2 in the same place :)
Title: A freighter - Unconvertable
Post by: TopAce on March 18, 2004, 02:28:50 pm
Quote
Originally posted by magatsu1
.... Depends how Top Ace made those raised edges/blocks


Object union. I connected the main model WITH a modifiied cube.
I already tried to delete all the faces on the upper-front side of the ship, but I failed to see which line goes where. ;). It was at about midnight, so maybe I was so tired to concentrate. I will try deleting all the needless vetices. Tomorrow. By 3 PM tomorrow, I will have already been home, and presumably, I will not be that tired than I was on Wednesday. So I make an attempt doing that model stable only tomorrow. As of this moment, I am working on a new cruiser, which is also blocky, and I use boolen operations much, but I test the model's stability in PCS. I also triangulate the concave[Not convex, if you do not use this word] faces on my own. The faces which are convex are not triangulated by now.
Title: A freighter - Unconvertable
Post by: magatsu1 on March 18, 2004, 02:39:29 pm
Object Union ?
Waaahh! Run Away! Run Away!

Poly Draw and select face--->sweep would give the same result without those nasty booleans.

Heh, trying to model when you're shattered and probably can't focus properly ? Good Lad!
Title: A freighter - Unconvertable
Post by: TopAce on March 18, 2004, 02:44:30 pm
But I must have one subobject for the model itself to avoid some visibility errors in-game.
Title: A freighter - Unconvertable
Post by: Flipside on March 18, 2004, 03:07:14 pm
Hmmmmmmmm... actually, since things switched to HT&L I've been doing a few 'bad' things for Alpha/Beta versions, and FS2 has been very forgiving :)
Title: A freighter - Unconvertable
Post by: KARMA on March 18, 2004, 03:07:57 pm
I use object union too sometimes, what's wrong with it?:p
Title: A freighter - Unconvertable
Post by: magatsu1 on March 18, 2004, 03:13:17 pm
it sucks donkey doo-daa. I've yet to try TS v5 booleans yet though.:p :p

I prefer point editing. I'm guessing modifing one object to the shape you want is better than joinig several objects to create the same effect (see Bob's post)
Title: A freighter - Unconvertable
Post by: TopAce on March 18, 2004, 03:17:50 pm
I am not so sure if I had to ignore object unioning. You may be right, you used FSO more than I did.
Title: A freighter - Unconvertable
Post by: mikhael on March 18, 2004, 03:25:44 pm
Regardless of FSO or not, its still best to avoid intersecting polys. Why invite possible trouble when you can ensure you won't have it? Unioning the objects is a good thing, TopAce.

The main concern with the union, of course, is that the geometry that results from the union is sometimes not accurate. Truespace lacks the depth and breadth of Lightwaves point and poly editting/construction tools, so you may have a lot of trouble cleaning up those errors in Truespace.
Title: A freighter - Unconvertable
Post by: magatsu1 on March 18, 2004, 03:28:13 pm
Nah. Easy Peasy.
I think Truespace is just "misunderstood":nervous:
Title: A freighter - Unconvertable
Post by: KARMA on March 18, 2004, 03:42:16 pm
I don't suggest to use intersections, but sometimes, they could be useful to reduce the pcount a lot and the amount of time too
Title: A freighter - Unconvertable
Post by: TopAce on March 18, 2004, 04:43:41 pm
Time is only secondary - Everything for GAMEPLAY!
Title: A freighter - Unconvertable
Post by: Flipside on March 18, 2004, 04:59:40 pm
Lightwave will actually be pretty forgiving with Subtractions and even Unions on occasion, as long as you remember to triple the polys, and to merge points afterwards ;) It's not 100% reliable, the more complex the object, the higher the risk, but it CAN be done :)
Title: A freighter - Unconvertable
Post by: mikhael on March 18, 2004, 05:58:45 pm
I find exactly the opposite, Flipside: Tripling the polys adds more edges  to the equation and makes things more error prone.

What I do is select the faces on the target layer, cut them and paste them to another layer. If they're all coplanar, I'll merge them. I then do the boolean on this bare face. After that, I do my clean up (usually just a merge points and possibly subdividing the non-quads intelligently), then I move them back to the original object and merge points again.

It seems like extra work, but it really does make booleans far more reliable (not that Lightwave has bad booleans to begin with).
Title: A freighter - Unconvertable
Post by: Flipside on March 18, 2004, 06:14:10 pm
I might well give that a try Mik, my current favourite is to subtract the main model from the Subobject (in a different layer), move in really close and move the subobject about 1nm from the hull. With HTL, you can also get away with deleting the inwards facing polygons, not sure if this works normally though. But this still relies very heavily on the complexity of the surfaces you are joining.

One handy trick I've learned is keeping the UV Map open in one window, that way you can select individual points on the model from the Atlas map, which is a lot easier sometimes, especially when you are working on models with 'Internal' components.
Title: A freighter - Unconvertable
Post by: Krackers87 on March 21, 2004, 09:57:29 pm
another thing that helps sometimes is to save the .cob as a .dxf

then open the .dxf and save it as a .cob again. It tends to clear alot of Fu)(ups