Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => FS2 Open Coding - The Source Code Project (SCP) => Topic started by: Omniscaper on July 28, 2004, 03:52:35 pm
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Ok, I feel like I've been going in circles getting the final definitive version of the Galaxy class into FSO. I've spent roughly over 40 hours perfecting the smoothgroups on this Galaxy in 3dsmax. I have 12 major smoothgroups in this model.
(http://www.penguinbomb.com/omniscaper/Screenshots/Smooth.jpg)
(http://www.penguinbomb.com/omniscaper/Screenshots/Smooth1.jpg)
(http://www.penguinbomb.com/omniscaper/Screenshots/Smooth2.jpg)
(http://www.penguinbomb.com/omniscaper/Screenshots/Smooth3.jpg)
(http://www.penguinbomb.com/omniscaper/Screenshots/Smooth4.jpg)
(http://www.penguinbomb.com/omniscaper/Screenshots/Smooth5.jpg)
(http://www.penguinbomb.com/omniscaper/Screenshots/Smooth6.jpg)
I welded all the overlapping vertices in all the major meshes (saucer, neck, engineering, nacells). And finally finished assigning smoothgroups to get the sharp edges where they're supposed to be. It displays in the viewport AND Full render perfectly.
(http://www.penguinbomb.com/omniscaper/Screenshots/Render1.jpg)
(http://www.penguinbomb.com/omniscaper/Screenshots/Render2.jpg)
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ENTER MY BANE....... TRUESPACE
I export this prestine model into a 3ds format, (I also tried LWO, COB, SCN, via Polytrans plugin.) And I get all these anomolies....
(http://www.penguinbomb.com/omniscaper/Screenshots/Smooth7.jpg)
(http://www.penguinbomb.com/omniscaper/Screenshots/Smooth8.jpg)
(http://www.penguinbomb.com/omniscaper/Screenshots/Smooth9.jpg)
(http://www.penguinbomb.com/omniscaper/Screenshots/Smooth10.jpg)
(http://www.penguinbomb.com/omniscaper/Screenshots/Smooth11.jpg)
(http://www.penguinbomb.com/omniscaper/Screenshots/Smooth12.jpg)
(http://www.penguinbomb.com/omniscaper/Screenshots/Smooth13.jpg)
As you can see, all my work is lost! All my assigned edges are gone and smoothed over. And random faceting occurs througout the mesh.
When I try to apply a new shader on faceted anomolies, it applies the changes in all different parts of the mesh. I think it uses different smoothangles for each material only. Smoothgroups only exist in the meshes various UV coordinates.
Please someone help me find a GOOD tutorial on Truespace smoothgrouping or give me alternative methods to preserve all the work I've done in MAX.
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You're going to have to do your smoothgrouping in truespace if you want it to work. The (max->3ds), conversion, weld, and 3ds->cob does not preserve that information the way it should. At least, it doesn't in my experience. Truespace handles smoothing as a feature of texturing, though that may have been fixed by the latest version, where as Max uses a per-vertex model which gets wiped out when you merge vertices in 3dexploration.
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these may be just some effects of the DX real time render of truespace. To see if the smoothgroups are really screwed, use the render (and convert and test in modelview). To apply smoothgroups in TS, just give to different groups of polys different shaders (either different types of shaders and different smooth angle of autofacet). Point edit->select faces->select the shader you want to use->click on paint faces.
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Oh, I see the problem.
You've got the nacells on upside down.
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I guess this would be a good time for the SCP boys to make a universal converter or something. Something that will do direct conversions to .pof from some of the more popular packages like MAX and Lightwave.
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AMEN, brother!!!
::starts praying to the SCP gods::
Karma, ever get around the specular faceting problem? I have a feeling all this smoothgrouping work will be useless the moment I turn on speculars in the Launcher. IIRC, the cob2pof converter made perfect shading WITH speculars when i first started converting back in December. Too bad it has a polygon limit. At the moment this Galaxy mesh was reduced from the original 15k to 10k.
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yeah I know what you talking about, I use cob2fs2 too for the same reason
I guess you are already using the one incorporated into modelview, which is the lastest version with higher polylimits.
In this case, what are those limits? because I never reached em, and it could be useful to know em.
BTW you may have to use smoothgroups with cob2fs2 too, the difference is that you can use only faceted and smoothshadings.
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Where can I get the latest modelview with the beefed up limits? I was unaware of its existance. I've never been able to convert via modelview. The smallest mesh I failed to convert had 9k polys,
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yeah, you have to do the smoothing stuff in truespace, and it's done via a per material basis
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If that is the case,
Can I take the smoothgroups I've established in max, detach ALL of them into seperate objects,
Then create a unique material name for each of them,
REINTEGRATE them together
And finally expect Truespace to recognize the newly divided materials
Each smoothgroup is composed of 2-3 materials, so itake it that all materials need matching smooth angles. Unless material borders are impossible to avoid.
Am I making sense ?
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true space does this fundementaly diferent than max, you specify a smoothing angle for a material, then apply that material, all polygons that are within that angle to each other will be smoothed, otherwise there will be a hard edge, you could probly do the entier thing with a smoothing angle of 20-40.
then you just have to be sure to use the facet build of PCS
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If I were a Starfleet Admiral I'd put you, Omniscaper, as head of the ASDB :D
Simply outstanding work!
I couldn't run it on my computer though. At least, not yet :)
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bob, there are some issues with pcs autofacet and the specular effect, which cause rounded models to look faceted in game and this is odd. The only way to avoid this weirdness is to use cob2fs2 and smoothing.
Omni, I'm not sure if that version of cob2fs2 you used is the same included in modelview. BTW check Vasudan Admiral's signature. The file should also be in the wiki and probably in the descent network too. The most recent version of modelview lets you convert model from cob files, it can't convert shields properly (in my case at least, you have to import them from another pof).
About the smoothgroups...
As bob said, Truespace works with materials, where a material is a group of parameters (texture, bump mapping, reflectance, shaders etc).
If you change any of these parameters you change matarial.
So, you use a different material anytime you change shaders and/or texture.
Just open the material editor and create the material you want to use (texture + shader type or smooth angle), select a group of faces you want to be painted with this material, click on the paint tool. That's it
edit:
In theory truespace may recognize the different smoothgroups from 3ds as different materials.
If this happen, you don't have to select the faces you are going to paint, you can just create the material you want to use, use the paint over existing material tool (not sure about the name of the tool), click the mesh over one of the old materials. All the polys using the old material will be painted with the new one.
It is hard to see that you are using different materials if you are using the same texture, you may paint with a solid color to substitute the old material if you want to see all the polys that belong to the same material group.
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You may not have to redo this, Omniscaper... we may have a conversion option from 3dsmax directly to POF. I'll ask around. :drevil:
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Originally posted by Goober5000
You may not have to redo this, Omniscaper... we may have a conversion option from 3dsmax directly to POF. I'll ask around. :drevil:
:drevil: :drevil: what a bastard :devil: :)
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Originally posted by Goober5000
You may not have to redo this, Omniscaper... we may have a conversion option from 3dsmax directly to POF. I'll ask around. :drevil:
Would you mind asking around for a POF -> 3DS conversion option as well? I would greatly appreciate sucn a tool. :)
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POF to 3DS is damn easy with POF2COB and 3D Exploration (the old, free version). Unless you mean keeping the whole object data.
:p
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Originally posted by Styxx
Unless you mean keeping the whole object data.
:p
That I do! ;)
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Hey Master Karma, is it possible for a single texture to have multiple shaders with different autofacet settings? If so, will the different shaders have distinct boundaries?
I am trying to apply this method to a single mesh containing multiple textures.
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it should work sort of like what you said
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in ts6, yes. In precedent versions there could be problems (or so I've been told).
you'll have (in truespace) a different material for each different autofacet setting, althought all the materials will use the same texture.
This way you can have polys almost smoothed and other polys faceted, althought all the polys are mapped with the same texture.
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Finally, I'm getting the hang of TS's horrid material application process. Thank you Karma. My first successfull test of PROPER smoothgroups.
(http://www.penguinbomb.com/omniscaper/Screenshots/Saucer.JPG)
There must be a way to view a mesh's materials in a list of some sort. I find that I have to keep checking to see if the material I'm using is not already being used or else I start joining different smoothgroups together.
AND LOOK KARMA, NO FACETING IN THE SPECULARS!!!!
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Thats a mighty purty Enterprise you got there! :)
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Looks great :yes:
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holy crap thats better than hte last one!!!!!!!! :EEK:
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Originally posted by Omniscaper
AND LOOK KARMA, NO FACETING IN THE SPECULARS!!!!
and how the hell you did it? cuz I'm not able to obtain the same results with autofacet, and believe me I've made lots of tests.
If you can replicate it then tell me how to, thanks:)
BTW the phaser array seem to still have this spec problem, maybe you could be able to see where's the difference between the phaser array and the rest of the saucer (either in the materials or the procedure you used)
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Getting close!!!
Karma, I've been using low number autofacet settings for the saucer, something I doubt would work well with the Tie Fighter's sphere. The phaser array in the previous post was set to 0 in autofacet.
Faceting still occurs, but the autofacet numbers I've set has reduced it tremendously!
(http://www.penguinbomb.com/omniscaper/Screenshots/GSpec.JPG)
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Wow, check out this shot with latest Environment map implementaion.....
(http://www.penguinbomb.com/omniscaper/Screenshots/GEnv.JPG)
Now if only stencil shadows would stop crashing with this model.......
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:eek2:
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awesome :eek2:
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Now can someone tell me how to use those new blinky lights 3.6 offers?
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That's really beautifull.
Cheers!
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Originally posted by Omniscaper
Now can someone tell me how to use those new blinky lights 3.6 offers?
If you are refering to those seen on the Arcadia and Ulysses included in the mv_models, those have glow-points. Glow-points are seldom-used, but have their advantages to glow-maps. I think there are controls in PCS to add them, but dammed if I know how it all works.
Later!
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glow points were like the first thing I added, like 2 years ago, they arn't new, just nobody uses them, in PCS there should be a glow points section, there very similar to thrusters, a few things diferent though, you have to specify a texture within a group, and points that have a NULL (0,0,0) normal will be rendered at all times, otherwise the'll fade in and out as they point at/away from you, if you want to make them blink, have all the points that you want to be on at a time (that have the same texture) in the same group, then give the groupe an on and off time (these are only needed if you want the group to blink) disp time is only needed if you want diferent groups to blinnk in a sequence.
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i use glopoints alot, its just i havent released a new version of nukemod in like 3 years :D
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i can genuinley say that looks better than the "real" one.
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Hm, if you had just waited a few more days you probably wouldn't have had to do all that work on Truespace... but hey, it's looking great, so good job!
:)
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Oh? Hey! Get it done then! I prefer the 3dMax shading to TS. So what if MT will be delayed 3 day more? ;7
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Whoa wait a minute....
Is there a 3dsmax > POF program in the worx? If so, PLEASE direct me to it. You'll be my personal digital savior!!!
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Er, you can talk to me. ;)
And it won't be a converter, it'll be an export plugin for MAX. I think I'll be doing the first actual export tests tonight, by the way, so if you're online I can try it out with your model. My ICQ is on my profile. It should export smoothing groups correctly, by the way.
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YIPPEEEEEE!!!!!
I haven't used my ICQ account for over 4 years. I can provide you with the model via Yahoo messenger or AIM. I think Yahoo increased their email attachment limits too.
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Heh... it seemed that everyone except Omniscaper noticed my previous post. :)
Originally posted by Goober5000
You may not have to redo this, Omniscaper... we may have a conversion option from 3dsmax directly to POF. I'll ask around. :drevil:
I talked to Styxx, who graciously gave me the inside track on this.
Styxx... will this import POFs, too? ;)
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Er, it may. Not sure on that yet.
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I read that post dude. I was waiting for an update on that. Getting news from Styxx of another proggy was the context in which the inquiry was all about. Didn't know it was the same thing.
I noticed that performace took a larger hit with this version of the Galaxy. The older one got over 45 FPS as this goes below 10 at times. The way I got the smoothgroups in Max to work in Truespace involved creating unique material ID's for EACH smoothgroup. That means over 25 materials. I don't know if it matters that many of the materials utilize the same texture file, but does Freespace know this?
In any case this is EXCITING news. I'm already trying to make sense of 3dsmax Lightwave and after that Maya. Truespace is a toughy.
I'd rather not learn another 3d program in which Freespace is its only use. 3dsmax seems to be the top program used for videogame design to begin with. With the knowledge of a FOURTH 3d program, I sense a work hours riddled with confusion as I do a keystrokes of one program in another.
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The materials are the problem, and honestly I'm shocked that the HTL engine didn't crash on you. You're only supposed to use something like 12 materials on any given ship ;)
The max plugin should clear that up. Hey Styxx, what version of Max is the plugin for? I'd be happy to do a little beta testing for ya' ;7
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Any updates on the 3dsmax pluggin, Styxx? I'm ready to give you this model for testing. In anticipation for this new tool, I've put all Truespace work on the Galaxy on hold for this.
I believe Stratcomm's assesment is correct reguarding the performance hit due to excessive number of materials which point to the same texture.
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PMed you. And StratComm, it's for MAX 5, I'll try to put up an open beta version soon.
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While I'm waiting for Styxx's potential miracle, I'm messing with PCS still.
Does anyone know if earlier builds of PCS used "smooth" instead of "auto-faceting"?
I've found that the limits modified Modelview does an excellent job smoothing out the saucer portion of the Galaxy model which I had set to "smooth" shading. The PCS-autofacet build doesn't smooth as well with autofacet set to maximum.
The Modelview's polygon limits keep me from converting all 11k polys. Unless there is an updated version of Modelview's increased limits build I'd like to know if PCS ever had a smooth build.
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yes there is a very old version which automatically smoothed everything. This was causing obviously shading problems which could probably be fixed by splitting the mesh in submodels.
Unfourtunately it was a very old build, not suitable for HTL models, and I think that nobody have it anymore.
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Originally posted by Styxx
PMed you. And StratComm, it's for MAX 5, I'll try to put up an open beta version soon.
Dagnabbit. Not backwards compatible, is it? Stuck on v4, myself.
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I have version 4, so it should only be a matter of recompiling it with the oder SDK... I'm not using anything that's MAX5 specific. I'm still working on adjusting it for MAX6, though.
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Does anyone have any experience using Unwrap3d? I see that it is capable of exporting into POF, and I was able to use their 3dsmax 6 pluggin to convert the model into their format (.u3d) with all the smooth groups intact.... i think.
Anywayz, I only have the demo version of Unwrap3d which cant save the file. I could provide the .u3d model to anyone who could convert it to POF for me.
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Ok, here's the thread about the plugin:
http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,26260.0.html
Right now it'll only work on MAX 5, but I'm working to fix that.