Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => FS2 Open Coding - The Source Code Project (SCP) => Topic started by: J.P. on February 27, 2005, 04:40:04 pm
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Wadup, I have watched this forum for a while and decided to post this:
Subspace Vortex (http://www.omegadigital.org/movies/SUBSPACE.mov)
It might take a while to load so be patient. Also if there are any changes somebody would like me to make, please say so. Constructive criticism on this would be nice.
Just to let you know, I am a 2d effects guy(whats the official name?) and I have Adobe After Effects and Adobe Photoshop. I have blender(I know, it's freeware, but I can't afford anything else at the moment), but I am not that expirienced and I don't know all of it's features yet.
I was hoping one of you could put this in the game so I could see what it would look like. If you need it in a different format I can do that. Just tell me what it has to be for you to put it in the game, if you are going to do so.
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Wow, preety.
The horisontal glow band should be seperated out of the vortex image though for use in the glow effect.
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i agree with firecrack's assesment
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damned time warps :(
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wtf... mine somehow posted in front of his.. eh
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Lol! :lol:
I was checking my forum options and trying to see if I could make the posts order go down. :p
Yeah, I agree with you guys. I shouldn't have put that horixontal-glow-band-thingy-whatever in there. It doesn't look right anyway. :p
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It did it again. O_o
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Keep the horisontal band, but make it another texture, part of the glow.
I like it, but this way it would look weird when seeing the vortex from an angle.
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Alright. Is there anything else I need to do to it?
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not encode it in mov...
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ok, got it to play, add in a bunch of weaker layrs moveing at diferent speeds, and maybe try to get the center a little bit more focused, this is realy great work.
and map it onto the subspace model we have, just to see what hapens (it might be a good idea to make a new warp model were you can have multable layers of stuff)
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Well, I can add some weaker ripples and such. But I have no clue how to map it onto a model. I am just a 2d artist. I wouldn't know how to put it on 3d stuff. That is why I asked if one of you could do it. I can make it a different file format but I might not be able to do it today.
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Yeah .mov will probably be very difficult to map onto anything in Blender. If I get a chance I may try mapping it to the warp pof in Max sometime.
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a few technical things, you'll need to get this into ani format (someing point him twards bright and ani-builder, or get taylor to explain the eff files(or what ever they were called)) and you probly should cut the number of frames, anis can have any frame rate you want so you can make a super high quality one and one that runs at 15 fps or 10 fps, given how slow it moves I doubt this'll be a problem.
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EFF files are basically text files which link together a bunch of DDS files. Here is an example of an EFF file's contents:
shockwave01.eff
$Type: DDS
$Frames: 92
$FPS: 20
That EFF is called "shockwave01.eff". So when FS is told to look for an animation called shockwave01, it'll find that file.
The frames associated with that file have the format: "shockwave01_####.dds", where #### is the frame number (Frame 5 would be "shockwave01_0005.dds", for example)
Did I miss anything, taylor? ;)
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Definitely get rid of the light band across the center, and make it, intensity-wise, radially semetric. It turns out the default mapping is rotated 90 degrees, for the record, so that's why the glow points up/down here. But since the orientation is relative in Freespace, the intensity should be roughly the same at a given radius from the center, regardless of angle.
Anyway, what it looks like on the model (http://www.duke.edu/~cek6/warphole.avi). You'll need DivX to view it. I didn't adjust anything, but the edges should fade all the way to black or you'll have that hard edge on the end of the model.
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Originally posted by Kazan
wtf... mine somehow posted in front of his.. eh
:lol: hehe Kazan, you went on hiatus before the time warps started, didn't you?
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Originally posted by WMCoolmon
Did I miss anything, taylor? ;)
Only a minor point, the frame numbers start at 0 so frame 1 would be shockwave01_0000.dds and frame 5 would be shockwave01_0004.dds. And it doesn't have to be DDS either, TGA and PCX and JPG formats work as well. Compressed DDS saves memory though so unless the image looks like crap compressed then DDS is the preferred format.
There's a SG-1 episode that explains the whole "0" and advanced civilization thing. ;)
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:welcome:
J.P.
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not to mention the fact that computers count from zero because it's computationally easier for a myriad of reasons
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I modified it.
This time it is in AVI format and it is incredibly smaller. about 1/15-14 of the original size(not pixels. data size).
New Subspace Vortex (http://www.omegadigital.org/movies/subspace.avi)
Wadya think???
Can you put that in the game or is there one more thing I need to do?
Hmmm. I'd better fix that link - Karajorma
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Looks good to me. I'll let the more artistically inclined have their say though.
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Much better. Just shrink the size of the effect relative to the size of the image so that the thing can fade all the way to black at the edges, and then see about turning it into an ani of eff effect. You might try PM'ing lightspeed or DaBrain if you need pointers, as I think both of them have experience making animations for Freespace.
EDIT: You can't stick an avi into Freespace as a texture, so you'll need to extract all of the frames into seperate images. From there, it's just a matter of making an eff file.
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I downloaded ani-builder and made a series of PCX images. I tried to put it in ani-builder.
I got this error:
ERROR: First frame has an incompatible PCX header (should be version 5, 8bits per pixel)
???
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Each frame needs to be an 8-bit pcx file, and my guess is you didn't reduce the color depth before you saved. The .ani format adds another wrinkle; each frame must use the same pallate as the first, so you're going to get some quality loss regardless of how you go about it. Someone with more photoshop experience than me could tell you how to get the same pallate onto each file before you try to compile the ani, though.
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Bravo ! looking good
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Originally posted by StratComm
Each frame needs to be an 8-bit pcx file, and my guess is you didn't reduce the color depth before you saved. The .ani format adds another wrinkle; each frame must use the same pallate as the first, so you're going to get some quality loss regardless of how you go about it. Someone with more photoshop experience than me could tell you how to get the same pallate onto each file before you try to compile the ani, though.
That's easy. Just create a new image. A ver very large one.
Now copy all, or at least one per five frames into this.
Reduce the colordepth to 8-bit and save the palette.
Now use the palette for all frames.
Or use Bright(search) to do the job. Sometimes the result is better if you do it all by hand though.
I.e. if you see heavy banding, which can be solved by replacing one or two colors in the palette.
I'd recommend the use of EFF (dds frames) to you though.
The quality will be better, as your effect has too many colors/gradients for an 8-bit format.
(Well, perhaps not per frame, but for all frames.)
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I wouldn't know how to make an EFF file. I must sound stupid to you guys, but it's true.
I am now going through all of the pcx frames and setting them to Indexed color in photoshop. I think it's working in ani-builder.
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Originally posted by J.P.
I wouldn't know how to make an EFF file. I must sound stupid to you guys, but it's true.
Not stupid in the slightest. EFF is a new format to FS2_Open so it's hardly surprising if people don't know how to use it. :)
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I got it to work.
W00T!!! (http://www.omegadigital.org/pics/New%20Subspace.bmp)
Wadya think??? :D
Is it possible to add some fog or something near the center of the vortex? I mean something that would make the ship blend better with the white and look as if light is being cast onto it.
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I've PMed you all the things you need to know about EFF.
Looks nice.
I think real fog is not possible, but perhaps some glowpoints on the vortex model.
That would look great if I think about it.
I think that's a special task for StratComm. ;)
Edit: BTW you should use JPGs for the shots you post here.
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Yeah, sorry about posting the bmp. I was so excited I opened up paint and saved the image. :P
And thanks for the pm. That was some good info.
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Gorgeous.
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Thanks. :D
I am putting the .ANI file up for you guys to use.
Warp (http://www.omegadigital.org/WarpMap01.ani)
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Looks great J.P.! I really like it in-game. The extra large white, compared to the original, makes a lot of difference in the effect.
Few things though... :)
It really needs to have the width/height be powers of two though (ie. 512x512), otherwise it's slower and wastes memory. At that size, with 75 frames and as an ANI it's using 37.5megs of memory. There will be a code update in the near future which will hopefully cut that size in half for ANIs but DXT5 would be half the memory size right now if you made an EFF out of it.
*Really* need to cut down on the number of frames too. It's way too slow in game, especially with small ships. About 2.5 seconds play-through is the top of where it needs to be I think (Lightspeed or DaBrain might have a better idea of that number though). For that speed you would need to cut it down to about 38 frames at the most, or go 30fps with it if you can't cut it down that much).
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There is no need to use DXT5. S3TC takes up only half of the memory while it looks almost the same as DXT5.
And effects don't need an alpha channel. (Will they ever need it?)
I forgot to mention that only effects with the power of two can be converted to DDS.
I hope this didn't give you any trouble.
Here is a sample of the EFF use:
I've converted your frames. The quality loss is HUGE, as the frames had only 256 colors (for all frames), plus I had to resize them (up to 512²), plus the S3TC comression.
So if you it right, it should look superior to the ANI.
Download (http://www.game-warden.com/starfox/Non_SF_related_stuff/warp_map_help.rar) (EFF DDS, S3TC, 512², 74 frames, 9 MB, 4 MB zipped)
I did not cut out frames, but I've increased the fps. It will take up 9 MB in your gfx ram.
You might try to cut out every second frame. It might look ok with the higher fps value. Or cut out every third frame and blend two frames in to each other. (50:50)
Edit: My bad, it has 75 frames. :rolleyes:
Open the *.eff file and change $Frames: 75.
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A .rar? I don't know what a .rar is either. :P
And I can't open a .rar. I wouldn't know how.
Can you put it in a zip file?
But from what I read I assume the quality of the picture was downsized.
I can re-render this in After Effects as a jpg sequence, pcx sequence, bmp sequence, tga sequence, tiff sequence, pict sequence, png sequence and a few other formats.
I can re-render it as 512*512, in "millions of color" depth at 30fps.
Then I can put the entire folder, that I saved the files at, on my site for download.
Can I see a screenshot of what you have right now?
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RAR is another form of compression; it's slightly more efficient than zip IIRC. You can unzip it with WinRAR, or get a freeware or shareware program that can handle multiple filetypes. I mainly use PowerArchiver; http://www.powerarchiver.com/ which is shareware but works forever.
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You should download Winrar. It's widely used here.
After effects, eh? Pretty cool.
Ok so the problem is fixed in no time.
Re-render it @ 512² and select 15 frames per second.
I recommend the use of TGA.
Use the DDS converter to convert the frames to DDS. And now just edit my *.eff file in the *.rar. Reduce the fps to 20-24. Change the number of frames to the new number.
Or just upload the TGA files and I'll convert them.
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Ok, I made the EFF file myself. Wasn't that hard really.
It works. I will upload it when I have the time.
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Originally posted by J.P.
Wasn't that hard really.
I told you. ;)
I'm looking forward to the effect.
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Sorry I haven't posted it. I am having som problems. First it was clipping off the edges of the warp so it looked wierd. Then I re-rendered it again with a few adjustments and converted it to dds format and... it was green. I don't know how it turned green but it was.
So now I have to re-render it all over again.
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Was it green in-game or after the DDS conversion?
I never had this problem before...
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It may be reversing the channels, perhaps as a function of some setting you've checked.
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It was an After Effects thing. The TGA files I converted were green so I have to re-render them and double check everything in the render queue.
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so wheres the final file?
i like the effect, its kinda like a stargate
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The final effect is finished. I will upload it momentarily.
EDIT: Here it is: Right Click, Save Us. (http://www.omegadigital.org/subspace/)
It's not a ZIP or RAR file. It's the entire folder uploaded on to my site.
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ehh... ok first off, you just made me click on and download 70 seperate files, use zip.
second, the file looks great, but it's extreemly waistfull, it loops a bunch of times, if you cut it to just the first 14 frames it would look exactly the same, but take up about 1/6th as much memory. this is actualy a very good thing you have done here, you made a very good looking effect that only requieres a little more than a dozen frames.
WarpMap01_0015.dds looks exactly the same as WarpMap01_0000.dds, so WarpMap01_0015.dds and everything after it, should be removed, and the eff file should say 15 frames rather than 75.
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like this