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Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The Modding Workshop => Topic started by: Vertigo 7 on August 14, 2008, 09:00:38 pm

Title: Archangel Battle ship nameplate problem
Post by: Vertigo 7 on August 14, 2008, 09:00:38 pm
Yay for more questions... ok today's topic, I've got both of the archangel battleship models that trashman did. I've been fixing a few minor bugs and adding glow points to them but ive come across one that i can't solve. the MKII and MKI both use the same name plate texture. On the MK2, however, the texture background on the name plate is invisible. It renders in fred and in game with the star background. the MK1 its transparent to the hull texture so its working right.

In all of the models of his that I have the name plates are just textures, except the mk2. the mk2 actually has name plate sub objects. If i delete the sub object the name plate goes away and i see the hull like im sposed ta, but... no name plate.  How to fix0r?

oh and one other thing, debug is also giving me an error on LOD mismatch on both of the battleship moddels, says "POF needs 5" but in the model itself there are 5 LOD's... i r confused on that one
Title: Re: Archangel Battle ship nameplate problem
Post by: blowfish on August 14, 2008, 09:13:37 pm
About the nameplates ... this has to do with the fact that transparent parts of the ship must be rendered last, and child objects are rendered before their parents.  So basically, if you have detail0 with nameplates as a subobject, the nameplates will be rendered first, causing this problem.  There is no way to fix this other than editing the hierarchy in TrueSpace.
Title: Re: Archangel Battle ship nameplate problem
Post by: Vertigo 7 on August 14, 2008, 09:21:32 pm
i dont have a problem doing that... if you've got the time to walk me through doing that i'd love ta do it. i've got TS 7.6 on here, i've just never used it before
Title: Re: Archangel Battle ship nameplate problem
Post by: blowfish on August 14, 2008, 09:42:29 pm
i dont have a problem doing that... if you've got the time to walk me through doing that i'd love ta do it. i've got TS 7.6 on here, i've just never used it before

Hmm ... this might be a bit harder if you've never used TrueSpace before, but I'll do my best.  Hopefully others can help where needed :).  The first thing you need to do is install TrueView (a hierarchy editing extension).  Download it here (http://homepage.ntlworld.com/karajorma/FAQ/Downloads/TruView.rar), and hopefully the install process will go smoothly.  To add it into TS 7, there should be a button near the bottom of the screen that says "add new TrueSpace extension" or something like that.  Click it, and locate TrueView.  Now there should be a TrueView icon near the add new extension icon.  I'll post the rest once you get this much done :)
Title: Re: Archangel Battle ship nameplate problem
Post by: Vertigo 7 on August 14, 2008, 09:49:33 pm
ok thats done and i've converted the model to cob but i didn't convert the textures, will i need to do that?
Title: Re: Archangel Battle ship nameplate problem
Post by: blowfish on August 14, 2008, 10:05:35 pm
You will need to convert all of the textures to BMP, and put them in the same directory as the COB.  After that is done, import the COB into TrueSpace, and open TrueView.  There will probably be something called LOD0.  Expand it.  Now there should be a something inside that called nameplates.  Expand that.  The actual nameplates geometry is represented by a solid cube called nameplates.  Right click it, and unglue.  You can delete the nameplates group now (the one that is still a child of LOD0, and has two lights in it).  Now, the actual nameplates object should be at the bottom of the list.  Rename it to z_nameplates.  Then drag it onto LOD0 to group it.  It should appear as the last object in LOD0.  Now, save as SCN and import into PCS2.  You will want to do a global import of the original POF to get all of the data that is lost going through COB.  Now save the POF.  If all of that worked correctly and I didn't forget anything, the model should be working now.
Title: Re: Archangel Battle ship nameplate problem
Post by: Vertigo 7 on August 14, 2008, 10:43:31 pm
I'm assuming you're talking about the gray cube in true view called nameplates (expanded out from the red cube called nameplates) when i right click on it, i dont get any kind of pop up menu.
Title: Re: Archangel Battle ship nameplate problem
Post by: blowfish on August 14, 2008, 10:49:11 pm
I'm assuming you're talking about the gray cube in true view called nameplates (expanded out from the red cube called nameplates) when i right click on it, i dont get any kind of pop up menu.

Yep, that's the cube.  All right.  This is easier.  Just rename the gray cube to z_nameplates and then drag it onto LOD0.  Then delete the red cube and continue :)
Title: Re: Archangel Battle ship nameplate problem
Post by: Vertigo 7 on August 14, 2008, 10:53:38 pm
gasp... that simple? ok... now when i opened up the cob to begin with it *****ed about some missing textures, xBeam02.bmp and .bmp (i was like huh?) anyways, in pcs2 ive been searching and searching to find where that xbeam02 is used at and i swear its not being used. is that and the .bmp going to be a problem?
Title: Re: Archangel Battle ship nameplate problem
Post by: Vertigo 7 on August 14, 2008, 10:56:57 pm
oh and how do i rename it? >.>
Title: Re: Archangel Battle ship nameplate problem
Post by: blowfish on August 14, 2008, 11:02:43 pm
gasp... that simple? ok... now when i opened up the cob to begin with it *****ed about some missing textures, xBeam02.bmp and .bmp (i was like huh?) anyways, in pcs2 ive been searching and searching to find where that xbeam02 is used at and i swear its not being used. is that and the .bmp going to be a problem?

Yeah, any textures that are used will be a problem if TS doesn't find them.  Just go through the texture list and make sure you have everything.  I can't see where it's being used either but chances are it is being used somewhere.

And to rename an object in TS, just click the name and wait a second or two and it should allow you to rename it.
Title: Re: Archangel Battle ship nameplate problem
Post by: Vertigo 7 on August 14, 2008, 11:07:42 pm
its not letting me rename it =/ i clicked on it, waited... double clicked on it, even tripple clicked on it =p
Title: Re: Archangel Battle ship nameplate problem
Post by: blowfish on August 14, 2008, 11:18:46 pm
OK.  Here's how to do it.  Select the object you want to rename, and there's this weird icon at the top of the true view window next to the X icon.  Click it and you should be able to rename.
Title: Re: Archangel Battle ship nameplate problem
Post by: Vertigo 7 on August 14, 2008, 11:33:36 pm
i donno if its cuz TS is going so friggin slow but it's not letting me rename it. soon as i click on the icon next to the X (the one that looks like a piece of paper and a nub) it deselects the object
Title: Re: Archangel Battle ship nameplate problem
Post by: blowfish on August 14, 2008, 11:35:10 pm
Odd.  Try downloading TS 3 from somewhere and see if it works better.  TS7 runs slow for me too.
Title: Re: Archangel Battle ship nameplate problem
Post by: Vertigo 7 on August 14, 2008, 11:36:05 pm
haha as soon as i posted that, i changed to workspace view and back to model view, it put TS on crack or somethin, anyway i clicked once on the object and it let me rename it
Title: Re: Archangel Battle ship nameplate problem
Post by: Vertigo 7 on August 14, 2008, 11:40:02 pm
ok do i save scene or save object? and if i save scene how do i get the model back into pcs2?
Title: Re: Archangel Battle ship nameplate problem
Post by: blowfish on August 15, 2008, 12:15:04 am
Yes.  Save as a TS scene.  PCS2 can import those.

Well, it was designed to import TS3 scenes, so if that doesn't work, select LOD0 EDIT:select the whole scene and save as COB.
Title: Re: Archangel Battle ship nameplate problem
Post by: Vertigo 7 on August 15, 2008, 12:29:38 am
you rox... worked like a charm, had to save as ts 4.3 cob. I can't thank ya enough! One last question... this detail mismatch error in debug, how do i make it go away? =p more specificially,
Code: [Select]
Warning: For ship 'GTVBS Archangel Mark II', detail level
mismatch (POF needs 5)
File: ship.cpp
Line: 9321


Call stack:
------------------------------------------------------------------
    fred2_open_3_6_10d-20080723_CHIEF_4712.exe 0086a632()
    fred2_open_3_6_10d-20080723_CHIEF_4712.exe 0086b46c()
    fred2_open_3_6_10d-20080723_CHIEF_4712.exe 0086a452()
    fred2_open_3_6_10d-20080723_CHIEF_4712.exe 008513e9()
    fred2_open_3_6_10d-20080723_CHIEF_4712.exe 00dae2e6()
    fred2_open_3_6_10d-20080723_CHIEF_4712.exe 00dad5a2()
    fred2_open_3_6_10d-20080723_CHIEF_4712.exe 00da9d50()
    fred2_open_3_6_10d-20080723_CHIEF_4712.exe 00daa466()
    USER32.dll 75cb8807()
    USER32.dll 75cb8962()
    USER32.dll 75cbc62c()
    USER32.dll 75cbc652()
    OPENGL32.dll 6a17834f()
    USER32.dll 75cb8807()
    USER32.dll 75cb8962()
------------------------------------------------------------------
Title: Re: Archangel Battle ship nameplate problem
Post by: blowfish on August 15, 2008, 12:34:23 am
That one I don't know how to fix :(
Title: Re: Archangel Battle ship nameplate problem
Post by: Vertigo 7 on August 15, 2008, 12:38:48 am
meh its no biggy. It doesn't seem to be causing any problems. Anyways, you're so awesome! thanks for all the help one this one =)
Title: Re: Archangel Battle ship nameplate problem
Post by: TrashMan on August 16, 2008, 06:29:20 am
About the nameplates ... this has to do with the fact that transparent parts of the ship must be rendered last, and child objects are rendered before their parents.  So basically, if you have detail0 with nameplates as a subobject, the nameplates will be rendered first, causing this problem.  There is no way to fix this other than editing the hierarchy in TrueSpace.

This is ...strange... I recall the nameplate rendering fine for me..at least with the last version of the Archy. I might have to look into that.
Title: Re: Archangel Battle ship nameplate problem
Post by: Herra Tohtori on August 16, 2008, 06:48:54 am
(...) select LOD0 and save as COB.

Code: [Select]
Warning: For ship 'GTVBS Archangel Mark II', detail level
mismatch (POF needs 5)
(...)


I've never converted anything more complex than a planet with rings into FreeSpace2, so correct me if I'm wrong but don't you need to select the whole object, with subobjects and at least one light, to get all the stuff into the cob?

Selecting just one level of detail would seem to me that it saves justthat into a cob - one LOD, no more... and seeing what the error report says, I would say it has something to do with LOD's all right.

Try and select the whole ship hierarchy on it's highest level so that all LOD's and debris and stuff are selected before saving the object as COB? :nervous:
Title: Re: Archangel Battle ship nameplate problem
Post by: Vasudan Admiral on August 16, 2008, 07:36:02 am
Not encountered that one myself but I'm fairly certain that error is just when the ship's tabled "$Detail distance: (<LOD0>, <LOD1>, <LOD2>, <LOD3>)" line doesnot match up with the number of LODs in the POF. So the much easier thing to do is just trim/add the distance numbers given there until they match how many are in the POF. :)
Title: Re: Archangel Battle ship nameplate problem
Post by: blowfish on August 16, 2008, 01:39:58 pm
*snip*

IIRC you can't select the whole scene for saving as an object (I might be wrong though).  This is irrelevant though, since all of the lower lods are children of LOD0.

EDIT: Oops :nervous:
Title: Re: Archangel Battle ship nameplate problem
Post by: Herra Tohtori on August 16, 2008, 02:19:32 pm
Wat?

(http://i35.tinypic.com/14t1pjb.png)

I'm fairly certain that if I selected detail-0 from there and saved the object, it would only save the detail-0 and it's subobjects. Choosing the whole model (not the scene) would save all subobjects of the model into the object, but the question seems to be irrelevant if PCS2 can import truespace scenes.

Also, your quotes make no sense. :p


EDIT: thanks for clearing things up, I never knew lower LOD's could be children of LOD0. :)
Title: Re: Archangel Battle ship nameplate problem
Post by: Vertigo 7 on August 16, 2008, 03:24:25 pm
About the nameplates ... this has to do with the fact that transparent parts of the ship must be rendered last, and child objects are rendered before their parents.  So basically, if you have detail0 with nameplates as a subobject, the nameplates will be rendered first, causing this problem.  There is no way to fix this other than editing the hierarchy in TrueSpace.

This is ...strange... I recall the nameplate rendering fine for me..at least with the last version of the Archy. I might have to look into that.

I got the models from freespacemods.net. It's possible the ones on there are outdated. I saw that most of your work was being hosted on hadescombine but since its gone that was the onry source =/
Title: Re: Archangel Battle ship nameplate problem
Post by: TrashMan on August 16, 2008, 06:11:16 pm
I was thinking of making a new VP with the latest of everything I have in it...kinda hoped to ship it together with the second part of my campaign, but my FREDers have a nasty habit of dissapearing and taking a few missions with them.

Around 16 missions done, 10 left to go and no progress in the last few months. Been working on other things...heh.
Title: Re: Archangel Battle ship nameplate problem
Post by: Vertigo 7 on August 16, 2008, 06:14:19 pm
i've been using your ships for a campaign i'm working on =p i love the detail in em, even tho i've had ta fix0r them up in some way or another  :lol: