Hard Light Productions Forums

Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The Modding Workshop => Topic started by: Starfury on February 26, 2002, 02:36:06 pm

Title: Argh, trying to get a ship in game, please help!
Post by: Starfury on February 26, 2002, 02:36:06 pm

Ok. FS2 is full patched, etc.  Blah blah, now that that's out of the way...

I've created a new model (obviously).  I have most of it done, I've added engine glows and turrets and a couple subsystems.  I want to see how all of this looks in game, so I added a table entry for it and changed everything accordingly, but when I try to create the ship in FRED, It gives me an invalid page fault.  So, somethings wrong... I did some poking around, cleaned up a bit.  However, FRED will still not take the model.  I'm out of ideas, so I'm turning to you guys.  Please help me! :mad:

Title: Argh, trying to get a ship in game, please help!
Post by: KARMA on February 26, 2002, 03:20:41 pm

use the default table entries and change the name to fighter2t-05
(myrmiddon), if it is something related to model it will continue to don't work elseway its something related to the tbl.
check textures also...btw i think that in early development there is no point in testing a model with his own tbl entries... just call it as a original pof and see in fred if the model has problems

Title: Argh, trying to get a ship in game, please help!
Post by: Starfury on February 26, 2002, 03:44:46 pm

Crap.  It's a model problem.  Oh well.

Title: Argh, trying to get a ship in game, please help!
Post by: an0n on February 26, 2002, 04:13:42 pm

Probably just too many polys.

Title: Argh, trying to get a ship in game, please help!
Post by: Starfury on February 26, 2002, 04:44:37 pm

Nah, less than 1200, no turrets.

Title: Argh, trying to get a ship in game, please help!
Post by: KARMA on February 27, 2002, 08:40:47 am

1200 may be too much...
you have a total poly limit of 5000(i think) but only 730->840 polylimit for single polygroup

Title: Argh, trying to get a ship in game, please help!
Post by: Starfury on February 27, 2002, 10:42:22 am

Per polygroup?  That means that the hulls of the original destroyers were less than 800 polys?  Oh lord, that's going to take a lot to wrap my mind around.

Title: Argh, trying to get a ship in game, please help!
Post by: Dranon on February 27, 2002, 11:35:01 am

Is there a way to check the poly's on a model outside of a modelling program?

Title: Argh, trying to get a ship in game, please help!
Post by: an0n on February 27, 2002, 11:41:54 am

Quote

Originally posted by Dranon
Is there a way to check the poly's on a model outside of a modelling program?

Getting millions of renders and counting each individual poly. :D:D:D

Title: Argh, trying to get a ship in game, please help!
Post by: KARMA on February 27, 2002, 12:56:30 pm

u can use modelview to check polycount...obviously on the converted pof;)

Title: Argh, trying to get a ship in game, please help!
Post by: Starfury on February 27, 2002, 06:43:54 pm

Anyways, back on topic.  Anybody know for certain what the poly counts need to be?

Title: Argh, trying to get a ship in game, please help!
Post by: Anaz on February 27, 2002, 06:47:58 pm

woah...we have 'Dranon' and 'an0n'....

Title: Argh, trying to get a ship in game, please help!
Post by: Starfury on February 27, 2002, 07:01:48 pm

:mad: I just can't get this right!   FRED will accept it now... but it's throwing polygons anywhere and everywhere.  Some are in the right place, some are just...  :wtf: help?

Title: Argh, trying to get a ship in game, please help!
Post by: IPAndrews on February 28, 2002, 03:11:03 am

Quote

Originally posted by Starfury
:mad: I just can't get this right!   FRED will accept it now... but it's throwing polygons anywhere and everywhere.  Some are in the right place, some are just...  :wtf: help?

That's the shards of death. You've still got a "sub object" with too many polys. Do a google search for my Freespace 2 ship creation guide. It's out of date and it's not great, but it should help a little.

Title: Argh, trying to get a ship in game, please help!
Post by: aldo_14 on February 28, 2002, 03:31:03 am

Quote

Originally posted by Starfury
:mad: I just can't get this right!   FRED will accept it now... but it's throwing polygons anywhere and everywhere.  Some are in the right place, some are just...  :wtf: help?

AS IP said - too many polys on it.  Try for under 800 on any sub-object (I think 846 is the max I've used, but best not to chance it).  Personally, all my ships are <400, so I can safely triangulate them.  If you have sub-objs, careful that the total number of polys isn't too high.  I think 2000~3000+ (LOD0) can work in FS2 (based on testing ...something....), but it's a pain in the neck to edit, as it won't show up in modelview.

Someone gave a good explanation for this - Eternal One I think - (correct me if I'm wrong) it's basically a stack overrun, where the poly co-ordinates are too many for the allocated memory space, and it's reading from unrelated data outside the allocated memory space - hence it's reading a bunch of random numbers and throwing out hugely different co-ordinates.

Title: Argh, trying to get a ship in game, please help!
Post by: Starfury on February 28, 2002, 10:27:45 am

Ahhhhh, well, that makes sense :)  So I get to break up ship up into several sub-objects.  Funnnnnn.  Oh well. Good learning experience.  Thanks everybody :cool:

[edit] aldo, you use blender, right?  How do you get around truespace screwing up normals when you import dxf's ?  it would help me because I'm having to break up the model more and more, but Blender says the normals are right.  

Title: Argh, trying to get a ship in game, please help!
Post by: aldo_14 on February 28, 2002, 03:11:24 pm

Quote

Originally posted by Starfury

[edit] aldo, you use blender, right?  How do you get around truespace screwing up normals when you import dxf's ?  it would help me because I'm having to break up the model more and more, but Blender says the normals are right.  

This is sort of complex to describe, but anyway.

On the blender console, look for a little icon shaped like a box - when you click it, it changes tohe bootm menu.  On the roght-most side of the menu, there's a 'show double sided' buttom.  click this - black areas have correct normals. silver are flipped.  (note - if you're on double sided mode, all remians silver).

To flip the normals, slect the vertices, and use a button in that same menu - 'flip normals' , handily enough.

Neat tip - if you make a box, it starts with all the normals flipped.  So I normally start from a cube, flip the normals (all faces), and extrude from it - most, if not all, normals should be fine ;)


:D

Title: Argh, trying to get a ship in game, please help!
Post by: LAW ENFORCER on February 28, 2002, 03:20:01 pm

I laugh in your general direction for using Blender... its 'Free'....
If you use a free program you are a idiot
If you use a comercial program (like MS3D) you are cool

So sayeth the wise Capitalist.....

Title: Argh, trying to get a ship in game, please help!
Post by: Starfury on February 28, 2002, 08:43:08 pm

lol Aldo.  I'm guessing you mean the object properties button.  So all the faces should appear black, in NON- double sided mode?  If it helps, I can pretty well find whatever you're referring to, in case you know it as something else.

Quote

Originally posted by LAW ENFORCER
I laugh in your general direction for using Blender... its 'Free'....
If you use a free program you are a idiot
If you use a comercial program (like MS3D) you are cool

So sayeth the wise Capitalist.....

Don' mess with Blender.  

Title: Argh, trying to get a ship in game, please help!
Post by: Anaz on February 28, 2002, 08:56:42 pm

I stopped using blender when I started using PCS

Title: Argh, trying to get a ship in game, please help!
Post by: Starfury on February 28, 2002, 10:25:38 pm

:confused:   Why?

Title: Argh, trying to get a ship in game, please help!
Post by: WMCoolmon on February 28, 2002, 10:57:10 pm

:confused: How?

Title: Argh, trying to get a ship in game, please help!
Post by: vadar_1 on March 01, 2002, 12:56:44 am

This may seem ridiculous... but if this is your first model, i would check your conversion process. Make a box, and do whatever you do to convert it to a pof and put it in game. If the box floats there in space, you can eliminate one of the possible problems. (Dont forget to incinerate the box)

Title: Argh, trying to get a ship in game, please help!
Post by: aldo_14 on March 01, 2002, 04:48:18 am

Quote

Originally posted by Starfury
:confused:   Why?

Kazan moans about blenders object saving..... I don't really know why.

But he does - or did - tend to badmouth using it with PCs.  Personally, I've never had a problem, regardless of how many file conversions my models have gone through into making it to pof stage.

EDIT - yep, black in normal sided mode.  morris13 told me that a looonnggg time ago (kudos to him ;) )

Title: Argh, trying to get a ship in game, please help!
Post by: LtNarol on March 02, 2002, 05:14:02 pm

hey, i have a problem converting a model: it keeps saying that it cant find the texture file, even though i have the original bitmap and the pcx version in maps, is it supposed to be in anotehr directory?

Title: Argh, trying to get a ship in game, please help!
Post by: Starfury on March 02, 2002, 05:24:54 pm

Try putting it in the directory with the model, if you're using Truespace.

Title: Argh, trying to get a ship in game, please help!
Post by: LtNarol on March 02, 2002, 05:34:56 pm

its in the model directory, the maps directory, and the effects directory, model (pof) is in the model directory

Title: Argh, trying to get a ship in game, please help!
Post by: Starfury on March 02, 2002, 05:37:42 pm

mmkay... go under preferences and make sure Truespace is looking in the right directory for textures.

Title: Argh, trying to get a ship in game, please help!
Post by: LtNarol on March 02, 2002, 05:49:27 pm

the problem is in fs2 and fred2, and yes, i did check.

Title: Argh, trying to get a ship in game, please help!
Post by: KARMA on March 02, 2002, 06:04:50 pm

textures MUST be 256*256 or 128*128 (or512*512 if you have the registry hack) AND of 256 colors (8 bit so if i'm not wrong) or fs/fred will not see em