Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The Modding Workshop => Topic started by: TrashMan on May 13, 2002, 02:13:17 am
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Well, I tested the Iowa model in the game. Here's how it looks:
(http://www.inet.hr/~tstanici/Images/snap001.jpg)
(http://www.inet.hr/~tstanici/Images/snap003.jpg)
(http://www.inet.hr/~tstanici/Images/snap007.jpg)
(http://www.inet.hr/~tstanici/Images/snap004.jpg)
There are two surfaces that need correcting, but othewrwise it's ok.
I'll start adding turrets and then give it to someone for further editing.
There is one problem. I have TS4,2. I paint the ship with a custom made texture (bmp) and I set the UV projection. The ship looks fine, but PCS won't convert it.
I paint it with PCX versions of the same texture, and since TS doesn't support pcx as a standard type, the ship looks completely black. I can't see if the textures(UV projection) are srewed up, but PCS convert's it now. In the game some surfaces have completely different UV projection (they look like stripes), even tough the bmp version of the same textures looked good (in TS).
What's the problem here?
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In the end I found I had less problems with cob2fs2 than I did with PCS. I know adding the turrets manually is a pain in the neck but try using that to see if it works. At least that way you know whether the problem is with your model or with PCS.
Can we have some pictures of the Iowa that aren`t in game as it's easier to see the ship like that.
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Nice model :yes:
Iowa..... Iowa...... Iowa....... Oh yeah!
The GTD Iowa from Awakenings! :D (not a ship class. a ship name)
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Just use the Printscrn key on your keyboard. Don't use Hypersnap.
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The cobFs2 converter doesn't work, it chrashes thes econd I start it (could be the Windows version, I have the 98SE).
And for those of you who don't know - the BB 63 Iowa (USA) is the greatest battleship ever constucted, over 50 000 tons of steel and 9x406mm firepower. The sheer power of battleships is demonstrated in a single evenet - the sinking of the Prince of Whales (which is allmost twice as small as the Iowa) - before it went down it took 24 direct torpedo hits, and over 300 bombs (from Jap bombers), and even after tahat it took him 3 hours to sink!!!!:jaw:
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Originally posted by TrashMan
The cobFs2 converter doesn't work, it chrashes thes econd I start it (could be the Windows version, I have the 98SE).
Cob2fs2 needs to be run from a dos prompt (or from the run option on the startmenu). Are you sure it's actually crashing or is it running, finishing and then closing its window?
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From the dos prompt? Thanks!
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yep. If you try to run it from windows you`ll see a dos prompt appear. Display some text and then disappear too quick to read it. I`m guessing that's what you saw :wink:
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Originally posted by TrashMan
The sheer power of battleships is demonstrated in a single evenet - the sinking of the Prince of Whales (which is allmost twice as small as the Iowa) - before it went down it took 24 direct torpedo hits, and over 300 bombs (from Jap bombers), and even after tahat it took him 3 hours to sink!!!!:jaw:
you could always nuke it :D
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Hehehe:) :) :) :yes2: :yes2: :yes2: :thepimp: :mad2: :wink: :ha:
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Originally posted by TrashMan
The cobFs2 converter doesn't work, it chrashes thes econd I start it (could be the Windows version, I have the 98SE).
And for those of you who don't know - the BB 63 Iowa (USA) is the greatest battleship ever constucted, over 50 000 tons of steel and 9x406mm firepower. The sheer power of battleships is demonstrated in a single evenet - the sinking of the Prince of Whales (which is allmost twice as small as the Iowa) - before it went down it took 24 direct torpedo hits, and over 300 bombs (from Jap bombers), and even after tahat it took him 3 hours to sink!!!!:jaw:
Japs had a very very bad day, or the commander of TPW was a friking manouvering genius. I think the last part is true as wee all know how fast Battleships can sink hint USS ARIZONA MEMORIAL.
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Two things:
1) Make BMP copies of the PCX textures you made. When you reference the BMP in Truespace, I think the converter changes the extension to PCX when it makes it a POF.
2) Just use FreeSpace 2 print screen. It saves as many thousands of pictures you want in a TGA format and doesn't have the stupid HypersnapDX thingy.
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Both the bmp and the pcx have to be in the Freespace2/data/maps, or in TS4,2/textures, or where?
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Okay it works like this.
You paint the model with bmp files and put it into the game. When freespace (or fred) runs it then looks in it's path to see if it can find the files you used. However freespace doesn`t care about extentions too much (it assumes that textures are always pcx) so if you textured the ship using mytexture.bmp it will look for mytexture.pcx
Freespace looks first in the freespace2/data/maps directory then in the .vp's so if you are using a standard unmodified [V] texture there is no need to do anything. Freespace will load the pcx from the .vp file.
If you`ve changed a [V] texture (i.e a skin mod) you should copy the .pcx file to the freespace2/data/maps directory where it will override the one in the .vp file.
If you`ve made your own textures copy the pcx file to the same directory.
The bmp's stay exactly where you found them since FS2 wouldn`t know what to do with them anyway :)
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If you use FSMM2 or PCS Construction, you can change the pof to use .pcx versions of your files and you wont have to worry about anything.
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Originally posted by IceFire
Two things:
1) Make BMP copies of the PCX textures you made. When you reference the BMP in Truespace, I think the converter changes the extension to PCX when it makes it a POF.
Actually, the extentions are cut off. FS2 doesn't want textures to be passed through it's code with an extention. AWACSTile2.bmp would become AWACSTile2 unless you used TS1 for applying textures in which case it will be AWACTI~2 (or in my case ~1) and nothing will be able to find it until you fix the texture name. You can fix texture names in ModelView32, PCS, and maybe FSMM. (I don't touch FSMM anymore.) That means you can actually make a reskin without using a 3D modeler. (Of course, you could also just override existing texture files, but changing the names means you could have two ships with the same design but different textures.)
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Great! I'll go to work imidiately! The more ships i make, the better.
B.t.w. - I think of making my own campaign (story can be found on www.inet.hr/~tstanici (http://www.inet.hr/~tstanici) ). Anyone iterested on helpimg me out?
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Originally posted by karajorma
yep. If you try to run it from windows you`ll see a dos prompt appear. Display some text and then disappear too quick to read it. I`m guessing that's what you saw :wink:
This doesn't really matter, but I just thought I'd note that Cob2FS2 (And probably the Cob2Pof programs) aren't DOS programs but are Win32 Console Apps. They look like DOS programs, but don't have PIF files and their associated properties. (Which can be a bad thing. If it was a DOS program you could tell it to stop automatically closing the window on exit. :))
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Originally posted by TrashMan
Prince of _Whales_
:lol: :lol:
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I'll correct myself - The Price of Wales!
And the Japs didn't have a bad day, TPW was one of the best(and newest) British battleships. The Repulse (an very OLD battleship) was with the Prince of Wales, and it sunk after beeing hit with 9 torpedoes.:(
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PCS gives me the "Illegal operation" message every time I want to convert the Iowa (luckily, I edit it and save it before I press O.K.), but every time I convert it some surface goes transparent. I converted it several times and every time some other surface goes screwy!!!!
Looks like I'll have to make the hull again (should take me about 1-2 hours, coause I'm good)!
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Originally posted by TrashMan
PCS gives me the "Illegal operation" message every time I want to convert the Iowa (luckily, I edit it and save it before I press O.K.), but every time I convert it some surface goes transparent. I converted it several times and every time some other surface goes screwy!!!!
Looks like I'll have to make the hull again (should take me about 1-2 hours, coause I'm good)!
Is the surface bad in ModelView or in the game itself? If it's bad in the game the face may be non-planer. (In otherwords, the face isn't flat.) If you split the face up it might do it better. D3 also has problems with non-planer faces, but it's level editor at least can tell you which faces aren't planer.
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ALL THE FACES ARE FLAT!
Arghhh....
I made the Iowa from scratch, and again the surfaces bug me!
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If you want to send me a copy of one of the cob files I could see if I can figure out what is happening and why. Otherwise I would suggest you try splitting the offending faces into triangles different ways and see if it helps.
[email protected]
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I sent you three versions..try them out!
B.t.w. - I made a capship weapon (looks like the Terran Hudge Turret, but a LOT more powerfull), does anyone know how to make it so that it only targets capships, not fighters (it kinda destroys them with one hit)?
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There are versions of both Cob2Pof and Cob2FS2 out there with Widnows GUI shells; just use those instead. ;)
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Where do you get them from?
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Yeh, I want those too!
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Thanks for the help EdrickV. What I don't get is that the textures on the (as you name it) sail are fine in the game. The textures that go screwy are on the completly good part of the model, where are points are conected (the main "main" hull).
I'll try to make the hull again... for the x-th time
b.t.w. - for multi-part turrets. In PCS there is a subobject section. PCS automaticly enters values for all subobject (including gun barrels). The entery's for the barrels are the same as for the turret base. Is that o.k.?
In the game I can target and destroy the turrets, but they don't fire!
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OK, you need to assign rotational submodels and firing points to your turrets. The POF editor in ModView works pretty well for that.
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The PCS put the same entry for the turret base and the barrel. Is that o.k.?
I have to addd the rotational axis? Fort he turret base that woul be the y axis, and the barrel z axis, right?
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Originally posted by TrashMan
The PCS put the same entry for the turret base and the barrel. Is that o.k.?
Use modelview, not PCS, for turreting. Yes, the turret barrel should be set as a rotational submodel to the turret proper, and firing points are much easier to do in the real-time updating of modelview. Turrets and their barrels are usually set to rotate on the z axis (it makes no sense, I know, but again Modview will help you see that); so long as the barrel subobject is set to rotate, and it is the rotational submodel, the turret should track correctly.
Item 2: edit turrets, not gunpoints. PCS automatically makes turret systems for any submodels named "turretxx", and you assign firing points there. From your description, you are trying to add weapon hardpoints, like on a fighter, instead of turret firing points. That could be why your weapons are not firing.
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In ModelView32 you can edit turrets a heck of a lot better (for now at least) and actually see which way a turret part will rotate. It'll also show you if your axis is totally screwed up.
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Concave Faces 101:
(http://members.aol.com/ArisKalzar/Iowa/ConcaveFaces.jpg)
The object on the left has a concave face. The object on the right shows the same face (mirrored) but sliced into two convex faces.
As to why I said there would be problems with that sail on the Iowa, here is an in game example:
(http://members.aol.com/ArisKalzar/Iowa/BadConvex1.jpg)
Also, compare the 3 Sail Front images here:
http://members.aol.com/ArisKalzar/Iowa/ (http://members.aol.com/ArisKalzar/Iowa/)
SailFront.jpg is how it should look, SailFrontBad 1 and 2 are how it sometimes looks. The same is true for the back and for the back of the thing on top. In the pic you posted did you notice the white texture in the target view box? That was caused by two faces that weren't connected but were flat against eachother with normals facing the opposite ways. My Iowa pics are a bit outdated, I've got a much better looking main hull model (that's actually in one piece) that I'm working on. Had a time getting it into Wings3D without screwing up it's geometry though. Had to open in TS1, export to DXF, open in GMax, delete the DXF's double faces, export to MD3, open in LithUnwrap, export in Wavefront OBJ, and then open in Wings3D. It triangulated a lot of stuff, but didn't screw up the geometry too much. And I haven't had any problems converting. (One thing of note though, your IowaMainLOD.cob file seems to have 68 different materials without any textures which makes no sense to me. You only need one material per texture I think.) On my copy the dimensions are a bit off probably due to all the conversions. My copy also doesn't have crawling textures like I saw on the IowaMainLOD.cob I converted. Also, I have just been working with the main hull not the turrets.
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I think I got it. I shouldn't have united some of the parts with the main hull (at least not on those places). They weren't connected with lines to other points. I know how to do it now. Thanks!
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Why didn't I think of this before!?
I'll just use polygon draw, and connect those faces with others!
Should work.:D
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I have no idea how you can join faces together in TrueSpace. But then, my copy isn't even in the same galaxy of usability as yours. :)
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It works!
Got it working. Has more poly's, but IT WORKS!!!!!:D :yes:
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If the faces are touching, and you don't mind sorting out a whole nother series of invisible face problems and textures, you may try setting down a box around the model and doing a boolean union. That will join the faces you are having trouble with. That always helps fix geometry issues before textures are laid out.
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No, that doesn't work for me, tried it. The model is a bit too complex.
I managed to fix 90% of all bad faces, only 10% to go. Looks menacing now, I'll post some pics later.
The problem is that it has around 1400 poly's (LOD1), and LOD0 will have around 50 simple turrets more ( + 300 poly's). Gonna be a big one.:D
PCS messes with the turret14. In Modelview32 the fireing point is set to 0.0.0., alltough I've set it to +-8, 40, 0 in PCS?!:mad: