Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The Modding Workshop => Topic started by: Mort on May 08, 2011, 09:11:16 pm
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Anyone knows where I can download this? The link on the wiki is outdated
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Spicious's sig
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For some reason I've always been too lazy to type this out but I will now: that is a silly place, it should be linked on the wiki and that link kept updated.
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For some reason I've always been too lazy to type this out but I will now: that is a silly place, it should be linked on the wiki and that link kept updated.
But that would be sensible!
The reason for keeping it in one place was for minimising effort when the link eventually has to change, which so far it hasn't.
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The wiki is also the place with more thorough (although possibly outdated) information about PCS2 itself, and its installation, etc. So the link really should be there, regardless of where else it is.
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Hey, the link is faulty again. Both on the wiki and on his sig. I really want to keep working, so I'm probably just going to download truespace, but I thought I'd let you know.
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If you download truespace, I'm going to eat your children.
True**** sux. It says "**** you" to smoothing and all your models will either be faceted or look like turds.
Don't do it.
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:nervous: ok..... I was just trying to export models to make small changes. Smoothing is still a little bit beyond me.
EDIT: Turns out I was able to make all the required edits in PCS2, even without the exe.....
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Well, if you did that even with properly smoothed models, TrueSpace would destroy all the smoothing data, completely and utterly.
But yes, Spicious, you need to update all the links.
Even the bsp build one is 403'ing
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truespace isnt that bad. i modeled some badass ships in that program back in the day. it aint no max though.
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was the stuff in that old '06 release of nukemod made in TS?
yeah there's some cool stuff in there. shame none of it has proper smoothing :P
Truespace forever fails as a modelling program cause it donno how to smoothgroups/edgesplit D:
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was the stuff in that old '06 release of nukemod made in TS?
yeah there's some cool stuff in there. shame none of it has proper smoothing :P
Truespace forever fails as a modelling program cause it donno how to smoothgroups/edgesplit D:
it had the best smoothing of the day, this was before pcs2 was churning out perfectly smoothed models. you had 2 import options: *.scn and *.cob (i never used cob, it always screwed up hierarchy). there was no other format supported. most people then were doing weird things to get their models into a cob or scn format. going through a hodgepodge of formats and format converters to get a cob/scn out of their input formats. the results were bad geometry, bad smoothing, and a ****ton of other glitches. of course then the max plugin came around and while this made perfect smoothing it was full of collision holes. and finally collada support finally allowed for good import from max, so that smoothgroups could be maintained. the good smoothing you have now is entirely a product of the steady improvement of mod tools. lets see you make a perfectly smoothed model with '06 tools, **** just be glad you didnt have to make a mod with 1999/2000 tools. you kids are spoiled! :D
granted truespace follows the wrong modelling paradigm for the kind of meshes freespace uses. truespace was intended for primitive modeling, not meshing. max is by far better at meshing. why cob/scn was chosen over other formats of the time was beyond me. perhaps it was because truespace cost a lot less than max, perhaps it was because it was a program the early devs had access too. it sure as hell wasnt chosen for its smooth grouping capabilities. there weren't many (if not any) open source model formats at the time that we could rely on, and some proprietary format had to ultimately be used. but it was the lesser of two evils at the time to forsake perfect smoothing in favor of a program that could write better cob/scn files, as opposed to convert from format a to format b to format c to cob to pof, which led to a number of bad geometry issues. put simply, i blame kazan.
i did learn later on that there were some ways to get good smoothing in ts, you could use multiple materials to create seams in the smoothing (they also aid in making selections for uv mapping), this can be seen on the ragnarok class. you could also tweak smoothing factors on a per material basis to get rid of uglies, use enough of them and you can get smoothgroup equivalent quality. and didnt apply maps until just before export. of course by the time i figured this out i had moved to max (this was when the max plugin came out).
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to thread creator, le sigh.
Get yer build right here. (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=77292.0)
The one eponymously named pcs2.exe has proven to be most stable for me (aka, feb 19,2011 build)
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was the stuff in that old '06 release of nukemod made in TS?
yeah there's some cool stuff in there. shame none of it has proper smoothing :P
Truespace forever fails as a modelling program cause it donno how to smoothgroups/edgesplit D:
it had the best smoothing of the day, this was before pcs2 was churning out perfectly smoothed models. you had 2 import options: *.scn and *.cob (i never used cob, it always screwed up hierarchy). there was no other format supported. most people then were doing weird things to get their models into a cob or scn format. going through a hodgepodge of formats and format converters to get a cob/scn out of their input formats. the results were bad geometry, bad smoothing, and a ****ton of other glitches. of course then the max plugin came around and while this made perfect smoothing it was full of collision holes. and finally collada support finally allowed for good import from max, so that smoothgroups could be maintained. the good smoothing you have now is entirely a product of the steady improvement of mod tools. lets see you make a perfectly smoothed model with '06 tools, **** just be glad you didnt have to make a mod with 1999/2000 tools. you kids are spoiled! :D
granted truespace follows the wrong modelling paradigm for the kind of meshes freespace uses. truespace was intended for primitive modeling, not meshing. max is by far better at meshing. why cob/scn was chosen over other formats of the time was beyond me. perhaps it was because truespace cost a lot less than max, perhaps it was because it was a program the early devs had access too. it sure as hell wasnt chosen for its smooth grouping capabilities. there weren't many (if not any) open source model formats at the time that we could rely on, and some proprietary format had to ultimately be used. but it was the lesser of two evils at the time to forsake perfect smoothing in favor of a program that could write better cob/scn files, as opposed to convert from format a to format b to format c to cob to pof, which led to a number of bad geometry issues. put simply, i blame kazan.
i did learn later on that there were some ways to get good smoothing in ts, you could use multiple materials to create seams in the smoothing (they also aid in making selections for uv mapping), this can be seen on the ragnarok class. you could also tweak smoothing factors on a per material basis to get rid of uglies, use enough of them and you can get smoothgroup equivalent quality. and didnt apply maps until just before export. of course by the time i figured this out i had moved to max (this was when the max plugin came out).
I guess I am spoiled :P
But the point remains that now that proper tools exist, I don't think anyone should still be using those archaic tools of the past, seeing as they well...usually generate more bugs and whatnot than anything else.
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Thanks, pecenipicek. This will help a lot.
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I guess I am spoiled :P
But the point remains that now that proper tools exist, I don't think anyone should still be using those archaic tools of the past, seeing as they well...usually generate more bugs and whatnot than anything else.
truespace is free last i checked, and is still a valid alternative to commercial tools like max. though if your gonna use truesspace at least do yourself a favor and use version 6, as the free version is bloated to no end and very slow. these days i use max. but most people either cant afford it or lack the moral corruption necessary to pirate it. other free software can be used, but in my experience some of them are just as bad as truespace. still with the right techniques truespace can make decent models. are there better tools? yea. but thats beside the point.
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I'm just sick of seeing models that either have 1) no smoothing whatsoever, and (this one ticks me off especially) 2) a single smoothgroup smeared all over the entire model resulting in no hard edges whatsoever (yuck! :ick:). And most people who use TrueSpace apparently have no idea how to actually use it and thus can't avoid both scenarios and wind up with one or the other. (I can let you get away with 1) if you're making a terranbrick but under no circumstance will I let anyone get away with 2), unless they're modelling an...asteroid.)
I believe the recommended "free" program nowadays is Blender (though it sounds like the latest version broke OpenCollada support), and it can do all the proper stuff like AObaking and Proper smoothing. It just has kind of a cryptic UI last time I tried to use it.
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there are techniques to make truespace models look nice, but i didnt employ them on many of my models which were made for retail long before the scp and before i discovered said techniques. smoothing didnt matter so much before specular or normal maps came along, you could always compensate for uglies in texturing. its much harder to get away with the bad smoothing these days, and you are less likely to loose it in conversion, and this was a common problem 5 or so years ago. my mod is on par with models from the same era. it doesn't compare well with anything more recent. was going through the process of fixing these problems when i htl the older ships, but i lost interest.