Hard Light Productions Forums

Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The Modding Workshop => Topic started by: QXMX on July 10, 2001, 03:24:00 am

Title: Shield Meshes
Post by: QXMX on July 10, 2001, 03:24:00 am
How are these applied?  Also, how do you make an image of a fighter for the HUD display?

Thx.

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Title: Shield Meshes
Post by: aldo_14 on July 10, 2001, 06:12:00 am
Create using segletouch, or create a triangulated object, glue a light to it(sibling) and name the combo 'shield', glue it to the main hull as you would an LOD and convert.

If you already have pof data done for everything else, then create another pof (using the same hull model) using the same methods as above, and import the shield data from that.

For the shield display - I use PSP7 for this.  Extract a suitable existing shield ani file (i.e. one with a close shape to your fighter).  Extract all the frames from it.  Then, render an overhead view of your own model (no thrusters), with a plain blue/green/etc background.  Load it into PSP and crop it to remove the extra spaces.  Create a 'magic wand' mask over the areas of the same colour - the background.  convert to greyscale (this stops you losing the edges between background and image).  Adjust the brightness, etc so the image is lighter.  Fill in the masked background with black.

Select your fighter, and copy it.  Then, create a mask in the first frame of the extracted shield ani, which completely covers the ship there - and paste into the mask (ctrl-shift-l).  Save as PCX.. and recombine it with the previous frames .  You should have your ani now.

That's the hard bit done.  Extract hud.tbl from the VPs, and add a new entry down at the bottom like so (you'll see);

$shield: newshieldname

Now you can use yer shield  (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/wink.gif)

Let me know if this works, ok?

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Title: Shield Meshes
Post by: QXMX on July 10, 2001, 10:41:00 am
Yea, I found an earlier post where you said to do that, but the gluing the subobject and renaming it 'shield' didn't work, it just created another object around the ship  (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/smile.gif)  Maybe I did something wrong, I'll try it again when I get the chance.  (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/smile.gif)

Thanks for the info on creating the hud image, that should go smoothly(hopefully)  (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/smile.gif)

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Title: Shield Meshes
Post by: aldo_14 on July 10, 2001, 10:45:00 am
Make sure you glue a light to the shield object first, same as when adding debris / lods.
Title: Shield Meshes
Post by: QXMX on July 10, 2001, 10:50:00 am
I did that.  What cob2pof are you using.

And where can I get segletouch  (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/biggrin.gif)

Thx.

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Title: Shield Meshes
Post by: aldo_14 on July 10, 2001, 11:02:00 am
 
Quote
Originally posted by QXMX:
I did that.  What cob2pof are you using.

And where can I get segletouch    (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/biggrin.gif)

Thx.


I use Cob2fs2.  Were you definately using a triangulated object for the shield?

and segeltouch is at  http://freespace.volitionwatch.com/segultuch/ ("http://freespace.volitionwatch.com/segultuch/")

Apparently, if you add shields to an existing model, certain info gets lost, which is why you have to import from a copy (see above)



[This message has been edited by aldo_14 (edited 07-10-2001).]
Title: Shield Meshes
Post by: QXMX on July 10, 2001, 11:10:00 am
Yea.  The Truespace Trinagulation tool tringulates everything, not just the faces.  Could this be a problem.  If it is, how do you triangulate just the faces.  Thx.

And Thanx for the Segletuch link, I've been looking for it for a while  (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/smile.gif)

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Title: Shield Meshes
Post by: aldo_14 on July 10, 2001, 11:17:00 am
Well, i just select the shield, triangualte it and glue it together - which sounds the same as you're doing.

Could be a convertor problem - try cob2fs2 as well, I haven't had any problems using it.
Title: Shield Meshes
Post by: QXMX on July 10, 2001, 12:34:00 pm
The one written by Garry Knudson(spelling?)?

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Title: Shield Meshes
Post by: aldo_14 on July 10, 2001, 12:43:00 pm
Yeah.
Title: Shield Meshes
Post by: QXMX on July 10, 2001, 04:08:00 pm
That's the one I'm using too, I'll try it again the next chance I get.  Maybe I forgot to do something  (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/smile.gif)

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