[TheCatalyst]

Hello everyone,

I am new to this forum, and I am also Razorskiss's brother. I was asked to look at the models for Tachyon (woot), and I have. I see some problems in geometry though. It seems the creators of this game have made "invisible faces" that they used 2-sided mapping in an attemp to fix it (I think I saw that somebody found it on the Pegasus model). Also, I found some problems that I am unsure how to fix:

the UVW coordinates are split up into "regions" or ID maps, and 3ds max doesn't seem to have those coordinates from the .3ds files alone. The only solution that I can find in 3ds max is to remap each ship. Then again I am not very proficient in texturing. lol =P Do you have another program that you use to remap ships? (i.e. descent)

Thats what I have found so far. Also, since you guys want to re-texture, what maximum mipmap size are you wanting to use with the DX8 engine? And once you have the object retextured, how to you export the texture file and coordinates into usable slices for game play?

Please excuse my "noobish" sounding questions. Thanks guys

- TheCatalyst

[Turey]

COMMAND: INCOMING JUMP SIGNATURE! NEW USER CONFIGURATION!

Helm! Ready all beam cannons!
Lock Beam Cannons and fire on my command!
FIRE!


NO, YOU IDIOT! USE THE BIG BEAM CANNON!
FIRE!


Welcome to HLP! Exits are to the right and left. In the event of a landing of any kind, you can and will be used as a flotation device. Flamethrowers are conviniently located under your seats, however, due to the recent funding cuts, a $3.5 million donation is required to obtain a flamethrower with a full load of napalm in it. If you do not wish to make a donation, your flamethrower will remain filled with water. If you don't wish to donate and still want a working weapon, you'd have to try the weapons locker. However, only HLP Admins, a :V: God, or a Hyperintelligent shade of Blue can open the lock, so you'd have to break in. If you find yourself inside a ventilation shaft and you catch a glimpse of a Shivan, you don't need to worry... much. It's just Carl, and you have two choices with how you want to deal with him:
    1. The first possible course of action is getting one of the weapons from the afore-mentioned weapons locker, and trying to ward off Carl by threatening him with the weapon. Be advised that many of the weapons in the weapons locker are covered with the blood of people who thought it a good idea to break into the weapons locker and use the procured weapon to ward off Carl. So, please, if you decide you want to choose this course of action, choose one of the already-bloody weapons, so you don't get blood all over one of the clean ones.
   2. Your second course of action when you see Carl is to throw your lunch to him and hope he isn't hungry. This is the better option.
   As a final note, please remember that any attempt to use the ASCII characters 0046h, 0053h, and 0033h in sequential order will result in you being trampled by Freespace Fanboys. Your trampled remains will be fed to Carl so that the rest of us don't have to carry around so much food for lunch.



anyways......

what maximum mipmap size are you wanting to use with the DX8 engine? And once you have the object retextured, how to you export the texture file and coordinates into usable slices for game play?

1. We don't like DX8. OpenGL is better.
2. Maximum mipmap size is..... 1024x1024, right? or is it 1024x2048?
3. textures should be converted into 256 indexed color mode and saved as .pcx (photoshop will do this out of the box)
4. coordinates? do you mean the UV mapping? since you have 3ds max, that gets put in an unwrap UV modifier IIRC. The whole model then gets converted using this.

[Vengence]

Hello everyone,

I am new to this forum, and I am also Razorskiss's brother. I was asked to look at the models for Tachyon (woot), and I have. I see some problems in geometry though. It seems the creators of this game have made "invisible faces" that they used 2-sided mapping in an attemp to fix it (I think I saw that somebody found it on the Pegasus model). Also, I found some problems that I am unsure how to fix:

the UVW coordinates are split up into "regions" or ID maps, and 3ds max doesn't seem to have those coordinates from the .3ds files alone. The only solution that I can find in 3ds max is to remap each ship. Then again I am not very proficient in texturing. lol =P Do you have another program that you use to remap ships? (i.e. descent)

Thats what I have found so far. Also, since you guys want to re-texture, what maximum mipmap size are you wanting to use with the DX8 engine? And once you have the object retextured, how to you export the texture file and coordinates into usable slices for game play?

Please excuse my "noobish" sounding questions. Thanks guys

- TheCatalyst

I didn't even touch most of the UV coordinates. I just applied the skin and it fits perfectly. I use 3ds too so don't think I did something different. Indeed there are invisible faces but 3ds has a simple setting called "2-faced" where the texture is applied to either side.

[TheCatalyst]

1. We don't like DX8. OpenGL is better.
2. Maximum mipmap size is..... 1024x1024, right? or is it 1024x2048?
3. textures should be converted into 256 indexed color mode and saved as .pcx (photoshop will do this out of the box)
4. coordinates? do you mean the UV mapping? since you have 3ds max, that gets put in an unwrap UV modifier IIRC. The whole model then gets converted using this.

Very valuable information Turey!  I am not sure about maximum mipmap size. I think is very dependant on whether you use OpenGL or DX8 and then also influenced by what specific game engine you are using.

So you all want to re-texture these models with a 1024 x 1024 mipmap and export the UVW coordinates using POF? (I think I follow)

I didn't even touch most of the UV coordinates. I just applied the skin and it fits perfectly. I use 3ds too so don't think I did something different. Indeed there are invisible faces but 3ds has a simple setting called "2-faced" where the texture is applied to either side.

Vengence, whenever you use that "2-sided" feature, doesn't it only fix the problem in MAX? What I mean by that is when you use something like POF, will it still remain an invisible face or will it be 2-sided as it was in MAX? I have always been taught that "2-sided" was a quick fix that wont correct geometry, it only hides it for MAX.

Thanks for the warm welcome, and err..... bloody stump from Carl.

[Vengence]

Ok then, the geometry fix is quite simple. Copy the faces and flip their normals and then weld them back on.

[Getter Robo G]

you know, I have hundreds of partial conversions that can be described by that "quick fix" no wonder they crash!

smacks self...

[Backslash]

1. We don't like DX8. OpenGL is better.
2. Maximum mipmap size is..... 1024x1024, right? or is it 1024x2048?
3. textures should be converted into 256 indexed color mode and saved as .pcx (photoshop will do this out of the box)

Aieee!  Wait wait wait.  Only do this if your original textures from the game are already just 256 colors, or if you guys don't plan to use the Source Code Project (i.e. want it to run on retail FS2). If, however, you do want all the graphics goodness, textures should be DDS format.  (Which, heh, is originally a DX8 format, but works with OpenGL now as well.)  Because then you're not limited to 256 colors, plus you get automatic LOD mipmapping.

Here's some more information in the wiki about texturing.  Basic summary:  the less textures the better.  If you can get the entire ship mapped to a single 1024x1024 (or smaller) texture, that's awesome.  (Your final texture can be any size width or height, as long as it's a power of 2... so you can do 512x128 or whatever, if necessary.  Just keep it 2048 or lower for the sake of people with non-monster graphics cards... 1024 is a good compromise for everyone, I think.)  I can't make heads or tails of the actual process of UVmapping, sorry, but ask me in particular if you have questions about converting images to the DDS format.

Anyway, welcome to the boards TheCatalyst, and I wish you two success in your efforts -- I loved Tachyon and look forward to trying these models.  I'd also be glad to help with table stats for them (particularly speed, damping, and rotation velocity).

[Vengence]

Yeah, go medium res. Don't be like me and put a 4000X4000 pixel map on a fighter . That was a pretty wierd mistake.

[RazorsKiss]

Anyway, welcome to the boards TheCatalyst, and I wish you two success in your efforts -- I loved Tachyon and look forward to trying these models.  I'd also be glad to help with table stats for them (particularly speed, damping, and rotation velocity).

Backslash - I'd love to accept!  Sorry it took so long to get back to you.  I was busily workin on the website,  and various other little issues.  Please stop by the website - http://fringespace.org - and take a look around.  We're not quite to that, as yet, but I hope to be before too long.