[Omniscaper]

Unfortunately, PCS-autofacet is the only build that converts it without crashing. I have no clue why. The entire object is set to smooth and yet it still crashes the smooth build of PCS. Trying the Autofacet PCS on a smoothed model just results in a completely faceted conversion.

[Vasudan Admiral]

Unfortunately, PCS-autofacet is the only build that converts it without crashing

does it actually crash (ie, error message)? or just not seem to do anything for a while? (ie, the window goes white and the cursor appears busy?)

Trying the Autofacet PCS on a smoothed model just results in a completely faceted conversion.

that's what i said will happen
try it with a fully auto-faceted cob/scn.

[Omniscaper]

Crash with error message. Auto-facet set to 120 has no effect. Its a 3k geosphere

[Vasudan Admiral]

are you talking about the autofacet in PCS or in the material editor in TS?
i am talking about the material editor. set it to autofacet, apply it to the faces you want, save and try converting again with the autofacet build if you havn't done those exact things already

[Omniscaper]

If I didn't know that, I doubt I would have been able to convert so many Trek ships. =)

I've tried the facet build with the Earth object set to FULL autofacet in TRUESPACE. No effect. The Speculars show up with shading errors that reveal facets. Only cob2pof which uses smoothing have been able to converted a TS smoothed object of mine which usualla has a polygon count of at least 4k. This geosphere is comprised of 3k polys. PCS seems to crash at a certain polygon elevel.

The issue here is not normal shading. Normal shading is flawless. When speculars are involved, shading issues pop up. You can see that in this early build of the Earth model with texture seams.

[Bobboau]

well with specular your always going to have issues simply becase were useing a per vertex lighting model, and to get it perfict you'd need a per piel lighting model

[Omniscaper]

Whoa. And is this possible with TS? What entails a "per pixel" model.

Cob2pof still does a great job translating specular shading when the object is set to smoothed in TS. There are no anomolies except for the edges of the specualr sheen, which reveals some much smoother faceting

[Bobboau]

with TS sure, with FSO no, we havn't implemented that yet

[Omniscaper]

OOOOOO!!!    I think I'll be patient and deal with specualr anomolies for the mean time then. I just got paranoid about these issues after reading Karma and Aldo's threads reguarding subobject shading anomolies. Bobbaou, what would you suggest for my Earth and its utiliztion of speculars. And recommendations on alternative model handling, in terms of hierarchy, polygon count, etc?

[Vasudan Admiral]

If I didn't know that, I doubt I would have been able to convert so many Trek ships. =)

  lol, good point.

and i see what you mean now. perhaps just have a black spec map? that would mean the smooth shading on the model will kick in alone, and it should look ok. (besides that, do planets reflect light like that? it looks a bit un-natural IMHO. )

[Omniscaper]

NASA has many satellite photos of earth with this beautiful specular over all bodies of water. Quite stunning. Recreating that is being a pain when the faceting acts like a reality check that this is just a digital model. I want complete emersion for our beloved planet.

The current available model already has the speculars dulled down, but if you compare the two screenshots above, the latter pic with speculars looks much more convincing.

[Omniscaper]

I'm still trying to find the right balance between accuracy and specular faceting avoidance. But what do you folks think of this tweak. I feel its still too dull but concessions must be made.

[KARMA]

Originally posted by Omniscaper
What are the polygon limits of a parent object anyway? I have a feeling a single mesh with 15k is over limit.

the same for all the other subobjects, IIRC 25k triangles (althought others reported crashes when using more than 7-8k)

Just be careful with the number of submodels merged on the same subobject (which shouldn't be a prob with this model). If you are not sure how many submodels are present select a mesh (not a group) in truespace and press "decompose into objects". If there are too many submodels merged on the same subobject the game will crash after few minutes/seconds in game. The number of submodels will change pof by pof (but I never got crashes with less than 100 submodels merged).

Also, if you want my opinion, don't use geospheres, they are *****es to unwrap:) and standard spheres should look more...regular and smoothed. If the specular is giving some faceted effects, using smooth and cob2fs2 doesn't work, and increasing autofacet angle to 120° doesn't help, then use a lower reflection level, or increase pcount. Unfourtunately I don't see any other solutions

Last pic of earth doesn't look too good IMO, with that limited and colored reflection and the rest of the planet that dark.
At least the clouds must be much more bright and the planet shouls have an higher graduation of light (brighter in the middle and darker around the borders). I don't know if it would work, but you may try to use a darker terran map, and use a copy of the same texture as specmap, preserving the original colours on the specmap, trying different levels of brightness.