[Flaser]

I'm no modeller or texturer, so I can't actually give you any technical advise, but thinking of the possibilities including a Lightspeedish powered-down base texture with your superb glowmap I can't help geting goosebumps.

AFAIK the OpenGl rendering hadn't suffered as much shiny problems as D3D did, thoug it is admitedly a bit buggy and neglected.

[DamoclesX]

Dont mean to sound like I know it all

but it's a -lot- simpler to simply built the textures in photoshop in such a way that you can add those sweet glows by hand, its what I always do

[kasperl]

Omni: get together with LS ASAP, please....

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by DamoclesX
Dont mean to sound like I know it all

but it's a -lot- simpler to simply built the textures in photoshop in such a way that you can add those sweet glows by hand, its what I always do

That's my personal preference, but if you could, um, 'bake' lighting straight onto the maps it would both a) save time and b) give a more realistic light effect (depending on how you do the glowmaps manually, of course... personally I always went for a more stylised look*)

*i.e. I didn't give a **** about realism, only how good/right it looked.

[DamoclesX]

ya I hear that

what mod is this for? I cant find any info on it.. how many polys is that ship anyways.. it sure looks good in the freespace 2 engine.


Have to admit..... startrek really does not lend itself to a fighter based game.. how are you going to get around that?

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by DamoclesX
ya I hear that

what mod is this for? I cant find any info on it.. how many polys is that ship anyways.. it sure looks good in the freespace 2 engine.


Have to admit..... startrek really does not lend itself to a fighter based game.. how are you going to get around that?

IIRC there are some ST fighters, plus wee shuttles.  I don;t actually like the series myself, but I'm sure I heard that in one of the earlier threads.

I think Omni's just doing this stuff for general, per-model release.  I'm not sure if anyone is making a specific campaign, but I think there will be one.

[Swamp_Thing]

Originally posted by StratComm
Well it's the 20 materials that had me concerned, glad you're working on it though.  Trouble is (and I don't know if the Max exporter fixed this or not), FSO renders each material seperately, or at least it did at one point, so if you had 5 materials named "hullplating" then that would be five seperate chunks of rendering data being sent to the GPU, despite only using one texture.  Truespace-native models are notorious for this.

That´s strange, i made a model that has 45 materials per 12 textures, and works allright in FS. No stuttering of any kind. It used to have 65 materials per 15 textures, but it crashed FS when i tried to load the mission. Then i cut down on the textures a bit, and it worked fine...
And i don´t have any kickass system either. Just a P4 at 2.6ghz, and an FX 5600.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Swamp_Thing


That´s strange, i made a model that has 45 materials per 12 textures, and works allright in FS. No stuttering of any kind. It used to have 65 materials per 15 textures, but it crashed FS when i tried to load the mission. Then i cut down on the textures a bit, and it worked fine...
And i don´t have any kickass system either. Just a P4 at 2.6ghz, and an FX 5600.

I believe it's (the less map recommendation) is at least partially to do with the context switches when it changes the material (i.e. when moving through & drawing the polies).

Actually, IIRC, Eternal One gave a really good explanation of this somewhere, which I've completely forgetton.  Bugger.

Oh, and Omni - do you mean actual texture maps by 'materials', or the material/smoothing subgrouping mat ids used in max?  

In terms of FSO, it's the former which actually matters IIRC.

[Omniscaper]

3dsmax's smoothgroup data and  material data are seperate. Its the evil Truespace that forced me to use over 30 materials to match the different smoothgroups.

GOD BLESS STYXX

He revitalized the modder in me by making that 3dsmax plugin for FSO.

I don't know if FSO treats smoothgroups and materials seperately, but its MUCH less work to create in 3dsmax.

Swampthing, when using that many materials, DDS textures shouls help that situation. I don't know about 60 materials though. Never reached that number. Do you remember the huge fleet I put together in January? I tried to recreat the greatest and most memorable battle in Trek history "Sacrifice of Angels" in DS9 TV show. Each starship had 15 + materials multiplied by over 20 starships. DDS made it possible!!!

http://nodewar.penguinbomb.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1691

http://nodewar.penguinbomb.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1706

These models were still un optimized and ran on a 2.56ghz P4 with a lousy Geforce4MX too.

[MetalDestroyer]

Are there any Star trek Mods which can be downloaded ??
I want to try. It seems pretty good.

[Omniscaper]

I'm afraid I'm a loner in this venture. Mod makers are free to use them for campaigns and stuff. I'm still quite disappointed that no one stepped up to seriously create an official mod. I'll still be around making Trek models available as ports from Bridge Commander and its modding community. Many of them love the progress I've been doing and some have joined this community.