[Konnayr]

Hey there,

I've been working on setting up the model production pipeline from blender to a finished, textured model in FS22 open.

My handicap: I own a MacBook Pro on OSX 10.4 with a Windows XP Installation on a Parallels Image. Blender and FS2 run native on OSX, PCS2 and FRED open (in a separate win FS install) run on Windows XP. I know, not a really optimal setup, but for now, it's the only thing I have access to.

I thought that before I'd try anything ambitious I should get the basics down, so I created a simple cubic model and a fitting UV Map in Blender, edited the texture in photoshop and saved it as .pcx, set up the hierarchy according to http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Blender_to_POF_Conversions and exported it using the Collada 1.4 exporter. The Model loads into PCS2 (with dae support), and shows the texture which I put into data/maps.

I exported it as a .pof, and put it in data/models.

For testing, I put a copy of ships.tbl in data/tables and edited one of the containers to use my .pof. But when I try to place that Container (TTC 1) in fred 2 open, it throws the following error:

Warning: Couldn't open texture 'container_cube'
referenced by model 'container.pof'

File:c:\fs2_open\code\model\modelread.cpp
Line: 3053
[This filename points to the location of a file on the computer that built this executable]

Call stack:
------------------------------------------------------------------
    fred2_open_d-P420061130.exe 005b2460()
    fred2_open_d-P420061130.exe 005b3b98()
    fred2_open_d-P420061130.exe 004e7322()
    fred2_open_d-P420061130.exe 0044cf22()
    fred2_open_d-P420061130.exe 0044da5c()
    fred2_open_d-P420061130.exe 0044cdae()
    fred2_open_d-P420061130.exe 00438c59()
    fred2_open_d-P420061130.exe 008f283b()
    fred2_open_d-P420061130.exe 008f1c6e()
    fred2_open_d-P420061130.exe 008ef410()
    fred2_open_d-P420061130.exe 008ef8ee()
    USER32.dll 7e418734()
    USER32.dll 7e418816()
    USER32.dll 7e42a013()
    USER32.dll 7e42a039()
------------------------------------------------------------------

Apparently FRED can't locate the texture, which is placed in data/maps and named container_Cube.pcx. I tried naming it container_cube.pcx or simply container_cube, but I can't get it to work.

To the more experienced modellers out there: What am I doing wrong? I would appreciate your help. 

[colecampbell666]

Try a JPG/TGA, or optimally a DDS. PCX files have limitations to number of colors etc. IIRC.

[blowfish]

PCX and JPG are more or less not necessary.  For testing purposes, TGA is good.  For the final version you will almost certainly want DDS.

[Vasudan Admiral]

Added a note about texture formats to the guide - along with a few dozen pictures to better illustrate concepts.

[Konnayr]

Thanks to all of you for your help.

I got it to work with TGA textures, after a few struggles. For one, PCS2 crashed once after converting to .pof. Resulting .pof did look good, but wasn't. Also, the first TGA texture i used turned out to be corrupt (got a nice int3 as a result, a second export fixed that problem).

I will certainly look into how to create dds textures, thanks for the tip.

And last but not least many thanks to VA for illustrating the Wiki with those screenshots, they answer just about any following question I had about turreting, subsystems etc. in blender.

P.S. I will spare you with screenshots of my modelled abomination. It was just used to test the workflow. But I might have something presentable in the works soon. :-)