[Billy Pilgrim]

Howdy all, first post on these boards - I've not been here long but I've been devouring Freespace since I arrived.

I might be going off at half-cock but I was mucking around trying to get a cockpit I liked and I hit upon something interesting. See, the show ship method is okay - it gives you the cockpit struts and the parts of your ship you can see out of the windows which is cool, but often the cockpit interiors aren't too detailed and the HUD is still all up on the screen - in some ships such as the Apollo in FS1 the glow makes it almost impossible to see what's going on with the lower HUD elements. If I remember right, I used the code from the second quote in the OP of this thread: http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=71151.0

So then I tried fightermedic's fantastic RTT cockpit made from Dragon and Vasudan Admiral's genericCP ( I hope I've got the credit right there, I don't have the threads in front of me) and loved it. But, of course with that every ship looks the same - you don't get cockpit struts and you can't see the outside of your ship. (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=84459)

So basically I was farting around, and I tried taking my .tbl file with all the show ship stuff, and actually just dumping it into the tables folder of the .vp file for fightermedic's mod. Lo and behold, up come the proper cockpits for each ship, and I look lower on the screen, and there's fightermedic's RTT display. Billy Pilgrim is a happy bunny at this point.

NOW...

This was all just last night, so I've had little chance to test it yet, so I'm coming to you. What do you think? (I'll add the .vp file and some screenies when I get home, I'm at work right now).

Problems I anticipate:

• I'm guessing it's working by just displaying both models - the cockpit and the ship - together rather than any deep magic. This might mean that the cockpits for some ships might clip through the control panel. I've not seen it on the ones I've tried (if you look upward in the Apollo you can see part of the pilot's head, but that's probably just an eyepoint issue), but I've not tried that many yet. I've now tried all the Terran FS1 ships and they look fine.
• On EVERYTHING NOW OH GOD WHY it seems to make some of the remaining HUD elements go wonky in terms of their positioning. I've only seen it on the Ulysses but it might happen elsewhere too. Ok, I got this one figured out. It doesn't play nicely with the FS1 HUD used in fsport and other mods. If you stick it in its own mod folder and put it in the mod.ini for anything you want to use it with before anything else, it'll override the FS1 HUD and play nicely like in the screenshots below, albeit with FS2 HUD elements.
• On the Apollo, there's still that mini non-functional gunsight within the proper one - this is because it's in the original cockpit model. I guess other ships might have the same. Yeah, a couple of others doo, but as you can see it doesn't look bad.
• Because it uses the generic CP, the rear view on every ship is that great big bulkhead that's built into the .pof file. I don't know if anyone who's better at modelling than I am wants to replace the bulkhead with just the seat headrest, and pull the headrest back a bit, so we get some lovely rear views for those ships that have them?
• I don't have TrackIR and know NOTHING about how it works, so for all I know using TrackIR with this setup might make lizards start crawling out of your speakers or something.

So there you go folks, that looks like a long list of issues but a lot of it is just "this might happen, I haven't tested it yet". Apart from the lizards. On reflection, that's probably quite unlikely.

Give it a whirl though, see what you think!

EDIT: Also I meant to say, I love these boards. Everyone here is so driven and creative, I hope I can contribute and not be too much of a noob.

EDIT: Screenies! FS1 first...

Angel.


Apollo.


Athena.


Hercules.


Loki.


Medusa.


Seth (just to show it works for any ship, not just Terran ones).


Ulysses.


Ursa.


Valkyrie.


Zeus.


ANOTHER EDIT: Right, tested again on a fresh install using the Blue Planet build based on 9960, found at http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=83318.0. All the blue text up there should be correct, I've tried it with vanilla, fsport, mediavps, Silent Threat Revisited, Awakenings and they all work fine. So, here's the mod:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/yppn5cnbbmax6dr/cpmod.zip

[wookieejedi]

Looks awesome. I think I will definitely try to incorporate some of these cockpits into my Original Trilogy mod

[Billy Pilgrim]

Cheers! It works better for some ships than others - it just depends on how detailed the ship .pof is around the cockpit area. I really like the way the Loki and the Ursa have come out. I've not tried this yet, but I *think* that moving the eyepoint in the ship should leave the control panel in the same place on the screen. So far though, I've not really needed to do this.

I know not everyone likes to have the cockpit there, but the default always feels to me like you're a disembodied pair of eyeballs floating through space. The cockpit reduces your visibility, sure, but I like that it adds another factor into choosing your ship.

"Oh, sure, the Medusa's tough, but you can't see a bloody thing," said the GTA pilot I just made up.

Also, I know people have mentioned it already but it makes sense that the actual control panel is the same between them all, even the Vasudan and Shivan fighters which have been retrofitted for Terran pilots - you don't want to be relearning everything every time you fly a new ship.

[fightermedic]

generally i like what you have done, but those cockpits are just too low poly and their resolution is too low to not look ugly
this would be a pretty good point to start a bit of modeling though you could import the standart cockpit model into the model of the ship, and then delete all parts of the ship that can't be seen from the cockpit, and finally add details and better thextures to the few things that can be seen
=> you get a good looking cockpit that is specific for each ship, and doesn't have the hud twice

[Billy Pilgrim]

Nah, I'm too lazy for that, and I've not modelled in years.

...is what I WOULD have said, but now OH NO HE DIDN'T IT IS ON 

Challenge accepted.

That said, while I'm a reasonable modeller in Blender (or at least, I used to be, I'm way out of practice), I don't know the first thing about modelling for FSO. I'm going to need to do a lot of reading.

[Billy Pilgrim]

you could import the standart cockpit model into the model of the ship, and then delete all parts of the ship that can't be seen from the cockpit, and finally add details and better thextures to the few things that can be seen

So is that adding more detail into the original ship model, or adding extra bits to the control panel model? I'm guessing the second one, as the first would mean that every time someone made a new version of a ship, the cockpit would need to be redone (or the modeller would need to do a really high detail cockpit in the first place) - also it would waste polies.

I'm just trying to figure out how to get the two models to line up in blender the same as they do ingame, so that the view from the eyepoint stays the same.

[DahBlount]

That said, while I'm a reasonable modeller in Blender (or at least, I used to be, I'm way out of practice), I don't know the first thing about modelling for FSO. I'm going to need to do a lot of reading.

Just do what you would normally do to model, UV Map, and Texture an object except add LODs and Debris as separate layers. Typical conversion from any program calls for LOD0-3 with 4 or more debris pieces. You're also going to need PCS2 (2.1 and a large pack of important things) to import the model and export as a .pof.

It may be problematic trying to find the correct PCS2 build and addons as only the latest couple of builds work with Blender export files (.dae, a collada export file). If you need help just pm one of us.

[Billy Pilgrim]

Thanks! I'm actually thinking about using max now, for various reasons (although because mostly I find Blender's interface really irritating).

I think the plan going forward is this:

• Import the GenericCP from fightermedic's mod, and the model for the ship I'm working on.
• Somehow get them to line up so that the eyepoints for both models are in the same spot. This is going to be the hard part, unless someone has a bright idea as to how to do it.
• Use the ship model as a basis to extend the GenericCP, adding in a high detail cockpit tub, struts, the bits of the ship you can see from the window and so on.
• Unwrap and texture it. I'm actually thinking that, given that I can probably go pretty high in terms of polygon count, I'll try to avoid using normal maps if I can help it and just model detail straight in.
• convert to .pof in PCS2.
• Alter the code in fightermedic's mod so that it references the specific ship model rather than the GenericCP. As long as I don't touch the control panel itself or alter any eyepoints, everything should work as it did before.
• ???
• PROFIT

Given that the model's only seen by the player close up, it shouldn't need LODs at all. This should also eliminate needing to use the show ship thingy at all. The only drawback I can see is that if someone updates the ship with a new model, what you can see out of the window might change from what you can see when looking at the ship from the outside.

I'm also going to check out how the deferred lighting model works, to see if it's possible to use an extra shadow map for everything within say 10m, so that the cockpit shadows itself nicely.

Big job!

[fightermedic]

what you do is this:
- open this cockpit file: http://www.mediafire.com/download/7vp3lyiitm91o6h/cockpit.rar
- import the ship model you want to create a cockpit for
- scale the ship and move it so it aligns with the cockpit as it should (DO NOT TOUCH THE SCALE OR POSITION OF THE COCKPIT!)
- remove those parts of the ship that can't be seen from the cockpit
- add detail and textures to the remaining parts, create a new texture for them, don't touch the old cockpit texture
- never ever have a shine map for glass textures in a cockpit, also you want any glass texture save the fightershield to be named something like "example-trans", or you wont be able to see parts behind the glass

once you have done this, let's talk about exporting
if you really can pull this off for a few of the ships, that would be super awesome

PCS2:
http://www.freespacemods.net/download.php?view.749
here is an example cockpit:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/bp5f4pekkn61a9f/racoon-cockpit.rar

[Billy Pilgrim]

Wo, I'm in the newsletter. Welp, guess that means I have to go through with this now

Fightermedic, thanks for the advice. I'm just going to scale the ship so the included cockpit matches as close as it can to the cockpit you linked to by eye. I wasn't planning to use glass textures except the one that's already on the control panel - I might go back and add dings and scratches to the canopy later.

My main concern here is that the eyelines are going to mean there's a big strut right in front of your view - I'm thinking on models with heavily armoured cockpits like the Loki - but that's something to sort out way further down the line.

I've got max back up and running, so I should be good to put some work in tonight. Does anyone have any requests for what ships they'd like to see first?

[fightermedic]

just go with the most obvious ones, Herc1 Valk medusa ursa athena etc

[Mongoose]

It's really awesome to see someone join up and immediately start tinkering around to produce something cool.

[fightermedic]

indeed Mongoose, quite an entry

i have updated the default cockpit that i uploaded before, it should be easier to fit into a cockpit frame now
you can either delete those 2 floating handles, or attach them where you like, if you want to use this version (you'll see what i'm talking about once you open the file)
http://www.mediafire.com/download/7vp3lyiitm91o6h/cockpit.rar

[Scooby_Doo]

You'll definitely want high-detailed models for the cockpit, including hi-res textures, as it's sitting right in your face in-game.   Also forget normal mapping,  glow is good, shine is ok.  Think of your cockpit as a completely separate ship model

Take a look at some of my work for ideas: http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=84497.20

[Billy Pilgrim]

Hey, just a quick update to say I'v got everything set up and am working on the actual modelling for the Medusa. It might take a while to do the first couple, as I've not touched max in like ten years, but I'm getting the hang of it again. Stay tuned!