[Goober5000]

I found two beautiful functions while perusing the source code - ship_change_model, and change_ship_type. So I made them into sexps...

change-ship-model - changes the model used by particular ship or ships
change-ship-class - changes the class of a particular ship or ships

Normally, these would be mere oddities that could be fun to play with.  But I've already thought of two uses for them...


The RoboTech mod.  Now I haven't followed this much, but I have heard that they had two main obstacles to implementation in Freespace - departure into hangars, and model manipulation (a la Transformers, perhaps? )  With end-mission and distance-ship-subsystem, they can exit into hangars, and now with these sexps, they can change around their models.


Cloakable Ships. This is made especially possible by Bobboau's animated texture feature.  Take a generic ship model, say the GTF Pegasus (it's already stealth!).  Copy and reskin it with animated textures displaying a cool cloaking effect.  Then copy and reskin it yet again with invisible textures.  Now to cloak the Pegasus, simply use change-ship-model to toggle the cloaking effect model,  then after a second or two use change-ship-model again to toggle the invisible model.


So modellers and skinners, get cracking!  I want to see some cloaking effects.

[Knight Templar]

A distortion effect would be awesome for ships

[Nico]

Originally posted by Goober5000
The RoboTech mod.  [...]and model manipulation (a la Transformers, perhaps? )  With end-mission and distance-ship-subsystem, they can exit into hangars, and now with these sexps, they can change around their models.

that'd be cool, we already could do that, but I think it was a direct coed modificatoin or something. But there's not been any news lately from the team, so...

[Fury]

Although this is a neat feature for "transforming" ships, but it has one drawback if I got it right from Goober's explanation...

There's no animation during changing sequence, and that sequence is instaneous. Looks damn odd if a ship has shape A but second later it is shape B.

Animated shape change is what we need for TBP, for Vorlon ships for example.
OK, perhaps I did not got the terms right, but hopefully you still understand what I mean, yes?

[Petrarch of the VBB]

Ahh, useful for we tappers. For beast infection, and mimics.

[mikhael]

Originally posted by Mr. Fury

Animated shape change is what we need for TBP, for Vorlon ships for example.
OK, perhaps I did not got the terms right, but hopefully you still understand what I mean, yes?

Ray Harryhausen to the rescue!

Originally posted by Goober5000

Cloakable Ships. ... .Now to cloak the Pegasus, simply use change-ship-model to toggle the cloaking effect model,  then after a second or two use change-ship-model again to toggle the invisible model.

If you're willing to slideshow it a bit, perhaps some stop motion slideshow type stuff will do?

[elorran]

Interesting... indeed.

[Goober5000]

mikhael: There's not much to show.  I made a sample mission with a Herc mutating into a Herc II.  The Herc was flying along, and all of a sudden, *pop* it became the Herc II.  Instantaneous. If I was a good texturer, I might be able to make a cloaking effect and slideshow that, but I don't texture.


Mr. Fury: Yes, the change is instantaneous, but the animated textures might help that a bit.  Make a model that's as big as the bigger ship to transform into, and then animate it so it looks like it's changing from one ship to the other.

Or there's the possibility of doing multiple model changes back-to-back (frame-by-frame!) to simulate a transformation.  That might work, but I'm not sure how much it would stress the engine.

[Killfrenzy]

Would it be possible to 'leech' some source code from Bridge Commander or Klingon Academy? Or even Starlancer?

[Petrarch of the VBB]

Originally posted by Killfrenzy
'leech'  

LOL!

I'll have to add that to my list of "alternatvies to stealing". Lets see:
Liberate, emancipate, comandeer, confiscate, win, freemantle, relieve of, and now "Leech"

[Goober5000]

!

and -- abscond with, appropriate, usurp...


Why would we need any other source code?  What did you have in mind, Killfrenzy?

[DTP]

The problem is, that animating anything would mean we would have to start messing seriously, with the POF format. up and until now, we have only added new chunks of relative short sizes.

Animation would mean, that

1 first we design a new POF file format, maybe like Quake´s MD files that has animation INFO built into them, in order to give the artist complete controle. Also we would have to think of a way to let the FRED2 mission designer chose what "frames" or "sequences" of the animation to play.

2 we alter the engine to animate these.

3 we come up with something really clever so that we don`t have to do 3-4 LOD animations for each model, or we throw away the LOD system and design our own Engine LOD code, that is present in many games today.

The size of the model would more than tripple, and then we run into memory issues.

its really a task for somebody who has done something like this before, and someone who has a clear idea of what to do.

I understand the technicalities of animation, but not how to actually code it.

[Goober5000]

Do you mean with the model switching or with the textures?  Bobboau already implemented animated textures.

[mikhael]

Originally posted by Goober5000

Or there's the possibility of doing multiple model changes back-to-back (frame-by-frame!) to simulate a transformation.  That might work, but I'm not sure how much it would stress the engine.

This is exactly what I meant by slideshow, Goober5000.

[Bobboau]

there is already a rotational animation system in there, we could use that to get most of the stuff doable, I don't think getting translation would be all that hard after that, I started to look into an animation system but I I got boared when I was haveing trubles getting my propertys strings getting parsed corectly

[Goober5000]

Originally posted by mikhael
This is exactly what I meant by slideshow, Goober5000.

Oh!  I thought you meant post a few screenshots illustrating the effect.

[Setekh]

That's sweet, Goober! Good thinking too, thinking of those applications...

Originally posted by Goober5000
The RoboTech mod.  Now I haven't followed this much, but I have heard that they had two main obstacles to implementation in Freespace - departure into hangars, and model manipulation (a la Transformers, perhaps? )  With end-mission and distance-ship-subsystem, they can exit into hangars, and now with these sexps, they can change around their models.

I think they actually engineered a technique to do this already, to do with destroying subsystems or LODs or something like that; but this will be infinitely better, I think. Again, good work.

[Goober5000]

Thanks!  I actually just stumbled upon some code that was already there and made it more accessible, but I appreciate the appreciation.

Actually, if you want to thank someone, thank Bobboau.  Those animated textures will allow for some really cool cloaking effects.

[Setekh]

It's thanks to people like you that I really can't wait to get really back into FS. Make sure you keep working on the SCP while I'm away, eh?

[DTP]

Originally posted by mikhael


This is exactly what I meant by slideshow, Goober5000.

The proposed Slideshow would´nt solve "sudden change" problem.

It will still look funny. and dont forget that you would have to have, all those models in the TBL file, which is currently restricted to 128 polygon model ships.

what are needed to do this is a redesign of the POF format itself, while maintaining backward compatibility.