[Starman01]

Hello guys,

there is one thing (among a few others too), that I don't under-
stand yet. Can someone please explain to me, what "smooth" is
for and why I have to smooth the models.

When I take this all right, then here the first Model is smoothed,
the second isn't (I'm not sure though).




Smoothing is necessary for correct light-effects on the models,
ecspecially in HT&L, is this right ? And so, it is absolutly necessary
for a model, I guess.

And now the important thing. I am using TS 5.1 and I'm currently
working on the second model. Can someone please tell me where
the "Smooth the model"-Button is. I guess there is none, so how
can I smooth the model (if necessary).

Thanks for your help.

Best Regards

Starman©

[aldo_14]

Smoothing is basically goraud shading.  IIRC, the basic explanation is that it averages the intensity of light on a face, by calculating the normals of each of the vertices on it and attached faces....  when it comes to FS, if you don't have a smoothed model, it works out the dark / light regions of a model based on individual faces.

i.e. you can have one face completely dark, and one next to it full lit - and thus looking crap (i.e. no smooth blending of light-to dark as parts of the model turn into darkness).

To get smoothing (in PCS), I believe you have to set the materials (in TS) to 'autofaceted' when texturing.  This is on a per-material basis - i.e. only faces covered with an autfaceted map will be smoothed during conversion.

[Starman01]

Ah, now I get it. Thanks Aldo.

Guess I will have to retexture the models then.

[Lynx]

Plz use exyct the same textures as on the old model. The easiest way would be to load a second model of that carrier nad extract the textures from there and apply them the on the same place, just with the right settings for the textures that should getz smoothed/ not smooted. But I'm sure you know that, Starman:) .

On a sidenote: would it be possible to make parts of the model smooth and the other part not? many WCmdels have hard angles and edges and look like crap with smooth lighting, but on the other hand, for stuff like engine nozzles and canopies smoothing would be good.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Lynx
Plz use exyct the same textures as on the old model. The easiest way would be to load a second model of that carrier nad extract the textures from there and apply them the on the same place, just with the right settings for the textures that should getz smoothed/ not smooted. But I'm sure you know that, Starman:) .

On a sidenote: would it be possible to make parts of the model smooth and the other part not? many WCmdels have hard angles and edges and look like crap with smooth lighting, but on the other hand, for stuff like engine nozzles and canopies smoothing would be good.

I'm not sure.... i have a feeling it's possible.  The V ships use this (although it may actually be 45 degree smoothing... i.e. the angle between faces affects whether or not their smoothed), because they were converted from Max, which supports degrees of smoothing and smooth groups (not sure if smotth groups are supported in the game, though)

However, I don't think PCS of Ts supports that - certainly not in my experience.  I think you could rig something up, because whether a face is smoothed is determined by the material properties on it - i.e. using unsmoothed maps for textures on flat or hard surfaces.... but I have a feeling it'd be ugly when it came to ingame lighting.

[Nico]

I would like to point out  that on a ship like the concordia, or the Orion ( FS2 ), or a starwars star destroyer, you DON'T WANT smoothing.
The ship is angular, no smoothed, therefore you don't add smoothing.
you wouldn't smooth a F117 mesh, would you?

As for the smooth/non smoothed thing, Lynx, you can get away with a basic tweak: detache the polys that are noy to be smoothed. Taking the exemple of the F117, that would make a LOT of subobjects, in fact ( follow an hard edge, all the polys that are in its boundary, detach them ). Smoothing can't smooth between two objects, so you'll get yor hard edge.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Nico
I would like to point out  that on a ship like the concordia, or the Orion ( FS2 ), or a starwars star destroyer, you DON'T WANT smoothing.
The ship is angular, no smoothed, therefore you don't add smoothing.
you wouldn't smooth a F117 mesh, would you?

As for the smooth/non smoothed thing, Lynx, you can get away with a basic tweak: detache the polys that are noy to be smoothed. Taking the exemple of the F117, that would make a LOT of subobjects, in fact ( follow an hard edge, all the polys that are in its boundary, detach them ). Smoothing can't smooth between two objects, so you'll get yor hard edge.

Possibly not, but the problem is that lighting is calculated on the triangles rather than 4 sided polys, which can give some wierd effects.  If you look at the er...whatever it was called... in CoW, the lighting does tend to get a bit screwed up looking at points becaue i deliberately lef tin unsmoothed.

I don;t think smoothing makes the textured model looking any different, it's the lighting that would concern me.  It's really a case of try & see, I think.  But remember that if you looked at an F-117 in real life, it wouldn't have one panel dark black and one next to it fully lit.  (well, it'd be hard to tell, as it's black...but you get the idea).

[Lynx]

Originally posted by aldo_14
I don;t think smoothing makes the textured model looking any different, it's the lighting that would concern me.  It's really a case of try & see, I think.  But remember that if you looked at an F-117 in real life, it wouldn't have one panel dark black and one next to it fully lit.  (well, it'd be hard to tell, as it's black...but you get the idea).

But real lighting doesn't try to convince you that two planar surfaces are a rounded one like the FS lighting system which trys to simulate rounded surfaces. You may have noticed that theres still a soft transition between light and shadow on unsmoothed models, but it looks like it's on a per face basis where the lighting on one face is rather indidendent from the other faces. Here's a screenshot of the unsmoothed Hellcat V fighter:



If it wasn't for the cockpit, the lighting would be perfect on this model the smoothed model has a nice cockpit, but the rest looks like doodoo compared to this one IMO.

I always thought that the FS lighting is a load of cr@p. I hope the SCP team does something about it some time(I'm not talking of realtime shadows and stuff like that, but a lighting engine that doesn't smooth everything would be cool, I think FS trys smoothing even at surfaces with a 90 degrees angle. If there's an angle more than 20 or 25 degrees I don't think it is supposed to be smoothed anyway)

[Nico]

Originally posted by aldo_14


Possibly not, but the problem is that lighting is calculated on the triangles rather than 4 sided polys, which can give some wierd effects.  If you look at the er...whatever it was called... in CoW, the lighting does tend to get a bit screwed up looking at points becaue i deliberately lef tin unsmoothed.

I don;t think smoothing makes the textured model looking any different, it's the lighting that would concern me.  It's really a case of try & see, I think.  But remember that if you looked at an F-117 in real life, it wouldn't have one panel dark black and one next to it fully lit.  (well, it'd be hard to tell, as it's black...but you get the idea).

Sure, but ingame, smoothed, you'll see no panels at all, just some gradiant shading on hard edged shapes. Very poor effect...

As for the problem above, well, only smooth groups can fix it.

[KARMA]

TS support smoothing group, I'm not sure about the game but I think yes, I'm not sure about pcs.
I'd use autofacet on angular ships too. Just use a low angle, so the main hard edges will be saved.
The point is that sometimes the triangulization make some wierd lightning effects, as you said, like giving  different light to polys that you want to be part of a flat plate but have some minor angle differences.
Sometimes using autofacet will solve those problems, some others will increase em, some other will give new weird effects that could be solved only with smoothgroups

mmm now that I think at it, I'm pretty sure that PCS can use smoothgroups, at least on different subobjects, not sure about fs2. I remember I noticed in modelview one of my ships with a lod using autofacet and another one lod using smooth (that isn't used by pcs so it was faceted)

[aldo_14]

Well, honestly it's a matter of preference.  I think 45 degree shading is probably about the ideal level, but we don't have a convertor to create that - I'm pretty sure the V models use it, though.

Personally, I prefer full smoothing ahead of none.  It's up to the model & modeller preferences which is actually the better, though.