[Omniscaper]

Ok, I feel like I've been going in circles getting the final definitive version of the Galaxy class into FSO. I've spent roughly over 40 hours perfecting the smoothgroups on this Galaxy in 3dsmax. I have 12 major smoothgroups in this model.









I welded all the overlapping vertices in all the major meshes (saucer, neck, engineering, nacells). And finally finished assigning smoothgroups to get the sharp edges where they're supposed to be. It displays in the viewport AND Full render perfectly.

[Omniscaper]

ENTER MY BANE.......      TRUESPACE

I export this prestine model into a 3ds format, (I also tried LWO, COB, SCN, via Polytrans plugin.) And I get all these anomolies....









As you can see, all my work is lost! All my assigned edges are gone and smoothed over. And random faceting occurs througout the mesh.

When I try to apply a new shader on faceted anomolies, it applies the changes in all different parts of the mesh. I think it uses different smoothangles for each material only. Smoothgroups only exist in the meshes various UV coordinates.

Please someone help me find a GOOD tutorial on Truespace smoothgrouping or give me alternative methods to preserve all the work I've done in MAX.

[StratComm]

You're going to have to do your smoothgrouping in truespace if you want it to work.  The (max->3ds), conversion, weld, and 3ds->cob does not preserve that information the way it should.  At least, it doesn't in my experience.  Truespace handles smoothing as a feature of texturing, though that may have been fixed by the latest version, where as Max uses a per-vertex model which gets wiped out when you merge vertices in 3dexploration.

[KARMA]

these may be just some effects of the DX real time render of truespace. To see if the smoothgroups are really screwed, use the render (and convert and test in modelview). To apply smoothgroups in TS, just give to different groups of polys different shaders (either different types of shaders and different smooth angle of autofacet). Point edit->select faces->select the shader you want to use->click on paint faces.

[ionia23]

Oh, I see the problem.

You've got the nacells on upside down.

[Thorn]

I guess this would be a good time for the SCP boys to make a universal converter or something.  Something that will do direct conversions to .pof from some of the more popular packages like MAX and Lightwave.

[Omniscaper]

AMEN, brother!!!

::starts praying to the SCP gods::


Karma, ever get around the specular faceting problem? I have a feeling all this smoothgrouping work will be useless the moment I turn on speculars in the Launcher. IIRC, the cob2pof converter made perfect shading WITH speculars when i first started converting back in December. Too bad it has a polygon limit. At the moment this Galaxy mesh was reduced from the original 15k to 10k.

[KARMA]

yeah I know what you talking about, I use cob2fs2 too for the same reason
I guess you are already using the one incorporated into modelview, which is the lastest version with higher polylimits.
In this case, what are those limits? because I never reached em, and it could be useful to know em.
BTW you may have to use smoothgroups with cob2fs2 too, the difference is that you can use only faceted and smoothshadings.

[Omniscaper]

Where can I get the latest modelview with the beefed up limits? I was unaware of its existance. I've never been able to convert via modelview. The smallest mesh I failed to convert had 9k polys,

[Bobboau]

yeah, you have to do the smoothing stuff in truespace, and it's done via a per material basis

[Omniscaper]

If that is the case,

Can I take the smoothgroups I've established in max, detach ALL of them into seperate objects,

Then create a unique material name for each of them,

REINTEGRATE them together

And finally expect Truespace to recognize the newly divided materials

Each smoothgroup is composed of 2-3 materials, so itake it that all materials need matching smooth angles. Unless material borders are impossible to avoid.

Am I making sense ?

[Bobboau]

true space does this fundementaly diferent than max, you specify a smoothing angle for a material, then apply that material, all polygons that are within that angle to each other will be smoothed, otherwise there will be a hard edge, you could probly do the entier thing with a smoothing angle of 20-40.

then you just have to be sure to use the facet build of PCS

[mrduckman]

If I were a Starfleet Admiral I'd put you, Omniscaper, as head of the ASDB
Simply outstanding work!

I couldn't run it on my computer though. At least, not yet

[KARMA]

bob, there are some issues with pcs autofacet and the specular effect, which cause rounded models to look faceted in game and this is odd. The only way to avoid this weirdness is to use cob2fs2 and smoothing.

Omni, I'm not sure if that version of cob2fs2 you used is the same included in modelview. BTW check Vasudan Admiral's signature. The file should also be in the wiki and probably in the descent network too. The most recent version of modelview lets you convert model from cob files, it can't convert shields properly (in my case at least, you have to import them from another pof).

About the smoothgroups...
As bob said, Truespace works with materials, where a material is a group of parameters (texture, bump mapping, reflectance, shaders etc).
If you change any of these parameters you change matarial.
So, you use a different material anytime you change shaders and/or texture.  
Just open the material editor and create the material you want to use (texture + shader type or smooth angle), select a group of faces you want to be painted with this material, click on the paint tool. That's it
edit:
In theory truespace may recognize the different smoothgroups from 3ds as different materials.
If this happen, you don't have to select the faces you are going to paint, you can just create the material you want to use, use the paint over existing material tool (not sure about the name of the tool), click the mesh over one of the old materials. All the polys using the old material will be painted with the new one.
It is hard to see that you are using different materials if you are using the same texture, you may paint with a solid color to substitute the old material if you want to see all the polys that belong to the same material group.

[Goober5000]

You may not have to redo this, Omniscaper... we may have a conversion option from 3dsmax directly to POF.  I'll ask around.

[KARMA]

Originally posted by Goober5000
You may not have to redo this, Omniscaper... we may have a conversion option from 3dsmax directly to POF.  I'll ask around.

what a bastard :devil:

[Vertigo1]

Originally posted by Goober5000
You may not have to redo this, Omniscaper... we may have a conversion option from 3dsmax directly to POF.  I'll ask around.

Would you mind asking around for a POF -> 3DS conversion option as well?  I would greatly appreciate sucn a tool.

[Styxx]

POF to 3DS is damn easy with POF2COB and 3D Exploration (the old, free version). Unless you mean keeping the whole object data.

[Vertigo1]

Originally posted by Styxx
Unless you mean keeping the whole object data.

That I do!

[Omniscaper]

Hey Master Karma, is it possible for a single texture to have multiple shaders with different autofacet settings? If so, will the different shaders have distinct boundaries?

I am trying to apply this method to a single mesh containing multiple textures.