[TrashMan]

I needhelp with two things:

1.) Warship nameplates.
Someone told me the best way to do it is to add a single plane (painted wiht an invisible texture) to the place where I want the name.then making a invisible texture with the naem (pure green background, white ship name) and hten replacing hte invisible texture with that one in PCS.

I tried it, doens't work for some reason!!!


2.) Insignias. I know PCS has the Auto-Gen, but I'm confused.

In the Tutorial it sez to make a triangulated plane and name it InsgLOD00-01 (for LOD0, insignia 1).
It allso sez to do them like thrusters. Thrusters are glued with a light, but in his pic, there is no light.



Can someone give me a DETAILED, 100% accureate explanation?

[karajorma]

Originally posted by TrashMan
1.) Warship nameplates.
Someone told me the best way to do it is to add a single plane (painted wiht an invisible texture) to the place where I want the name.then making a invisible texture with the naem (pure green background, white ship name) and hten replacing hte invisible texture with that one in PCS.

Actually I said you should make a single plane painted with any texture you like and then replace it with a texture that shows only the name on it in FRED

[TrashMan]

That's a crappier approach.

The first way, you can place the nameplate on several different areas of the ship (wiht different background colour), and it will allways look how it should...

EDIT: Got the ship insignias working! YAY!:D

[karajorma]

The texture that the ship is using is not on the single plane. It's on the model itself. The plane is mearly a place where you either stick the words for the nameplate or a pure green texture for no nameplate at all.

I fail to see how replacing one texture with another in PCS would make the process any better than replacing the same textures in FRED. IF anything it's worse because now you have to make a new table entry for every ship you give a nameplate.

[Roanoke]

Indeed.

And all that invisible texture stuff is bollocks too.

[TrashMan]

How so?

Somone said it was used on the High-Poly Fenris.

It's an excellent way to make nameplates, since you can have the same nameplate of different size, with different backgound tiles on multiple locations on the ship - and all you need would be ONE nameplate map.

[karajorma]

The someone was me (again).

As I stated the way to make it work is to use the texture replacement system in FRED to swap the nameplate texture depending on which ship you're using. Your first post said that you're swapping textures in PCS which is just plain nonsense.

The name plate texture is a pure green texture with nothing on it except the name/logo you want.

Rather than me explaining it just use VPView to take a look at the HTL Fenris.

[TrashMan]

PCS? I meant FRED....

The thing I don't understand is HOW to make that face painted with an invisible nameplate!

Is it supposed to be part of the hull? (if so, wouldn't then that part of the hull be invisible?)

Is it supposed to be a plane a few mm away from the actual hull?

What I asked for is a detailed step-by-steo explanation on how to make it work...

[Vasudan Admiral]

In TS, make a plane, give it a different texture to everything else, place it very close to the hull, convert, replace the texture with a puregreen one, and via fred replace with individual nameplates for individual ships in different missions. Kara was right from the start. It's easy - it's why everyone is flying around with fenris cruisers all named Orff.

[karajorma]

The new media vp files replaced the orff textures with a purely invisible one but VA is spot on about everything else

Like I said look at the high poly fenris in modelview. It will take you about 10 seconds to see what to do

[Roanoke]

Looks like you was right Trashman. Sorry about that !

I just realised I'm missing all the SCP Media VPs!!

[pecenipicek]

*cough*maniacal laughter*cough*

[Vasudan Admiral]

Originally posted by karajorma
The new media vp files replaced the orff textures with a purely invisible one

It has?
*checks*
Oh-ek, it has. :\

The idea behind the Orff plate was for people to replace the GTC_Orff texture with an invisible texture through PCS/Modview, and then perform the texture replacements on a per mission basis in Fred.
The GTC Orff plate i included in the original was only to demonstrate the feature to people (problem is, no-one seems to change it, so every fenris since HTLing has been named Orff :\ ).

In the final version i'll have to leave it with an invisible texture. (Ie, have an invisible texture named "NoNameplate", rather than an invisible texture named "GTC_Orff". )

[karajorma]

It's not that no one is using the name plates. It's just that no one who has released anything yet is using them.

[Vasudan Admiral]

Oh good then.
The Aeolus will be featuring nameplates too if that's a help.

[TrashMan]

Great...Now I'll have a real neat fleet:D

[TrashMan]

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAArgh!


Why isn't the green part invisible????? I'll go insane!

[TrashMan]

Allmost forgot - added the full Phoenix version for downlaod. The sInvisible map and generic Shield are in the Shrike zip file.

[Anaz]

try making it a .tga and use the alpha channel. And also make sure that your color is (0,255,0)

[TrashMan]

Alpha channel? Alpha channel.....

Been a while since I did that...

Lemme see... you put the ship name as a new layer on a transparent background...no, a full green background...
merge the layers.
 Select just hte text...invert selection... apply the alpha channel... or something???

right?