[Unknown Target]

I've always wondered something - is it at all possible to pronounce Kilrathi ship names?

[Bobboau]

some of those ships need to have the smothing values tuned down, it screws with the lighting, especaly on hard-edge designs.

[Scooby_Doo]

Unforunately truespace doesn't save smoothing values from Max, and using facetted looks way too blocky and auto-facetted is a hit or miss, works on some areas and others bleh  Also my shinemapping isn't all that great anyways. I can do glowmaps with no problem nicely but shinemaps ugh. Also I'm not exactly looking for a hard edge like Saga, more of a rounded feel. (also helps with polycount    )

Does anyone know if/how Truespace 7 can use smoothing like Max does, where you can define polygons to have specific smoothing sets?

Ugh I honestly don't know how this can be done correctly.  I could divide the vertices where the problems occur, but that leads to other problems.

[bizzybody]

You can change the angle that auto-facet triggers at by first changing the type to auto-facet in the material editor, then rightclicking the auto-facet icon. This is settable per material.

Another trick you can do with a model-wrapping UV map is instead of using the same setting for the entire skin, you can change the facet type then use paint face to make specific faces selectively faceted, auto-facet or smooth shaded.

How that will translate to POF, I dunno. The different facet type makes trueSpace designate it as a different material. Could that lead to the texture being loaded more than once in Freespace?

[Scooby_Doo]

You can change the angle that auto-facet triggers at by first changing the type to auto-facet in the material editor, then rightclicking the auto-facet icon. This is settable per material.

Another trick you can do with a model-wrapping UV map is instead of using the same setting for the entire skin, you can change the facet type then use paint face to make specific faces selectively faceted, auto-facet or smooth shaded.

How that will translate to POF, I dunno. The different facet type makes trueSpace designate it as a different material. Could that lead to the texture being loaded more than once in Freespace?

Yes I've used auto-facet values before.  It works ok sometimes and others it mismatches.
Now the model-wrapping uv thingie I haven't seen before.

[aldo_14]

Unforunately truespace doesn't save smoothing values from Max, and using facetted looks way too blocky and auto-facetted is a hit or miss, works on some areas and others bleh  Also my shinemapping isn't all that great anyways. I can do glowmaps with no problem nicely but shinemaps ugh. Also I'm not exactly looking for a hard edge like Saga, more of a rounded feel. (also helps with polycount    )

Does anyone know if/how Truespace 7 can use smoothing like Max does, where you can define polygons to have specific smoothing sets?

Ugh I honestly don't know how this can be done correctly.  I could divide the vertices where the problems occur, but that leads to other problems.

Why are you using TS?

[Vasudan Admiral]

How that will translate to POF, I dunno. The different facet type makes trueSpace designate it as a different material. Could that lead to the texture being loaded more than once in Freespace?

No, it works fine. In fact I just described the exact same technique to him in the other thread:

You take your texture, pick faceted/smooth/autofaceted (each different angle on autofacet will form a different smoothgroup), and apply it to the parts you want faceted/smooth/autofaceted. During conversion, PCS will correctly interpret the smoothings, but merge the materials back into one so you don't end up with copies of the same texture all applied to your mesh.

Expanding on Bizzybodys description and rewording my own a bit, when you use the paint brush to apply a material with a particular smooth-type to a particular group of faces, you can use the autofacet angles to differentiate between groups. For example, if you paint one group of faces with the autofacet angle set to 60, and another with it set to 61, PCS will interpret those two groups of faces as separate smoothgroups, but it will keep them as the same texture - it won't separate them into two separate textures that FS would then have to render one after the other.

Again though, it's always best to let the mesh speak for itself. Facet all the way! If you find you have polygon edge creases in awkward places, fix them instead of using smoothing to hide them. It will always result in far better lighting and give you a much neater model.

[Scooby_Doo]

Unforunately truespace doesn't save smoothing values from Max, and using facetted looks way too blocky and auto-facetted is a hit or miss, works on some areas and others bleh  Also my shinemapping isn't all that great anyways. I can do glowmaps with no problem nicely but shinemaps ugh. Also I'm not exactly looking for a hard edge like Saga, more of a rounded feel. (also helps with polycount    )

Does anyone know if/how Truespace 7 can use smoothing like Max does, where you can define polygons to have specific smoothing sets?

Ugh I honestly don't know how this can be done correctly.  I could divide the vertices where the problems occur, but that leads to other problems.

Why are you using TS?

Because with the max plugin, I usually get mixed results, some work, some dont, some are missplaced (especially those with turrets)

edit: quote mismatch

[bizzybody]

Normally you'd paint the whole model with your single texture, or the individial parts with their own textures, each texture with the same settings for all faces it covers.

But you can set different aspects like the auto facet angle, shine and all them other things for any number of faces by changing them then using the paint face tool. I just tried it on a one piece model with a single texture and was able to have some faces faceted and others auto-faceted.

What I don't know is how the resulting different materials will affect converting to POF. Does POF keep such attributes seperate from the materials/textures?

[Vasudan Admiral]

...I just told you it works before:

No, it works fine.
....
PCS will interpret those two groups of faces as separate smoothgroups, but it will keep them as the same texture - it won't separate them into two separate textures that FS would then have to render one after the other.

See?

[Scooby_Doo]

Ok this looks very promising 
Now I just wish the opengl or directx solid views were actually useable and not totally sluggish.

Btw is it possible to pickup a texture from a polygon, instead of the whole object? That would help with the tweaking

[Vasudan Admiral]

The eyedrop thingie works on polygons, though it is somewhat tempramental and likes to pick the texture of the object behind the one you're trying to grab half the time, while not picking any texture at all the other half.

[Scooby_Doo]

Yup just found out the eyedropper works too 

I don't suppose theres a way to select multiple polys quickly?

[Vasudan Admiral]

Depends on your definition of 'quick'.

[Scooby_Doo]

Hmmm does modelview not understand smoothing correctly? The results I got look very opposite of what i wanted.
Ugh well that wasn't as hopeful as I wanted.  Instead of doing smoothing as truespaced rendered it, it facetted it instead.

Also the max plugin won't even create a pof file and all I wanted it to convert was a group name detail-0 

[Vasudan Admiral]

Make sure you're setting the smoothing up based on which build of PCS you're using. I did some experiments on this a while back, with the results in the PCS entry on the wiki: http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/POF_Constructor_Suite

Most notably, the settings you give in TS are somewhat mixed up.

With a standard build, something faceted or smoothed in TS will ONLY result in a faceted effect on the pof, whereas setting stuff to autofacet will result in it being smoothed. (You can't achieve an autofacet in a standard PCS build, just as you can't achieve smoothing in an autofacet build)

[bizzybody]

tS has lasso and rectangle select buttons. I've never used them, dunno if that's just for selecting a bunch of whole objects or if they'll work in conjunction with the Pont Edit panel. If you can't find them, use the icon finder button that opens a panel with almost every button on it. (Doesn't have the paint buttons from the material editor.)

I just ctrl+click to select multiple objects, faces, edges, vertexes.

[Scooby_Doo]

Yup version 7 has the ability to lasso/rectangle select polys and paint them en mass.  This was EXACTLY what I was looking for.  Imagine trying to paint several hundred triangles individually  TS 3.2 doesn't seem to have this (or I didn't see it).



Bobboau do you remember which ones were the worst? I'll fix those first.

Also is there trueview in TS 7 or 6? I can't seem to find it, only thing I found is the hierarchy chart layout thingie.

[Scooby_Doo]

Alright the worst offenders have been fixed and reuploaded (the demon, hornet, drakthi, and ???)  the Goran could use fixing but i don't have the files anymore, just the dds and pof file

[Scooby_Doo]

Back on course...

The F-12 Falcon is the current high end fighter.  Fast, very agile, well shielded, better amour than the Vampire, the Falcon is a joy to fly.  It is armed by default with twin cloudbursts and twin quantum disrupter's, it can be reconfigured for quad cloudbursts for max damage.



The Falcon can be found here: http://scoobydoo.freespacemods.net/Finished_Mods/Finished-Falcon-02-27-07.rar
Update here: http://scoobydoo.freespacemods.net/Finished_Mods/Finished-Falcon-06-03-07.rar
Fixed: Large Lod misalignment now fixed.

The Falcon was built from the Vampire, hellcat, and probably the Panther.