[Nico]

Hem! I'de like to know too! Because I tried several things, from creating a fake map with the same name (thruster01) to changing map name under an hex editor, and the best result I happen to get is the ship to load, no error message (cool), but no thrusters too  

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venom2506
Member of the Robotech mod for FS2

and of Hidden Terror, the Shivan campaign

and My own page

[JarC]

 

Originally posted by venom2506:
Hem! I'de like to know too!

As far as I have understood it, it works likes this. When you open a POF in ModelView, you will see a thruster listed in the texture list, however you will not find a thrusterXX.pcx file in any of the vp files, but only thrusterXX.ani files.
Since ani files are nothing but a series of scrunched pcx files (probably using keyframes and deltaframes), FS (and any viewer) simply takes the first unscrunched frame (which is a complete, full frame in pcx format) and uses this as texturemap

So all you got to do is to extract the thrusterXX.ani of your choice, open in AniView and extract the first frame, save it giving it the same name as the ani but use bmp as format, you now have a thrusterXX.bmp which you can use to texture in TS...

CRAFT strikes again here, coz I vaguely remember there being something to the size of the object in truespace in relation to the x,y size of the chosen thruster ani...

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JarC (ICQ) "Dave? Will I dream?"
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[This message has been edited by JarC (edited 04-22-2001).]

[Eternal One]

 

Originally posted by venom2506:
Hem! I'de like to know too! Because I tried several things, from creating a fake map with the same name (thruster01) to changing map name under an hex editor, and the best result I happen to get is the ship to load, no error message (cool), but no thrusters too  

I've always done it with a fake map with the same name, it should work.

[morris13]

 

Originally posted by Eternal One:
I've always done it with a fake map with the same name, it should work.

So am I right in understanding that the way to do this is just have a texture file that can be pretty much anything, but just labelled thrusterXX? and that instead of whatever texture you had FS2 will know to load the ani instead?

[Jabu]

As I've understood it, Freespace doesn't even look at the file type, only the name itself. So thrusterxx.bmp is the same as thrusterxx.ani as far as the game is concerned.

[Sushi]

Sweet- that'll make the thrusters easier.

Now, once I have time, I just need to move all the polys so they DON'T intersect... or just Boolean the whole thing. Either way, pieces must be shifted- I don't want to Boolean anything on a curve.   No faster way to get tons of polys.

One more thing- this thing really has to be a low-poly model. It's supposed to be a relatively cheap scout/light intercept fighter- similar to the Pegasus in performance, but a whole lot cheaper to manufacture and operate- and thus, I hope to have a lot of them.   I WILL keep it under 300.

And thinking ahead a bit...
what's a good way to create different LODs? 3ds3 doesn't have a poly-count reducing algorythm.


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Sushi- the OTHER white meat!
Accelerate your game-Velocity Mod

[Warlock]

 

Originally posted by morris13:
How do you texture something with an .ani? Do you do this in truespace? Also, do you have to name it in Truespace as well?

The simple thing to do is use VP View, open the Thurtser ani and use save as AVI  

Then when you select a texture in TS, simply set format to All textures (or avi) and go for it)

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Warlock
 
DeathAngel Squadron
CO

Do or Do Not,..There Is No Spoon
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 We meet our fate together

[Nico]

well, with 3ds3, the best way to make lods is to make the LOD0 first, then for the 2 one you make a copy of it, and merge lots of useless vertices, and so on. That's the way I do that, anyway.

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venom2506
Member of the Robotech mod for FS2

and of Hidden Terror, the Shivan campaign

and My own page

[JarC]

   

Originally posted by morris13:
So am I right in understanding that the way to do this is just have a texture file that can be pretty much anything, but just labelled thrusterXX? and that instead of whatever texture you had FS2 will know to load the ani instead?

Some additional things I've discovered...

If a thruster subobject uses any of the following texture names: thruster01,
thruster02, or thruster03, FS will use the animated ANI textures

In addition, activating afterburner changes the displayed texture from the current one to the corresponding "afterburner" mode of that texture.

Normal          Afterburner
thruster01.ani  thruster01a.ani
thruster02.ani  thruster02a.ani
thruster03.ani  thruster03a.ani

Thruster textures are ani files, 30 frames long, 15fps, 64x64 pixels.

Now, here's the size related thing...

thruster textures MAY NOT BE TILED.  If a thruster texture does not fit the face it is applied to without tiling, it will not be
displayed, and you will have an invisible thruster flame.

BTW. You do NOT need to use an animated version as texture in TrueSpace, in fact, it doesn't even matter which imageformat as long as TS can read it...and as long as the name before the period is the same as in FS, FS will use the correct ani...

so there's no need to struggle with an avi file, just export the first frame of a thrusterXX.ani with ANIVIEW and save it as a BMP...

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JarC (ICQ) "Dave? Will I dream?"
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[This message has been edited by JarC (edited 04-27-2001).]

[morris13]

So it seems like the best thing to do would be import a thruster object from a finished model and just change the base to fit your own model in order to make sure the size is right? Is there an easier way to make sure your thruster object is the right size?