[Vengence]

The diffuse has an alpha channel in it. Be sure to disable it. The multi channel one will need to be separated into different textures. Go into channels in photoshop, delete the necessary channels and save them out to the specified needs. Red is shine, blue is reflection I think, green is probably further illumination to some things but I don't know for sure. Alpha is most definitely glow.

[starbug]

Aaaaagh as i said i really struggle when it comes to texturing, so sorry if my questions may seem a bit dum.

[starbug]

Ok after arguing with photoshop CS3 to get the dds files to save i think i have got it! Ps green also seems to work for self illumination as well.

[attachment deleted by ninja]

[Vengence]

I've got a few surprises in the works.

[Vengence]

Ta da...

[crizza]

I want that...

[redalbatross]

Wow, Vengence! That looks amazing. Beyond amazing.   

How long did the process take?

I've been wondering if we can use the weapon effects in the Sins files in FSO as well, like the plasma bolts and whatnot. Actually tabling the ships and weapons will be a delicate process, but not nearly as time-consuming if we can get most of what we need from Sins assets. The Kol looks great! I didn't realize how high-poly and high-res the Sins assets were, for the fact that they're so small in the game itself. How did it look up close?

[Vengence]

Very bad to a slight degree. Well least in the hangar. Its like a pixel every 10 meters  . Also the normal mapping is a bit obnoxious, it honestly looked better without. The model needs some serious TLC in the hard edges. They don't blend well so need to be chamfered. On the bright side, yes most of the game's effects can be utilized if possible.

All in all the process took... maybe 4-5 hours... I gave the model debris and that really took the most time. I really detest making debris. Also the left side turrets need tweaking as they rotate wrong. Also FS2 seems to be determined to annoy me. I set the rate of fire on the cannons to be 0.15 and they didn't exactly spew the firepower I imagined. Also the beam cannons never fired... which annoyed me greatly. Granted I skipped a lot of steps as I was on the verge of falling asleep, so I just copied paste entries from my EVE minimod. Anyhow I think most every model will need to be tweaked to make best use of FS2's closer perspective.

[redalbatross]

I figured as much, although the smaller ships like Cobalts and Illuminators should look slightly better. I've been thinking that we really won't need to convert EVERY ship, really. Maybe the light frigates, long-range frigates, heavy cruisers, and carriers only, to save time, basically, the ones that makes stuff go boom. Ships like Cielo command cruisers would almost be a waste, as most of the abilities they use to be useful in Sins would be difficult or impossible to emulate. Although, given enough imagination, I'm sure we could think of something, like Cielos giving ships around them a higher AI class while they're alive that would make them important to protect.

At least we don't have to make all the assets from scratch. I'm absolutely blown away by how fast this went from a vague feasibility question to seeing a Kol blow up a Moloch.

Even though I don't have experience with 3ds Max, if you could detail the process, I could help out with converting the ships. I can work with Photoshop, so if I know what needs to be done with the textures to make them look better, I can assist with that as well. I'd really like to be useful - I'd feel pretty lame if I pitch the idea and then couldn't do anything to help it become reality, and I don't want to feel like I'm riding on the coat-tails of anyone else's hard work. 

[Vengence]

Whew where do I begin... there are quite a few steps I go through just for a ready conversion. Even so we need a sort of set agreement on what each factions should be colored. Yes I know TEC is yellow, Vasari is Red, and Advent is blue but I really like my red Kol  . I'll post the instructions in due time, I have some RL stuf... namely a dog to care for right now.

[Hades]

Ships like Cielo command cruisers would almost be a waste, as most of the abilities they use to be useful in Sins would be difficult or impossible to emulate.

Nope. Quite doable, at least with clever FREDing.

[Retsof]

Try not to get too involved with high detail things please.  I want to have a Sins style BOE without making my computer grow arms just to strangle me.  This being said, I'm not really doing anything to help, so it is really all up to you of course.

[redalbatross]

Whew where do I begin... there are quite a few steps I go through just for a ready conversion. Even so we need a sort of set agreement on what each factions should be colored. Yes I know TEC is yellow, Vasari is Red, and Advent is blue but I really like my red Kol  . I'll post the instructions in due time, I have some RL stuf... namely a dog to care for right now.

Oh, absolutely no pressure, V. Rome wasn't built in a day, y'know. Heck, I'm already shocked that there's a Kol in FS2.

Personally, I think like a lime green works very well for Vasari, it evokes a reptilian feel for the ships and that works for them. TEC looks great in red or yellow, I think, they're the colors of emergency (Trader EMERGENCY Coalition, after all). I always use blue or purple for Advent, for a regal sort of look.

And Hades, I'll take your word for it - I've made some simple stuff in FRED but I'll have to take a crash course in advanced scripting. 

Retsof - I don't think we'll be changing the polycount of the models much, so hopefully performance won't be much of an issue even if we upscale the textures. Most people don't see slowdowns except when there are unoptimized models on the field of engagement with mega-high polycounts.

[Vengence]

The textures are already huge for their assigned ship types. I mean... a 1024x1024 for a cobalt frigate? Also the teeeeeny ultra low poly fighters have a 512x512 tex.... which is sadly underwhelming but still... I assume they never expect people to look at them up close and personal. modifying or remaking the fighters should be a priority sometime in the future... they are just that bad. Least the Tec fighter.

As for modifying the models I don't mean anything drastic. A few chamfers here and there, extruding detailing bleh bleh. At most it will add 1000 polygons and even then that's a stretch. I'm making a tut on how to get a SOASE model being initially ready for FS2 work so some of ya can join in. Gimmie about an hour. This goes especially for you Starbug  , you did great with that battleship.

[Vengence]

Just a forewarning... this is gonna be extremely image heavy.

[redalbatross]

Well, hopefully that means the medium-sized ships won't take too much tweaking on the texture front to make them look good. Most of the work on the model assets front will be making the strikecraft not look like blocky pieces of junk. It's possible that if that turns out to be too much of a pain, we can adopt some public assets, find something that fits design-wise and give it a new paintjob. Everyone's just gonna wanna watch the capital ships duke it out anyway.

I really appreciate all the work you're doing, V. Hopefully I can start getting some work done converting the models after this. By the way, if we're going to have multiple people doing this, we might want to decide who's going to do which ships so we don't get duplicates.

Let's start work on stuff we can easily equip with retail weapons early on and see how they perform without having to table weapons or script abilities for them.

TEC:
Cobalt
Javelis
Garda (on an unrelated note, this thing is going to be an absolute nightmare with 8 flak cannons - Aeolus 2.0)
Kodiak
Kol
Sova

Advent:
Disciple
Illuminator
Defense
Destra
Radiance
Halcyon

Vasari:
Ravastra
Kanrak
Junsurak
Skarovas
Kortul (is going to be a beast to watch)
Skirantra

I suppose since you're doing TEC and Starbug seems to be working on Advent, I'll see what I can do with the Vasari ships.

[Vengence]

Sounds good. Okay here's a tutorial:

The SOASE plugin has instructions for the initial import but here's what to do afterward to prep the mesh itself to be worked on for FS2. This includes resetting X-Form, resetting pivots, proper positioning, flipping normals, welding vertices, and restoring the smoothing.



This is what it looks like upon import. It is riddled with problems we shall resolve right now.



Rotate the model so it FACES the +Y Axis and the sides are to the X Axis. Also mirror the model along the X-Axis!!! Some of the models are asymmetrical and the plugin imports them wrongly mirrored. Do this to fix it.



Next up we reset the pivots and transform. Click on Affect Pivot Only then press Reset: Transform. This will set the pivot's rotation to 0,0,0. Just where we want them and devoid of problems. Also feel free to set the transform coordinates to 0,0,0 on the coordinate boxes on the bottom of the screen. FS2 demands ships be perfectly centered on the origin. Least their pivots that is.



Next up we reset the X-Form. This is pretty much standard procedure here.



The model goes black, the normals have been flipped! No prob, go into the modify tab and scroll down to 'normals'. Once selected the model's normals are flipped and all fixed.



Next up we're gonna weld verticies. Right click anywhere in space or on the model and scroll down to Convert to: Editable Poly.



Go inter vertex mode by right clicking and going into the appropriate menus.



Now scroll down on the right bar till you see 'weld' and press the square button next to the button. In the threshold type 0.01. This ensures that only verts on top of each other will get welded. You will notice the smoothing is screwed up. This is the last step.



Scroll the modify rolldown and select smooth. Press automatically smooth and type 35 in the threshold. It will be a good starting point but you'll have to apply smoothing to certain parts of the model to make them resemble the original. This is a sad but 100% necessary step. Very important. For those unfamiliar with anything about 3DS.... this is gonna be a pretty confusing work. You need to go into either element or polygon mode and select faces that need smoothing then going into the modify rolldown and do smooth on them, there you can specify the smooth threshold only on the selected polygons. 35 is good for smooth, unextreme surfaces. 60-65-75 is good for octagons or hexagons. 45 is good for some things inbetween.

That's it for prepping a model. Serious, as it is right now the model is ready for anything we want it to. I'll post up the texture tutorial sometime later. Maybe tomorrow, I have to do something called 'eat' right now.

[redalbatross]

Thanks, Vengence! I'll get to work. 

[Pred the Penguin]

This looks like something I could get behind... and also finally learn how to actually do stuff for FS.
I have the programs needed, or at least easy access to them. I've played around with Photoshop quite a bit and I have used Max before...
But I don't have Sins.

[bigchunk1]

This is a great game. Some really nice models can come out of this; I remember the Halcyon Carrier being a really nice looking ship. This is an RTSish game, so Vengeance is right about the lower detail.