[Kopakapat]

Huh, I guess I get what you meant by "it won't work with PBR"

 

[Kopakapat]

Can you guys tell me if you see that one has a normal map? I can't see ****.

http://imgur.com/a/wGqVj

[Shivan Hunter]

I'd need a closer pic with an angle that catches the specular light, but it doesn't look like either of those have normals. (it also looks like they're flat shaded, which might be a problem if the normal maps were baked from a hipoly model which I think EVE's are.)

[Kopakapat]

Ok I'll try to make better screenshots. On what ship would that be the most visible? Something flat like the Naga/ Nidhoggur or something bumpy like the Drake?

[Shivan Hunter]

Anything with flat polygons with lots of normalmap detail on them. Looking again, I'm almost certain those ships don't have normal maps.

[Nu11u5]

Huh, I guess I get what you meant by "it won't work with PBR"

 

Remove the alpha channel from the texture.

The current PBR texture system uses the alpha channel on the albedo map as a mask to separate areas that get tinted by the paint shaders from areas that are statically colored.  If you do this though, all ships will just be off-white with colored details.  You can make use of the mask and tint the rest of the texture in a graphics program.  The actual color parameters the game uses are stored in a global data file.  These used to be stored per-ship, and there is a program that could decode them (Black2JSON) however the program chokes and crashes on the new (quite large) global file.  I've tried to see if it could be fixed, but the original author didn't document his code, and it looks like the data has a new block that can't be interpreted and is causing the issue.

As far as normal maps go, make sure that the texture file you are using form Eve is in the correct format that FS2Open uses.  You may need to swap some channel around and clear out others.

[Kopakapat]

@Nu11u5 Thanks for the alpha channel. I would love to be able to apply the real colors but this is way out of my league. I'm still having problems understanding how to convert the EVE normal maps in FS2. I tried a few combinasons and failed aparently.

[Nu11u5]

@Nu11u5 Thanks for the alpha channel. I would love to be able to apply the real colors but this is way out of my league. I'm still having problems understanding how to convert the EVE normal maps in FS2. I tried a few combinasons and failed aparently.

Freespace2Open expects the normal map data to be in the Red and Blue channels, while Eve (and a lot of other Direct3D programs) are set up to have the data in the Green and Alpha channels.  Swap those channels out, set Green to solid black, and remove the Alpha channel.  See if that works.

[Kopakapat]

Condor "Battle of Hoth" edition anyone?

 

Here's the Naga with normal maps. I don't know if it's really correct but something definately happened!

http://imgur.com/a/aYjoI

Thanks Nu11u5!

[Nyctaeus]

PCS2 does not display normalmaps, so if these compared ships are without and with normalmap, well... Something happened, but I'm not sure if this is proper result

[Kopakapat]

@Betrayal, no no the image is showing the diffuse texture before EVE's PBR patch and the equivalent texture after.

For pictures of the normal maps, go here:  http://imgur.com/a/aYjoI

[Nu11u5]

The ships in the previous image are from two different assets designed for different render systems.

The left side are the old assets, using regular diffuse and specular maps.  The right side are the new assets that utilize Physically Based Rendering, using albedo and roughness maps.  That side is missing color because the texture is supposed to be tinted in real-time by a shader based on the model's material properties.

[Nu11u5]

edit: now with a better, newer image.

So I'm re-relearning Blender so I can get the new PBR assets into there and bake out proper texture maps.  So far it's a bit of a mess, but once I get the materials set up right it should be pretty straight forward.

[Nu11u5]

Also, taking a look at prepping the turrets.  The exported models have no subobjects or groups, but creating them isn't a big deal.

[Shivan Hunter]

@Nu11u5 Thanks for the alpha channel. I would love to be able to apply the real colors but this is way out of my league. I'm still having problems understanding how to convert the EVE normal maps in FS2. I tried a few combinasons and failed aparently.

Freespace2Open expects the normal map data to be in the Red and Blue channels, while Eve (and a lot of other Direct3D programs) are set up to have the data in the Green and Alpha channels.  Swap those channels out, set Green to solid black, and remove the Alpha channel.  See if that works.

I don't know what result you got from this, Kopakapat, but it's definitely wrong. FS uses the green/alpha normal maps just like EVE does.

http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Herra_Tohtori%27s_texturing_tutorial#How_to_make_good_and_proper_normal_maps.3F

If you can zip up one POF model + maps and send it to me, I might be able to get it working.

[majorvader111]

edit: now with a better, newer image.

So I'm re-relearning Blender so I can get the new PBR assets into there and bake out proper texture maps.  So far it's a bit of a mess, but once I get the materials set up right it should be pretty straight forward.

Hey man hows it going with this?

[Nu11u5]

Hey man hows it going with this?

How about a cherry red Incursus?



I've started from scratch using the Cycles renderer since it behaved better at processing the textures.  It can now load the original texture files directly so importing a model will be as simple as 1) open mesh, 2) load texture slots, 3) apply material, 4) pick colors.  I need to tidy up the node graphs next and then set up the baking routines to get the diffuse, specular, glow, environment, transparency, normal, etc maps that FSO can use.

Unfortunately, the models in FSO won't look quite that nice as it is using a simpler shading algorithm, but I'll do my best to represent it.  On the other hand, it's very close to what it looks like in Eve.  C'est la vie.

[chief1983]

I hope you're documenting this publicly so someone can do an EVE mod for Homeworld 2: Remastered later this month

[Nu11u5]

I hope you're documenting this publicly so someone can do an EVE mod for Homeworld 2: Remastered later this month

I'll release the blender file containing the materials once I get it to a nice point.  I'll probably also get around to making some racial color presets.

In other news, CCP just released a machinima tool that takes a script and converted Collada animation paths as input and renders scenes using the game engine (no physics, though).

[majorvader111]

I hope you're documenting this publicly so someone can do an EVE mod for Homeworld 2: Remastered later this month

way ahead of you i plan on doing it, at the moment im helping mr thi with his homeworld 2 eve mod, we plan to port it over to remastered