The textures have probably been the biggest proble for the rest of us as well - or maybe re-zoning...

It looks as though you have only posted a link to your thumbnail. Could you change the link so that we can see the whole picture? Or maybe it's just my computer again... :(

OK - Now I can see the whole thing - I like it so far, but more changes the superstructure might be good. Worst texture issues than I have ever had though. :o

yes but your skins seem to fit verry wel AG124
maybe you can explain how you import into pack3d without messing up the textures

Actually I've discussed it before with Iambecomlife - it doesn't appear that I am doing anything very different.

1. I clone the ship in pack3d, close pack3d, open it again and then export the 3d objects. It doesn't work right unless I do it in these two steps.

2. I use wings3d (build 0.98.32a) to make the 3d changes I require. I should also note I do not change the names of 3d parts to the new ship name - for example, I didn't rename the extracted 3d parts of the Liberty Ship from LL to RC like I did with the regular files when I made the Rose Castle.

3. I re-import the changed objects.

That's it. The only other thing I can say is that it appears I may be using an older version of pack3d, but I'm not sure. If Iambecomelife was here, maybe he could help more.

I am having some problems though. It's hard to see from the screenshots of my ships, but some textures are messed up. The biggest problem is that funnel and superstructure textures appear where they shouldn't be appearing. The hulls are allright though.

cheer ill try :up:

sometimes these texture issues u have go away if u use the vertics option of wings 3d insteed of faces options . When u strech things never use the faces option or ur textures will mess up all the time just use the vertics and it shouldn t happen.

nah didnt work,the moment i import anything the textures are messed up
any chance you sending me that older version of pack3d ?

cheers Noline

Thanks :D . That's an interesting pic you linked to. Interesting, how so many companies during the 1950's and 1960's switched to having their freighters and tankers' deckhouses aft, like that ship's. However, this goes to show there would have been a few WWII-era ships with aft superstructure arrangements.

The problem is that for an aft deckhouse ship I'd need to move the smoke back, and I still can't find the smoke node or whatever it is that controls it. I also still can't find the bow wave node, which is really annoying. :damn: I've got that resized NKGN model almost complete, so I really want to find this. :damn: .

Chris911, that's an interesting thing about the textures and face/vertex mode; I'll have to see if it works.

To Noline & anyone else having texturing trouble, try this method: select a single hull panel, texture it with the deck texture using Wings3d's "materials" function, and then import it. Pack3d sometimes textures the hull correctly (except for that one panel) when you do this. If this doesn't work you may just need to work with the NKGN model, which seems to be a lot more reliable texture-wise than most ships.

Another question I have completely forgotton - How do we make new images for the ship recognition manual? I don't even know what file the existing ones have to be extracted from, or how to do it. I could probably edit them once I got them though.

Any help on this one?

But befor u do that u have to save the parts seperatly cause pack 3d sometimes doesn t work with the changed texture and then all ur work is lost.

theyre also in the shipfolder, a tga file, ill have to check the name when i get home

OK, I think I know what you're talking about - I've seen the files but never checked to see what they were. The name would be (for the tugboat for example) NATF_sil.tga.

I've got some bad news. It looks like the game cannot use multiple skins with cloned ships. I started a mission with several of the new ships I created, and the game assigned the same skin to all of them (t01.tga). There were five or so different skins available, and four of them went unused by the game. :damn: These were all NKGN-based vessels, which should have worked based on their "ancestry". This is a severe blow to my modding, since unless I figure out a way around this all of the new ships will look identical. :nope: Does anyone know what might be happening here? What parts of the DAT file control skin assignments? Are there certain sections of the dat file I need to hex-edit so that I can use multiple skins? Wow... I can't tell you how frustrating this is... :damn: :damn: :damn:

Ask Sergbuto. I'm sure for him it would be an easy fix.

And one question. How do you know for sure that the game is not using all of them?



FYI - single missions (or Scr campaign layer) do not support random selections of skins. For instance, if you run the same single mission over and over again, you will always see the same skin. Same goes for scripted ships in the campaign layer. Ships always wear the same skin, whether it be t01, t03, t05, or whatever.

The only times the skins are randomly assigned are when you run across ship in the campaign random layer.

At least I am pretty sure of this... Can anyone confirm?

Iambecomelife, maybe you should test your ship in campaign random layer?

The thing is that with the Merchant Variety Pack I would see all the coastal merchants in, say, the Convoy Attack naval academy mission with different company skins. Granted, they'd always remain the same, but at least the game was using different textures. With cloned ships, ALL vessels use [unitname]_T01.tga. I haven't tried these ships in the campaign layer but I really doubt that it will matter.

I think I found some pertinent entries in the ships' dat files (cfg#txr_[unitname]). This is the designation for the ships' hull skin, as seen in Wings3d. However, I have no idea where to go from here.

This problem means that each individual paint scheme will require a different ship model - a massive waste of HD space - unless I manage to get around it. If I can't I'll just have to release all the new ships in wartime grey :nope: .

Well, considering that Sergbuto knows how to convert single skin ships to multi-skin ships, he might have a clue as to what needs to be fixed...

Lets HOPE he does... ;)