Lighthouses in SH5
 

This thread is in some way a spin-off from the SH3 lighthouse thread. I cannot see much sense in it, to have two threads for discussing the creation of new 3D models, historical and technical issues or localization of lighthouses. If you want to do that, do it in the SH3 lighthouse thread. Doing it this way will confirm that all this information will stay bundled at one place.

The one and only goal of his thread shall be to achieve something for SH5, that was present right from the beginning in SH3: a working lighthouse model; one, whose flare you are able to see from far away and one you are able to place where ever you want.

How cool would it be to return at port at night by following the flare of a lighthouse or to regain orientation by it during a storm after one week of dead reckoning.

With the help of Gap or better: only throught the help of Gap, I was able to import Flakmonkeys beautiful lighthouse model to SH5.
Jeff-Groves helped me to make the fresnel shine, which where shut down, because I complicated the controller stuff.

Nothing more at the moment.
A raw imported SH3 lighthouse in SH5.

In the near future, I will try to do some basics: Creating ambient occlusion- and normalmaps, tweak the controllers (the range of the light is way too short), maybe importing it into some GR2 object, who knows.
None of this I have ever done before. So expect a lot of questions.

It would be nice, if someone could tell me, how to contact Flakmonkey for permission to use his lighthouse.

Although no screenshotmaster, here some pics (1,2,5 taken in Ecomod-ambiance):

https://i.postimg.cc/W46hJGY1/1.png

https://i.postimg.cc/J09kQ1Nr/2-1.png

https://i.postimg.cc/KYMvnn9M/2-2.png

https://i.postimg.cc/cJMPyCCz/2-3.png

https://i.postimg.cc/zGZVxzQM/2-4.png

Like announced the first question:
Is there a difference in scale you have to consider when importing units from SH3 to SH5?
Having stared too long at this lighthouse, I couldn´t tell, if its definitley too small.

In the meantime, I´ve found an answer on that question myself.
In TWoS there is a handy tool, called LXX-ruler, included.
So I was able to find out, that the heigth of the lighthouse in SH3 respectively in S3D, matches the height in SH5. Both are around 26,5 meters.
[IMG]https://i.postimg.cc/5yKp3G39/4.png[/IMG]

In addition I managed to create a second map channel into the lighthouse .dat following this threat http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=135177

But now there is no way to apply the lightmap on the model: It works not the SH3 way to attach the lightmap directly at the main texture and not the SH4 way using unified render controller.
The latter gave me a lot of troubles, so it seems to me that it doesn´t work with land objects at all.
Probably herein lies the root of the short visibility of the lighthouse flare?
Whatever...
Does somebody knows something about the TDW_FXU_lighthouse_flare inside the library?
I tried to make it work instead of my SH3 flare, but didn´t succeed.

Very nice! :up:

All the SH models from SHIII to SH5 use the same scale. I am sorry that you had to waste your time on checking that, before I could solve your doubts.

In the EcoMod as well as in TWoS there are rulers for measuring objects in game (from the style of the TWoS ruler, I think it is my work, but as I had completely forgotten about it, I created a similar one for the EcoMod). Nonetheless, the quickest way to measure game's 3D objects, is by exporting their meshes and measuring them in a 3D modelling software. One unit measured in any of the commonly used 3D program is equal to ten in-game meters.

If you specify what kind of lightmap you want to add to the model, maybe I can help you with it.

Finally, IIRC TDW's particle effects are done in a way that they can only be edited using an hex editor. You can use his flare effect as it is, but its particle generator(s) might be pointing to textures and materials contained in FXUpdates, so you need to have that mod (or TWoS) installed for the effect to work...

FlakMonkey has not logged in since 06-20-2017

Just follow the Guidelines posted here...
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=115983


You will need to add the Normals to the 3D model as it does not have them.
Until that is done you will never get normal textures to work.
Same with the AO

Now here's an interesting thought.
SH4 has no listing of the Unified render controller in it's core files.
(The act files and such.)
SH5 has one but seems to be only an error message thing possibly for devs?

I wonder what would happen if a new shader was placed in the Shaders folder? Say a modified Unifiedrender controller shader with the caustics stuff removed?
Then edit the controller in the dats to remove the caustics stuff.
Would need to be done by hand in Hex of course.

IF it works with no issues? Could be a door to add things to SH4 style dats.

What do you have in mind exactly? :D

If we can edit the Unfiedrender as I stated and it works?
I'm thinking we may be able to ADD to it.
Maybe even create new shaders.

ADD dynamic shadows maybe? :hmmm:

I have not found anything that calls the shaders in the core files other then the pointer to the shaders folder.
Kind of a read this folder pointer.
So what stops adding a new folder with a new shader?
Now I don't know the limits of what could be added but maybe our friend could give us a clue?
:03:

Hopefully yes. He told me he won't have access to the game until February but that's definitely something worth asking. He might also have an answer on why dat objects and particles are not visible through the sea surface, and why they look so blurred when seen underwater. That could be something shader-related...

@Gap: Thank you.
:up:
it was - like you suggested in the modding thread – essential keeping seperate things seperate.
Finally - I don´t know after how much unsucessful attempts (no idea what I was doing wrong in the end) - I got it working:

The lighthouse is now defined as landunit, can be positioned by mission-editor and as landunit the flare ranges after first estimation about 17 km (don´t know how much weather like fog affects the range). Pretty much like the lightship-flare. It´s a nice effect: You first see the lighthouse and after a while the city lights appear.
Have to experiment a little with ParticleGenerator, if range could be extended a bit more. But have to look into some Env-files too. No popping up observed.

Now as your Ecomod-Helgoland is near completion, I should find out the SH5 coordinates of lighthouses like Roter Sand, Hohe Weg, Arngast. But I see the next problem appearing:
These are mostly Offshore-Lighthouses; so I will try what happens, if I turn for example the LSH15 Roter Sand into a sea unit.

About AO-mapping:
At the moment Blender keeps me busy. To avoid troubles for not having Unified Render Controller, I have chosen a sea unit - namely the Harbour Tug - for first trials in AO-mapping.
Meanwhile I got stuck in renovating and it will take me some time to split up the modell.
I´am planning to seperate hull, superstructure, deckstuff and the mast, taking individual lightmaps and combining them in one AO-map in the end. I think thats the way it is done?
After that I will see whats the trouble with the lighthouse.

@Jeff-Groves: Thanks for the hint with the normals. As I understand it, it would be enought to import the lighthouse into Blender and recalculate the Normals?
And some really working Unified Render Controller with transparent water and shadows would be great for sh5.

Cool! :up:

When you hoover the pointer on the world map, Mission Editor's status bar should provide information on local Lat/Long (both in deg/min format and as metric offsets). For very accurate object placing you can edit manually .mis files, where unit coordinates are expressed as meters. There used to be a tool by TDW converting from real world coordinated to SH meter offsets, and I can provide you with a spreadsheet doing the same, but knowing that in the SH world 1 degree is equal to 120 km, (1 min = 2 km, 1 sec = 33.33 m) and that the origin is at the intersection between the equator and the Greenwich meridian, you can do the math yourself (negative offsets for southern latitudes and western longitudes).

Laying "land units" on the seabed shouldn't be an issue. IIRC, Mission Editor refuses to place them in the middle of the sea, but you can drop offshore lighthouses on a nearby land area, and then adjust their placement as I described above. Indeed, using this method you will have to adjust unit's height manually, but that's not a big problem either.

On a side note: on 3D Warehouse there are a couple of models of the Roter Sand lighthouse, one of which is nicely detailed, and a lesser detailed but still acceptable model of the Arngast. :03:

Adding AO map to SHIII models is a bit complicated. Unless the model you are importing has entirely non-overlapping UV projections, you need to combine all its parts into one model making sure that every piece goes in its correct position (node translation/rotation must be considered), make a copy of the combined model, resize/re-sort (note: re-sort, not re-do; I will tell you the reason a little below) its UV projections so that they don't overlap with each other, and bake the AO map. At this point you can split again the combined model, making sure that you follow exactly the same steps with its two copies (the original one textured with the diffuse texture and the copy textured with the AO texture). This is important because the two of them must be imported together, and for S3ditor/GR2 Editor to accomplish this task correctly, not only the diffuse and the AO model must have the same number of vertices and faces, but the order of xyz vertex coordinates, uv coordinates and face definitions must be the same for the two sets of meshes. Completely redoing the AO UV map, or accomplishing different modifications (or the same modifications but in different order) on the AO models than on the diffuse models, will most probably scramble vertex and/or face order, thus causing errors in the AO mapping once the models are imported in game.
For your first model imports I recommend you to follow the workflow I described above, but once you grasp its fundaments, you can eventually develop your own method, depending on the tools that you are using :up:

You are correct :yep:

Sure they would!

I'm still around, and as always, anyone has standing permission to use any of my old sh3 mods for anything they like :)

Thank you, Flakmonkey!

:salute:

Your lighthouse is an awesome model and still the best looking lighthouse in SH.
And what is more: it is functional out of the box in SH5.
I will change nothing at the 3D model itself
and of course - if there will be a release - give proper credits.

At the moment I´am working out some coordinates to place it in the first two campaigns.
Had some saving troubles, but now hopefully everything will go well.

:yeah:

Small update for my part: Have localized lighthouses for regions where the first campaign takes place.
The coordinates match not to 100% the real world coordinates.
Thats not possible, because the SH5 world differs from the real world.
I tried to find the most plausible spot for lighthouses on the SH5 map near their real-world-locations.
As source I used mainly wikipedia. The lighthouses names are their present-days names (consistently without diacritical signs).

https://i.postimg.cc/bNgThDCz/LHs.png


Reading Gap´s last information about his Ecomod, it seems to be best to wait with any further work on placing lighthouses until Gap proceeds.
I wasn´t able to place important lighthouses, because rocks and islands are missing.
Perhaps I will compile a list of those around Great-Britain, Ireland, Sweden, Norway.

Problem until now is:
Some .dat files appear in SH5, others don´t, even though I do exactly the same things, when importing them.
Will search through the TDW-unit-import-thread to find a solution.

The next step will be to import the lighthouse into a .GR2 file, namely the „church“ file.
To begin with I will do it without AO- or Normalmaps, because I had troubles with flickering.
Will follow TDW´s instructions and cry for help.
If someone knows some coprehensible tutorial, I would be grateful.

Can you please make a quick list of the lighthouses whose real location didn't find an exact match in the SH5 world?

Don't always trust wikipedia: I don't say that its information is wrong, but more often than not the coordinates it offers are an approximation of the real locations. For still existing lighthouses, I always check them with Google Earth.

On a side note: the best all-around website on lighthouses that I have found so far is the lighthouse directory. Other websites with nautical charts that I like checking for minor and lesser known lights and beacons not listed elsewhere, are the following:

http://map.openseamap.org/
http://fishing-app.gpsnauticalcharts...avigation.html

Yes please!

That's weird. Check if their 3D coordinates don't place them below the terrain/seabed level. Did you set them as terrain objects or as land units?

Always make sure that the GR2 file you start from, fits your present and future needs.

Most stock terrain objects lack 'bump' and 'additional bumpmap' (i.e. normal map) support. In addition to that, the model you have chosen also lacks "self-illumination" (i.e. ambient occlusion map) support. That is okay, because you said that you don't want your model to feature those maps, but if in future you will decide to add them, you might be forced to re-import your model in another GR2 file with a better texture support; in theory, on loading any GR2 file the latest GR2 Editor versions let you choose whether you want to add the missing strings to the file, but that never actually worked for me.

Something else you should look, is the number of meshes of the base_GR2 file, because you can't add new meshes. Church.GR2 has only two meshes, one for the visible model and one for the collision model. That's okay if you want to import you lighthouse as one mesh, but if you wanted to split it in one or more parts, or if you wanted it to use a lowpoly water reflection model you might better pick some other GR2 file with more than two meshes.

Lastly, I have recently discovered that the HarborObjectCtrl, used in SH5 for the rendering of snowy textures during winter and of windows lights at night, doesn't work on my pinnacle rock texture, probably because - looking for normal map support - I imported it the GR2 file of one of the icebergs which obviously don't need that controller. As you see, it is a matter of compromises, and often you will have to trade off some features for some other features :)

Of course Wikipedia has not the same level of information as sources altogether dedicated the lighthouse-topic.
On the other hand, it is a good point to start with:
you are not overwhelmed, the information is clearly arranged, there are direct links to OpenStreetMap and – because both are given – you haven´t to convert degrees into decimal values.

My workflow was as follows: Following the coordinates, I tried to find approximately the location of the lighthouse on the SH5 map.
Then I compared the location on the SH5 map with the location of the lighthouse shown at OpenStreetMap.
In the end I placed the lighthouse on the SH5 map at that position, where I had the impression, it would represent best his real world position.
Often I put it nearer to the shore or at some nice shore nose around.

Two examples:

Grottuviti lighthouse at Island: The position 64.165°/-22.02195° provided by Wikipedia is located at sea on the Sh5 map.
In SH5 the island Grotta – the original place of Grottuviti – isn´t modelled.
But a little southward there is a island on the SH5 map, where OpenStreetMap indicates mainland.
Hence I placed Grottuviti there, at: 64.155472°/-22.030581.

Vardo lighthouse in the North-east of Norway: The Wikipedia position 70.38876°/31.15635° is – although near the shore – at sea.
The whole islands there aren´t modelled in detail.
Finally I placed the lighthouse at 70.389732°/31.151344° at some tongue of land .
And so on.

In addition there is only a fraction of the real world lighthouses into that Mis-file.
At the moment my foremost goal is not to have an exact real world representation (what wouldn´t be possible), but to see the effect of these lighthouses during campaign.

But probably I could convert the OpenSeaMap values and insert them into the Mis-file.
Then one could clearly see, where the lighthouses on their original location, were misplaced or not on the SH5 map.

That´s the one thing, the other thing are missing rocks and islands.
I have to lump together my hand written notes on them or collect the information anew.
It will take some time.

Concerning GR2 file import: At the moment I´am in a sort of trial and error stage.
I would be happy, if I succeed to import the lighthouse in its most basic form.
Once I´ve figured out how it works, I will take into account all these aspects you mentioned.
Thanks for that.

And I will have an eye on the 3D-coordinates of the Dats.
Thanks for that hint, too.
Next thing I will try is to import a non-working model into a working one.
Most likely I only overlook some small detail, as always.
:Kaleun_Salute:

See the difference!

From close up (with shadow!):

https://i.postimg.cc/8k6y2XWy/comp.png

https://i.postimg.cc/nLPh8h7Q/LHup.png



From far away:


https://i.postimg.cc/43MzxZtr/LHfar.png




The left one is the lighthouse imported into gr2 files, the right one the common dat file.
Additionaly I have added an AO- and a Normalmap.
Of course there´s quite a room for improvement.
Especially concerning Blender, I´m not fully aware of what I´m doing.

Next step will be to understand how this bones-stuff works for adding the lighthouse-flare.

Because I´m intending to place a seperate model into the library, I´ve removed the lense from the lighthouse.


https://i.postimg.cc/SQtJ0V6v/LHLat.png

Well done Seaowl! :Kaleun_Applaud:

Your first GR2 import looks promising, and your GR2/DAT comparison is very useful. Besides the obvious eye candy of dynamic shadows, It also demonstrates that GR2 model look much sharper too, though the additional texture maps you have added to the GR2 version of Flakmonkey's model, the in-memory texture compression/sampling settings (for the DAT version) might also play a role in that. I have a few questions/remarks.

Have you tried adding a specular map in the alpha channel of the main (diffuse) texture? A well done specular map can do miracles in increasing the realism of models.

Are the lighthouses set as terrain objects or as land units?
If the latter is true, you can add a LOD model for the GR2 version. Just look at stock sea/air units to see how their LOD models are set.
If the contrary is true (i.e. the lighthouses are simple terrain objects) no LOD model is possible, but I am curious to know if you applied this method to increase the rendering radius of the GR2 model.

Are the texture/materials of the DAT lighthouse version set as in SHIII or SHIV? SHIII has a limited multi-material support, but SHIV's UnifiedRenderController enables DAT models to have as many maps and textures as SH5's GR2 models and to similarly use dds (compressed) textures instead of tga ones. It would be interesting if we could put side by side a DAT and GR2 model at their respective best, and see how they will compare in game.

I can be wrong, but I seem to see a smoothing problem near the base of the model (below the door). If that's true you can solve it by splitting some of the model edges. Since you are using Blender, there is a edge split modifier you can use for quickly performing that task. :)

Storing the lamp/lens model and the flare effect in separate files than the main model is a good idea. If the main model is set as a unit, you can link the lamp to it by equipment node/bone and date-configurable .eqp file or, for any other type of model, via placement nodes (for DAT units) or via bones and .prt file (for GR2 units).
Creating new bones using GR2 Editor is not hard: you need to check and select one of the existing bones, right click on it and select "clone bone". Renaming the new bone, changing its parent bone and editing its position within the model is quite straightforward but let me know if you need help. Just note that the latest GR2 Editor version don't handle bones very well, so make backups (in case you file gets corrupted) and in case you fail performing the clone upload here you file and I will see which one of the previous GR2E versions I have on my HD will work better with it :up: