[WIP] ShipReskin and Rec Man V3.0
 

Hi you may have seen my Reskin posts in other threads, I have decided to reskin many of the Merchant ships that are available in the stock game.
Also in conjunction with that I shall redo my Rec Manual to include images of the ships as photos instead of the stock Technical Drawing style.

The Clones are being converted into master models, so there correct info will show in the Rec manual.

Here is the Liberty Clone (The NKL - Large Steamer)

http://i236.photobucket.com/albums/f...%205/Ship1.jpg

http://i236.photobucket.com/albums/f...hip-Ingame.jpg



And it in the Rec man
http://i236.photobucket.com/albums/f...amerRecMan.jpg


Here is the Liberty Clone (NKL_WarSupplies - Large Steamer Warsupplies)

http://i236.photobucket.com/albums/f...arSupplies.jpg

And it in the Rec Man
http://i236.photobucket.com/albums/f...liesRecMan.jpg


Here is the Original reskinned Liberty Master (NLL - Liberty)

http://i236.photobucket.com/albums/f...Reskin/T92.jpg

http://i236.photobucket.com/albums/f...Reskin/NLL.jpg


Here is the Liberty Warsupplies Clone (NLL - Liberty Warsupplies)

http://i236.photobucket.com/albums/f...Reskin/T93.jpg

http://i236.photobucket.com/albums/f...arsupplies.jpg


As it stands I wanted to re-create the clones into new Ship Model names and to assign different skins to the same model to have a random skin assignment.
But alas it does not seem possible at this time due to the model format.

This may open up in time with Privateers excellent work in that area.
But for now at least each ship type and there clones will at least be able to sport a different skin.
So we seas will not be full of the same dull Grey model across all the master and clone ships. :yeah:

Beta Test Release
Ok Guys, I need some testing done.
I've uploaded the Liberty Master ans Clones as above into a beta mod.
I don't have time to test properly in-game (Only using created missions).



Can you test that these are:

1. Rendering in Campaign
2. I cannot find how the game references the Winter skins, so I just created them using the same naming system. Can you see if these ever show up in-game and not the stock Grey/snow skin.
3. In instances where there are different models of the Liberty on-screen, are they showing the correct skins?

I'll wait for feedback on the above, before going any further with the mod. Don't want to do lots of work if its of no use :D.

Any feedback including pics and time/dates of visual sightings would be great.
Thanks Guys. :up:

Here is link: http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/down...o=file&id=2791

and when will have at least a beta version, thanks. :ping:

:rock:Excellent stuff Reaper :salute:
Can't wait to try this one.
I especially like the idea of the photos in the recognition manual.

Reskin of the merchant ships is really great idea reaper! Thank you! Can't wait to this mod!


Please do two separate mods for merchant skins-mod and recognition manual. I like more a realistic recognition manual - U-Bootwaffe use the "Weyers flottentaschenbuch"
http://s2.postimage.org/bkPKS.jpg

http://s2.postimage.org/bm_WJ.jpg


I use currently your good "NewUIs_TDC_4_2_0_ERM_Reaper7_NightVision". Looks more realistic than this recognition manual with photos.

Got the other NLL Clones converted to Master and reskinned.
Also reskined the original Nll model.

Here is the Original NLL (Liberty) reskinned.

http://i236.photobucket.com/albums/f...Reskin/NLL.jpg

And it warsupplies Clone thats converted and reskinned.

http://i236.photobucket.com/albums/f...arsupplies.jpg




Now just to prove to myself there wouldn't be an issue of the game replaceing the same skin on all the models, I created a mission with all 4 types.

And the results:

http://i236.photobucket.com/albums/f...s_and_NKLs.jpg

So now when mod is released all 4 ships will have a totally new and unique look from each other compared to them all sharing the same grab grey skin. :yeah:

Well done Reaper!:yeah:


All ships in the convoy will have "only" these 4 skins? Or will the ships in the convoy as well as those with grey skins? It would be better.

As of now they only way I can get them to work is to give each model its own skin.
Untill we can figure out how to get skins to work random like they do for SH4, its the only way :wah:.
As it stands stock uses the same grey skin for all 4 of the above:
NLL
NLL Warsupplies
NKL
NKL Warsupplies
These are all the same Liberty class Ship ingame, so in stock SH5 they all looked the same (Well the warships used a light mask to give them a kind of camo look).
In order to have a grey version I would have to make one of the above grey, thats no problem - I can leave one to use the stock skin.

There are other Merchant Ship Types that I have to reskin so there will be plenty of colour in the sea's by the time I'm done.
And I can leve some as is so that its not all colour. :)

I can do some test also to see if Skins can be assigned in other ways.

ie: Country, Date etc. :)

Great! Can't really wait to this mod!:up:

Sweet, this game is really shaping up thanks to you modders :D

Hey reaper, I just got back from my weekend vacation, and I can't tell you how excited I was when I saw that you released a re-skin mod. Looks pretty awesome my friend, keep up the good work.:yeah:

Fantastic stuff Reaper7, thank you :up:

In the stock game, camo skins, winter skins etc would not load properly most of the time (for both sub and merchies), have you managed to fix this?

Thanks SteelViking, I've made a push to at least get something working and released. At least untill I can figure out the random skins issue. :DL

Ya the stock game doesn't actually reskin the model it uses the same texture on all model and just places a shadow map over the clone models to give it a camo look (Diff shades of black) :nope:.
What I'm doing is giving each model its own proper texture so how they are in the pics above is how they look ingame.
Also the textures are applied to the model like wallpaper strips rather than one complete texture, this means I can't do curves or realistic camo effects (Like the triangular ones that ran the lenght of the ship) as the texture is repeated along the length of the ship.
Unfortunatly when the devs went with GR2 files compared to the DAT files of sh3/4 they changed how things work.
The old method of getting skins to be applied randomly does not appear to work anymore :wah:.

So for now this is the best I can do, untill the issue has been figured out at least. If anyone has any ideas to get skins applied randomly to the same ship class at the same time - please let me know :up:.

That explains alot! In the image below there was a huge amount of flicker where the icicles would compete for space with the surface of the model (you can see a chunk missing on the bow).

http://img716.imageshack.us/img716/7...0907132228.png
Uploaded with ImageShack.us

Ah, sorry I was a little misleading there :oops:. The game does actually reskin the winter model - its the same texture with blobs of snow added.
I haven't worked out where the game changes this yet.
The icicles are seperate to the textures and hence the flicker when the game renders them. These I belive are dds images rendered on the ship.
But the camo in your pic above is just shadow rendered over the texture to give a darker shade of green.