Adding smoke effects to any ship?

Tex · 12-13-07, 02:32 PM

Hi guys. I was wondering if anyone had an easy way to add smoke effects to any ship? I'd like to add fire and smoke effects to a few ships actually that burn continuously. Any ideas?

Thanks in advance for your help!

PS: They are static ships, the battleships sunk in Pearl Harbor.

tater · 12-13-07, 02:47 PM

Stream of consciousness here, posting so it's out there and I don't forget.

People have posted wanting to have darker smoke. ROW does this to some extent, and ups the distance.

The next thing is that many japanese merchants were coal fired still. There is only one type of stack smoke.

Idea: if a fire/smoke could be stuck onto a ship, couldn't the smoke effect in question be cloned, reduced in diameter, then stuck on top of the stack for certain, cola fired merchants?

tater

Tex · 12-13-07, 03:39 PM

Thanks for the feedback tater, though I'm looking for fire and smoke that you see on a sinking ship. In FSX using the SDK one could create fire smoke effects on a small plane and basically place that plane on the object you want smoking effectivly 'hiding' the plane inside the object so it appears the smoke is coming directly from that object. My only issue is, how to actually create that smoke and fire. Cloning an already made fire/smoke like you mentioned could work too, I'm just not sure where to look and what to look for.

tater · 12-13-07, 04:19 PM

Just did it. BTW, I can now add custom smoke effects to specific ships, I will work on a coal fired ship mod. Woot!

The only thing I cannot do at the moment is hook the smoke to the funnel in such a way that it will go away when the funnel gets blown off. Still, that's not the end of the world. BLACK coal smoke for SOME ships can now be easily possible.

tater

tater · 12-13-07, 04:23 PM

BTW, Anvart has a similar SH3 mod: http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=118089

When he first posted about it I lacked the skill to understand what he was talking about. My method is different, actually, but his is still very cool.

Actually, Anvart's method will be far better for adding multiple smoke types (coal vs oil vs diesel). When the next S3D is out I will have a crack at it based upon his excellent work.

My technique involved pointing at it with the eqp file. Works, too.

tater

tater · 12-13-07, 04:41 PM

The wrecks at PH are not in the Sea folder, and don't have EQP files. It should be possible to make a new ship type with no model at all, but a few nodes. Then we place the ship on the wreck, with the desired smoke/fire effects stuck to it in the eqp file.

tater

mrbeast · 12-13-07, 05:33 PM

According to the Sqaudron Signal book Japanese Light Cruisers of world war II In Action, Japanese ships tended to give off quite a lot of black smoke, even the oil fied ones. This made them easy to distinguish from allied vessels. Some of the pictures do show this while they are at high speed.

I don't know how valid this is but I'm guessing that the Japanese where probably forced to use inferior quality fuel due to shortages (they even pumped it out of the sunken BB Nagato) which might have created more and darker smoke.

TheDarkWraith · 12-14-07, 01:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tater

Just did it. BTW, I can now add custom smoke effects to specific ships, I will work on a coal fired ship mod. Woot!

The only thing I cannot do at the moment is hook the smoke to the funnel in such a way that it will go away when the funnel gets blown off. Still, that's not the end of the world. BLACK coal smoke for SOME ships can now be easily possible.

tater

in the particles.dat there is an ID named 'funnel_smoke'. The ship's use this for their smoke stacks. If you clone this and change the 'color' parameters in the fastparticlegenerator to make it a darker color and then add this cloned ID in place of the funnel smoke's ID in the ships you should have different smoke then.
To add a smoke node to any ship is also easy to do. Basically clone the fastparticlegenerator out of funnel smoke and paste it onto a new node. Attach that node to the ship you want to have a continuous smoke effect. The best way to do this would be to make the new node 'public' by placing in particles.dat or make a new .dat file for it, and reference it as a new cfg#xx node in the ship's .eqp file.
The particles.dat and materials.dat files I'm very familiar with as I ported them over to SH3 and made my own FX mod out of it for SH3. I'll be bringing that FX mod over to SH4 here soon...

tater · 12-14-07, 02:22 PM

Yeah, anything in Library can be stuck on a ship via the eqp file. Take the burning_oil node in particles.dat. Link=burning_oil for any node in a ship's eqp file, and there you have it.

mrbeast · 12-14-07, 03:39 PM

This sounds promising. Is there anyway this method of making smoke could be tweaked so that smoke screens could be modded in?

tater · 12-14-07, 03:42 PM

Do any of the smoke types "lay down" along the water? I haven't messed with particles, but if there is a setting to do that, then yeah, should be pretty straightforward. Course getting the AI to use it intelligently is another matter entirely.

TheDarkWraith · 12-14-07, 03:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tater

Do any of the smoke types "lay down" along the water? I haven't messed with particles, but if there is a setting to do that, then yeah, should be pretty straightforward. Course getting the AI to use it intelligently is another matter entirely.

the smoke can be made to 'lay down' by changing the vertical velocity component. In the fastparticlegenerator there is a setting called 'speeddirection'. It's format is float x, float y, float z. What this relates to is the % (this percentage is 0-1, 1 being 100%, .5 being 50%) of the velocity applied to each plane. Almost all the FPGs and PGs are set with speeddirection = 000000000000803F00000000 which is giving the y plane (vertical plane) all the velocity. You'll have to play around with weight also because moving some (or all) of the speeddirection to the x plane with a high weight will cause the smoke to sink into the water.

mrbeast · 12-14-07, 04:00 PM

I don't know I guess you could try altering it in the particles.dat but then all the smoke would just hang on the surface of the sea wouldn't it. :hmm: Is there a way of getting that particular smoke to use differen't paticle controls?

Yeah the AI might not use it properly. I can see it just pulling a constant smoke screen all the time. Then there is the question of how often if at all the IJN used smoke screens as a deffence againsst subs. Might not be very authentic.

Would be cool for surface engagements like the battle off Samar at Leyte Gulf though as the US DE and DDS try to fend of Yamato. So I suppose it could be scripted in to some extent for just those battles.

TheDarkWraith · 12-14-07, 04:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mrbeast

I don't know I guess you could try altering it in the particles.dat but then all the smoke would just hang on the surface of the sea wouldn't it. :hmm: Is there a way of getting that particular smoke to use differen't paticle controls?

if you clone the funnel_smoke and use that clone as your new smoke then all the smoke wouldn't be hanging on the surface. There might be a way to use it as a smokescreen....the controller 'Fog' might do the trick....would have to experiment with it to see for sure

tater · 12-14-07, 04:08 PM

Well, you could add the smoke generators to one eqp list. Remember that ships, like planes, can have loadouts.

So you make a smoke generator version, and explicitly put it in the campaign where you want it. You can chose what loadouts randomly appear as well, so you might have 1xAsashio @100% in a group, and a 2d Asashio at 10% set to be a smoke generating version.

Here's a possibly novel idea.

You make a new active sensor. Instead of a "ping" it makes smoke. Detect a sub (perhaps periscope or other surface detection), and it starts smoking off the stern. The various controllers are still sort of a black box to me, but I imagine this is possible. Kind of like RB's idea for the collision (I think).

Actually, this makes me wonder. I wanted to have merchant ships drop DCs. Only ship types 0-4 will use DCs, however. Having a new sensor that drops Dcs upon detection would be cool. The idea would not be for them to try and hit you, it was common for them to chuck ashcans just to try and scare subs away, lol. Course if you made it so that this particular hydrophone that triggered a DC had a VERY short range, it might actually work to scare the player... go to duck under a merchie and BOOM DCs go off fairly close. I bet such "unaimed" DCs would also go off at the set depth, not be overridden by the AI, too...

tater

12-13-07, 02:32 PM	#1
Tex Director of the Deep Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: Houston, Texas Posts: 83 Downloads: 7 Uploads: 0	Adding smoke effects to any ship? Hi guys. I was wondering if anyone had an easy way to add smoke effects to any ship? I'd like to add fire and smoke effects to a few ships actually that burn continuously. Any ideas? Thanks in advance for your help! PS: They are static ships, the battleships sunk in Pearl Harbor. __________________ Click >>HERE<< to View my Films

12-13-07, 03:39 PM	#3
Tex Director of the Deep Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: Houston, Texas Posts: 83 Downloads: 7 Uploads: 0	Thanks for the feedback tater, though I'm looking for fire and smoke that you see on a sinking ship. In FSX using the SDK one could create fire smoke effects on a small plane and basically place that plane on the object you want smoking effectivly 'hiding' the plane inside the object so it appears the smoke is coming directly from that object. My only issue is, how to actually create that smoke and fire. Cloning an already made fire/smoke like you mentioned could work too, I'm just not sure where to look and what to look for. __________________ Click >>HERE<< to View my Films

12-13-07, 05:33 PM	#7
mrbeast Ace of the Deep Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: Bolton, UK Posts: 1,236 Downloads: 0 Uploads: 0	According to the Sqaudron Signal book Japanese Light Cruisers of world war II In Action, Japanese ships tended to give off quite a lot of black smoke, even the oil fied ones. This made them easy to distinguish from allied vessels. Some of the pictures do show this while they are at high speed. I don't know how valid this is but I'm guessing that the Japanese where probably forced to use inferior quality fuel due to shortages (they even pumped it out of the sunken BB Nagato) which might have created more and darker smoke. __________________

12-14-07, 03:39 PM	#10
mrbeast Ace of the Deep Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: Bolton, UK Posts: 1,236 Downloads: 0 Uploads: 0	This sounds promising. Is there anyway this method of making smoke could be tweaked so that smoke screens could be modded in? __________________

12-14-07, 04:00 PM	#13
mrbeast Ace of the Deep Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: Bolton, UK Posts: 1,236 Downloads: 0 Uploads: 0	I don't know I guess you could try altering it in the particles.dat but then all the smoke would just hang on the surface of the sea wouldn't it. :hmm: Is there a way of getting that particular smoke to use differen't paticle controls? Yeah the AI might not use it properly. I can see it just pulling a constant smoke screen all the time. Then there is the question of how often if at all the IJN used smoke screens as a deffence againsst subs. Might not be very authentic. Would be cool for surface engagements like the battle off Samar at Leyte Gulf though as the US DE and DDS try to fend of Yamato. So I suppose it could be scripted in to some extent for just those battles. __________________

12-13-07, 02:47 PM	#2
tater Navy Seal Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: New Mexico, USA Posts: 9,023 Downloads: 8 Uploads: 2	Stream of consciousness here, posting so it's out there and I don't forget. People have posted wanting to have darker smoke. ROW does this to some extent, and ups the distance. The next thing is that many japanese merchants were coal fired still. There is only one type of stack smoke. Idea: if a fire/smoke could be stuck onto a ship, couldn't the smoke effect in question be cloned, reduced in diameter, then stuck on top of the stack for certain, cola fired merchants? tater

12-13-07, 04:19 PM	#4
tater Navy Seal Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: New Mexico, USA Posts: 9,023 Downloads: 8 Uploads: 2	Just did it. BTW, I can now add custom smoke effects to specific ships, I will work on a coal fired ship mod. Woot! The only thing I cannot do at the moment is hook the smoke to the funnel in such a way that it will go away when the funnel gets blown off. Still, that's not the end of the world. BLACK coal smoke for SOME ships can now be easily possible. tater

12-13-07, 04:23 PM	#5
tater Navy Seal Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: New Mexico, USA Posts: 9,023 Downloads: 8 Uploads: 2	BTW, Anvart has a similar SH3 mod: http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=118089 When he first posted about it I lacked the skill to understand what he was talking about. My method is different, actually, but his is still very cool. Actually, Anvart's method will be far better for adding multiple smoke types (coal vs oil vs diesel). When the next S3D is out I will have a crack at it based upon his excellent work. My technique involved pointing at it with the eqp file. Works, too. tater

12-13-07, 04:41 PM	#6
tater Navy Seal Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: New Mexico, USA Posts: 9,023 Downloads: 8 Uploads: 2	The wrecks at PH are not in the Sea folder, and don't have EQP files. It should be possible to make a new ship type with no model at all, but a few nodes. Then we place the ship on the wreck, with the desired smoke/fire effects stuck to it in the eqp file. tater

12-14-07, 02:22 PM	#9
tater Navy Seal Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: New Mexico, USA Posts: 9,023 Downloads: 8 Uploads: 2	Yeah, anything in Library can be stuck on a ship via the eqp file. Take the burning_oil node in particles.dat. Link=burning_oil for any node in a ship's eqp file, and there you have it.

12-14-07, 03:42 PM	#11
tater Navy Seal Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: New Mexico, USA Posts: 9,023 Downloads: 8 Uploads: 2	Do any of the smoke types "lay down" along the water? I haven't messed with particles, but if there is a setting to do that, then yeah, should be pretty straightforward. Course getting the AI to use it intelligently is another matter entirely.

12-14-07, 04:08 PM	#15
tater Navy Seal Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: New Mexico, USA Posts: 9,023 Downloads: 8 Uploads: 2	Well, you could add the smoke generators to one eqp list. Remember that ships, like planes, can have loadouts. So you make a smoke generator version, and explicitly put it in the campaign where you want it. You can chose what loadouts randomly appear as well, so you might have 1xAsashio @100% in a group, and a 2d Asashio at 10% set to be a smoke generating version. Here's a possibly novel idea. You make a new active sensor. Instead of a "ping" it makes smoke. Detect a sub (perhaps periscope or other surface detection), and it starts smoking off the stern. The various controllers are still sort of a black box to me, but I imagine this is possible. Kind of like RB's idea for the collision (I think). Actually, this makes me wonder. I wanted to have merchant ships drop DCs. Only ship types 0-4 will use DCs, however. Having a new sensor that drops Dcs upon detection would be cool. The idea would not be for them to try and hit you, it was common for them to chuck ashcans just to try and scare subs away, lol. Course if you made it so that this particular hydrophone that triggered a DC had a VERY short range, it might actually work to scare the player... go to duck under a merchie and BOOM DCs go off fairly close. I bet such "unaimed" DCs would also go off at the set depth, not be overridden by the AI, too... tater