[TEC] Create Ambient Occlusions the way the Devs did!

Adding Units from SH4 gives you a limited number of Units.
Adding New Units, be they SH4 stock or other Modded Units?
You may want to do AO mapping as it was done for SH5.
The nice thing is? The tool to do so is totally free!
And as S3D is free? Your not too limited in what you import now to dat format.
(Just remember the dat format will be soon be depricated but the Tools and how to is important)

1. Get the SoftImage Mod Tool
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet...12&id=13571320

All AO mappings for SH5 were done in SoftImage.
How do I know that? Because I asked Dan and he hooked me up with the artists that did them!


2. Download this document
http://www.mediafire.com/?qoihiv0z8wooev5

This comes from the Man that did the AO's for SH5.

Good Luck and Happy Huntings!

[TheDarkWraith]

Nice

I was just thinking about this subject last night. Two things came to mind:
1) if one were to add another set of texture coordinates (duplicate first set of texture coordinates in the model nodes) for SH3 then could SH3 use AO maps? I know the maps aren't blended together but seeing the Blend controller in the SH3 ACT files it has shader code right there.

2) take this same idea of duplicating texture coordinates and give the SH3 unit an AO map but use the model in SH5. This way they wouldn't look so SH3 like. SH3 has many more units than SH4 does.

The insides of the Subs use shadow mapping. (AO)
I expect one could apply them to exterior models but at what cost?
SH3 is bad at rendering at todays expectations so it may cause more problems then it's worth.
Look at the shadow mapping for some external subs mods now and add a hundred ship convoy with each ship useing AO!


As to SH5? That is why I posted all the Tools and info.
One can now duplicate the exact way AO's were done for SH5!
Not some random "Well it kind of looks good" BS! But the EXACT process used for SH5!
Note that SH4 DID NOT USE XSI for AO mappings!
I verified that through discussions with the artists involved!

[urfisch]

interesting investigation, thanks!

[TheBeast]

My Laptop got ripped off and MS Office is not installed on my Game Machine.
What app do I need in order to read the DOC's you supply?

Regards!
TheBeast

[Trevally.]

Originally Posted by TheBeast

My Laptop got ripped off and MS Office is not installed on my Game Machine.
What app do I need in order to read the DOC's you supply?

Regards!
TheBeast

One of the problems we encountered while doing this was the fact that generating automatic uv’s in max is poor and so is the map rendering(AO and others) . Mapping the ships two times(once for AO and once for Diff) was not an option for us. XSI is doing a great job on generating automatic uv’s and AO.
The workflow we used for the ships from SH5 :
-modeling in max
-exporting it to Softimage XSI(use the format ’.obj’)
-generating UV’s in XSI (is called ‘unique uv’s’)
-rendering AO (in XSI)
-exporting it to max(use the format ’.obj’)
-mapping the diffuse texture on channel 1 , but before mapping the diff you need to copy the AO uv’s channel on channel 2
This procedure can be time consuming since you will have to map every single identical piece on the ship(when mapping diffuse). You cannot delete a single polygon(while mapping diff) and duplicate a mapped one instead because every single polygon has his own mapping coordinates for AO.

You can also use this method, which is faster:
-modeling in max
-mapping the diffuse channel in max(channel 1)
-exporting it to XSI(use the format ’.obj’)
-generating uv’s for AO (channel 1 is already mapped for diffuse, make sure you use channel 2)
-rendering AO (make sure you select uv channel 2 for geberating AO)
-this part is a bit harder. The ‘.obj’ won’t export 2 uv channels . In order to export the object back to max with both uv channels you need to export the object from XSI twice(use ‘.obj’). The first time with the uv’s used for diffuse on channel 1, and the second export you are going to make is with the uv’s for AO on channel 1. In XSI you can move the uv’s from channel 2 to channel 1 by deleting channel 1.
So now you have 2 obj files , one mapped for diff and the other one mapped for AO
-import the the .obj file mapped for diff back in max
-import the the .obj file mapped for AO back in max
-save the uv channel of the object mapped for AO and copy it to the second uv channel of the object mapped for diff.
You should end up with a single object mapped for diff on channel 1 and AO on channel 2 .
The uv transfer between those 2 object is not going to work unless you follow these steps.

The second method is faster because you can duplicate identical objects while mapping the diff channel, and there a lot of identical objects on the ships.

[sparrs]

Originally Posted by TheBeast

My Laptop got ripped off and MS Office is not installed on my Game Machine.
What app do I need in order to read the DOC's you supply?

Regards!
TheBeast

Open Office reads docs. Its open source. http://www.openoffice.org/

I use Word Viewer from Microsoft.
It's free.

[TheDarkWraith]

Originally Posted by sparrs

Open Office reads docs. Its open source. http://www.openoffice.org/

Can't go wrong with the whole Open Office suite Nothing beats open source and free

[liliput]

Thanks for the info , it seems to be helpful, especially when i'm in a step from texturing of my new sub

I found the AO's to be much better useing this method.
The Life Boat I did for SH4 was done this way.
It takes a bit of getting use to and you may want to play with the settings at times.
I was told the setting were always the stock settings in XSI.
But I prefer to play with them a bit myself.

[gap]

A couple of tutorials on creating self-illumination maps in Softimage Mod Tool:

http://www.game-artist.net/forums/su...xture-xsi.html

http://cryrid.com/art/?p=12

Thanks to privateer for pointing us to the right program