[REL] S3D - Silent 3ditor

[iambecomelife]

Originally Posted by skwasjer

Hey Jeff,

I most definitely have not kept up, but good to see you still rockin' it. I just stopped by out of curiosity to see how SH and the community was doing.

I always said I'd be interested to just release the code so its development can continue without my (active) intervention. But even though I did manage to release the file parsers like 4-5 years ago IIRC, just this alone took a lot of work because I had to modernize the toolchain to make it work (for general consumption) and remove a lot of licensed code, and address some other issues.

But to give you an idea, the S3D application itself (which uses those parsers) contains probably 8-10x more code, uses old dependencies, has similar issues (with regards to licensing, dependencies, etc.), has an installer project that no longer works, etc.

The amount of work needed to modernize S3D is not trivial, and I am not sure it is worth the time anymore. Surely, the SH (mod) scene is not as active as it used to be?

Perhaps when I retire IRL, who knows, getting there

It's so wonderful to see you again! S3D as it is has been absolutely addictive to me, it has been so wonderful to tweak the game in ways we never could have dreamed of before 2010.

I still remember the nightmare of hand-altering individual id's to clone my [ugly] HMS Renown into existence, around 2007. We here owe you and other tool creators a huge debt .... things that took days can now be done in seconds. You are responsible for consuming so many of my days off.

Even though the modding community at Subsim is small (and smaller than it was back in the day), we are devoted. I would really like to give you some substantial support with respect to modding tool development. I will PM you shortly!

[Rick Fortens]

How can I do, with Silent 3ditor, to change the SHAPE of a ship? I did a test: I opened the ATug .dat file and moved the funnel back to the back of the ship, then I saved the changes. S3d saved these changes without reporting any problems. I reopened the file and the change was saved.

But no way to see this change in the game. The Tugboat still has its funnel in the middle. What am I doing wrong or is it simply that this is not possible with s3d?

Thanks for your help

Rick

[iambecomelife]

Originally Posted by Rick Fortens

How can I do, with Silent 3ditor, to change the SHAPE of a ship? I did a test: I opened the ATug .dat file and moved the funnel back to the back of the ship, then I saved the changes. S3d saved these changes without reporting any problems. I reopened the file and the change was saved.

But no way to see this change in the game. The Tugboat still has its funnel in the middle. What am I doing wrong or is it simply that this is not possible with s3d?

Thanks for your help

Rick

Did you make sure you are saving the changes to the DAT file in the game directory? One mistake I often make is, I copy an entire ship folder, save it somewhere else, and forget that the files I'm editing are not the ones in the actual game folder. Check the entire file path of the modded file to make sure you are saving to your game install - usually:

C:\Program Files\Ubisoft\SilentHunterIII\Data\Sea\[UNIT].dat

[Rick Fortens]

Thanks for your answer.


Yes, I checked that. It's as if the game, during a previous launch, had loaded the ship and that it was not going to take the file during a subsequent launch. I even changed the name of the ship file so that the game would not find it and crash. But it does not crash and opens normally by displaying the original ship.


What I want to do in fact is to attach the anti-aircraft balloon to a ship, as was actually done in many convoys. I managed to do it easily by replacing a funnel with the balloon in a .dat file, but that didn't work either.


According to your experience, is what I'm doing supposed to work, am I doing it right? Could the problem be due to the fact that I'm on GWX? Do I absolutely have to install the MOD via JSGME? Or maybe I should reinstall the whole game?


Thanks for your reply and I look forward to your further comments.


Rick

[propbeanie]

Save what you have worked on thus far, but I would re-do SH3 and GWX, to be certain you use "fresh" files. S3D has a "Save file to New Mod..." and "Save file to existing mod..." function, and that is the route to go when trying to alter existing files in the game. Also, the way the game works, is to run off of the Save folder, which does not get updated by JSGME. Therefore, if you add a new ship, it is in the game folder, but NOT the Save folder. If you are not seeing your changes, delete the "C:\Users \UserName \Documents \SH3" folder, unless you've edited that with MultiSH3, and then maybe the proper ship hull / funnel change will show. However, it sounds more like you want to change the geometry of the hull, and for that, you need to export said hull to an obj file within S3d, then import or open said obj file in a 3D app, such as Blender or Wings3D, do your edits (properly, which can be quite involved), save the obj file, and then re-import it into S3D... it can get rather involved.

[Aktungbby]

Rick Fortens!...the infamous 7-year-itch strikes again, ending your 'silent run' since 2018!

[Rick Fortens]

Originally Posted by propbeanie

Save what you have worked on thus far, but I would re-do SH3 and GWX, to be certain you use "fresh" files. S3D has a "Save file to New Mod..." and "Save file to existing mod..." function, and that is the route to go when trying to alter existing files in the game. Also, the way the game works, is to run off of the Save folder, which does not get updated by JSGME. Therefore, if you add a new ship, it is in the game folder, but NOT the Save folder. If you are not seeing your changes, delete the "C:\Users \UserName \Documents \SH3" folder, unless you've edited that with MultiSH3, and then maybe the proper ship hull / funnel change will show. However, it sounds more like you want to change the geometry of the hull, and for that, you need to export said hull to an obj file within S3d, then import or open said obj file in a 3D app, such as Blender or Wings3D, do your edits (properly, which can be quite involved), save the obj file, and then re-import it into S3D... it can get rather involved.

I will follow those instructions.


Thank you for your help


Rick

[Rick Fortens]

Originally Posted by Aktungbby

Rick Fortens!...the infamous 7-year-itch strikes again, ending your 'silent run' since 2018!

Yes, I was working on a big mod at that time and I wanted to come back to it.



Thanks !

[Rick Fortens]

Is it existing a manual or a tutorial that show how to use Silent 3ditor?

Please to send me a link where I can download it if you know one.

I try, I try and, or sh3 crash or nothing happen.

Thanks

[Jeff-Groves]

Best I can give you at the moment.
https://www.mediafire.com/file/pchml...-vids.zip/file

[propbeanie]

Originally Posted by Rick Fortens

Is it existing a manual or a tutorial that show how to use Silent 3ditor?

Please to send me a link where I can download it if you know one.

I try, I try and, or sh3 crash or nothing happen.

Thanks

In addition to Jeff's videos link, you could try the links in skwasjer's signature at the bottom of his first post in the release thread [REL] S3D - Silent 3ditor
Some of those links are still active. Also, there are 97 pages in that thread, but there are some gems of info peppered throughout, especially in the early posts. His (skwasjer) original web site for S3D is now defunct, but the download for the app is here on SubSim as well as other sites.

[Jeff-Groves]

What exactly are you trying to do?

[Rick Fortens]

Thanks to both of you, Jeff-Groves and propbeanie, for your response to my post. I will look into your suggestions.

Jeff-Groves, you ask: "What exactly are you trying to do?"

I want to anchor barrage balloons to the ships, as was common on many convoys.

The story is that I revisiting a huge mod project I started a few years ago called "ARCTIC CAMPAIN". In that project I scripted a "historical" reenactment of the attack on convoy PQ-17, and on that convoy many ships were traveling with these balloons anchored to their decks. It's scripted to be a multiplayer game with the actual route of the convoy, the exact positions of the 10 U-boats involved, etc.

But it is part of a much larger project: the "historical" reconstruction of the Arctic Ocean as a theater of operations for U-boats, for the purpose of a single-player or multiplayer game. This theater offers many interesting advantages: the naval bases remain close (no need to waste time to reach the American coasts to launch a Paukenschlag operation); it takes place in a winter environment (opportunity to model ice and snow); but, above all, the presence of friendly air cover and heavy cruisers that add competition to the U-boats (sink the ship before the plane does); etc.

For this purpose, I have completely rebuilt the map of the Arctic Ocean to scale (with the Kriegsmarine grid inlaid inside). I don't know many SH3 players who are bothered by the imprecision of the map in the game, but it bothers me. So I rebuilt it using SH3 Terrain Extractor. In the game, the distance between Greenland and Novaya Zemlya Island is 8000 km. But actually, on the surface of the earth, it is only 2000 km. So it is on my map (much smaller theater of operations). See the image below.

About S3D, when I started this project, I was able to create drifting ice to put on the surface of the water and snow on the deck of the U-boat (see image) using Google's Sketchup and S3D, but I don't remember how I did it.

So that's exactly what I'm trying to do. At the moment, I would really like to be able to put balloons on these ships.

Thanks

Rick

[LUKNER]

Originally Posted by Rick Fortens

Thanks to both of you, Jeff-Groves and propbeanie, for your response to my post. I will look into your suggestions.

Jeff-Groves, you ask: "What exactly are you trying to do?"

I want to anchor barrage balloons to the ships, as was common on many convoys.

The story is that I revisiting a huge mod project I started a few years ago called "ARCTIC CAMPAIN". In that project I scripted a "historical" reenactment of the attack on convoy PQ-17, and on that convoy many ships were traveling with these balloons anchored to their decks. It's scripted to be a multiplayer game with the actual route of the convoy, the exact positions of the 10 U-boats involved, etc.

But it is part of a much larger project: the "historical" reconstruction of the Arctic Ocean as a theater of operations for U-boats, for the purpose of a single-player or multiplayer game. This theater offers many interesting advantages: the naval bases remain close (no need to waste time to reach the American coasts to launch a Paukenschlag operation); it takes place in a winter environment (opportunity to model ice and snow); but, above all, the presence of friendly air cover and heavy cruisers that add competition to the U-boats (sink the ship before the plane does); etc.

For this purpose, I have completely rebuilt the map of the Arctic Ocean to scale (with the Kriegsmarine grid inlaid inside). I don't know many SH3 players who are bothered by the imprecision of the map in the game, but it bothers me. So I rebuilt it using SH3 Terrain Extractor. In the game, the distance between Greenland and Novaya Zemlya Island is 8000 km. But actually, on the surface of the earth, it is only 2000 km. So it is on my map (much smaller theater of operations). See the image below.

About S3D, when I started this project, I was able to create drifting ice to put on the surface of the water and snow on the deck of the U-boat (see image) using Google's Sketchup and S3D, but I don't remember how I did it.

So that's exactly what I'm trying to do. At the moment, I would really like to be able to put balloons on these ships.

Thanks

Rick

Is it possible to do something similar in SH-4?

[Jeff-Groves]

Take the AerialBomb and do it as a loadout in the eqp file.