[TEC] Adding/Importing new units / SH5 Damage/collision models

[Zedi]

Uekel from the german forum who imported dozens of ships from sh4 (and we use 2 ships from his mod), has a flag.dat in Library. He already mixed the ships and placed them in every nation roster. So maybe the flag.dat is the answer.

[SteelViking]

Says file has been deleted, can't download. Can anyone else upload this mod.

[Zedi]

I have his mode, its over 120Mb, I can upload it again, but .... not sure if is this permuted... maybe the owner dont wanna share his mod anymore? I have permission only to extract few ships from his work, not to deal with the whole mod itself. I really dont need another one accusing me of stealing stuff, just had enough with Privateer.

[gap]

Hi there,
as promised, I would like to do my first attempt at importing SH3/4 ships in SH5.
Though being quite good photoshop-wise (but Zedi and SteelViking are taking care of this aspect already), I am a total newcomer as for other modding aspects. Also, my time is limited, so don't expect fast results.

On this topic I have some questions/request for the concerned modders:

1- wich ship should I start from? I know we are focusing on SH4 small merchants, but wich is/are the one/s on the top of the list?

2 - by now there's so much scattered information on the various aspects of ship importing, that I am getting confused. Things could be a lot easier for beginners like me if some veteran could collect all the knowledge gathered until now, organize it and put it in a single post. Even better if this someone could also try to keep the tutorial updated, let's say on a weekly basis, with all the new discoveries.
I know this can be a boring task, but IMHO such a complete tutorial would encourage ready and willing people to join the project.

[JU_88]

Originally Posted by gap

2 - by now there's so much scattered information on the various aspects of ship importing, that I am getting confused. Things could be a lot easier for beginners like me if some veteran could collect all the knowledge gathered until now, organize it and put it in a single post. Even better if this someone could also try to keep the tutorial updated, let's say on a weekly basis, with all the new discoveries.
I know this can be a boring task, but IMHO such a complete tutorial would encourage ready and willing people to join the project.

Excellent Idea , hell I might even have stab and porting over some new aircraft and stuff if I can figure it out - (cant promise anything as I suck with imports.)

[Rongel]

Originally Posted by gap

Hi there,
as promised, I would like to do my first attempt at importing SH3/4 ships in SH5.
Though being quite good photoshop-wise (but Zedi and SteelViking are taking care of this aspect already), I am a total newcomer as for other modding aspects. Also, my time is limited, so don't expect fast results.

On this topic I have some questions/request for the concerned modders:

1- wich ship should I start from? I know we are focusing on SH4 small merchants, but wich is/are the one/s on the top of the list?

2 - by now there's so much scattered information on the various aspects of ship importing, that I am getting confused. Things could be a lot easier for beginners like me if some veteran could collect all the knowledge gathered until now, organize it and put it in a single post. Even better if this someone could also try to keep the tutorial updated, let's say on a weekly basis, with all the new discoveries.
I know this can be a boring task, but IMHO such a complete tutorial would encourage ready and willing people to join the project.

Good point. And the import data is scattered to two forums now. This whole thing started with the TDW's tutorial and the torpedo boat example. I joined in with no knowledge of almost anything, and we just started to try out things, now SteelViking is also on board . So many of those early posts contain false data, the basic import routine is relatively simple. I'm not saying this is the best way to do it, but we have tried A LOT of stuff, and current method is the easiest and most succesful. We have some serious restrictions now, like:

-no reflections, no dynamic shadows, ship don't render underwater when looked above (with TDW's shader some graphic cards apparently make this happen), and some smaller bugs (like the random foam wake when ship is already destroyed).

Anyway, it would be great to have more importers, everyone usually finds out something new and that way improves the whole thing. TDW is currently working with something else, and that's really okay. I could make a small tutorial, but the first post is TDW's, and I would not like to start a new thread. And if I post the tutorial here, it will get lost in other posts... What is the best way to do this?

Zedi can help with what ship to import. Good luck!

[gap]

Nice to see that you're appreciating my idea!

@ Rongel

Thank you for your willingness. I hope this task is not going to divert you from the rest of your tasks for too long!
If you don't want to start a new thread I see two solutions:

1 - after you have it finished, you PM your tutorial to TDW, who on his turn would make it available in the first post of this thread (but in this way you should disturb him everytime you want to update the tutorial);

2 - even better: you post your tutorial anywhere in this thread, by asking TDW to put a link to it in the first post.

What do you think of it?

[TheDarkWraith]

Originally Posted by SteelViking

This may seem like a dumb question, but how do you make the flags show up and function with an imported ship. If I leave the old SH4 relic of a flag it works, but then only that flag shows, and not the country I put the ship in for in the roster.

Any help would be appreciated.

cfg#FLG nodes are supposed to control the flag showing for the country. Usually you place a cfg#FLG node and the game takes care of placing the correct flag. This is not happening?

[Zedi]

Main target should be the small tonnage ships. The reason... SH5 has built in only huge ships with over 5k tons. So no wonder we have millions of tonnage sunk in just a month of patrol and this must be fixed. We need more merchants, but low tonnage merchants.. normal ships, not monsters.

I reduced the campaign mission requirements very much, instead of 200k, now we have max 50k tonnage, mostly 20. But with the sh5 fleet this requirement can be achieved in a single patrol. If we import low tonnage ships, the 20k requirements can be difficult to achieve. This way the whole campaign can be more realistic.

Here is a small pack with ships extracted from Uekels mod, ships with low tonnage, but also with NOLNippon which is a huge and beautiful tanker. Not sure about this one as in reality tankers were a pretty rare sight and this one never sailed in Atlantic... but hey, I dont think anyone would mind sinking this fat lady :P

[Rongel]

Originally Posted by TheDarkWraith

cfg#FLG nodes are supposed to control the flag showing for the country. Usually you place a cfg#FLG node and the game takes care of placing the correct flag. This is not happening?

I think it's working for me, didn't have to edit anything. When I first put the originally Japanese Kasagisan ship to British roster, I get British flag in the game. Same thing happens when it's in American roster, I get American flag.

Here is a small pack with ships extracted from Uekels mod, ships with low tonnage, but also with NOLNippon which is a huge and beautiful tanker. Not sure about this one as in reality tankers were a pretty rare sight and this one never sailed in Atlantic... but hey, I dont think anyone would mind sinking this fat lady :P

And now there is these ships already being imported, so no duplicates please:

-PTelco
-KSSSKasagisan
-KMCSAkita
-PSTyohei
-NAMC

These ships have many names, so you need to check them carefully. Studying sea/roster cfg-file helps!

2 - even better: you post your tutorial anywhere in this thread, by asking TDW to put a link to it in the first post.

Gap, I think this is pretty good idea. But I'll start slowly and just tell the basic steps to get the ship to game and take damage. I won't deal with texture modification, others (TDW, SteelViking, Zedi) know that better than me, and it's also a matter of taste. Also Importing airplanes is a good idea, I made a quick test months ago, and Sh 4 airplanes automatically spawn debris-wings when destroyed, something that doesn't happen in SH 5. The importing method might be different though.

But you have to wait the step 1. tutorial a bit longer...

[Rongel]

Importing Silent Hunter 4 Stock Ships to Silent Hunter 5 Tutorial




Part 1. Basic Import

To begin, you need a copy of SH 4 and Skwasjer's great Silent 3ditor and a very limited modding skills. There is example import included at the end of the post.

1. Select a ship you want to import from SH 4 (SH4/data/Sea) and copy it to SH 5. I suggest you make a new mod for it. Copy also the selected ships roster file (SH4/data/Roster/*Nation name*/Sea/) and place it to your mods roster folder to the nation you want it to have. Keep the same filestructure that Sh 4 has.

2. Your new import ship works already, and should show in game, but it doesn't have Collision model yet. So open your ships dat-file with S3D. I'm using as an example NKSSS_Kasagisan-ship. Now click the ships main node, in this case it's called 7:Node - NMFMSSS. Create a new child node (type 4/100) to it by right clicking it. Then create a new child node to the node you just created. This time select 8/0 Label-node. Now give the label node a name called DMG_col_NMFMSSS. This is the most important thing! NMFMSSS means here your ships main nodes name.

You notice when you click your new node that there reads in blue text Linked 3D model. Currently there is none. So open again the ships main node 7:Node - NMFMSSS and click it's 3D model node. Up center of the S3D screen there reads the 3D models ID number. Copy it and paste it to your new nodes Linked 3D model/Model ID field. Then uncheck the DMG_col-node's Visibility. Voila! Now you have basic damage model to your ship.

3. Search (Ctrl + F) for WaterReflection and delete all those nodes and their child nodes too. SH 4 water reflections just don't seem to work, so it's not neccessary to keep those.

4. It's ready, and fully functional*! Save and apply your mod. Check the situation in Mission editor, if your ship doesn't show there, something is propably wrong with the roster file. Create a new single mission and test your ship in action!

*Known Bugs:

-Ships don't break in half
-Ships don't cast shadows
-There is no water reflections
-Ships don't show through water when looked above waterline

Download Kasagisan example import ship mod!

Note: I'm not saying this is the right way to import ships, but this is the easiest and most functional way that I know. And after this you need to add guns and crew to your ship, possibly tweak your ships floating mechanics and adjust the textures. But that is a story for another night!

Big thanks for this goes to TDW! If I forgot something, please tell and I'll update this. SteelViking can also add if there is mistakes. And sorry if it's not understandable, making a tutorial is much harder than it sounds... I hope that you also study the import threads, there is no point importing if you just follow instructions, you need to know what is going on too! Good luck

[Rongel]

Reserved by Rongel!

[TheDarkWraith]

I linked your tutorial in post #1

[SteelViking]

Nothing to add here, sounds good Rongel, that really is all you need to get a ship into SH5 and have it functional. Making it look pretty takes a good bit more work, but nothing too complicated.

Honestly the most time consuming part when importing is redoing the shadow map and base texture for it.

[SteelViking]

Originally Posted by TheDarkWraith

cfg#FLG nodes are supposed to control the flag showing for the country. Usually you place a cfg#FLG node and the game takes care of placing the correct flag. This is not happening?

Aha, the name of the node for the flag on the NAMC did not match that. Changed the node name, and flag is now working. Thanks TDW