[WIP] Lighthouses mod

Originally Posted by gap

Just found a good tutorial on how to generate a mesh from a grey-scale heightmap using Blender.
It might come in handy for creating natural-looking small islands, rocky reefs, skerries and shoals

Fantastic !!! This will help us a lot ! Just have to find good maps.

[gap]

Originally Posted by Kendras

Just have to find good maps.

Yep, real or fictive

Let me know if you find any which might fit our purposes, otherwise I will see if I can generate any using Photoshop

[Jeff-Groves]

Take into account that the terrain in SH3 is pretty much a guess and limited by how it is created and edited.

Wonder why the Kiel Canal is not perfect?
It's the limits of the Game Engine.
You can not change that.

For every 3D model you create, depending on where you place it?
You will need to make more.

I can see editing of the terrain as a partial fix.
Just gonna depend on where you put them.

Originally Posted by Jeff-Groves

Take into account that the terrain in SH3 is pretty much a guess and limited by how it is created and edited.

For every 3D model you create, depending on where you place it?
You will need to make more.

I can see editing of the terrain as a partial fix.
Just gonna depend on where you put them.

Not at all.

PROS/CONS :

Originally Posted by Kendras

Location unit

+ icon is visible anywhere on the map, it's also possible to add colors to the icon
+ always placed at the same altitude, whatever the depth of the sea

- 3D model placed into/under the ground if the land is higher than 5 meters.
- not possible to custom the LH with an .eqp file

Land unit

+ no problem if placed on a land with altitude (will always be placed on the ground)
+ possible to custom the LH with an .eqp file

- altitude depending on the depth of the sea (the 3D model can be submerged)
- visible on the map only when in visual range, always green icon (for neutral units) but this can be solved by this trick : a land unit with no icon + in the locations.cfg file (at same placement) with no 3D model but with the icon of LH visible from everywhere !

Originally Posted by Niume

Could you create a mod when allied ship sinks the crew shoots a red flare what would light up sea.

I think it already exists ... in GWX ? You mean a red halo on the sea and a red diffuse light ?

Originally Posted by Niume

Originally Posted by Niume

Or when destroyers shoot shellstar it would light up sea better

What do you mean ? A larger light halo ? More realistic color (not blue) ? I already improved it a bit for myself, because my U-Boot was no more enlighted even if I was still in the light halo (texture applied on the sea surface) ... or it was the contrary, I don't remember.

Originally Posted by gap

Yep, real or fictive

Let me know if you find any which might fit our purposes, otherwise I will see if I can generate any using Photoshop

Did you see that ? : http://forum.simutrans.com/index.php?topic=2210.0

[gap]

Originally Posted by the_frog

I think, SH3 supports ambient occlusion OR normal/bump maps. There are some models with either ambient occlusion or normal channels but I am not aware of any with both ambient occlusion AND nomal maps. Some have ambinet occlusion and bump maps.

Hi the_frog, I am quoting this post of yours from another thread. Can you please point me to a SHIII object, either from stock game or from a mod, which is using an ambient occlusion map?

I need it for Kendras reefs. My idea is to map a seamless rock texture on the diffuse channel (making its UV projection bigger than the texture space, so that the texture will be mapped n times on the object), and AO shadows and fouling on the AO channel.

Once a get this peace of information I will be ready to hand over to Kendras

[gap]

Originally Posted by Kendras

Did you see that ? : http://forum.simutrans.com/index.php?topic=2210.0

I did, but I think the 90-m resolution stated in that tutorial is too low for our rocky reefs... 90 m is about the size of an islet, and I think in game we need something of the same size, or even smaller, but not totally flat.

On the web there are many heightmaps of real or fictive islands and mountains that with some resizing can be used as reefs in game. As we speak, I have one almost ready (see my post below)

[Jeff-Groves]

The Red flairs were done by TheDarkWraith/RacerBoy as I recall.
Check your mod installs.

Originally Posted by gap

I did, but I think the 90-m resolution stated in that tutorial is too low for our rocky reefs... 90 m is about the size of an islet, and I think in game we need something of the same size, or even smaller, but not totally flat.

On the web there are many heightmaps of real or fictive islands and mountains that with some resizing can be used as reefs in game. As we speak, I have one almost ready (see my post below)

Great !

[gap]

Originally Posted by Jeff-Groves

The Red flairs were done by TheDarkWraith/RacerBoy as I recall.
Check your mod installs.

Thank you Jeff, are they included in GWX?
SHIV units use the unified render controlled where you can enable/disable bump, specular and ambient occlusion maps, but I doubt this is compatible with SHIII

Originally Posted by Kendras

Great !

Here's a preview of the upcoming rocky reef; from top to bottom: a wireframe render, the model with diffuse textures mapped on it, and the same with AO shadows + underwater fouling textures. You should overlap the two textures mentally while I find a way to physically do it within a SHIII-compatible dat file:



The mesh has a resolution of 6,794 faces and it is ca. 30 m high (from top to bottom) with a base of about 180x240 sqm, though the emerged part will be much smaller (how much depends on where you will put it in game). I have set the base vertices to have a 0 heigth, so that they will always lay on the seabed if you set "place on land" as true.

That looks good ! I have several things to say, but I need a computer to illustrate (writting from a cell phone).

Originally Posted by gap

... a base of about 180x240 sqm, though the emerged part will be much smaller (how much depends on where you will put it in game).

If the model's placement is in the Locations.cfg file with "On land = false", its 0 heigth will ALWAYS be at the sea surface. So, this 0 heigth must be at the place we want the sea to be, as on this pic (red arrows) :



Next, I think that the base of your model should have near vertical sides near the bottom (70-80°), to improve the aspect of the stone emerging from the sea bed of the game (brown color on the pic).

Originally Posted by gap

I have set the base vertices to have a 0 heigth, so that they will always lay on the seabed if you set "place on land" as true.

As stated earlier in this thread, the "place on land" function is not working properly, some LH in the Locations.cfg file are set with this function as "true", but they are half in the ground, or invisible (and NOT UNDER the ground, I mean really invisible ! ... ). This was the case of the LH at the location "Pointe du Raz" (Schnellboat Mod v2). I changed to "false", and the LH re-appeared !

Finally, about the texture, I don't like the green seaweeds everywhere on the stone. I would prefer some small zones of weed, and more green, or no weed at all ...

[gap]

Hi Kendras, in my opinion for the best look of the reefs, their on land property should be set to true and, unlike your picture, they should be placed where the seabed is almost flat (alternatively you can make the terrain below them flat using Terrain Editor). I am pretty sure that some models disappearing under the soil when placed on land is due to some errors from your part. Something I have noticed is that SHIII objects are not placed in game directly, but they are assembled together in dummy files through placement nodes. The absolute position of those nodes and that of the 3D model might dictate at which heigth each object is placed on land.

At this moment I am not focusing on the shape of the reefs or on the stepness of their base, and I have little control over them. Matter of factly I didnt actually model the reock that your comment refers to. I made Blender to displace the y coordinates of the vertices in a plane mesh, on the base of a greyscale heigthmap. I have control over the heigth scaling factor though (though extreme values look a bit weird) and I can decide which heigthmap to use of course. Maybe you can help me by looking on the web for heigthmaps whose caracteristics you think fit our needs, and by linking them here. Where needed I can do some manual adjustements, but honestly I wouldn't like wasting too much time on some generic and pretty random rock models ;-)

Lastly, the seaweeds are not covering the whole model. If you look closely at the last picture, the top part of the reef is free from them. Seaweed distrkbution is in patches and it follows roughly model's heigths, with fouling gradually fading out until it totally disappears at a certain heigth. I can easily modify this heigth, make the fading zone more or less sharp, make fouling colour and other caracteristics to change with the heigth, and make them to look more or less sparse

[gap]

here's a first version of the rocky reef that I been working on:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/3cyw0d...eefs_shoals.7z

Please drop the dat file in the Library folder (or straight into the Terrain/Locations folder? ), place the object in shallow waters near land, preferably where the seabed is almost flat, set it "on land", and launch the game.

Omitting aesthetic considerations regarding the quality of the textures or the shape of the mesh, which can be addressed in a second stage, atm I am mostly interested into technical aspects. More specifically:

• is the shadow/seaweed texture correctly rendered on top of the main (gray rock) texture? If I have set the material properly, both textures should be "blended" together.
  
• is the reef laying with its base just below the seabed, as it should?
  
• is the object collisionable?

If the answer to the three questions above is yes, I am ready proceeding to the next step and listening to any other remark you might have