Lighthouses in SH5

[gap]

Originally Posted by Seaowl

@gap
Sorry for the belated reply, but I had quite a busy week.
Nonetheless I made some progress.

No problem mate

Originally Posted by Seaowl

It seems that this problem is solved.

Jeff-Groves solution posted here:
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...0&postcount=79
worked in this case too
Thanks to Jeff once again.
Short description of what I did: In Blender I made a plane-mesh with the side length of 50.000 m and about 1132 below 0 (not exactly 1000 to avoid conflicts).
This mesh I called collision_fresnel and imported it into the Fresnel GR2 file (luckily there was a free „mesh-slot“).
From now on lighthouses are visible from about 17-18km without preciding activation using the free camera.
It works great.

So the rendering range issue affects equipments as well as land units. Is that correct?

Every new discovery we make, is lesser brain racking the next time we will have to deal with similar issues. Well done on that!

Originally Posted by Seaowl

For the light shining trought walls, I found a solution too:
In the settings of the particle controller, you have to set the „depth buffer test“ to „true“ or (in goblin editor) to „yes“.

That was an easy fix, I knew you would have found the "magic" setting

Originally Posted by Seaowl

As far as I know there were six sizes or six orders (and several sub orders) of fresnel
lenses.
Or at least I saw a table relating to US lighthouse lenses.
On the other hand I do not know, if the same is valid for lenses in France, Great Britain, Ireland, Sweden, Germany...
will do some research, how they grouped their lenses...
But to get to the point: It would be great to have several Fresnel lense models combined in one Fresnel file inside the library.
If you could send me a file with different models and textures, I would try to do so.

You are right about the six main orders (IIRC there were also a couple of intermediate orders). I should have saved somewhere some tables with pictures/drawings of them and their relevant data including sizes and ranges.

If memory serves me well, Fresnel lenses were a French pantent and between late XIX century and mid XX century they were used all around the world, some them still being in use. Not all the lighthouses had Fresnel lenses installed though. A good example of that was the old Helgoland lighthouse (the one built in 1902 and destroyed by Aliied bombings in 1945), which had a custom-made and very powerful lens installed:



Anyway, if I remember correctly I have a couple of Fresnel lenses modelled and textured, though right now I can't say which order they belong to. They are made according to the data I mentioned above, so they should be pretty accurate, though low-poly. If you think you can put them to use, I can check them and send them your way

Originally Posted by Seaowl

However first of all I have to take a little break from lighthouses,
mainly because I´m eager to import some vessel into GR2 files.
I think DivingDucks fishing boat would be a good beginning?

Sure it would!

Originally Posted by Seaowl

Moreover I have discovered the moles of Malta.
(how much stuff is buried into these files, I had never seen in game...)
I suppose it is not difficult to make separate land units out of them.
At Memel they could be useful to do the „white lighthouse“ at harbor entrance for example.

Yes, there is a lot of unfinished / unused stuff in stock files that is only waiting for us to finish it and put it in game

Originally Posted by Seaowl

And I had a look at Kendras site: among other cool things, he creates really great lighting stuff.

Yes, I call him the king of special effects

Originally Posted by Seaowl

As a beginner I tend to overdo all these things just to see the difference.

Meanwhile I have turned down the normal map.
In fact it looks much better now.

If you don't try you never know. Keep doing your experiments!

Originally Posted by Seaowl

To tell the truth: All the lighthouse files - and especially the textures - will still need some fine or even rough tuning.
I will keep you informed.

Let's keep in touch!

[gap]

Originally Posted by gap

if I remember correctly I have a couple of Fresnel lenses modelled and textured, though right now I can't say which order they belong to. They are made according to the data I mentioned above, so they should be pretty accurate, though low-poly. If you think you can put them to use, I can check them and send them your way

Originally Posted by Seaowl

Of course: I´m not sure if I can put them to good use, but at least I can try it.

Check your PM inbox please.

The two low-poly models I sent you portray a 1st order and a 4th order Fresnel lens. They are correctly scaled relative to the SH proportions and they are already triangulated. Other than that, they might/will require some further post processing in order to be imported with GR2 Editor and to look good in game (removal/splitting of the hard edges, removal of the inner lens faces, setting up of a different materials for the crystal lenses than the one used for the metal frame, etc.).

As you can imagine from my comments above, I never used them in game, but I am glad to offer them to you and I am sure you that, with your time, you will do a good job with them. The one favour I ask you in change, is to keep updating us on your progress, on the problems you are facing, and on the workarounds that you are finding

Originally Posted by Seaowl

It would be great to have a library file with different lenses and maybe I can ask Kendras, if he allows me to use some of his "special effects" (presupposed they work in SH5 as well).

I already told you how to get in touch with him, but I am sure that, as long as you give him credit for his work, he won't have any problem granting you the permission to use it.

On a side note: SHIII particle generators have much in common with SHIV and SH5 ones. All the old generators should perfectly work in SH5 and, when importing SHIII-IV particle effects into SH5, you can always copy the parameters of old generators in the new ones. Btw: If you like using Skwas' Silent3ditor, I definitely recommend you to patch it with this extension by Rosomaha:

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...79#post2438679

Perfect for messing with the generators of the three games using just one tool!

[Seaowl]

Thank you, gap!




Just downloaded the file and couldn´t resist to throw a quick glance at them before writing this reply.

Both are magnificient.

Without further ado I will try out the first order lense in the latern room of Flakmonkeys lighthouse.

The fourth order lense seems suitable for some smaller harbor lighthouse.
Possibly - taking other models as example - I will attempt creating one myself.

Would be a good point to start.


In any case I will keep you and of course everyone reading this thread, informed.
But - of course - it will take its time.


By the way information: yesterday I reduced the size of the Collison mesh from 50.000x50.000 to 2x2 and even 0.1x0.1m.
In either of this cases the lense was functioning flawlessly.
Henceforth there seems to be no further obstacle in creating one central fresnel file into the library folder.

[gap]

Originally Posted by Seaowl

Thank you, gap!




Just downloaded the file and couldn´t resist to throw a quick glance at them before writing this reply.

Both are magnificient.

Without further ado I will try out the first order lense in the latern room of Flakmonkeys lighthouse.

I modelled that lens for one of the tall European landfall lighths destroyed during WWII: the grand phare de l'île de Sein, which was about two times taller than Flakmonkey's lighthouse. I don't know if a 1st order lens will fit within its lantern house...

Originally Posted by Seaowl

The fourth order lense seems suitable for some smaller harbor lighthouse.

You are right, that's exactly what I had in mind when I modelled it

Originally Posted by Seaowl

Possibly - taking other models as example - I will attempt creating one myself.

Would be a good point to start.

Good idea. There is plenty of free information, pictures and drawings on any order of Fresnel lense, so you shouldn't have problems finding them, but if by any chance they have been removed, I should have something saved in my archive

Originally Posted by Seaowl

In any case I will keep you and of course everyone reading this thread, informed.
But - of course - it will take its time.

No rush

Originally Posted by Seaowl

By the way information: yesterday I reduced the size of the Collison mesh from 50.000x50.000 to 2x2 and even 0.1x0.1m.
In either of this cases the lense was functioning flawlessly.
Henceforth there seems to be no further obstacle in creating one central fresnel file into the library folder.

I was sure about that. Also note that for collision of land units you can use the CollisionableObject controller. In all the SH games, this controller is used only with terrain objects, but as I have experimented, it also works with ship equipments (see the TWoS' coastal artillery bunker) and land units (see one of the testing versions of the La Plate lighthouse in Kendras' Lighthouse mod).

[Seaowl]

Since I found no suitable lighthouse for
gaps awesome lenses, I started to make one myself.

As pattern I choose the Wolf Rock Lighthouse.
Initially because I found some nice blueprints of Wolf Rock
at this site: https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Wolf_Rock_Lighthouse

But besides that Wolf Rock has other advantages as well:

It has a quite prototypical shape of an british lighthouse.
So parts of it – like base, railing, lantern graiting – could be used to model lighthouses just as Eddystone, Beachy Head probably even Fastnet.

By the way: As I never go through the Channel I would probably never see Eddystone and Beachy Head ingame.
And even Wolf Rock itself is a border case.
Waters at this regions are far too shallow for my taste.
So actually a lighthouse at Scotland or Ireland would make more sense as a future project.

One other reason for choosing the Wolf Rock lighthouse is the shape of the lense.
Originally Wolf Rock lighthouse had a first order fresnel lense that looked
– at least at the drawings I have at hand –
pretty much the same as the first order lens model gap sent to me.
So the perfect housing.

At the moment I´m at the point where I think about to start with uv-mapping and texturing.
Concerning this I have one question:
In the early stages, I modelled the windows as parts of the main lighthouse mesh.
Not really the windows, but in fact the shutters, because on most of the pictures I have seen the windows closed.
Doing it that way, I never came along with smoothing very well.
So I decided to use the shutters as a seperate model.
There are some shipmodels, where it is done this way.
It´s also intended to have the base and the quay (will be added later) as separat models.
Are there any downsides doing it like that, especially respective game performance?

Progress is slow because I have to learn everything from scratch.
Here are some pictures:

[gap]

WOW, Seaowl, if you are really learning everything from scratch, we should admit that you are doing it unbelievably fast!

Your model looks very nice indeed!


Sure enough, windows and other details which require hard edges, will mess with the smoothing of rounded surfaces they border with.

Within certain limits, a lesser than perfect object smoothing can be masked out with a good texture work but your idea of modelling details that protrude from the main geometry as a separate geometries, is obviously a better solution because it will eliminate the root cause of the problem, and it will make your model to have lesser polygons too. I don't see any downside to it but having to deal with tens (or hundreds, for big models) of small meshes every time you need to un-group a model, and maybe the fact that portions of the main lighthouse geometry will be hidden behind the new details, but they will still occupy texture space that you could have used more profitably for something else.

Unfortunately the same "trick" can't be used when the detail you want to add doesn't protrude from your model, but it is actually indented into it.
In that case, the only possible fix, is to break the hard edges into smaller edges, making them to follow object's (smoothed) curvature as closely as possible.


Other than that, I have a few more remarks:

12 to 16 is the ideal number of "slices" needed for SH to render acceptably smooth cylindrical surfaces without increasing too much the poly count.

I have noticed that you have used a lot of faces to model the jagged lighthouse base. While very nice looking, this is probably accounting for a significant increase of model's poly count. You could fake that detail with some well done texture maps, especially a normal map, but you are probably aware of that already.

I like very much the way you modelled the railing around the lighthouse gallery, though, again, the polygons you spent on those nicely detailed poles that we will only appreciate from very close distance, might not be worth the computer resources they will use.

Remember that GR2 units support LOD models, so you can keep all the nice detail for the main unit, and then decimate its polygons until you get a basic outline for use as LOD

I think that's all for now

[Seaowl]

I have noticed that you have used a lot of faces to model the jagged
lighthouse base. While very nice looking, this is probably accounting for a significant
increase of model's poly count. […] Remember that GR2 units support LOD models, so
you can keep all the nice detail for the main unit, and then decimate its polygons until
you get a basic outline for use as LOD

The thing is, that I considered this kind of basement somehow characteristic for
Wolf Rock (and also Beachy Head and Fastnet).
So I didn´t want to abandon this structure in the first turn.
Especially because it will be relatively easy to change, if the impact on resources seems too big.

The same is valid for the railing.

In any case I will take your advice and make a reduced LOD-Model.
I really hope that this will do the trick.

Yesterday I finished the quay or I don´t know how it´s called, because if you watch the
videos of change of shifts on Wolf Rock
https://www.britishpathe.com/video/wolf-rock-relieved
this platform isn´t intented for any ship to dock,
added a fog horn, a weather vane and a smoke stack,
raised the lantern room floor and – because I wasn´t sure about the scale,
imported for comparision partly the Frogs beautiful Harbour Defense Motor Launch
with one crew member. (I had to scale everything by 10)

The source of the fog horn are mainly the above mentioned videos.
The smoke stack, is sketched in on the plan I use or at least it´s my interpretation of
this pipe on the roof: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...ng_drawing.png

This is by no means an exact representation of Wolf Rock, it´s only an approximation.
If you have better information or sources at hand than I have, I would be glad to correct things.

And of course, I have to add the cliff. For this reason I´m trying to understand, how this ANT-landscape addon works in Blender.

Here some pictures again: