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

[Zedi]

Originally Posted by Rongel

Is that my ship! looks good anyway. I think it's the ambient occlusion map that is showing in your picture:


[IMG]....[/IMG]

This was taken when I edited Sh 4 ship, for some reason, if I enable this occlusion map in my import, all I see is black. You could send the ship to me and I'll take a look at it.

I can check your ship too if you still have the problem.

Somehow I had a feeling that I need to check the previous page after posting, happy I did that. I will send you my work so you can take a look and see if you can fix something. The reworked tga is embeded along with the new normal map.

I have similar results (black ship) when I embed a dds file. Somehow there is no way to embed anything else than tga. And thats sux because the quality is not the same.

[Zedi]

If anyone can help explain wtf is wrong with this ship texture, please do. Im out of ideas.

[Rongel]

Thanks Zedi for the new skin, got it working finally, my bad... Really nice looking boat! This screenie looks awesome, but the I guess the ambient occlusion is somehow distorted, the sun light goes directly to the opposite side of the boat! The surface where sun shines is not illuminated...

[TheDarkWraith]

invert the occlusion dds

[TheDarkWraith]

Originally Posted by Zedi

Somehow I had a feeling that I need to check the previous page after posting, happy I did that. I will send you my work so you can take a look and see if you can fix something. The reworked tga is embeded along with the new normal map.

I have similar results (black ship) when I embed a dds file. Somehow there is no way to embed anything else than tga. And thats sux because the quality is not the same.

The Unified Render controller has a hard time with embedded dds files. They have to be tga type. We have to embed TGA files to get over the damage texture bug.
The embedded tga file should be overridden by any .dds files specified in the roster entries. Are you seeing this not happening? If so, try placing the .dds files in \data\Textures\TNormal\tex and see what happens.

[Rongel]

If anyone can help explain wtf is wrong with this ship texture, please do. Im out of ideas.

I think Zedi, I fixed your ship, NMFMPC! At least took away the crazy textures. I think that the error was in the modified occlusion map alpha channel. I used a version that I downloaded here some time ago and it's embedded occlusion map's alpha channel was different than in SH 4. Have to test more, but now I'm off to a victory cigarrette.

EDIT:



As you can see, there is occlusion "glow", but nothing too crazy. Now the next step would be to get some textures to the ships guns and the light thing at the top of the ship.

[TheDarkWraith]

Originally Posted by Rongel

I think Zedi, I fixed your ship, NMFMPC! At least took away the crazy textures. I think that the error was in the modified occlusion map alpha channel. I used a version that I downloaded here some time ago and it's embedded occlusion map's alpha channel was different than in SH 4. Have to test more, but now I'm off to a victory cigarrette.

EDIT:
As you can see, there is occlusion "glow", but nothing too crazy. Now the next step would be to get some textures to the ships guns and the light thing at the top of the ship.

excellent work Rongel Now as I don't fully understand these occlusion and normal maps purposes, can you explain? Also can you tell us what you changed to get Zedi's ship fixed? I've noticed that many of the ship's from SH4 have an occlusion map (the _Oxx files) whose alpha channel doesn't match the RGB channels. Any thoughts as to why

As far fixing the guns and the spotlight that is going to be some major work. The problem is all the guns and spotlights from SH3/4 have to be edited and have images embedded and entries made for their _Oxx and _Nxx entries. Or we can substitute SH5 guns for them....

[Rongel]

excellent work Rongel Now as I don't fully understand these occlusion and normal maps purposes, can you explain? Also can you tell us what you changed to get Zedi's ship fixed? I've noticed that many of the ship's from SH4 have an occlusion map (the _Oxx files) whose alpha channel doesn't match the RGB channels. Any thoughts as to why

Explaining what i did might be even more complicated than fixing it! Let's try... The occlusion map and it's alpha channel are indeed totally different looking, but it's not a corrupt or anything like it. So it seems we must leave it alone. There was nothing wrong with the two textures that Zedi sent me, the base texture, and the normal map. I used in this ship a dat-file that I downloaded here earlier and I could see it's occlusion map's alpha channel was different than in SH 4, it was edited. I just changed it back. Still, it didn't change in the game or in S3 editor. It seemed that the game sniffed the old dds files I had in the ships folder, so I simply deleted them, so that it must use the embedded files.

One weird thing I noticed is that the spotlight and guns cast shadows. I tried to use the shcontroller "VisibleUnderWater" to the whole ship and it vanished from the game. You could see it only underwater. Weird thing was that now the spotlight and the gun were rendered and had textures!

Okay one issue more. We can see water reflections in the ships structure near the water (when we aren't underwater). But why only in one side??? Stock ships have this effect on both sides.

[TheDarkWraith]

Originally Posted by Rongel

Explaining what i did might be even more complicated than fixing it! Let's try... The occlusion map and it's alpha channel are indeed totally different looking, but it's not a corrupt or anything like it. So it seems we must leave it alone. There was nothing wrong with the two textures that Zedi sent me, the base texture, and the normal map. I used in this ship a dat-file that I downloaded here earlier and I could see it's occlusion map's alpha channel was different than in SH 4, it was edited. I just changed it back. Still, it didn't change in the game or in S3 editor. It seemed that the game sniffed the old dds files I had in the ships folder, so I simply deleted them, so that it must use the embedded files.

One weird thing I noticed is that the spotlight and guns cast shadows. I tried to use the shcontroller "VisibleUnderWater" to the whole ship and it vanished from the game. You could see it only underwater. Weird thing was that now the spotlight and the gun were rendered and had textures!

Okay one issue more. We can see water reflections in the ships structure near the water (when we aren't underwater). But why only in one side??? Stock ships have this effect on both sides.

Can you send me the files you speak about above regarding the occlusion maps? I'd like to see what you're talking about.

The spotlight and guns will cast shadows because they are being pulled from a gr2 file (they are SH5 guns and spotlight). Only items taken from GR2 files will cast shadows This is that whole granny thing which is a total PITA!!

Now the likely reason why when the ship 'vanished' and all of a sudden the guns and spotlight rendered is because there are two ways the game engine can render items: the granny way and the old way. It can't do both on one object. Since we asked the game engine to render the ship using .dat files (the old way) it rendered everything that way, including the gr2 stuff. Now since the old way couldn't read the textures from the gr2 file () they show up as dark. This is my hypothesis.

Can you show a screenshot of these water reflections you speak about? I want to ensure what you're conveying and my understanding of what you're conveying are the same.

[Rongel]

Hope you can spot them, they show better in motion.

EDIT:

ARGH MY AVATAR

EDIT 2:

I'll send you soon the files!

[TheDarkWraith]

Originally Posted by Rongel

Hope you can spot them, they show better in motion.

ah, ok, those are the caustic effects. Never noticed that problem actually till you brought it to attention

Try disabling the caustic effects in the Unified Render Controller and adding a regular caustic effects controller and see what happens.

[Zedi]

What still bothers me is that damn rust on the ship hull. Is not like I dont like it, but it should not be there. In the first version of TDW Elco boat I managed to apply the new skin properly and cover everything, but in the latest version I have transparency.. the old texture is slightly visible through the new one. The difference.. first version had an external dds texture file, the latest and embedded tgs.

Anyway, if the stupid occlusion map glowing effect is fixed thats already a huge step ahead. You guys are awesome, hats off!!

This topic for STICKY

[stoianm]

Originally Posted by Zedi

This topic for STICKY

yes... for sure

[TheDarkWraith]

Originally Posted by Zedi

What still bothers me is that damn rust on the ship hull. Is not like I dont like it, but it should not be there. In the first version of TDW Elco boat I managed to apply the new skin properly and cover everything, but in the latest version I have transparency.. the old texture is slightly visible through the new one. The difference.. first version had an external dds texture file, the latest and embedded tgs.

Anyway, if the stupid occlusion map glowing effect is fixed thats already a huge step ahead. You guys are awesome, hats off!!

This topic for STICKY

Ok, send me a ship in question that has this problem or tell me which ship it is in the latest archive you sent me. I have an idea...

[Rongel]

Try disabling the caustic effects in the Unified Render Controller and adding a regular caustic effects controller and see what happens.

Did this, but still almost same effects, caustics only on one side...