Iluminating gr2 ships test

[Rosomaha]

Excellent work.
On the one hand, I liked the night lights of ships, with the SH3 mods, but at the same time I did not like this solution, because of their constant glow, including on a Sunny day that looked unnatural. This seems to be the best alternative to this. . Only C3 seems to have a very bright glow.)

[kapuhy]

Necroing my old thread after fiddling some more with this controller.

Turns out I found an elegant solution to problem I had with it - namely, the fact that you can't have separate .sim files for clone ships unless you make them full-on separate models with their own gr2 files and everything.

This meant that if I wanted a neutral version of a ship with lights and non-neutral without, I had to make two copies of all files in ship's folder. Repeat this for many ships and your Sea folder starts to look very fat.

As it turns out, there's a solution for that. HarborObject controller requires a small additional _night texture to work. If controller doesn't find this texture, it doesn't do anything, so one can simply make two skins for a ship:

a) "neutral" skin, that has additional _night texture in textures folder
b) "non-neutral" skin that doesn't have _night texture

So I could now easily make beautifully illuminated versions of all .gr2 format ships, if not for one remaining issue that is crashing Goblin editor while trying to further edit a ship with HarborObject controller... ship does seem to work without problems or CTD's in game, but it blows up Goblin Editor every time

[Angelis]

Ingenious!

[Jeff-Groves]

Now stop depending on Goblin to do things.
S3D with the proper controllers add-ins can do things Goblin can't.

Rule 1
If it works In-Game? Then it works.
Rule 2
If Editors say it won't work? See Rule 1!

[tonschk]

Very good great work!

[gap]

Originally Posted by kapuhy

Turns out I found an elegant solution to problem I had with it - namely, the fact that you can't have separate .sim files for clone ships unless you make them full-on separate models with their own gr2 files and everything.

This meant that if I wanted a neutral version of a ship with lights and non-neutral without, I had to make two copies of all files in ship's folder. Repeat this for many ships and your Sea folder starts to look very fat.

As it turns out, there's a solution for that. HarborObject controller requires a small additional _night texture to work. If controller doesn't find this texture, it doesn't do anything, so one can simply make two skins for a ship:

a) "neutral" skin, that has additional _night texture in textures folder
b) "non-neutral" skin that doesn't have _night texture

So I could now easily make beautifully illuminated versions of all .gr2 format ships, if not for one remaining issue that is crashing Goblin editor while trying to further edit a ship with HarborObject controller... ship does seem to work without problems or CTD's in game, but it blows up Goblin Editor every time

A possible alternative:

Separate 3D portholes and windows from the main model and set them as configurable equipment. For each vessel there should be two nearly identical copies of such an equipment: one with the HarborObject controller and one without it. Since each proxy clone uses its own .eqp file, you can easily set up two variants of the same unit, one with lights on and the other with darkened lights.

Advantages of this method:

- no more Goblin Editor CTD's
- no need to have two copies of the same texture.


Disadvantages:

- stock models and all previously created custom vessels would require their 3D models to be edited.
- more files in the Library folder and higher chance of Id conflict (though, talking about GR2 objects, this one should be a remote chance as long as no duplicated model names are used).
- complex illumination effects like illuminated funnels, superstructure etc. become impossible, unless those parts are also separated from the main model.

Originally Posted by Jeff-Groves

Now stop depending on Goblin to do things.
S3D with the proper controllers add-ins can do things Goblin can't.

Rule 1
If it works In-Game? Then it works.
Rule 2
If Editors say it won't work? See Rule 1!

I agree. I strongly recommend Rosomaha's S3d Configurator for full compatibility with the new SH5 controllers.

The one thing that Goblin Editor does better than S3d, is 3D model shading. Since Goblie uses the same shaders as the game, one can reliably use it for previewing the combined effect of diffuse, specular, normal and AO maps.