[REQ] Interim cloned merchant shipping

[wamphyri]

It'd be so nice if we could get out paws on granny .. but a license for it is a nice even $10k. A little out of my reach

[tater]

Have you tried putting the o-map in the dat as a material in S3D?

[wamphyri]

Originally Posted by tater

Have you tried putting the o-map in the dat as a material in S3D?

yeh and I bet sergei has tried even more things than that.

There is no UnifiedRender controller in SH5
so the path stuff is not going to work.
Granny files work differently from the old dat file days.
You need to look very closely at them with Granny Viewer.

You also need to look at other files for clues to controllers that
may replace the UnifiedRender Controller.

I'll be testing a few Controllers I found this weekend if
the 'Gremlin' leaves me alone long enuff.

[iambecomelife]

I finally managed to get the Akita from SH4 in with proper textures. However, because the texture has to be embedded directly in the file there can only be one skin per merchant ship model.

It also doesn't help that there are still weird issues (the ship's stern is too low in the water for no apparent reason) and that I'm unhappy with DRM, crew ghosting through bulkheads, bad dialogue, bad camera angles, etc etc etc.

All in all, this has left a bad taste in my mouth. I could go into more detail about how frustrating these SH5 "improvements" are, but I guess I'll get back to modeling & skinning for the next Merchant Fleet Mod version.

[bigboywooly]

Originally Posted by iambecomelife

I finally managed to get the Akita from SH4 in with proper textures. However, because the texture has to be embedded directly in the file there can only be one skin per merchant ship model.

So how exactly did you get the textures to show ?

Embedding the textures alone in the dat hasnt worked for me or others in the thread here

[wamphyri]

Yes you guessed it. That's the Yamato flying an american flag

Turns out bigboywooly that it was easier than I thought. For this ship there's 3 materials listed. For all 3 I embedded an image under them, I used the regular texture because after testing I think there's no way that sh5 will use a bumpmap or occlusion map from a dat. Then I also told it to use an explicit texture, the same texture that I embedded and make sure to change the texture filters at the bottom of that page to linear because with point the mipmap goes all wonky. (eventually I found out which ones needed a texture and which ones were for the occlusion and bump map.. not that we can use them tho)

If I didn't do it exactly this way I'd just get the grey model in game. iambecomelife mentioned that we'd only be able to use one texture/ship but with them changing to granny files we have that anyways, but atleast now we can clone ships and give them each their own texture.

This gets the texture showing but I noticed that some things still need to be fixed, but this is to be expected. Hope this gets the ball rolling for everyone.

[tater]

That Yamato has no o-map, clearly.

Yamato in SH4:

[bigboywooly]

Originally Posted by wamphyri

Yes you guessed it. That's the Yamato flying an american flag

Turns out bigboywooly that it was easier than I thought. For this ship there's 3 materials listed. For all 3 I embedded an image under them, I used the regular texture because after testing I think there's no way that sh5 will use a bumpmap or occlusion map from a dat. Then I also told it to use an explicit texture, the same texture that I embedded and make sure to change the texture filters at the bottom of that page to linear because with point the mipmap goes all wonky. (eventually I found out which ones needed a texture and which ones were for the occlusion and bump map.. not that we can use them tho)

If I didn't do it exactly this way I'd just get the grey model in game. iambecomelife mentioned that we'd only be able to use one texture/ship but with them changing to granny files we have that anyways, but atleast now we can clone ships and give them each their own texture.

This gets the texture showing but I noticed that some things still need to be fixed, but this is to be expected. Hope this gets the ball rolling for everyone.

lol arrived at same conclusion myself earlier



SH3 units deff look better with out the additional textures
BUT
No damage model - shells go right through
AI needs altering to new ones plus a lot more I guess

[wamphyri]

Originally Posted by bigboywooly

lol arrived at same conclusion myself earlier

SH3 units deff look better with out the additional textures
BUT
No damage model - shells go right through
AI needs altering to new ones plus a lot more I guess

When I was trying to sink the yamato for fun I noticed something odd. A torp with a magnetic trigger would hit it fine, but an impact pistol and the torp would go right through it like the 88's shells do.

Plus nothing I tried would get the o-map to show. I tried everything. I'm no graphic artist but was wondering if it's possible to somehow get the o-map to combine with the texture map. I tried using blender to import the 3d model, apply the texture and the o-map then I would try and export it as one texture, but I don't know enough about any of that to do it right, or if it's even possible (instead of having the sh5 3d engine do it).

[tater]

Do SH5 roster files look like those in SH4? Do any of those point at an o-map, or are all smashed into the granny file? If that is the case, does that mean that SH5 ships cannot have more than one skin per 3d model?

SH4 was an improvement over SH3 in that you could reuse the same model by pointing a new ship name at it, allowing variants without extra system loads. Is SH5 a step backwards in this regard?

[bigboywooly]

Originally Posted by tater

Do SH5 roster files look like those in SH4? Do any of those point at an o-map, or are all smashed into the granny file? If that is the case, does that mean that SH5 ships cannot have more than one skin per 3d model?

SH4 was an improvement over SH3 in that you could reuse the same model by pointing a new ship name at it, allowing variants without extra system loads. Is SH5 a step backwards in this regard?

Many cfgs still piont to a texture in the Sea folder but lookin there and most have none
In the texture folder though again not all
Seems there is no system
So yes a step backwards
Was something I really liked about SH4 in regards to textures
No need to use an ext program to date change them
You can still use one model to be 2 ships using the cfg
As in the case of the Littoria and Duilio

ClassName=BBLittorio
3DModelFileName=data/Sea/NBB_Littorio/NBB_VV

RL

Unit]
ClassName=BBDuilio
3DModelFileName=data/Sea/NBB_Littorio/NBB_VV

RL

Close but no cigar esp as both have exact same eqp

So looks like that feature still works but textures are another ball game altogether

[tater]

Having the clones with alternate textures is so important, though.

Sad there are no dev posts WRT this issue. It seems a huge backwards step unless their business model is to sell ships. The trouble of course being that you'd have to pay for the new ships AND bust your chops to fix them to look right because whoever makes them is unfamiliar with the terms "google" or "library."

[wamphyri]

I've taken the textures out of the directories and haven't had anything happen because of it. Looks like it's a step backwards with all the textures jammed into the granny file, so in fact we have no way of changing the textures at all in a sh5 model. Plus the 3d engine changed so that certain things like the 0-map only work from a granny file

[tater]

Wow, that sucks for merchants in particular. The ships that most need large numbers of variant paint jobs, and it's impossible without a new dat (granny, whatever) for each?