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

[TheDarkWraith]

Originally Posted by Zedi

There is a small problem with Elco. She is listed as.. escort ship in the roster. And that will make the game to use her as generic escort for convoys. Now having this guys to cross the Atlantic as escort.. is a bit too much to ask. And to change every single traffic/convoy in all the campaign files just to customize the escorts.. is too much for me. So what can we do with this guys to assign him only to coast patrol? Create a new type entry in the roster?

you can change it's type to something else. I'm not sure if we can make new 'types' or not. Actually I'm not even sure of all the types defined by the game. I haven't located anything in the .exe or any of the .act files that says x types are the only types recognized by the game. The only clue I've found is in the \data\Roster\Names.cfg. At the top it defines Merchant, Warship, etc. Maybe add a new entry there and see if it shows up in campaign.

[Zedi]

I sent you booth the textures for all these 4 ships, including their normal maps.

Thanks Stoian for the no fog fix!! Finally I can see the ships. So here is the latest test in campaign with Rongel's version ship included:

The rust is there, but no other bug. Light map seems to be ok.


Akita is white. Dunno why, used only what you sent me. The texture is dds with no alpha channel and is placed in the tex folder.
Also her bow seems to be lower in the water than her stern. The green blankets are still a black hole.


Here are booth ships one after another in a large convoy:


I will have to test to add a new type .. hope it will work, or tis will be a huge problem. I just cannot edit the million generic trafic included in te game and cutomize all of them. Is just impossible as it would take me months.

[Rongel]

The rust is there, but no other bug.

It's not a bug! I truly believe that it should be there if the occlusion map has rust painted in it (and that is the case in my ship). That is the way it works in SH 4 so the import is fine. The bug that is killing me is the opposite sun light. Now in my ship I took it out by setting the Unifiedrendercontroler's Loddistance to a negative number. But this seems to cause couple of other small problems. If we can't fix this, then maybe it's better to take off the sunlight effect completely .

[TheDarkWraith]

Originally Posted by Rongel

If we can't fix this, then maybe it's better to take off the sunlight effect completely .

remember we are treading on new ground here. There is much to learn/figure out still. Don't get aggravated. I don't know how many times I tried and failed to make something work in SH5 before I finally found the right combination that worked. We will eventually find the right combination here also The more people working/experimenting with importing new ships the quicker we will get there

[Zedi]

I agree, the rust should be the last problem on the list. Fixing the light map, shadows, transparency, reflection on water are more important right now. Wish a dev could hop in and give few hints as they said importing ships is possible even if its a bit tricky.

[Rongel]

remember we are treading on new ground here. There is much to learn/figure out still. Don't get aggravated. I don't know how many times I tried and failed to make something work in SH5 before I finally found the right combination that worked. We will eventually find the right combination here also The more people working/experimenting with importing new ships the quicker we will get there

Agreed! I think just that this task is starting to damage my real life soon, I'm absolutely obsessed with this now. People should be warned how addictive this is . I hope too that when we are close enough we can make a really detailed and easy tutorial and others will join!

Wish a dev could hop in and give few hints as they said importing ships is possible even if its a bit tricky.

My thoughts exactly! If somebody would just say "you need to untick this button" and it will work nicely

[TheDarkWraith]

Originally Posted by Zedi

I sent you booth the textures for all these 4 ships, including their normal maps.

Akita is white. Dunno why, used only what you sent me. The texture is dds with no alpha channel and is placed in the tex folder.
Also her bow seems to be lower in the water than her stern. The green blankets are still a black hole.

@ Zedi: maybe I'm missing something but this ship is rendered exactly the way it should be according to the texture defined for it. I loaded up the texture in Photoshop and compared it to what shows in game. It matches. It's grey/white because you made the texture that way. What am I missing here? What's wrong with the light map? Granted I don't know what I'm exactly looking for in this area so tell me what I should/should not be seeing. To me it looks fine.

[Rongel]

Here is my version of Akita. I made it really quickly, copied the Sh4 ship folder to Sh 5, replaced Zedi's textures, didn't touch the dat-file (so the damage modelling isn't in place) but looks good to me, no need to embed I guess. Don't know if you can spot anything crucial from the small image, though.

PS. Note the wrong illumination in the sunset picture .

[TheDarkWraith]

Think I found the right combination:


What I did:

- all the embedded textures were removed for the Type 2/0 nodes below
- The first Type 2/0 node uses external texture (class name_T01.tga) and it's name is cfg#TXR_class name. It is not double sided and uses linear filtering with no in memory compression.
- The second Type 2/0 node uses external texture (class name_O01.tga) and it's name is cfg#TXR_class name. It is double sided and uses linear filtering with no in memory compression.
- The third Type 2/0 node uses external texture (class name_N01.tga) and it's name is cfg#TXR_class name. It is double sided and uses linear filtering with no in memory compression.
- Unified Render Controller settings:
MediumLODDistance = 15.0
LowLODDistance = 0.0
BumpEnable = True
SpecularMaskEnable = True
SelfOccEnable = True
UseSpecularFromDiffuse = False
- the class name_T01.dds is Zedi's and is located in \data\Textures\TNormal\tex
- the class name_O01.dds is stock SH4 and is located in \data\Sea\class name
- the class name_N01.dds is Zedi's and is located in \data\Sea\class name

This has the light shining on the right side (correct illumination), the holes show under water, the damage texture problem doesn't exist, the light map works, the rust doesn't show, and the lighting doesn't snap from dark/light or light/dark as camera moves closer/farther away from unit...looks quite excellent

The only anomoly is when the camera is very close to the ship the lighting is turned off and the texture gets darker. You can tell that the game switched to some other light mode and all.

and in bright daylight here is what it looks like:


big difference from my previous pictures of this ship.

[Rongel]

This has the light shining on the right side (correct illumination), the holes show under water, the damage texture problem doesn't exist, the light map works, the rust doesn't show, and the lighting doesn't snap from dark/light or light/dark as camera moves closer/farther away from unit...looks quite excellent

OMG! Have to try this! If this works I think we're back on track!

[TheDarkWraith]

Originally Posted by Rongel

OMG! Have to try this! If this works I think we're back on track!

Yes, please verify that you can duplicate results on different ships also I'm testing on different ships also.

Trying another ship reveals that it's still blending the _Txx and _Oxx maps together and using that blend for final rendering. I know this because the rust showed on another ship. So to remove the rust one must edit the _Oxx file and remove it (or add more if that's the effect wanted). I don't understand why they put rust on the _Oxx map and not on the _Txx maps. I guess if you wanted the rust to be visual no matter what texture is used could be a reason why.

[Zedi]

Originally Posted by TheDarkWraith

@ Zedi: maybe I'm missing something but this ship is rendered exactly the way it should be according to the texture defined for it. I loaded up the texture in Photoshop and compared it to what shows in game. It matches. It's grey/white because you made the texture that way. What am I missing here? What's wrong with the light map? Granted I don't know what I'm exactly looking for in this area so tell me what I should/should not be seeing. To me it looks fine.

Here is the hull part of the texture I did. The basic gray texture is the same used by many merchants in SH5. Its a light grey texture and not white. If you see it differently on your side, let me know.



Problem I see is that the hull is reflecting to much of the ambient light, thats why is so white and shiny. So the ambient reflection should be a bit lowered.

I had the same problem with the Elco boat when I did the first texture for her, but there I fixed it by using a much more darker texture. So the texture itself was almost black, but in game was rendered gray. Maybe I should apply the same trick here too, thats an easy fix.

LE: As you can see, this problem exist only on hull and where this texture is used. The rest is rendered ok.

[Rongel]

Yes, please verify that you can duplicate results on different ships also I'm testing on different ships also.

I'm not sure if it's my setup, but I still see sunlight bugs, bit different when I was adjusting the MediumLODDistance. If I go really close to the ship, the sunlight snaps opposite again. I guess we could eliminate this by setting the LowLODDistance to a negative number (it worked before) but I believe it will cause the underwater damage graphics to dissappear.

Also, again, I'm using Sh 4 guns in my ship that should be textured, but they are rendered black. Only when I go really close to the ship, it will show the textures. But does it really work for you, TDW? If you go so close to the ship as you can get, does the sunlight stay ok? And if so, do the damage graphics show underwater? Is it my settings?

[TheDarkWraith]

Originally Posted by Rongel

I'm not sure if it's my setup, but I still see sunlight bugs, bit different when I was adjusting the MediumLODDistance. If I go really close to the ship, the sunlight snaps opposite again. I guess we could eliminate this by setting the LowLODDistance to a negative number (it worked before) but I believe it will cause the underwater damage graphics to dissappear.

Also, again, I'm using Sh 4 guns in my ship that should be textured, but they are rendered black. Only when I go really close to the ship, it will show the textures. But does it really work for you, TDW? If you go so close to the ship as you can get, does the sunlight stay ok? And if so, do the damage graphics show underwater? Is it my settings?

no, I said the only anomoly is when you get really close to the ship the game engine shifts to a different lighting model. But you have to be really close. If you outside that distance everything looks good. Same for you?

[Rongel]

The only anomoly is when the camera is very close to the ship the lighting is turned off and the texture gets darker. You can tell that the game switched to some other light mode and all.

Oops! I was so excited that I missed that! I was mistaken that the problem was gone altogether. Yes, I had the same situation, it was almost the same results when I was messing with the MediumLODDistance. I've tried to change every other setting in the Unified Render Controller but no luck. Maybe I couldn't explain my situation correctly.

You know, maybe this is something that we can live with but I would really like to get rid of this bug. It disables the textures on SH 4 guns too, unless you go right next to the ship.