[Help] Mesh and or Texture Problem....

[Ryderstorm]

Ok I created a mesh in ms3d. And then I UV mapped it with ms3d's texture cordinate thing.....Then I regrouped the model as all the uv cordinates lie on the same thing or whatever. Then i made myself a cheat map overlay of the UV map to assit in texture kitbashing(just to see a concept). So I applied the texture and stuff is all goofed up, somehow part of my texture is see thru????...Im ataching 2 images...one a clear shot of the mesh. The other is the "textured" mesh which looks weird. I cant really describe it but if I hide dif parts of the mesh the others look fine but when I have all un-hidden together it looks just like the image and right now im disapointed and clueless to what I did wrong. Anybody have any Ideas?

And thank you in advance for anybody that gives this any thought.


Oh and btw WOOT!!! 100th post...to bad its a troubleshooting one

 

[Adm_Z]

I think it might have to do with the face lighting and such. when you apply textures, there are all those settings, and I think it has to do with them.

Sorry I can't be of more help...But I am really loven' what your maken' :Y

 

[Ryderstorm]

yeah i kinda noticed somehow stuff is transparent but im not sure what the proper settings are and what they actually mean. All I know is right now im tired and will try again tomorow. I allmost made the one screencap a lol pic with a big fail stamp on it.....I still have some humor about it but Im learning as Im going.

 

[Adm_Z]

I usually just use trial and error if it won't work the first time. I don't know all the correct settings, but I'm pretty sure those are the settings you would mess with to get it to work.

 

[Ryderstorm]

it was stupid paint.net!!....It had saved an alpha channel that was messing everything up......I blacked out the background and now stuff is fine....which is weird...but thanks adm_z!! i wouldnt have thought to look at the texture itself tonight without ur help!

And now for a full mockup....yes it looks bad but im just trying to figure something out lol. And no i didnt make the texs they are from coxxon....

 

[Majestic]

With lightmaps, go to your material settings and there is a drop down menu, click ignore alpha and it will show up fine.

It's looking great mate.

 

[Ryderstorm]

Thanks I tried what u said Majestic and that worked too.

Hmm at first I was hating the texture but im starting to really like it...I plan to do some more mesh work as the complete mocked up mesh is still under 1200 polys. my goal is to have a really nice looking model at around 1400 polys or so...maybe higher but we will see. Id like to when I do finaly get this thing done have it work for everybody and not just high end pc's or whatnot. But first I would like to get some kinda texture figured for it as its helping me guide any further mesh additions I may put on it.

So I have 2 new questions.

1. Is it a bad thing at all to just have a single mesh group or is it better to break the mesh into several groups?

2. Does anybody know of a good source posibly for nice orthographic shots of a CG baseship? As I would love to assign a more "cannonish" texture to it if I could obtain ok from the author. My texture skills are basicly an F- (

 

[Achilles]

I always reckon it's best to have a single mesh, easier for trouble shooting.

 

[Majestic]

And looks better when it blows up. However I always find I need to use more due to textures.

 

[Starfox1701]

Well the more mesh groups a ships has the more processing power it takes for the game to run it. Even so with textures being what they are these days 3 to 6 are often requiered to do the job. I personaly wouldn't have mor then 6 in a ship.

 

[Achilles]

ahh, I should clarify. I meant to say that every none animated face using the same texture should by collapsed into a single mesh... I generally end up using 2-4 textures, there is no limit as far as I'm aware but keeping it low does indeed help computer performance, adding LODs to both the mesh and textures will help immensely. Also he's right about mesh looking better when you group it up, you get larger chunks

Hope that's a better explaination.

 

[Ryderstorm]

Ok thanks for the info. I think maybe I will try to keep it a single mesh group if I can.

Btw what would be a animated face?

 

[Starfox1701]

The doors on a Fed construction ship are the most prominant example I can think of but any Mesh based keyframe or flip book animation would apply.

 

[Ryderstorm]

Ahh I see. Thanks for that info but I think thats far beyond my capabilties. I was just curious is all.

 

[Ryderstorm]

Ok I now have a new problem....

What are the proper material settings for the texture?

When I exported my model the texture came out far to bright in game. I have not assigned no alpha channel to it so im not very sure what Im suposed to do.

the tag im using is:

!phong_basemap3_!default

and my settings are(I think):

ambient:

Hue 160 all others zero

diffuse:

Hue 160 sat zero lum 160 and rgb all at 170

specular:

hue 160 all others zero with slider all the way to right

emmisive:

hue 160 all others zero with all others zero and slider all the way to right.

Im enclosing cap of the model....but basicly in game it apears whiter in color radther than the darker grey and also I saw no evidence of phong lighting being applied to it as I didnt see torp flares illuminate the surface of the model

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Majestic]

Okay mate, I can help you here as I ran into this problem when I was first converting models. But thanks to Fahres he got me in the right direction.

Instead of having _!default you should have _!noalpha. You only add _!default when you have alphas/lightmaps.

Also you need to have the following material settings:

Ambent: Hue 160 Lum 0 (Black)
Specular: Hue 160 Lum 0 (Black)
Diffuse: Hue 160 Lum 240 (White)
Emissive: Hue 160 Lum 240 (White)

 

[Ryderstorm]

Thanks Majestic that did the trick perfectly.
Oh and I includes a sneak pic of what is coming soon....

....

 

[Adm_Z]

Amazing Ryder!!! You must Release! I would love to use it in my mod

 

[Majestic]

You're welcome Ryder. Looking great.

 

[thunderfoot]

MIGAWD, Man! She's frakkin' bee-yoooti-full! Me likey! Me want! Gimmeegimmeegimmeegimmeegimmee... Well, you get the idea, lol.

 

[Ryderstorm]

Calm down man calm down!!!

Thank you for the compliments. But still a ways to go on this. I am debateing of reworking the textures and I still have to adjust some 40 hardpoints.

Also I will be doing some form of a HP map.

So just hold your horses buckaroos!!!

 

[Adm_Z]

so is this a Cylon war era ship, or a TOS baseship? it sure looks like the first.


oh and if you use Assimview, and print screen, you can get a HP map instantly

See below.

 

[Ryderstorm]

Actually I just used assimview to figure out why the hardpoints were messed up but its fixed now. I personally radther do a slightly better map than generic assimview but well see.....

I was going for the First Cylon war era for this baseship. I hope it fits as it seems to for my mind at least. Unfortunately I cant really find much visual documentation on the models ZOIC did for razor so I kinda just made stuff up from TOS and BSG-R........

 

[Adm_Z]

I think it looks great! It definitely Struck me as Cylon War era, and the textures are good because they are similar to the other models here.

I can't wait until you can release it Though, Its ok if you Release it before you write odfs too, like I said i can't wait

 

[Majestic]

To be honest the Cylon Basestar in TOS and in the TNS Cylon War are the same design. Just graphically updated for the new generation whom the show was aimed at. Those who didn't grow up with BSG like myself.

They did the same for the Raiders, Viper II and Centurions in Razor.

 

[Ryderstorm]

Yeah I agree the basic design looks similar from tos verus re-imagined. They did update the mkIIs and the old raiders a lil bit however I couldnt really tell in razor if the baseships were indeed the same model as tos but just digitized.

I just made what I could with what I had available to me....And for me it fits more with say the first cylon war from the re-imagined series than tos. I will never claim its even remotely cannon. In fact I will claim that my creation is nothing more than a cheap knockoff or ****py imatation as that is how I truly feel about it. I much radther would have liked to have made a cannon baseship however after many hours of trial and error I had nothing texture wise...so I kitbashed away at textures and reworked the mesh a lil bit and what u see in the screen cap is what came out.

Sorry to go off on this rant...Im just not happy with this creation to be honest....

 

[Majestic]

I too am also limited by not being able to make textures. I have tried and they have turned out very poorly.

But it's still a great effort and result that you should be proud of. Many wouldn't be have able to do that, plus artistic licence is the best thing created since sliced bread in my opinion.

 

[EAS_Intrepid]

Sorry to go off on this rant...Im just not happy with this creation to be honest....

I think it is a good try. You only get better with trying.
Myself I have struggled and I still struggle with the design of the Brakiri Avioki cruiser from B5, same with the Centauri Vorchan
It took me five years to get some decent models together...


Just keep trying, keep looking at other people's work and try to learn.
The mesh could use a bit more detail here and there, but overall it is all right.

 

[Ryderstorm]

Ok Im working on a different model now and Im having a very odd problem. It has to do with everbodys favorite subject.....HARDPOINTING!!!!!! And this is for A2.

Ok my problem is I cant seem to get multiple meshes to show up in storm 3d..

I have a model.

It has 2 mesh groups as follows.

tbolt1
tbolt2

I then added these 3 nodes.

h_scene_root
m_tbolt1
m_tbolt2

All three nodes are unlinked.
Only the tbolt2 mesh shows in storm 3d

Now I did some experimenting to troubleshoot and this is where I get lost.

If I node the model with just the scene root and then m_tbolt1 and export it the tbolt1 mesh shows.

If I node the model with the root and tbolt1 and tbolt2 nodes and export it only the tbolt2 mesh shows up.

I have reinstalled ms3d and the armada exporters in case it was messed up and its still messed up. Or am I doing something incredibly dumb and just cant see my error?

Thank you in advance for any help anyone can render..and thank you all who read this anyways.

EDIT:

Btw I tried linking the nodes together and that just made a bunch of....well it was quite amusing to say the least lol.

 

[EAS_Intrepid]

Hi!

tbolt1 and tbolt2 need to be linked to "h_scene root". Try adding an "h_geometry" node as well.

Remember: all "joints" (as it is called in MS3d) have to be linked one way or another to "h_scene root"

It works like this:

h_scene root
-h_geometry
-h_damage
--h_engines
--h_crew
--h_life
--(etc)
-h_lights
--s_bluelight1
--(etc)
-h_hardpoints
--h_hp01
--(etc)


If you can't figure it out, you can send the mesh to me and I take a look at it.

Does the SOD-exporter show any error messages while or after exporting?