New model system

[Fish]

That would be great for a big rotating part  yea and huge pistons on the side of a ship

[fluffyfreak]

"...stop talking about it." 0_0 already shocking by this sort of despote who's think he can say to others what they can talk about on a forum ! robn , personally i've really stop to talking about this new concept here, i'm just take a seat and waiting after the fantastic new models create by the new "artists" who join in mass the project Pioneer since this new system of modeling is integrated ... but the future extinction of the LMR in pioneer mean also that the "several brilliant models" disappear if its impossible to make transition on another system , so excuse me but , i 'll continue to talking about this real problem (on another topic). end of discution (hoppe you are satisfy robn), and good luck to the "artists" . Well he did ask you, and gernot, several times to start a new topic to discuss it. That's not being a despot that's being reasonable for a while and then getting fed up. Also those "several brilliant models" won't disappear because robn, who you jsut called a despot, wrote an obj file exporter for the modelviewer so that they can be saved out and brought over to the new system. So nothing lost, new things gained. It certainly isn't "impossible to make transitions", so far you've hit two minor issues which are both known about and temporary, and you don't seem to have tried the exporter which was mentioned in the first post. andy

[Pinback]

As Robn stated in the OP this thread about the new model system. Any member who is unhappy about the change should start their own thread.

[Potsmoke66]

There will be a fix for this landing in the next few days (hopefully). We'll be creating the collision mesh with gear down instead of gear up.Longer term, we need to be able to refresh a collision mesh for animated parts. Its on the list of stuff that has to be done before LMR goes. sounds good, you know i'm longing fort such since "attila crossed the alps". --- yep fluffyfreak, actually the situation is this, i can level the ships proper when they dock with the new models, this i noticed, only the finally docked ship will sink in to the lowest y of the body.or stands to high in case for LMR, it depends also on the collision mesh you use. --- somehow i guess it will workout fine,even if i still can't get warm with .dae...but it works, that's what counts. i.e. the "enormous" filesize you get with a final model is a bit, let's say "unhandy".of course plays no big role and zipped as a mod it's small as before. i will be off for a week, just if someone is missing me... --- i noticed a update to the pioneer branches, anything of interest?i will see, i guess i won't use it on the mac, times to tight, but i will see what has changed at home.

[Fish]

Here are a few things i would like in the new model system.these are just ideas and i know the model system is not ready so please don't think im pushing for anything. onFire animation that's called when shooting.onHyperDrive animation thats called when the player starts a hyper jump.colored lights like navlight_green navlight_red and so on.(perhaps they could be navlight_1 and then the color for navlight_1 could be defined in the .model file using something like light1 = RGB or hex or something )colored thrusters similar to the navlights. again these are just some ideas but i will stop now as im rambling on a bit

[Guest]

these are just ideas and i know the model system is not ready so please don't think im pushing for anything. That's fine. We need artists to tell us what's missing, because although some missing features are obvious, some are not. John B

[Zordey]

Just seeing Fish's event trigger wish list, I would like to add a couple more: on entering / leaving atmosphere, to allow atmospheric wings to fold in / outon landeding / taking off, to allow doors to open / closeFish, if you place an empty object and call it navlight_xxx it places a navlight, although it is always red as far as I can figure out, I presume this function is not fully implemented yet. I assume the system will automatically assign a colour depending on the side of the model the navlight is placed on?

[Fish]

Fish, if you place an empty object and call it navlight_xxx it places a navlight, although it is always red as far as I can figure out, I presume this function is not fully implemented yet. that is correct but i was thinking of cases where i may want a different colored light (eg. potsmoke66's ufo would look cool with purple and green lights around the bottom)

[Zordey]

Fish, could the same not be achieved using the 'tex_glow' emission texture map? (I'm a complete modeling noob so I'm still trying to figure all this stuff out)

[Fish]

to some degree but if you wanted them to blink then i think you would need light objects perhaps having an option in the .model file as to how fast they blink if at all would be nice

[Luomu]

Q&A!Is it really necessary to need a UV map for the entire model? There are certain portions of my model that I would be happy if they were just the base object with a colour and specular level.It is always necessary to generate UV coordinates (not complicated; select faces, auto-unwrap, done), but you can have untextured materials. However, instead of using multiple materials just to have some "untextured" parts it is more effective to use areas of flat colour in one texture.In real time rendering it is a good practice to pack as much variety as you can in one texture instead of multiple smaller ones. It's maybe for Blender and Max only?I guarantee latest Blender is supported, Max has been confirmed by Fish to work, don't know about other programs and their best practices yet. If it can export Collada it should work. The loader can handle a few different file formats now.going by this [url]http://assimp.source...es_formats.html[/url] as long as you export it to a .DAE it should be fineIn theory, everything from that list.In practice, not all formats and exporters are equal, .obj for example does not store a node structure so it cannot do everything. Please do experiment, but I recommend: stick to Collada (.dae) for everything. seriously. why don't support a mesh format like .x fully and i don't have to mess with materials and textures a second time?There's more to the in game materials than just name + texture. Different programs, model formats and exporters have different capabilities, so to see how the model is actually rendered by the game engine you would have to tweak, export and reload multiple times. So, it's easier to just require it always defined in a unified way, and tweaking the material does not require re-exporting the model. It's more resistant to modeler/exporter version changes as well. im wondering is there a way to 'ping-pong' or 'loop' animations yet or is this something still to come?Yeah, at first the modelviewer had play/pause/rewind buttons and you could specify a "loop" flag for the animation, but I took it out for this first release to concentrate on getting this show on the road. We'll have to decide which animations the game will support but a looping 'idle' animation may be one of them (radar dish on a space station or similar). something else, collada exists in different versions, which is supported?1.4.1 at least, this is what blender and max export, we'll have to collect experiences with others onFire animation that's called when shooting.planned, feel free to already animate a gun model so I have a test case onHyperDrive animation thats called when the player starts a hyper jump.should be doable colored lights like navlight_green navlight_red and so on.(perhaps they could be navlight_1 and then the color for navlight_1 could be defined in the .model file using something like light1 = RGB or hex or something )yeah, planned. We'll just need a nice universal way to determine the light animation. At minimum named groups that animate according to some standard (navlight_red, navlight_green...). In max and blender one can attach comments or other metadata to objects, and a custom exporter can take advantage for this, but with Pioneer we have to support a wider variety of software and object names are likely to be the only grouping method.Actually my first plan was to allow defining attachment points, thrusters etc. also in the .model file as simple lists, but right now I'm waiting to see if requiring .dae or similar is enough for everyone. colored thrusters similar to the navlights.Thruster colour would be likely determined by the ship config on entering / leaving atmosphere, to allow atmospheric wings to fold in / outon landeding / taking off, to allow doors to open / closeFish, if you place an empty object and call it navlight_xxx it places a navlight, although it is always red as far as I can figure out, I presume this function is not fully implemented yet. I assume the system will automatically assign a colour depending on the side of the model the navlight is placed on?Folding wings, or a B5 style spinning midsection is already possible as far as the model system is concerned, but we'll have to figure out the collisions and make the game aware of these animations. For now you can wing animations to the landing gear action if you want to experiment. I'll consider an animation triggered by surface landing (and playing reverse on takeoff) so you can have some door activity  Fish, could the same not be achieved using the 'tex_glow' emission texture map?btw, maybe not related but I have not planned material animations 

[fluffyfreak]

1.4.1 at least, this is what blender and max export, we'll have to collect experiences with others Worth noting that Max/Maya vary what they export depending on the version, MAX has notoriously bad DAE support by default.You might want to get an alternative DAE exporter plugin, or just do the modelling using MAX then export to DAE using Blender.

[Fish]

feel free to already animate a gun model so I have a test caseok here is a realy simple weapon animated over 12 frames (half a second) its only the firing part of the animation but if needed i can fix that to include it resetting to its start positionthe scale may be a bit of again let me know and i can change itthe texture is not great (hell even the unwrap is poor) but the basic idea is thereim not sure about the timings for animated weapons (will the anim be sped up for faster guns or will i need a faster anim?)as time goes buy i will replace it with a better modeltest weapon

[Zordey]

Quick question on scale... I have been working to the scale of, 1 blender unit = 1 meter (I had seen that in documentation somewhere but cant find it now). I have 2 models that I am experimenting with and both of their bounding boxes are around 40x40x8 meters, but when I drop them into the game they appear quite small (not much bigger than the standard eagle). Am I doing something wrong or are the other models not following that convention and I need to scale my models up?

[Fish]

i found the best way to get the scale is to import something like the "wave hypersonic bomber" in to your modeling software then scale your model around that. i had same problem from the other direction my models were to big

[Luomu]

The scale of the old models is all over the place, so please do not use them as a guideline, especially the oversized buildings and the eagle Do all new models in 1 unit = 1 meter scale, and try to keep the sizes realistic, whatever that might mean (a space shuttle is around 40 meters long if I rembember).

[fluffyfreak]

37.24m apparently

[Zordey]

Thats grand then, I intended my models to be around shuttle size so I will just let everything else scale in round them over time :nyam:

[Fish]

can i just check that this scale looks right size in max is 40x20x10 (max units)using automatic unit scale on export (that happens to be inches) showing a scale factor of 1 if i set it to meters on export the scale factor is 0.0254 and thats way to small in game (isnt it?)

[Zordey]

From memory that looks to be about the length that my models sit on the landing pad although your buildings look smaller? I use a LUA script to load my model (so you see the model change) from the default start and my model is not much bigger than the eagle. Very roughly 1 inch = 25mm so that scale is probably correct converting from inches to meters