SpaceSimCentral

Wow! There's a lot to respond to here! As I said, I'm not sure who made the original Pioneer models, but I think it would be nice to include a proper credit if we can find out. Your info is interesting. I didn't know that Tom worked with his wife Maude on this project. You say you use "GL Xtractor". Do you mean OGLE? I can't seem to get to their site at the moment. It would be really handy if I could pull out the textures with the model. I'm doing the uv unwrap bit with Blender, but no matter how I much stretch and pull I can't get everything to line up correctly. I'm just figuring out how to draw textures on the Blender model, but it's been tedious. I want to redraw them in higher rez anyway. Landing gear has been a total mystery to me. I haven't found a good tutorial on it, up to now. (thanks) I'm planning to tackle it after I get the textures to my liking. As usual, most of what you're trying to tell me is a bit over my head, but I'll refer back to it when I'm ready for it.

GLXtractor is "a cool tool for OGLE" as it describes itself, you won't need OGLE, GLXtractor comes with all the needed libraries and the config files are preset to work out of the box. erm sort of "screen hack" like robn stated once, but it didn't harms anything. don't forget even the cartography dudes of "ETH Zurich" use OGLE.that was the place where i found GL Xtractor first, our premium technical high school.(they are cool and well even old "Colonial Conquest II" for the miggy is from the biologists section of ETH). i guess it's still here on SSC's download section if not, and if it isn't available in the web anymore tell me i can upload it to my skydrive. i see it must have ben before SSC moved, thus i will upload both to my skydrive.or why not here on SSC under utilities as it was before.but i need to check first if it's present on the macbook, else this would take a week, i ran out of money this month, had to pay power and my new ordered web, which has cost me all in all half of the money i receive from welfare.ran to a police hold up, ("up against the wall motherf***") and this wasn't funny at all, even when i soon laughed about it, on our independence day, they cut your wings, well, well, i wonder what wiliam tell would have done in such a situation...i had a blody nose, was nearby hospitalized (i told the doctor, do you see any harms? me not please let me go)while the constable ran to the doctor because his hand is hurt, erm phew what term to use for this without hurting someones feeling...a mimosa in my eyes. now it's a official delict, i attacked the police and not like it was in reality the police attacked me and robbed my freedom.well by my honor i never attacked them, verbal maybe but not physical, i have no words for such a injustice.except maybe who replaces freedom with security will loose both me the buddy of the local "hooligan" (who isn't a bad boy after all), friend of any poor farmers boy who had to go through hard times because daddy was a drunken headyou do this to me? i hope you burn well in hell! no, better burn long, endless long. "take this rotten badge off from me, i can't use it anymore"(in other terms, who should wear the badge for real the mimosa constable or a boyscout like me?i thought they get trained in fighting? and run to a doctor because hand is hurt? in what world do i live?they wear protective gloves with carbon inlays, how can he have hurt his hand at all?what a liar! and what a weak character, certainly the badge doesn't belongs to him!) i have a hundret good reasons why i don't like to work anymore, i don't like to work for softballs like him and be even suppressed by them.it's not, it's never worth any money i can gain.first learn to have respect, only then the donkey gernot will go back to work.i'm not a "horse" i'm a "donkey", i'm not stupid, i only have my limits, i have some pride and some ideology i follow.i would do anything for a broken ass, even share my bed and food with my foe, but not for ppl like him. edit:there is one job i would like to do. i would like to... "look how shiny the oak gets if i polished it, doesn't it looks great?doesn't the texture of the oak look deep? it's made only from the best natural grown swiss oak, i ran into the forest at newmoon in december to chop it only for you, it's your shrine my friend..." (lets figure this out, i'm here to put things in the right light, usually the donkey is the "sucker", but it was uttered unwisely only to keep ppl down.who is in fact the "sucker"? a horse will pull the plow even if you beat it, no matter how often you beat it it will still pull the plow. the donkey won't do such, he can do hard work, maybe harder as the horse, a donkey climbs any passage and walks on where the horse steps back because of fear. but if you beat the donkey he stops and kicks you, that's anything else as stupid, the donkey only has it's pride and limits. it's imho a sign for typical human behave, we preferred the animals who are in bondage, we prefere the dog in front of the cat even we prefere the horse in front of the donkey. we say "a horse has pride" - what pride if he pulls the plow no matter if i beat it? it's a good slave to us that's all, that's why we honored it and said it has pride where is no pride to see at all, neither any dog has pride, for a handful of food he wil be your willing servant, while a cat will never loose it's pride, no matter how often you feed it, she knows "i don't need you, but i'm pleased and feel comfortable in your presence". though we measured it by the will to be our slaves and not by intelligence or pride, and believe me the same we do amongst our own species, we honor the willing slave and dispite the prideful upright woman/man. remember? my cat was a good friend to me, she awaited me from work almost like a dog, nonetheless she was free and could leave and return whenever it pleased her. she hated it to sit on my shoulder nonetheless she did it because she knew it pleases me, give a animal it's freedom and it will honor it, same to us humans give a woman/man it's freedom and you will be honored for a lifetime. some will first have to learn how to handle freedom after thoousends of years of slavery which still goes on even if we don't like to see this, no one likes to be a slave, nonetheless most still are. some are simply slaves to the money, some are slaves to drugs, others are slaves to sex and most are slaves to power.as a resumeé i would honor snakes and cats far above any else animal, just like the ancient egypt did, one simple reason is the capapility of hunting the mean rats which eat our food, a second one might be their natural pride, you can't enslave cats or snakes.if we look now at our monotheistic religion hmm... we turned everything upside down our ancestors believed in for what reason?a simple one, it grants easier enslaving of ppl. but it has nothing to do with pride or intelligence only with servility. the roman empire didn't fall by christianity, the roman empire would have been stupid as a bag full of straw if it wouldn't have recognized this power). i once uploaded it together with the my slightly edited direct x export script for blender 2.49, "edited" because my version exports "key 1" (as it's in blender) as "key 0" how it's needed for FFED3D (even this is a simple solution 1 - 1 = 0... and so on, who would have ever suspected this ), further it removes some more "dangerous" naming remnants which aren't allowed in a x mesh (# * / and other glyphs will be replaced with a underscore). e.g. if you open/convert a 3ds mesh the objects and materials are named "#some_name" such will break the direct x mesh and that's why i replaced them. that was quite a easy task to do, some restrictions was already made i only had to add some more in the same way. --- i like it if things are "idiotensicher", intentionally my "rot_gear" was planned as "idiot safe", but it failed at a point of which i should have been aware of, the idea was to let the script create a submodel named "'entered name of model' .. _sub" to pre-rotate it for a otherwise impossible "z" rotation, unfortunately or logically you have for a standard gear if it's called then more as once several "gear1_sub" and this results in a slight confusion nonetheless it didn't crashed the game, but i guess when two models get drawn at the same time with the same sub-model it will be the wrong one for one of them. they have to be idiot safe for a "cricket brain" like me.i'm not stupid but i can forget things very quick, that's why my school buddy "jürgen" gave me the nick "cricket brain" - "you know quite a lot things gernot, but often you forget the simpliest things so quick" - ok, cricket brain, that suits - a rinse of a memory. the idea was one could enter anything wrong as long as he states "i like to have a clockwise z rotation" the function should handle all, but i failed, or i see a solution to that now, but on the other hand until now only one idiot is using it, me - and to achieve this it gets very complex, to find a unique name based on the main models name, of course i could read the string and use it, but like i said as long as only i use it this goes to far, far to far and the "rot_gear" is already quite comfortable without that. its already cool that i can now rotate a model with a "short" command and it spits out the complete animated model i entered.the idea is that everything is aligned ordinally (or naturally, like you see it on the model) and it works, only for a z-rotation you need to pre-rotate the model ina formatted way ("nose down", pre rotate model with +y pointing to -z, or with fingers: "right hands forefinger has to point upwards" ) else it won't work.i have to pre assume a pre-rotation else i can't let the function spit out the animated model, that's why i liked to let the function control even this, but like i said it goes to far. x and y rotation - no problems and the starting position is corrected though it starts at it's ordinal alignment, like you modeled it, always.you have still two possibilities for CW or CCW movement, either by entering the proper vector i.e. v(1,0,0) for CW along x or v(-1,0,0) for CCW along x i.e.i needed this to differ between the desired rotation axes, this i can't foresee i'm no magician.still one could use negative degrees with the same result, neither one has to guess about clamping, enter start and end to clamp to, it will be computed always to "0.0 to 1.0".it does it all in the background, one who would use it only has to enter the model as usual and additionally desired degrees of rotation, direction and start&end timepoint. if i'm not wrong you have to enter "v_right" & "v_up" as usual but it will be disrespected, or partwisely - erm "cricket brain" he wrote the stuff himself and already forgot how it works.no i changed the function finally in a heavy way and now i'm not sure what is left of the original function i wrote, i removed the "idiot safe" part,in the beginning it changed everything you entered to ordinal alignment, "idiot safe" enter it wrong but result is right, but i guess due to the complications i removed this completely, or i'm not sure, i would have to refere myself to the script. it works, but hmmm... it seems i forgot already how it works exactly. fanally a quote: any smoothly working technology will have the appearance of magic - robert a. heinlein another one of him i like much politicians should read science fiction - not western and crime stories and to calm the souls down... 

to the texturing problem, yes i found that interesting myself that a projection (besides the model dump function exports the textures as well) i made in the script isn't exactly the sameas a projection in blender, from my point of view, theoretically, or in other terms, i expected it should be the same, but practically it isn't. which means you can't reach exactly the same relation as in the script. but as long as you don't change the projection it shouldn't matter, only you have to flip it vertically because of the different coordinate system, resp. orientation. projections you scripted are only usually displaced on a x repetition of the texture, because it's not easy to control this in the script. if one would like to have the projection in the script on the first repetition or ordinal coordinates of the texture, he has to respect the righthanded system. that means for the the positioning of the projection to use only negative values i.e. "texture('my_texture',v(-0.5,-0.5,0),v(1,0,0),v(0,-1,0))you see a lot of negative values, position must be held negative to keep it on the ordinal coordinates, the "V" value in this example it's "Y" must be negativeif the texture is upright, ordinally, like you look at it, top is top.that's comprehensible if you again take your hands as reference, "right hand forefinger points to you" this means -Z is the front section of the model,on the 2 dimensional texture this is the same, "V" points away from you thus it's righthanded a negative value. this is all a little ancient stuff, but why change what ms. decartez figured out? it works and we just need a congruent coordinate system in geometry to understand3 dimensional things and to understand each other what we mean, this is called science - usually. it's good thus it hasn't to be changed in no case. what can be done?if you like to keep the original projection, don't touch it, transpose, flip the UV but don't make a new one on your texture you made for a scripted projection.if it's displaced on repetition "x" of the texture and you like to have it centered, you can calculate this easy.if the original texture you used has a size of of i.e. 512x512 pixels, well then translate the texture by exactly this values or a doubling, tripling.... of it.in blender type "g" (for grab) if the pointer is in the texture window, then simply press the desired direction to move "x" or "y" and enter the value i.e. 512and the projection translates to i.e. x by 512 pixels, negative values work logically as well, but usually the displacing of a righthanded scripted projection is "to the lower left".however. now the flipping, that can be a slight problem, you can only choose between, pivot:- bounding box center- median point- 2D cursor usually bounding box center is what we like, but if the bounding box doesn't reaches over the complete texture space the mapping will be displaced, of course no problem to move it, i suggest really only to move it with either integer values as discribed above, or by entering "g" and the desired direction x or y and pressing of the cursor keys, it will be moved only in integer amounts then. if you grab it with the mouse, it will be translated, moved by floating point values.when translating with cursor keys (as well by entering the integer amount, i forgot, sorry) the texture should be loaded to the window, else blender doesn't knows what the size is and then the movement will be "fractions of" or "doubles of" depending on the size of the texture. usually if you don't map it new the relation of your scripted projection should be held, if not (i'm not sure) then it's a issue of the dumping of the model,OGLE resp. GLXtractor does it right, i know. in general scaling or changing of the original relation shouldn't be needed, but i know i encountered such problems myself when i combined the textures for a new model and it was then automatically remapped to the new combined texture. erm, like i said i neither have a idea what causes this slight difference in relation of a i.e. "from top" projection, in my very humble opinion it should be x as o,but it isn't. in fact and this might be a little trick behind the LMR, a projection of a sphere or a bezier shape is very slightly like unwrapped, the result is a little bit better as what i can reach in blender, it reaches a tiny little bit more around the shape. but i can't say if it was willingly done or just a issue with a positive effect.i guess it's wanted since you can only use projections for scripted geometry, while with a CAD like blender you could unwrap the shape for real and won't need such a trick. to much won't be nice it would visually destroy the relations of the texture, but a tiny bit, why not, you won't notice the slight bending but it's overall better as a flat projection. however i noticed your problem as well and tried then to take care not to remap especially bezier flats or spheres if the texture was painted to the scripted projection. if you combine textures to a larger map, usually the meshes will be remapped to the combined texture (to make such combined textures a shape must be assigned to a specific texture, to set the texture in the material isn't enough, you can prove this by, if you switch to edit mode, if the texture get's shown in the "UV mapping"window then the mesh is assigned to the texture, it would be as well if you see in the textures names bar a red name, this means it's assigned but texture isn't present,if everything is empty nothing is assigned). now probably you liker to combine a texture but like to keep the original relation of some parts, there is a workaround for this.take then care that the meshes of your model are clean of any texture assigned to them, you can reach this simply by, if in edit mode, click on the "x" this deletes the assignment and the window is "clean", next time you switch from object to edit mode there should be no texture to see. ok but in this way we can't combine textures.but we can nonetheless, create a set of planes as much as you have texture tiles, move them somewhere you find them later on :)assign now these dummies to the the texture tiles by simply unwrapping or release the texture coordinates on the texture tiles ("reset"),select then only the dummies and "combine texture".this method has a second positive effect, usually if you combine textures blender cuts away what is not used by the meshes, to reach a maximum of size on the new combined texture it often rotates a mesh resp. the texture, now this looks often ugly, some texture which is tiled probably (some sort of paneling i.e.) will look shitty diagonal or rotated by a few degrees. but if all the texture tiles are completely mapped to the dummies, it can't do it in a other way as to use the complete texture tiles arranged ordinally.if you aren't satisfied with the relation between some textures, erm take my ladybird project as a bad example the engine textures for the tiny nozzles are very big while the texture for the pistons i.e. is very small (but it's a tiny object as well, just as a example), the change the sizes of the texture tiles you like to combine, large what should use much space on the combined texture small what should use little space.often i hand edit the result some textures are simply to small while 64x64 would be fine but a resulting 52x52 is already a little bit to small if you have some space left. to repeat what i posted years ago, even when it was made wrong, like the electrical flow, it's worth to keep it because it has no influence on the mathematical result.(again i love the clip jery elsworth made about this problem she's super cool and i'm envious on her friend, she's not only brillant and "a force of nature", she's so natural that's what makes her so attractive, there is not a tiny bit of false pride on her to see. i only hope he will take more care about his body, his breath is already short because of his overweight and recently my brother in law has hard times because of disrespecting this fact, i know it's easier said as done and almost mean of askinny boy like me, lazy or not but overweight i will never have, it's in your genes and those who have these genes have to work harder against the issues as someone like me. i can eat sweets as much as i like, they get burned very quick, while others aren't allowed only to think about sweets, perhaps it's even the restless mind?who knows, sugar is "brain food" and i dislike all the rant against it today, sugar calms the mind down, that's a fact as well as proteines force a agressive mood.usually one won't notice this well, it's a subconcious process, but it's a important rule for ppl who experiment with halluzinogenes. to citate leary, "avoid cheese and other protein rich food, before you take such, this prevents horror and other unwanted issues" - we can transpose this 1:1 to the "unimpoisened", the process in the subconcious part of our brain is the same, it's only that we notice that far less. thus longing for power and dissatisfaction could be also controlled with the food.probably sugar isn't good for the teeth, it has some drawbacks on our body, but our mind loves and needs it. if i feed myself now only with protein rich food and forego carbon, well then it's no wonder to me that i will be a type of person who longs always for more and more power, money, fame or whatever. yes we are a "simple" electrochemical machine and it can be - no, it is controlled with food, the chemistry in other terms. whatever one guesses it isn't only wrong or bad to have experiences in that, but we have to share the experiences and knowledge and take it serious if it's ment serious. i might be a "predator", i love meat and will never forgo this, i even like it raw sometimes, but i can't live without my "coke", coffee or a tea so sweet others say it crumbles their toenails. yes it's a drug as well, both coffeine as well as sugar, but it's a good drug not a bad one, while ok i'm not so sure about coffeine, that's "hard stuff", legal, but i would count it to the hard drugsas well as nicotine. already the naming convention tells this, no joke that's science as well, naming conventions for substances to classify them. old school as well, but still it's true and won't change. while a "oleat" ok that can never be so harmful, with the OH groups we have to be more careful, e.g. alcohol, it's seen from one point only a sugar, but a mean one even in it's side effects to overweight, and erm "free bases" (a free OH) for god's sake this doesn't blongs in our body, never! but we mix it since the 60's to the tobacco to triple the effect of nicotine in the human brain, PM noticed this effect first, seen from this point they invented "free basing".we are today at a point in chemistry that we can tell exactly which substance added to a specific drug will produce which mood in our mind, that is "fascinating"but as dangerous as well. it doesn't count's only for drugs this knowledge is present to any food chemicist, which puts companies like nestlé in a bad bad light.they know exactly what they do, but they would be the first who would say "oh, we didn't noticed this, it was occasionally" - nothing or not much is occasionally in the 21th century, especially not in chemistry neither it is in arts, even here we know how to control the human mind and has been abused several times, with exactly this excuse "oh, we didn't knew" dammit already the third reich knew it, don't lie to me! know you know why i dislike manga, it goes exactly in this direction, abuse of the lowest level of human urges, they know exactly what they do, but they don't have to mess with the consequences and leave this up to future generations.i only ask for what? money? fame? is it really worth to put us in such a danger?there is no conspiracy except the "conspiracy" of money and greed. "you" impoison my children and their childrens children, i would have all the right in the universe to work on your coffin,"doesn't the texture of the oak look deep and nice?" how can we ever build a "new world order" with such ppl, this puts fascism in a different light, doesn't it?i won't say that it's right way to solve this problem, but it makes it comprehensible it's just what alexander did with the gordian knot, he cut it with his sword,i'm more the type of guy who would say "ok, let's have close look at it..." or "is that the motor?" - "let me porouse it" - "ouch it burned me finger") 

I haven't mentioned it, but I haven't been able to run Pioneer properly since I upgraded to Ubuntu 14.04. I kept upgrading the Nvidia drivers using instructions I found on various web pages but no matter what I did I was getting 2 fps. I wasn't too excited about working on Pioneer because I couldn't play it. I just installed the 343.13 drivers from a ppa and finally got it running right. I was about to wipe the drive and revert to Ubuntu 13.04. It was that frustrating. Stand by for launch in T minus when I next get around to it. I've been sitting in front of the computer for hours!

Glad your up and running again Marcel. That info you provided could be a great help to other Ubuntu 14.04 users out there trying to get the game to run.

I hadn't thought of that because nobody else was complaining. Here's the link to what worked for me in case anyone's interested.http://linuxg.net/how-to-install-the-nvidia-340-24-driver-on-ubuntu-14-04-ubuntu-13-10-ubuntu-12-04-and-derivative-systems/[/url] I'm still getting some glitches in pull down menus but I can live with that. I'm getting 30-60 fps now. I'd be really upset with the company if I actually had to pay for my operating system, but since it's free I'm just grateful to have it at all. edit; Kind of like Pioneer! :prankster:

 

:O That is awesome work!

that's the first version of three i even know now why the docking sequence doesn't works proper with large stations, somehow the ship stopsin a precalculated distance to the station instead whatyou entered in "ship_approach_waypoints", it seems to be related to the mediacre collision mesh radius. thus to release the docking sequence theflagged collision mesh must be in very front of the station.

Hey gernot ! i think it's not necessary to work on genesia now ^^, another game in LMR is on the way ( my dream is alive !!!) You've take a long time to come back , but you'r really comin ^^

Can you two guys just work together now? :haha: :nyam: :crazy:

rebirth even this craft is reborn as script 

The Interdictor is looking badass!If I may make a constructive critisim, I think the textures could be improved. The texture makes a nice wall or floor but when wrapped over that model it doesn't fit with the shape of the ship. I really liked what you did with the SGM Eagles. The way the hull plates fit on the Eagle could be used with good effect here. Perhaps a different texture for the nacelles, perhaps not. They could look cool with radiators. (subtile pun) 

Nice to see the Interdictor getting some love, great work Gernot! :girlcrazy:

it's something quite different to work with UV unwrapping or simply to project textures, it wasn't my idea to make for each ship a texture, the textures are from a repo.to make textures like for the eagle (while the sgm and later model(s) is textured new), the rapier or the corsair (gunboat) which are made especially for the scripted geometry, but thats a lot of work. its's difficult to make textures if you won't use a uv export as layout, on the other hand that's a little displeasing to script a model and then dump it to get the projectionsfor shapes like the bezier from this ship or similar. of course it could be done better, but not in such a short time (soon two months). however the projections are made, one could now use the exported UV to create fitting textures in fact this is a new projection, in despite of the small difference (but 1:1 should work) therefore yiu have now even the inlet parts to i.e. draw something into hem. --- something like this?

your'e right it's worth the effort

Ahhh, its good to see you back Gernot. Both models look great! :girlcrazy: One thing though (and it's a very small thing) the RCS nozzles. With the sleeker ships like the Eagles and Interdictor do you think recessed (into the fuselage) RCS jets or even cut outs ( I think your Constrictor model used those) would be a better fit for the models as it would maintain their sleek silhouettes? What I was thinking about is these designs shown from Star Citizen on this[/url] page.

@geraldinecertainly i woul have liked that, but you can't cut out a bezier shape (with a overlayed transparent smaller sized geometry, it will be difficult to impossible to find theright points) usually, maybe a flat one like the rear of the "shark" (falcon?). on a planar shape it's no problem and i like to keep it in scripted geometry, else it won't be a big thing.

Perhaps on a streamlined ship you could sink the nozzles in so they don't protrude so much, or maybe a streamlined housing for them? The Space Shuttle just had holes. They could be drawn in the texture itself without any modeling. By the way, your new textures are looking good!

a very "cheap" method to cut with the texture, i use it sometimes, but it leaves ugly aliased borders, for small things it's ok, like the dashboard from the "conny".and erm it's no spacdeship but wait... this super cheap model is based on a traffic car from nfs4, most is cut with the alpha channel. $ erm, yes... i didn't use it for pioneer models, or nor often, there is (was) a issue with certain graphic cards, if a texture has a alpha channel set to 0 (fully transparent),but there is still some data to show, e.g. a snippet i like to use for the underlayed geometry, then either it turrns all black sometimes or sometimes the colors get desaturated,happens to with ships for which i used a overlayed semitransparent geometry, i seperated because of this issue the texture for the overlayed geometry. it's not good and if i would refere only to my nvidia i wouldn't even know this behave. further, if you use 8bit depth textures, which i feel is as good as 24bit depth (i swear you won't see no difference in the game), you can only have indexed alpha 0 or 1, there is obviousely no data stored for a another 8bits of grayscale, though you have to use two textures in certain cases. but this anyway didn't works well with sgm and color patterns. to cut a "hole" a geometry is safe with any gfx card. hmm... patterns and color blending... you see the "fur" on the drivers chair? the colors are the 4 patterns from nfs while i used two for the chair, even if it's not really men't to blend colors with the patterns, they get blurred and fade into each other (even on higher resolutions), for the skin i abused another pattern channel, nonetheless the borders from not colored sections are sharp, thus a eye which is about 4 pixels wide is still to see (hardly because of the reflective glasses and the lo res of the picture).