How to reskin a Neolite Ship.

[Simon B]

it is good ta have a realtime preview program. "

can anyone recommend a preview prog? preferably a free/cheap one, for PC?

Take care with those terms - do you mean a Windows PC or a gnu/linux PC?

Either way, the good ones seem to be commercial.
I've been experimenting with typhoon tools, but have not found a plugin for it which will handle any of the formats that Wings3D can output or a converter from any of them to typhoons native format. This is probably a good ad for open formats.

The next step up for gnu/linux seems to be Maya - sheesh! But I tell a lie - there is always Blender.

Griffin uses a thingy called Rendermonkey - that would be a windows thing. here's an example of an early preview.

Blender is free (gratis and libre) but is pretty hard to learn.

------------------------------
Man: What sort of computers do you have here?
Sales: Oh we have both kinds, XP *and* Vista.

[Griff]

if you want to give rendermonkey a spin on your pc KW (annoyingly, it looks like you have to register an email account with AMD now before they let you into the downloads section) we could easily whip up a rendermonkey scene file for testing normal maps, once you load up the scene into rendermonkey, you'd just have to do a tiny bit of clicking to point rendermonkey to your ship model .obj and the texture & normal maps

[Killer Wolf]

Cheers guys!
i'm a windows XP PC person, didn't realise "pc" was no longer exclusive to windows machines :-/

finished my new ship, the Dominatrix, and i'm dying to try some shadery things for her.

[Killer Wolf]

bah, is there a quick start guide to getting a ship in rendermonkey? i'm getting nowhere fast

[Griff]

there's this i wrote a while back, http://www.box.net/shared/ig02aaj6e6
i dunno though, it seems it was originally part of the griff_boa oxp, it goes on about how to preview that oxp in Rendermonkey but i can't find the resources folder it refers to, i think i must have deleted them, it might help with loading your ship and textures into rendermonkey though

I've whipped up a rendermonkey scene to easily test normal maps, you can use the guide above to help you swap out the textures in the scene for your own

http://www.box.net/shared/h3p7d40o5c
the download contains the rendermonkey scene file and the obj & png's it needs, when you first open the scene in rendermonkey you'll probably just get a load of errors as it will be looking in the wrong place for the object file and the textures, it only takes a few clicks to sort it out. This scene just needs the ship, a colour texture file and the normal map texture file

this next download is the same but the rendermonkey scene also has all the effects maps and glow maps etc in it, it's basically the shader for the ship as it appears in the griff normal mapped oxps
http://www.box.net/shared/6an59i9td5

[Killer Wolf]

Many thanks Griff, grabbed those and i'll have a play at the weekend.

cheers
KW

[Killer Wolf]

wow, i managed to get that up and running (after having updated my 6 year old drivers )

got my ship in, and her diffuse map, not done a normal map yet. tried an effects map, and ran it in the full shadey cobra RM version. not sure if it's my map or a combo of things but the ship is almost totally white, and flickers gently. i think my map might be cack. i assumed through trial that the GIMP "addition" mode is the equal of Screen/Lighten in PShop, must admit i just hammered a quick one together w/ no frills.
trawling through the rest of your guide at the mo Griff, but it's pretty cool to see my ship shiny and shadery, even if all the UV map and effects are totally wrong!

[Simon B]

That's very cool -

Would people using this tutorial to help build their own models, or remix the neolite ones, please start their own thread (when they have something to show) and post a link to it here?

I am keen to see what people try, but I don't want this thread to get too far off being a tutorial.

Ta.


You want to check that screen/lighten in photoshop really is an addition mode - merge the layers and use the color picker to check the colors where they overlap. green + black = 00ff00.

I think you can get the same effect with multiply, and an inverted mask (so it is white on transparent).

Also be careful of the shader you use. The shady cobra effectsmap is different from the neolite effectsmap, does different things. eg. the green channel is used for gun heat IIRC, and red is for the cyan engine glow.

Since this tutorial is specifically for neolite ships, I have not gone into detail about how to write shaders.

[Killer Wolf]

I've been having extensive PM conversation's w/ Griff, who's very kindly provided me w/a ton of info and examples. my Dominatrix is now wooking pretty damn tasty, if i do say so myself!

[Simon B]

Good - create a thread, put a screenshot in it, and share the oxp.




please?

[ADCK]

Excellent guide!

Here's 8 retextures of Neolites FerDerLance:





LINK> Neolite FDL Retex<LINK

Requires neolite.oxp

[DaddyHoggy]

Splendid work! The first full retexturing (I think) I've seen of Simon B's wonderful ships.

[Simon B]

Good to see -

On some of those textures you can see the defects in the UV map - like the black-and-grey pattern. A fancier mapping program can probably do a better job if someone wants to tackle it. You may also try setting smooth to false to see if the interpolation changes things.

I like the yellow one.

For the silver skin, you may want to increase the specular effects to make it more shiny. This is also a ship that may benifit from the active camo effect to pimp it out. Maybe griffs decal effect too - so it can be player customised.

The fdl gets a lot of positive comments - the neolite fdl departs most from the standard set - in the specs too. However, it seems to balance so that players are prepared to fly the thing even with the price and inconvenient views.

I had originally planned a single-engine version for the main set, with the same specs as the standard (perhaps better manouvering), leaving the twin-engine for the NG. Perhaps a triple-engine NG?

[ADCK]

Two things i noticed while making this, the forward laser of the FDL is about 2 feet too low,
outside view shows the laser comming from a bit below the ship when firing, and it also doesn't line up with the crosshair.
While trying to retxture your gecko, i noticed an error in the shipdata.plist for the entries:

Code: Select all

exhaust = ("-4.1 0.8 9.6 2.5 2.5 5.0", "4.1 0.8 9.6 2.5 2.5 5.0");

That actually puts the exhaust in FRONT and a little above of the ship.
This would be better:

Code: Select all

exhaust = ("-4.1 0.0 -9.6 2.5 2.5 5.0", "4.1 0.0 -9.6 2.5 2.5 5.0");

For the silver skin, you may want to increase the specular effects to make it more shiny. This is also a ship that may benifit from the active camo effect to pimp it out. Maybe griffs decal effect too - so it can be player customised.

I'm still a noob when it comes to shader effects, i look at a fragment or vertex file and just go: "What is this? Moonspeak?"
Anything else i can do blindfolded... but the actual coding of shaders eludes me.

[Simon B]

Thanks - I am bugfixing neolite-core right now so I need to know these things.

A quick way to make the ship very shiny is to remove all the green from the effects map. This is done for the wings on the coriolis where it creates a highly polished look.

Varying the amount of green varies the dullness of the surface. The blue parts are for constant glows of whatever colour the corresponding part of the diffuse texture is, and the red puts in a reddish glow which depends on engine heat.