Oolite Bulletins

Simon B wrote:

@griff: so for the effect I'm thinking of, I'd need to multiply the color channels of the diffuse-map with it's alpha channel to get an emission map (so windows glow yellow and engines glow blue etc)? I'll have to watch how these things blend. Actually I'm kinda liking the idea of all pearly lights on these ships... its growing on me.

If you just use emission_map in the materials you don't have to worry about trying to blend in alpha channels* or anything into the glow map, you just paint it out how you want it to be, so for yellow windows glowing cyan, you'd actually paint them out like that in the glowmap, with the benefit that both shader enabled & non-shader enabled players (on certain video cards) will see exactly the same glow effect, no need for anyone to feel left out of the eye candy!
here's the glow map from the black monk station:

i've been a bit unimaginative with my hull light colouring, but all those lights could have been painted out in any colour you like and they will glow that colour in game

* if you do want to blend in other colours into your glow map, add a emission_modulate_color setting in the materials, although with a full colour emmission_map you probably wouldn't want to do this

... interesting: notice that the yellow windows appear glow yellow even though the glow color is pearly? Also, the exhaust appears to glow brighter with speed due to the occlusion by the exhaust plume. I should try making the windows white glowey patches instead? More like griffs ships?

Something to note: I can deconstruct a png image with GIMP, then paint on the alpha-channel layer, then construct it to a single rgba layer again ... but, if I move that layer to another image (say, drag it to the image window), something odd happens ... oolite renders the texture all black where it is not glowing. This is odd since GIMP has not zeroed all the transparent pixels.

A shame because it means I cannot drag the edited layer into the OXP texture to save it, I have to select file > save and browse to the OXP texture and overwrite it.

Griff wrote:

Simon B wrote:

@griff: so for the effect I'm thinking of, I'd need to multiply the color channels of the diffuse-map with it's alpha channel to get an emission map (so windows glow yellow and engines glow blue etc)? I'll have to watch how these things blend. Actually I'm kinda liking the idea of all pearly lights on these ships... its growing on me.

If you just use emission_map in the materials you don't have to worry about trying to blend in alpha channels*

Yes I get that - however, this means making a new full-size texture, which I wanted to avoid. Thus the question. However, I'd probably want a full-colour emmission map for some ships ... like thargons and police vipers. Maybe for ships that don't appear very often and would benifit from looking more dramatic.

* if you do want to blend in other colours into your glow map, add a emission_modulate_color setting in the materials, although with a full colour emmission_map you probably wouldn't want to do this

That would blend an adjustment to all the emmission zones though, wouldn't it?

The greyscale emmission-map and emmission_modulate_color seems a very efficient way to add glows ... though putting it in the alpha-channel of the diffuse map makes my Textures directory look like its full of air I have always enjoyed the way this confuses people looking over my shoulder and it is not getting old.

Just a note for those already with the pre1.oxp
... most of the exhausts are too big, by about 1m. Some have their x and y axis dixed.
... the custom views has the same fault as the core game - most ships too close to viewpoint. I have doubled the distance in the anaconda and then copied it to all the other ones. This makes the adder very small but the other ships are quite comfy. It also provides a sense of relative scale to the ships ... which may not be very desirable since the model scales are all whacked anyway.

The iguana spike subentity entry for the second spike (the rotated one) needs to be lowered by 1.415m to sit it correctly. The iguana should be non-frangible too, or they keep attacking after their guns have been destroyed. Since shooting off the guns is fun, perhaps there is a way of scripting things so that it notices the subents are gone and runs for it?

(aside: please test-run the iguana and comment on how it compares with the stock version in terms of fun... should I keep the stats, adjust slightly, or adopt the stock stats?)

Anyone wants to add their 2c on which ships need to be spectacularly lit speak up now.
I'll probably add frontier (turreted) and blockade runner (fast - but less cargo) versions of the python and anaconda to the re2dux set ... oh I think we need a working torus station right? ...anyone want to veto this sort of thing say so now. I am thinking of these as more a set of stuff I enjoyed rather than a formal replacement like neolites was intended to be. People who don't like some of the ships but want to use others can always add their names to the "replace" plists after all.

BTW: saw this while testing the iguana and had to snap it

... thats the combra3 trader ... or something ... after I'd corected its exhaust - I've added multiple plumes to a few of the ships.

Simon B wrote:

... the custom views has the same fault as the core game - most ships too close to viewpoint. I have doubled the distance in the anaconda and then copied it to all the other ones.

The view points are different for each ship in the core game, roughly adjusted to the ship filling a good portion of the screen bottom. Their general idea is not to give a sense of scale for comparing different ships (the player can only fly one ship at a time anyway), but to give you a good view of your ship's outside in your current surroundings.

Simon B wrote:

...however, this means making a new full-size texture, which I wanted to avoid.

The best way to do this is to open a new layer on the diffuse_map, add the emissive components on the new layer using the diffuse_map as a 'template' to get the positioning right, then isolate the new layer. Add a black background layer to this to make the emission_map, then scale it down to 512x512px. You can use a 512x512px emission_map with a 2048x2048 diffuse_map (or 1024x1024px come to that), and it keeps the overall file-size of the Textures folder down.

Smivs wrote:

Simon B wrote:

...however, this means making a new full-size texture, which I wanted to avoid.

The best way to do this is to open a new layer on the diffuse_map, add the emissive components on the new layer using the diffuse_map as a 'template' to get the positioning right, then isolate the new layer. Add a black background layer to this to make the emission_map,

https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?p=75875#p75875
Thanks anyway.

then scale it down to 512x512px. You can use a 512x512px emission_map with a 2048x2048 diffuse_map (or 1024x1024px come to that), and it keeps the overall file-size of the Textures folder down.

Yes I had realized that. I did this sort of thing with the neolite ships - some of the maps are very low res. The only one that needs to be kept high is the normal map... which I don't plan to do for this set (much) though others are welcome to make some if they want.

The re2dux textures are 512x512 btw. Using a 128x128 emission map adds about the same as a greyscale 512x512 layer freeing the diffuse-alpha channel for a specular intensity thing perhaps (then I can reuse the diffuse map as a specular map). However, I was hoping to have paint and decals ... I'll have to review. Single-color glows are working better than expected.

I'm putting glows in the diffuse alpha because of a discussion above. A second texture to be used for paint, fancy effects like flashing lights, and a specular intensity. I could put a second light color here too ... though I gather each material can only have one emission map, I can arrange for the alter-color bits to have different materials. I expect to do what you suggest for ships that would strongly benifit from multicolored glows, like the anaconda and the vipers ... unless you are particularly attached to having yellow windows?

Some of this would be shaders-only.

Commander McLane wrote:

Simon B wrote:

... the custom views has the same fault as the core game - most ships too close to viewpoint. I have doubled the distance in the anaconda and then copied it to all the other ones.

The view points are different for each ship in the core game, roughly adjusted to the ship filling a good portion of the screen bottom. Their general idea is not to give a sense of scale for comparing different ships (the player can only fly one ship at a time anyway), but to give you a good view of your ship's outside in your current surroundings.

Sorry, I didn't mean to suggest this was not the case.

I found, however, that the default viewpoints were too close to some ships to "give you a good view of your ship's outside in your current surroundings". For instance, the adder's nose is off the top of the screen, lots of the anaconda too, some ships side views are obscured by the HUD (needing debug mode to see them) and though it works quite well for the cobra, its still almost touching the ship on overhead view.

If you like, you can go through the custom views in re2dux and set them to something sensible for each one, then send me a text file with just the custom views dict?



Of course, what we really want is the ability to manipulate the external views in the game... say: click+drag alters the theta/phi coordinate for the camera while a scroll-wheel alters r? ... camera always oriented to point along -r? (the "v" key working normally to switch between pre-defined camera positions) ... this could mess up the mac users with one mouse button but I'm sure there is a way around it like use shift+v+mouse-move to dolly in and out?

Am trying out your re2dux.oxp (without the shipdata/yard.overrides.plists) and this popped up in the log file: (Refers to line 1648 of the shipdata.plist)

Yep, spotted, fixed ... the quick-fix is just to delete the alloy entries and not use them. Otherwise just change the entry to refer to the correct model etc. The "scarred alloy" in this case is exactly the same as the non-scarred alloy - at some point it will have a different skin so if you want to make one feel free: just set a different diffuse map in a materials dictionary as discussed above... and let us know how you get on.

One of the navy ships is up for testing ... go to the box site for re2dux. Here's the ship in-game:



http://www.box.net/shared/q418myep2e
Caveat: I've set it with roles hunter, pirate and police ... so they show up in different contexts. They have four turrets (strength 15) and twin military lasers forward (one aft) so don't do anything naughty near a station It does make things quite tense ... but they are beatable with that iguana if you keep your distance and keep moving.

You can set a player to it and get decent views ... but you have to hit v if you want to see the turrets fire, otherwise you just point at the target and it mysteriously explodes. It will also dock - it is just small enough to fit with a bit of a bump.

There are two textures - the enging part of the small texture is not used in this model, I just copied my behemoth guns...

I should point out that anyone who wants to add materials to any of these ships is welcome to do so ... tell me what you've done

@griff: how did you get your turrets so smooth ... the image above has smooth = "yes"; set in the plist but I see no difference. I suppose I could just steal your turrets, scale the model to fit and all that? They'd work because you just use materials for them.

Very nice work there Simon!

I wish I had more time to play the game and see all this new and lovely eye candy!

looking good Simon!

Really smashing work Simon! Looks great! Are you going to put some hull lights and stuff on it, and some engine glows?
Re: smoothing on the turrets
These were done ages ago, and i think the workflow has changed since then - the way to do it now is to set the edges on your .obj file to either 'soft' or 'hard' (this is how it is in Wings3d, not sure how it's done in blender) before running it through the obj2dattex.py script (make sure you've got an up to date version of this script)

However, the way i did these turrets originally was to open the obj file in a text editor and look for the lines that appear a bit like this: and type in s 1 between them, eg save your changes then run it through the obj2dattex.py script, this probably just sets all the object edges to soft, doing it the proper way via wings will let you have both soft & hard edges on your object

Oh yep - the navy ships should get the full(ish) treatment. Mind you, someone wanted to do a normal mapping for it?
Anyone beats me to adding the special effects for any one these craft, I'll use them. Just let me know.

But if you like this sort of thing, you'll love the thargoid upgrade that goes with it ... also in pre-release:
http://www.box.net/shared/vt3op4dsvv



Eventually something related to this one replaces the thargorn thing... hence the pattern of crosses.
Here I have used a full-color emmission map and the specular map is the diffuse map.
There is room for a greyscale illumination map too but all that washed out the colors too much... maybe later.
You can grab it - at the mo it just appears as a regular thargoid about half as often as the others ... though I do keep getting two of them for some reason. You need to have the re2dux set in place for multiple guns though ... it mounts 5 thargoid lasers but only seems to fire them in pairs for some reason.

BTW: the top two images have the uberthargoid facing me ready to fire (I tried to catch it firing - not fast enough), the bottom one in the box is facing away (it's a rear shot): the blue balls are from the destroyer rear plasma ... for scale: see that hole in the middle ... it is 100m across, easily fits an anaconda through it, but the destroyer will bump the sides. The big blue ball in the hole belongs to the model - maybe a different color? But it is a very effective in-game visual.