Oolite Bulletins

more progress....





thanks to some help from the Wings 3D forums i managed to texture one of the landing pods then to duplicate it and move to position and even though they said it wouldnt work, ithen rotated one copy 180 degrees and it worked the attitude jets moved to the outside from the inside.
the 4 engines should be easy now as i can do 1 and duplicate and move. the command module is going to be tricky as the original has cutouts for the pilot and copilot. this picture should ilustrate the command module.

Spud,

May I say that what you've done to date is brilliant, as in Ron Weasly 'that's brilliant!'. I guess it's a lot of sweat and maybe a few tears, but yes! And all in a few weeks.

I'll look forward to seeing the next reveal.

why thank you Sir!
i do envision that we get this model up and flying then i can spend a bit more time tweaking the thing. i would like to inset the black voids between the pipes on the spine and both end modules. Just not yet.
i have also started in the daunting task of the dreaded .plist files for this thing.

to misquote Forrest Gump.... "Some days there aint enough cookies!!! "

Engines done and i think i like them.... only too all day today to do them... i am relearning photoshop too!

can someone please explain to me what the minimum requirement to get the model to show up in the game?

I have tried to follow the wiki , i have look at several single ship oxp's and tried to reproduce them with my model and name for the ship.
i tried the oxp tutorial. and made a demoships.plist as the tutorial said but it didnt show......
i have a shipdata.plist and a shipyard.plist with minimum to get the ship showing i thought but what is absolutely needed to get this to work?

i figured that the exhausts would be wrong and the views wrong etc but i thought that could be fine tuned or added later... i suppose i just wanted to see the thing in the game to see how it looked, its size etc....

here is what i have so far... please be kind i have no idea what i am doing here... lol

https://app.box.com/s/xsswie9kl2pk35ax02gr

P.S. the command module hasnt been skinned yet and the rest is as always a work in progress.....

This is what it looks like in-game at the moment.


There is a warning about shipyard.plist not containing an "oogle_transporter" corresponding key in shipdata,plist. The reason is that shipdata.plist has currently only an "oogle_transporter-player" key in it. To get it to show in game, I had to remove the player part from the key, change the role from player to "oogle", then use Debug Console to spawn it.

The other thing that is wrong at the moment is the lack of textures in-game. The log has this to say about it:

Latest.log wrote:

03:53:00.644 [mesh.error]: ***** Failed to find TEXTURES data (will use placeholder material)
..... from oogle.dat (from file)

which most likely happens because the dat file does not seem to contain any texture definitions at this time.

another_commander wrote:

This is what it looks like in-game at the moment.

Not visible from here.

another_commander wrote:

This is what it looks like in-game at the moment.


There is a warning about shipyard.plist not containing an "oogle_transporter" corresponding key in shipdata,plist. The reason is that shipdata.plist has currently only an "oogle_transporter-player" key in it. To get it to show in game, I had to remove the player part from the key, change the role from player to "oogle", then use Debug Console to spawn it.

The other thing that is wrong at the moment is the lack of textures in-game. The log has this to say about it:

Latest.log wrote:

03:53:00.644 [mesh.error]: ***** Failed to find TEXTURES data (will use placeholder material)
..... from oogle.dat (from file)

which most likely happens because the dat file does not seem to contain any texture definitions at this time.

ok, no idea about that. i downloaded python 2.7.6 i think and installed. i exported the wings model as a wavefront obj with the options the same as the wiki tut...
first two options ticked, tesselation to triangulation, swap y z unticked and the last two ticked with default texture file type set to PNG..


EDIT:
ok i think i might have found a problem.... "spaces" in texture names....

// textures used: ['Engine', 'Cargo', 'default', 'Landing', 'Engineering', 'Spine_auv.png']

from the dat file.... i know this lins is a comment but the file names are not complete.... except for spine ?


i then ran in a cmd terminal obj2dattex.py . the obj and mtl file as well as the texture png files are all in the same folder. and the script had no errors when it completed....

EDIT 2:
ok well i changed the spaces to underscores and redid the dat file and renamed the texture files first .... and that line in the dat file is the same.

https://app.box.com/s/xsswie9kl2pk35ax02gr

hrere is the oxp again also with the obj and mtl files as well as the obj2dattex.py script i downloaded.

I tried to use Obj2DatTexNorm to convert and get this
Unfortunatly I don't know to assign coordinates so hopefully someone with more experience in wings can help. I suspect that you need to add vertex colors and try to assign materials to colors. but I'm not sure.

If you are using windows you may prefer to use openstep for plists, it is easier to read unless you have a MAC. I believe they have conversion software that allows you to read it while writing.

Here is a basic openstep plist.

Check out some other OXPs or the plists in the core game to help expand on it.

Here is a handy script for spawning ships complemments of Smiv's...thanks bro
make sure to make a world-scripts.plist to enable it...like this
Your texture looks great on the ship. Its going to look awesome in the game.

Stormrider wrote:

I tried to use Obj2DatTexNorm to convert and get this

Code: Select all

~/GNUstep/Applications/Oolite/AddOns/oogle_transporter.oxp/Textures $ python Obj2DatTexNorm.py Oogle_1.5.obj
Oogle_1.5.obj -> oogle_1.5.dat
  Material library file: Oogle_1.5.mtl
  Material Cargo_Pod_auv -> oogle_cargo_bay.png
  Material Command_auv -> oogle_command.png
  Material Engine_Top_auv -> oogle_eng.png
  Material Engineering_Module_auv -> oogle_engineering.png
  Material Landing_pod_rear_left_auv -> landing_pod1.png
  Material Spine_auv -> oogle-spine.png
File does not provide texture coordinates! Materials will not be exported.
File does not provide texture coordinates! Materials will not be exported.
File does not provide texture coordinates! Materials will not be exported.
File does not provide texture coordinates! Materials will not be exported.
File does not provide texture coordinates! Materials will not be exported.
Done.

Unfortunatly I don't know to assign coordinates so hopefully someone with more experience in wings can help. I suspect that you need to add vertex colors and try to assign materials to colors. but I'm not sure.

If you are using windows you may prefer to use openstep for plists, it is easier to read unless you have a MAC. I believe they have conversion software that allows you to read it while writing.

Here is a basic openstep plist.

Check out some other OXPs or the plists in the core game to help expand on it.

Here is a handy script for spawning ships complemments of Smiv's...thanks bro
make sure to make a world-scripts.plist to enable it...like this

Code: Select all

(
    "oogle-test-scrip.js"
)

Your texture looks great on the ship. Its going to look awesome in the game.

cheers Stormrider, i have had some messages from Smivs and have already replaced the plists still not sure if they work though as it was way past my bed time last night..will look into ths links you gave. i did manage to start a new commander and fly to zaonce and buy the ship. but with all the missing parts i had to fly it in chase camera mode... looks a tad small that way but at least i could see the stars..lol.

p.s. yes windows and i have downloaded notepad ++. i need to spend some time flying and trading to clear my head. then read more wiki entries on the plist commands that i downloaded. when does the dark side get to be fun? im over the cookies already....

spud42 wrote:

when does the dark side get to be fun? im over the cookies already....

Basically, when your first OXP is finally released, and you get to see it in action, and being used by others... the high it generates will sustain you for quite a long time.. long enough to do it all over again, as a rule.

Bugger!




EDIT:

ok thanks to Smivs i have taken his advice and "borrowed" his config scripts from his yellOo cabs oxp. original plists were in xml style. now using the openstep? is it?

anyway more reading and i have adjusted and added the exhausts, changed the front, aft,port and starboard view positions as well as the weapons positions.
i am unsure what to do about the rear laser because as far as i can remember the Eagle didnt have a rear or port starboard lasers... anyway due to the size of the engine bells the top and bottom engines actually touch , so there isnt really any room for a laser there. i had thought of adding it at the top of the spine which is where the rear view comes from..
The texture is still not working and i have left smivs yelloo cabs textures in the materials section as a guide and reminder.

Link to latest ver of the oxp is here
ver 4 just updated box....again...

EDIT 2: ok so i imported the obj file that wings 3d made back into wings and the model is correct BUT the only texture is the spine. it doesnt look like Wings is exporting a correct obj/mtl combination... any ideas?ok i redid the export to obj the re imported it and this time it worked but there were a png for every part not jus 1 for all 4 engines. giving up its after midnight ...

Kudos to you sir! Wonderful TV classic ship. Where you mentioned earlier about the lack of space for a rear laser between the engine bells there may be a get out if you wish.

Although the eagles only had one forward facing laser there is an episode where a second laser is seen and used. It was in the spine above the forward access tunnel that linked the pod to the command module. It was on a telescopic arm and could rotate and tilt.

http://catacombs.space1999.net/main/ima ... tss149.jpg

BBD

PS A Space 1999 Hawk would be nice to

that is almost what i had in mind. mounting the rear laser in the spine. this is also where i currently have the rear view coming from.

as for other ships like the hawk, well lets just figure this one out first..... still havent got any textures working......

Great minds etc etc.. You'll get there I'm sure.

I can wait for a hawk. Tomorrows a good day

BBD

how about a tardis? spinning blue box... lol should not be too hard... and talk about cargo storage? bigger inside than out.... lol

but seriously i have been looking for inspiration for the next one but i will not do any Star Wars ships..... or Star Trek... too overdone....
have been checking out some 70's and 80'2 scifi shows...firefly has already been done and the planet express from futurama....
cant remember what the ship from Andromeda looked like....... or i could just make something up from scratch.....

But as i said this is a huge learning curve for me and i still dont understand why wings didnt export a obj file WITH the textures..... but thanks to Stormrider i have just got a working version. still have to do the command module textures and fix all the problems of stretched graphics on the spine and back of the engineering and service modules.....then tweak all the views,lasers ,pitch,roll...etc