Skinner’s Den

[DaddyHoggy]

I suspect that a square uv texture map has been applied to the non-square polygon of the ship - while a plain texture will look fine, any shape will be stretched at the top of the shape as the limited pixels in the mapped uv texture are stretched to fit the shape. You could either distort the cockpit texture to compensate (narrow it at the top) or remap the texture to limit the distortion.

[Svengali]

Does anyone know what's going on here and if there's anything I can do to sort it out?

Draw a small line from the upper left corner to the bottom right corner. For me it looks as if the vertices of this square are not at the same level (Y probably, upper right corner). Happens pretty often when converting in apps with different precisions, so you could check if it's the case here.

[TGHC]

+++Danger, Pangloss!! Danger!!+++
You're showing your age!

Captain Hesperus

Oy watch it matey

I can see standards have slipped since I've been away

[mandoman]

Hello, I'm extremely new at this process. I use to draw space ships, and battles in my notebook during 8th grade math, so it's something I've done lots of a while back. I was struggling with Blender, so I tried using the basics of a ship form I was trying to build in Blender to create more what I was wanting, using Gimp. I have a preliminary .png here, and I know it's no where near complete, but it's something closer to what I wanted to get in Blender, and couldn't. I would appreciate any advice on how I might take this and improve on it. It is suppose to be a Kzin Carrier. You will notice the green dots at the ends of several protrusions. Those are suppose to represent laser weapons, while the lines extending from the ship are antenna. The scratches, and smears around the launch bay door are suppose to represent Kzin script, as they are cat-like creatures. Any suggestions would be very much appreciated. Meanwhile, I'll keep poking at it.

http://img715.imageshack.us/img715/981/kzinship5.png

[Smivs]

Hi Mandoman, It's up to you where it goes. In your mind you have a picture of this ship, and you need to sit back and work out how you are going to make this look the way you 'picture' it.
As I think DH suggested you could post the model and texture for others to look at, but as you've got Gimp you have all the resources you need. Sorry if this is all non-specific but I don't know what you want from this (rather nice) ship, only you do.
If you need help with the texturing in terms of how to approach it, there are tutorials here on the BB and on the Wiki which could help you.
The details you mention are tricky ones. The 'lasers' are not very visual (probably) and TBH if you are thinking of one day releasing this, I'd go for plasma turrets. I don't think you can do lots of lasers pointing in different directions in Oolite. And the Kzin script is (no offense meant) un-convincing. Personally I'd imagine a Feline script to be elegant and flowing, like the animals themselves. As for the aerials, can they actually be seen in-game? They're a really nice touch but might need to be more substantial to 'work' in the game.
It's an interesting concept and worth doing for sure, and definitely worth posting the model/texture for some of us to have a look at.

[DaddyHoggy]

Did I suggest this somewhere else or am I having a nervous breakdown - because there's no post of mine betwixt Smivs and mandoman's and yet Smivs refers to a post I thought I had made...

Wibble...

DH-still-one-winged-and-taking-quite-strong-painkillers.

[mandoman]

If you need help with the texturing in terms of how to approach it, there are tutorials here on the BB and on the Wiki which could help you.
The details you mention are tricky ones. The 'lasers' are not very visual (probably) and TBH if you are thinking of one day releasing this, I'd go for plasma turrets. I don't think you can do lots of lasers pointing in different directions in Oolite. And the Kzin script is (no offense meant) un-convincing. Personally I'd imagine a Feline script to be elegant and flowing, like the animals themselves. As for the aerials, can they actually be seen in-game? They're a really nice touch but might need to be more substantial to 'work' in the game.
It's an interesting concept and worth doing for sure, and definitely worth posting the model/texture for some of us to have a look at.

OK. I'll find those tutorials. Thanks.

Did I suggest this somewhere else or am I having a nervous breakdown - because there's no post of mine betwixt Smivs and mandoman's and yet Smivs refers to a post I thought I had made...

Yes you did, and I will stop asking stupid questions and check out the tutorials.

[DaddyHoggy]

Not a stupid question at all - I was just confused because - having now answered your other query in the other thread - I realise that you have basically the same question running in two threads and if my brain wasn't so addled with drugs I'd have realised it earlier.

[Smivs]

Don't forget the How to make OXPs page on the Wiki. one way or another everything you'll ever need is linked to from that page.

[Big Bene]

Just a few questions about textures/shaders - haven't found the answers quickly with Search / on the Wiki, so I just ask, lazy me...

- Is it possible to have animated textures/shaders? Some OXPs seem to have them, but .png is defnitely not an animated format...
- Is it possible to have different textures for the same entity/ship?

[DaddyHoggy]

Just a few questions about textures/shaders - haven't found the answers quickly with Search / on the Wiki, so I just ask, lazy me...

- Is it possible to have animated textures/shaders? Some OXPs seem to have them, but .png is defnitely not an animated format...
- Is it possible to have different textures for the same entity/ship?

If you look at the shady billboard oxp and shady thargoid oxps that Ahruman created you can see how "animated" textures work (Griff's done an amazing job on the YAH constores - so that would be another good example to see how the shader fragment works)

I think you can switch textures inside an oxp for a ship using the materials setting, but I could be wrong (I think you can even define an array of texture (names) and have an oxp pick one at random from the pool when the ship is spawned)

[Smivs]

Hi Big Bene,
I don't know much about the animations - you'll need to talk to Thargoid I think.

You can't use more than one texture per ship, but if you want a variety of textures you can use 'like_ship' in shipdata and specify a version of any ship with a different texture.
The example below is from my soon to be released update to Smivs'Shipset, where I've added a 'Scavenger' version of the adder, which has a unique texture.

Code: Select all

"adder" =
	{
		aft_eject_position = "0.0 -4.5 -23.0";
		ai_type = "route1patrolAI.plist";
		auto_ai = yes;
		cargo_type = "CARGO_NOT_CARGO";
		energy_recharge_rate = 2;
		exhaust = ("-5.75 0.0 -22.5 6.0 4.0 4.0", "5.75 0.0 -22.5 6.0 4.0 4.0");
		forward_weapon_type = "WEAPON_PULSE_LASER";
		fuel = 70;
		has_ecm = 0.01;
		has_scoop = yes;
		likely_cargo = 1;
		max_cargo = 5;
		max_energy = 85;
		max_flight_pitch = 2;
		max_flight_roll = 2.8;
		max_flight_speed = 240;
		missile_launch_position = "0.0 -2.5 16.0";
		missiles = 1;
materials = 
		{ 
			"smivs'-adder.png" = 
                                           {  
emission_map = "smivs'-adder_em-map.png";
shininess = 5;
specular_color = ( 0.3, 0.3, 0.3, 0.5 );  
                                            };  
		};
		model = "smivs'adder_redux.dat";
		name = "Adder";
		roles = "hunter hermit-ship";
		thrust = 30;
		weapon_position_aft = "0.0 0.0 -22.5";
		weapon_position_forward = "0.0 0.0 25";
		weapon_position_port = "-15.0 0.0 -14.5";
		weapon_position_starboard = "15.0 0.0 -14.5";
		subentities =   
		(
               "smivsgun   0 0 21.0 1 0 1 0"
		);
	};
        "adder-scavenger" =
	{
		like_ship = "adder";
		ai_type = "scavengerAI.plist";
		auto_ai = yes;
                materials = 
		{ 
			"smivs'-adder.png" = 
                                           {  
diffuse_map = "smivs'-adder-scavenger.png";
emission_map = "smivs'-adder_em-map.png";
shininess = 5;
specular_color = ( 0.3, 0.3, 0.3, 0.5 ); 
                                            };  
		};
		model = "smivs'adder_redux.dat";
		name = "Adder";
                roles = "scavenger";
		subentities =   
		(
               "smivsgun   0 0 21.0 1 0 1 0"
		);
	};

Hope this helps a bit.

(Ninja'd by DH a bit. He is right that you can change a texture 'on-the-hoof' with materials. If you just want several otherwise identical ships with different textures, the above is the way to go.)

[Thargoid]

My Butterflies OXP might give you a taster both of physical animation (in this case flapping wings) and also having different coloured ships (or butterflies in this case) using the same texture. But as noted above you can also change the texture to a completely different one by scripting (both this and the colour change use the materials key - see  this wiki page for more details). That can be used to simulate animation without shaders (at least now that we have frame callbacks so things don't look completely jerky at 4FPS which is the limit by timers).

The other way for true animation is the already mentioned shader option (as championed by Griff and Ahruman) with several fine examples already mentioned. On that score I'm only a neophyte grasshopper to their mastery and will let them expand more.

Oh and one texture per ship isn't completely always true - if the ship has sub-entities they will have their own individual textures distinct from the mother entity's. So depending on how you build it you can cheat a bit.

[CommonSenseOTB]

Here's something you might want to look at:

https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=8973

Cheers!

[Thargoid]

Indeed - and that thread is the lead-in to the Griff Cobra with external missiles (plus his most recent one masterpiece too) using the sub-entity technique that I mentioned in the link. But we're going off-topic a little (who, us? never!).