Oolite Bulletins

Posted: **Thu Jun 10, 2010 3:16 pm**

The reason this announcement is in Outworld rather than Expansion Packs is simply because of the nature of this new ship.

As I had to learn to use the new version of AC3D because I have to teach it next term I thought I'd combine my two interests of the moment - Oolite and Jonnie Rocket.

So I built myself Tycho 8 - Jonnie's mode of transport as he explores the Universe.

Now I've got to work out what to do with it now I've exported it as an OBJ file (v1.4 according to the documentation on the exporter) to get it in to Oolite...

Anyway, here it is:

and it's supposed to look a bit like this:

From here: http://www.jonnierocket.com/about.php

Posted: **Thu Jun 10, 2010 3:30 pm**

Cool! Two minor suggestions: are the two little side-pods supposed to be mounted on little wings? In the drawing they look more like they're flush with the side of the ship. Also, should the dome be longer, i.e. should its rear edge extend backwards to nearly the end of the red bodywork? Ooh, and a third one: the big "8" needs to be chunkier.

Posted: **Thu Jun 10, 2010 3:37 pm**

Side pods are definitely on wings - other images I have show this.

Chunkier no. 8 - yup.

Re: Cockpit dome - some of the drawings in the book have it almost spherical (as I have created it) others more like the image I included in my post - that's the problem with basing it on a "cartoon" - there are slight variations in every image of it.

Looking forward to getting it in to Oolite so I can also play with lighting maps and (gosh) perhaps even shaders and Normal maps!!!!

Posted: **Thu Jun 10, 2010 3:47 pm**

I think the dome would look better stretched, i.e. more like an aeroplane canopy.

It'll be interesting to see if, when flying it, you can bring yourself to blow open some harmless trader ...

Posted: **Thu Jun 10, 2010 4:29 pm**

lovely work - except for the colour scheme, lol, man that's...uh...vivid!!

the only thing to consider, is if it's in scale in Oolite, going by the comic illo there, it's gonna by tiny.

Posted: **Thu Jun 10, 2010 6:19 pm**

To put it into Oolite : attach a laser.

Posted: **Thu Jun 10, 2010 10:46 pm**

I'm going to make it a very rare NPC ship - super fast and will injector and jump out at the first sign of trouble - no weapons - Jonnie R's not that kind of pilot...

Anyway, proper noobie question - putting this into Oolite - I guess I need to install Python - yes? Then find the python scripts that take my AC3D exported OBJ file and do something whizzy with it. Will somebody point me at the right thread/download links?

Nearly four years on this forum and this will be my first ship - tragic...

Posted: **Thu Jun 10, 2010 10:50 pm**

DaddyHoggy wrote:
Nearly four years on this forum and this will be my first ship - tragic...

In my case it could be forty years and I still wouldn't be able to produce a ship. Well done!

Posted: **Fri Jun 11, 2010 12:05 am**

DaddyHoggy wrote:
Will somebody point me at the right thread/download links? Nearly four years on this forum and this will be my first ship - tragic...

'Course, it had to be on the wiki... the cached version should be reachable here,:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/s ... en&strip=1

this also contains a link to the current version of obj2dattex.py (needing python 2.6 - right click, save).

Tsk, it looks like that 'you'll make an OXP' curse is working, after all...

Posted: **Fri Jun 11, 2010 8:07 am**

Kaks wrote:
DaddyHoggy wrote:
Will somebody point me at the right thread/download links? Nearly four years on this forum and this will be my first ship - tragic...
'Course, it had to be on the wiki... the cached version should be reachable here,:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/s ... en&strip=1

this also contains a link to the current version of obj2dattex.py (needing python 2.6 - right click, save).

Tsk, it looks like that 'you'll make an OXP' curse is working, after all...

Thanks Kaks - the cache link works - going to go download python now.

What does this line mean (exactly):

to obj( mtl texture) and convert to *.dat format

What's an "mtl texture" - I don't recall being given any texture options as part of my export from .ac to .obj from AC3D

EDIT: Have also found a .mtl file in same directory as .obj file - doesn't seem to be much in it (1KB file), but until proven otherwise will presume this is normal!

Posted: **Fri Jun 11, 2010 8:47 am**

DaddyHoggy wrote:
What's an "mtl texture" - I don't recall being given any texture options as part of my export from .ac to .obj from AC3D

“MTL” files define materials for OBJ files. They aren’t textures, just text files telling us what texture to use.

Posted: **Fri Jun 11, 2010 9:16 am**

DH,
when you run the OBJTODAT it'll have a line at the top of the DAT file like this :

// original file: "biggerwolf3.obj"
//
// model size: 113.472 x 34.016 x 122.835
//
// textures used: ['metalliwolfskin.png']

the textures will be the texture from your modelling program, i usually rename mine (cos it's usually originally called "testskin" or summat) for the game so here i've overtyped it w/ "metalliwolfskin.png", which is the texture that will be in the OXP folder.
same as per the bottom of the DAT, thre's a wad of stuff mapping textures to verts etc :

TEXTURES
metalliwolfskin.png 1.0 1.0 0.00430 0.73089 0.04901 0.78781 0.13034 0.76914
metalliwolfskin.png 1.0 1.0 0.00430 0.73089 0.13034 0.76914 0.13034 0.73107
metalliwolfskin.png 1.0 1.0 0.20874 0.37598 0.00430 0.60212 0.13034 0.60231
metalliwolfskin.png 1.0 1.0 0.00430 0.60212 0.00430 0.73089 0.13034 0.73107

again, i just search/replace whatever was in there w/ the name of the texture file that's going to be in the OXP.

when you create/export a file in OBJ you get an OBJ file and an MTL file, but it's not relevant to the OXP beyond this point.

Posted: **Fri Jun 11, 2010 9:37 am**

If you open the .mtl file, you'll see something like this (this one exported from Wings3D):

Code: Select all

# Exported from Wings 3D 1.1.12
newmtl cube2_auv
Ns 100.0
d 1.0
illum 2
Kd 1.0 1.0 1.0
Ka 1.0 1.0 1.0
Ks 1.0 1.0 1.0
Ke 0.0 0.0 0.0
map_Kd cube2_auv.tga

I just replace cube2_auv.tga with *mytexturename*.png before running obj2dattex.py (the python script works via command prompt in WinXP), so the resulting .dat will have correct texture references already in place.

Posted: **Fri Jun 11, 2010 9:59 am**

Or alternatively, use the 'right' texture .png to begin with!

If you use 'texturefilenameusedinsideoolite.png' inside your 3d progam, you don't need the extra steps mentioned by KW & Zieman.

And yes, it's normal. When you export to .obj you actually generate two files instead of one: .obj & .mtl

Posted: **Fri Jun 11, 2010 10:30 am**

Killer Wolf wrote:
DH,
when you run the OBJTODAT it'll have a line at the top of the DAT file like this :

// original file: "biggerwolf3.obj"
//
// model size: 113.472 x 34.016 x 122.835
//
// textures used: ['metalliwolfskin.png']

the textures will be the texture from your modelling program, i usually rename mine (cos it's usually originally called "testskin" or summat) for the game so here i've overtyped it w/ "metalliwolfskin.png", which is the texture that will be in the OXP folder.
same as per the bottom of the DAT, thre's a wad of stuff mapping textures to verts etc :

TEXTURES
metalliwolfskin.png 1.0 1.0 0.00430 0.73089 0.04901 0.78781 0.13034 0.76914
metalliwolfskin.png 1.0 1.0 0.00430 0.73089 0.13034 0.76914 0.13034 0.73107
metalliwolfskin.png 1.0 1.0 0.20874 0.37598 0.00430 0.60212 0.13034 0.60231
metalliwolfskin.png 1.0 1.0 0.00430 0.60212 0.00430 0.73089 0.13034 0.73107

again, i just search/replace whatever was in there w/ the name of the texture file that's going to be in the OXP.

when you create/export a file in OBJ you get an OBJ file and an MTL file, but it's not relevant to the OXP beyond this point.

The start of my dat file looks like this:

Code: Select all

// output from Obj2DatTex.py Wavefront text file conversion script
// (c) 2005 By Giles Williams
// 
// original file: "tycho8_obj.obj"
// 
// model size: 4.614 x 3.214 x 9.500
// 
// textures used: ['tycho8.png']
// 
NVERTS 984
NFACES 1352

I've just realised that my ship may be a realistic in the real world (i.e. a small 8 year old boy could fit in to the cockpit) but in Oolite terms its teeny-weeny - much rescaling needed!

By the way is 1352 a lot for number of faces? (I know it's not a lot in "modern" gaming terms - but is it too many for Oolite? I hear this number 800 in the back of my mind...

The end of my .dat file looks like this:

Code: Select all

TEXTURES
tycho8.png	1.0 1.0	0.12519 0.51155	0.01888 0.51778	0.05076 0.28801
tycho8.png	1.0 1.0	0.12519 0.51155	0.05076 0.28801	0.07139 0.27339
tycho8.png	1.0 1.0	0.12519 0.51155	0.07139 0.27339	0.07077 0.26002
tycho8.png	1.0 1.0	0.12519 0.51155	0.07077 0.26002	0.14518 0.25566

Which then goes along the same lines for another 1300+ lines (same as the no. of faces I guess?)

My .mtl file looks like this:

Code: Select all

newmtl acmat_0
Kd 1 1 1
Ka 0.2 0.2 0.2
Ks 0.2 0.2 0.2
Ns 128
Tr 0
map_Kd tycho8.png
newmtl acmat_1
Kd 1 1 0
Ka 0.2 0.2 0.2
Ks 0.2 0.2 0.2
Ns 128
Tr 0
map_Kd tycho8.png
newmtl acmat_2
Kd 1 0 0
Ka 0.2 0.2 0.2
Ks 0.2 0.2 0.2
Ns 128
Tr 0
map_Kd tycho8.png
newmtl acmat_3
Kd 0.533333 0.533333 0.533333
Ka 0.2 0.2 0.2
Ks 0.2 0.2 0.2
Ns 128
Tr 0
map_Kd tycho8.png
newmtl acmat_4
Kd 0 0 1
Ka 0.2 0.2 0.2
Ks 0.2 0.2 0.2
Ns 128
Tr 0
map_Kd tycho8.png

So, basically I think this model for Oolite is WWWWAAAAYYYYYY too small - rescaling is easy, and has too many polygons - harder to fix.

Can somebody confirm this for me?

Oolite Bulletins

My first ship...

My first ship...