Oolite Bulletins

Hi guys,

I'm still plodding along learning Wings3D in my spare time, but I have a couple of questions re. texturing.

Firstly, I've seen a couple of walkthroughs on websites where they show an object using multiple texture sheets instead of just one. Is this supported by Oolite?

Secondly, can anyone suggest any recommend texturing tutorials they have used - from building a ship through to final product?

Aside from space probes I've put together a few ships, one of which is shown below as a WIP, but the whole texturing process is confusing me a little.

Cheers!
Px4

The cockpit is facing to the lower left - the recessed portion:


Underside:

Oolite can use more than one texture file per model, however obj2datTex.py will only export the first texture.

Nice ship!

Hi Phoenix4,
Very nice ship!
I don't know if you've had a look at my new Texture Tutorial but you might find it helpful.
Oolite can support more than one 'texture' for a ship, to be specific (for non-shader graphics) a diffuse_map (the ship's 'skin'), an illumination_map (for spotlighting etc) and an emission_map (for lights and 'glows'). However it is more efficient, and therefore recommended, to combine the illumination_map and emission_map into a combined emission_map.
My tutorial explains in detail how to do this.
I can't advise you on Shaders I'm afraid. You'll need someone like Griff for that.
Anyway, I hope this helps.
Cheers,
Smivs.

Cheers guys, thanks for the info and compliments!

@Smivs, I'll definitely follow your tutorial and see what happens - thanks!

@Kaks. not quite sure what you mean by "Oolite can use more than one texture file per model, however obj2datTex.py will only export the first texture"

Does that mean that any additional texture files will be lost? - I'm not sure what the obj2datTex.py actually does.

Thanks,

Px4

I'm referring to this:

https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?p=28362

Hope that after reading that thread everything will make sense!

Aha! Cheers Kaks, thanks for the link

Px4

Kaks wrote:

I'm referring to this:

https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?p=28362

Hope that after reading that thread everything will make sense!

That link is from 2007. The current python script does support more than one texture, I used it often on multi texture ships. Only the converter dat->obj is old and only converts one texture. But when starting with wings you won't need conversion in that direction.

The most current converters are found here. The drop converters are mac only. The two you are interested in are the bottom two. Obj2DatTexNorm.py will only generate 1.74+ files, the Obj2DatTex.py will create dat foles usable for all oolite versions.

And Phoenix4, Oolite wants triangles. So before you start exporting you must divide all four-angles in triangles. Wings has a command to do that in one click.

Oolite wants triangles. So before you start exporting you must divide all four-angles in triangles. Wings has a command to do that in one click.

Thanks, I'll check that out.

One other thing re. textures. I've just tried the following in Wings but wonder if Oolite supports it - I took a cube and textured it then saved the file. Afterwards I opened a blank file and created a cylinder and textured that too (both in Photoshop). I then used the Merge command in Wings to bring them both together and then combined them as a single object.

Question is, will Oolite support a model created that way? It gives a lot more control over each piece of a model in my opinion, but is there a better way?

Thanks,
Px4

Just for reference, the command to turn quads into triangles is Tesselate->Triangulate. It's in the right click menu when in face mode.

Thanks for the clarification guys!

The separate texture issue is interesting. I guess I'll just have to use a larger texture file to incorporate all the various graphic elements.

Cheers!
Px4