Spring RTS Engine

Hi

So this is what i got




I tried to move it up on the y axis on up spring but it did not worked


as for the texture, i thought that i may have done the alpha mapping wrong, but it does not as the greyed parts are also black.

So what do i have to do in upspring to fix this, anyone knows? please thanks

Thanks.

I am going to say this because you have ignored all other posters.


Make 1 thread. post in that. I could probably BETTER help you if all of your posts were in 1 thread.

well i got past the modelling and texturing part, now the probleme i have is related to upspring so i thought it had a better place here.

Broken alpha channels, most likely. What graphics program?

rattle wrote:Broken alpha channels, most likely. What graphics program?

Photoshop and DXTbmp, image format is tga.

Well if you really use the tga as texture this doesn't apply but when you mentioned DXT I immediately thought of you using only DXT1 format without alpha channel...

I remember that bug, but it was a broken alpha on Texture 1 for me. I've only had it on my GF2 though.

Hm, if you used DXTbmp to put alphas on your TGAs then you should be fine. Is the alpha of texture 2 good? Also did you think of adding a hitsphere, height etc.?

Whenever I had an all-black unit it was either the lack of UV coordinates or no normals set. Try recalculating normals in upspring.

rattle wrote:I remember that bug, but it was a broken alpha on Texture 1 for me. I've only had it on my GF2 though.

Hm, if you used DXTbmp to put alphas on your TGAs then you should be fine. Is the alpha of texture 2 good? Also did you think of adding a hitsphere, height etc.?

how is any new modellers meant to understand anything you just said?

Better yet, just send me the model, via a link or PM... and I'll fix it, and post the answer. Sheesh, you guys suck at helping people. I can't stand watching this any more.

Recalcualting the normals in spring did not worked, oh baw

Maybe the probleme comes from wings 3D

How do i set the UV coordinates in upspring?

rattle wrote:I remember that bug, but it was a broken alpha on Texture 1 for me. I've only had it on my GF2 though.

Hm, if you used DXTbmp to put alphas on your TGAs then you should be fine. Is the alpha of texture 2 good? Also did you think of adding a hitsphere, height etc.?

Do i have to add a texture in texture 2 in upspring? I only added a texture in texture one, it's the one i saved with DXTbmp with the alpha layer.

Argh wrote:Better yet, just send me the model, via a link or PM... and I'll fix it, and post the answer. Sheesh, you guys suck at helping people. I can't stand watching this any more.

Hey thanks, i will upload it asap.

If you meant see the UVs, it's texture mapping => show UV mapping. You don't set them, you import your model with UVs.

Also the lowest point on your model should be at y=0, this is ground level. Anything below goes underground.

Argh wrote:Better yet, just send me the model, via a link or PM... and I'll fix it, and post the answer. Sheesh, you guys suck at helping people. I can't stand watching this any more.

8======D *wag-wag*

rattle wrote:If you meant see the UVs, it's texture mapping => show UV mapping. You don't set them, you import your model with UVs.

Also the lowest point on your model should be at y=0, this is ground level. Anything below goes underground.

Argh wrote:Better yet, just send me the model, via a link or PM... and I'll fix it, and post the answer. Sheesh, you guys suck at helping people. I can't stand watching this any more.

8======D *wag-wag*

When i set y=0 in the model tab, the hitbox moves down the grid, and is half under the ground. Is it the model that has to be at Y=0, is it the hitbox or both?

I have set in objects tab the base model to be above the grid, then hit apply transform. But the hitbox isn't at its lowest point in model tab.


Also here is a rar with the 3SO 3DS and TGA files.
http://www.mediafire.com/?wkjsyqwvwgz

Almost done. Brilliant model for a first go, I'm half-tempted to ask you to work on P.U.R.E.

You can offset it with upspring by moving the root object on the Y-axis, I didn't mean the hitbox though. I do it in the model app usually. If you're using wings, combine everything together and use Tools => Put on ground.

Projectile models can be "underground" by the way, doesn't matter there.

Ok, first off... here are all of the minor issues:

1. You're using a lot of double-sided polygons. I should warn you that these often render a bit funny in Spring, when any reflectivity is enabled, and I usually avoid them, even at the cost of slightly higher polycount. However, that's a minor issue.

2. The orientation of the model was wrong, it was turned sideways. Again, super-easy fix. See upper-right window for the way the front of the model should be facing.

3. You needed to do Object-->Recalculate Normals, then follow up with Object-->Recalculate Vertex Normals, 3DO-Style (all objects), to get the shading right and correct the smoothing. I used an angle of 45 degrees, it worked for everything, as even the round "radar dome" will look rounded with that smoothing angle (anything less than 45 degrees is smoothed, when that's the number you give UpSpring).

That will fix the blackness, if it's cause by welding problems, or, heaven forbid, bad vertices- it won't fix bad verts, but you'll see them.

Now, to see a good preview, you need to use the following viewport settings:



That will show you if you're having serious problems due to welding- although it's not exactly like Spring's renderer, it's very close.

The biggest single issue, though, was that you didn't define a texture2. The texture2 is used for the glow / reflect map, and 1-bit transparency. It's not optional. I've posted the one I use as my stock file, along with a shrunken 8:8:8:8 DDS texture (more or less lossless) of your main skin, which looks practically identical to your 1024 skin at a quarter of the size. Don't use TGA, they're huge, require Spring to make the mipmaps when the Unit's built, and the textures have to be upside down- UpSpring renders them right, but Spring doesn't, for some unknown reason. I'm sure that certain people around here will say otherwise, but tbh I think that 8:8:8:8 DDS is the way to go- lossless, but without the problems of TGA.

Click here to get the updated MG Rex. Let me know if you're still having problems, that should have sorted it out, though.

[EDIT] The model wasn't centered on the X axis, either... fixed...[/EDIT]

3. You needed to do Object-->Recalculate Normals, then follow up with Object-->Recalculate Vertex Normals, 3DO-Style (all objects), to get the shading right and correct the smoothing. I used an angle of 45 degrees, it worked for everything, as even the round "radar dome" will look rounded with that smoothing angle (anything less than 45 degrees is smoothed, when that's the number you give UpSpring).

It's better do the normals/smoothing groups it in the model app, since upspring's auto-smooth doesn't work well with mixed round/hard objects.

Also the legs should be straight, not rotated. You pose them in the unit script with the turn command. Smoth, for example, does this for all of his mechs.
The reason for this is that they will turn around the x-axis, not the axis they face to right now. It'll be okay for the thighs but other pieces like lower legs or feet will look weird.

Going by Argh's screenshot, one other minor thing: don't use spaces in piece names in the object tree. "beam lazor" should be "beamlazor" or "beam_lazor" for example. Spaces and scripts don't get along.

All of Rattle and Gnome's points are correct, although I will say that, most of the time, you can just use UpSpring's smoothing tools. Just not with single Pieces with a mix of curvature and stark lines.

And, while we're posting up niggling stuff... the small barrels of the miniguns could probably have been 5-sided, and nobody would ever know.

Lighting on many of the bevels is incorrect, it doesn't all match an overhead light source.

Detail levels on the texture are much better than most people's, where they keep everything the same, but are inconsistent, sometimes in areas that don't make sense. For example, the big four-barreled gun has a very low level of detail (i.e., it's small on the uvmap) but it should be as high, if not higher, than the body, because especially the top face will get seen by players all the time. The bottom of the body, on the other hand, has waaaaay more texture space assigned to it than it needed- players will see that infrequently, even if using the non-overhead views, and you could have gained a lot of free space that way.

Overall though, it's very good for a first go. Looking forward to seeing what else you can do.

haha oh wow thanks a lot for all of this!

Argh wrote:
And, while we're posting up niggling stuff... the small barrels of the miniguns could probably have been 5-sided, and nobody would ever know.

I actually tried to delete some faces and lower down some details on the barrels but in upspring it still counted 2000+ polys.

I lowered the barrels down to four sides, but upspring still added all the polies of the deleted face on the flat sides. Is it uv related or something?

Also i will redo the uvmapping, i don't like how i did with all the faces having texture, also there is many faces i have to delete, player will never see these faces.

Now the probleme is that spring wants to load a 3DO, while i have my model.3SO inside the object3D. But i can't figure out why it wants a 3DO and not a 3SO.