Spring RTS Engine

My first problem is UV mapping. I have tried using feature detection and projection but neither produce uvmaps that work with upspring (misaligned). Feature mapping seems to align something but they are the wrongsize (too small). I've tried flipping but to no avail. Am I supposed to flip in the UV window or the whole bmp?

Also these points of origin... I see no red dots. Also it sounds dodgy. It sounds like I have to move my objects when the models I imported are all perfectly aligned. I don't want to have to do that again in upspring because it sucks for aligning.

Also is it possible to zoom in with upspring?

I'm using wings 3d and upspring.

Orakio wrote:My first problem is UV mapping. I have tried using feature detection and projection but neither produce uvmaps that work with upspring (misaligned). Feature mapping seems to align something but they are the wrongsize (too small). I've tried flipping but to no avail. Am I supposed to flip in the UV window or the whole bmp?

are you making your UVmaps in Wings?

in wings it's pretty easy. you go into the uvampping bit (having combined your model). then you select what faces you want to be attached to each other on the texture.
tell it to cut some edges for the sake of preserving the shapes of the faces.
choose projection: unfolding as it's a little easier to interpret. provided you chose your groups wisely then your faces should be grouped in nice easy to interpret places. make the texture and voila, it's done...

export parts of the model as .obj and it'll automatically save a copy of the texture in the same folder.

NOW you have to make the texture a 32bit RGBA .tga/.dds. use something to add an alpha layer. that should work fine with upspring.
i don't think the texture needs to be flipped for upspring, only for spring itself. flip the image itself when you want to!

Orakio wrote:
Also these points of origin... I see no red dots. Also it sounds dodgy. It sounds like I have to move my objects when the models I imported are all perfectly aligned. I don't want to have to do that again in upspring because it sucks for aligning.

you can only see the origins in red when move mode is selected. select specific objects to see their origins.
it's not too bad to replace them. - resize the window/POV you're working in so it's a bit bigger and zoom in (see below )

Orakio wrote: Also is it possible to zoom in with upspring?

YES!!! - use the middle mouse button (click your wheel)

a little note about using Wings... I strongly recommend that you do two things if you haven't already:
1.) go into edit->preferences, and in the camera tab, select 3-button mouse and Blender-style camera control.
2.) edit->preferences, advanced tab, and enable advanced menus.
If you are new to modelling, I strongly suggest doodling and fooling around with different commands and tools so that you get acquainted with and used to using them.

FizWizz wrote: 2.) edit->preferences, advanced tab, and enable advanced menus.
If you are new to modelling, I strongly suggest doodling and fooling around with different commands and tools so that you get acquainted with and used to using them.

damn right - that's one of the most usefull features in the program

I fixed the UV mapping. I exported the obj of the combined model and imported UV coordinated from that.

I still don't get changing the point of origin.

Is it possible to do it without moving parts? I need wings to align all my objects upspring just isn't good enough for me to feel that my objects are correctly centred and positioned. So it seems that to set the point of an object, I ignore that object's actual point and move the object in relation to the root point that I want it's point to be and click apply them moving it back. What's the point of having it in the right position in the first place?

I only started modelling a few days ago...

bdsm.kicks-ass.org/Spring/Orakio/dev/

Ok so I can get into the same position again by using the x y z change and figuring out for the new point of origin.

So now I just need to know how to set the alpha channel.

Uhmm, sorry to butt in, but I need a little help, this stupid thing REFUSES to allow my actual unit's body to take over, and instead I have a damn flare on top of the list...

Anybody know how I can kick it out.. I tried copy/paste and similar things already...


Fuck that: I just deleted it and remade it in upspring, and spent 20+ mins moving it into the right place, somehow it vented my anger...

Well I'm not 100% sure of the problem but here's what I do...

If I have an object with three pieces, the base, roundabout and seesaw, I select each object one by one and use the export selected option in file to export each object as a separate obj file. Then in upspring I start of by loading the base object. I select the base object and import the next object, roundabout, then I select roundabout and import seesaw. That seems to work for hierarchy with me.

that's right. if you import and object whilst having another object selected it becomes a daughter. god only knows how you managed to get a flare to become den mother snipa .
(cut and paste might work for moving them round...but it also might distrub the positions/shapes or corrupt the model)

I'm still having trouble with UV mapping. Upspring keeps showing them misaligned and things. It worked before if I imported coordinates from a file but now that I have added more objects it produces misaligned textures again. I have tried exporting to a model for UV mapping but all this does is produce a model with ruined edges added or morphed everywhere that still doesn't align fully.

Also what does it mean if it can't use feature detection because of closed surfaces?

you can't map an entire object in a single map with Wings. just make all but one face a single map and the odd one another if that's how you really want to do it.

But doesn't spring/upspring only support one UV texture?

There's a picture of the model here:

bdsm.kicks-ass.org/Spring/Orakio/dev/

5 6 7 are the most recent, how would you UV map this? Is it some quirk that I must leave out one face? Can I just select all then deselect one unseen face?

you can map a whole model in wings, just group the objects, UVmap ande then ungroup.

You mean combine it? I have been doing this, however there are two faces that upspring doesn't sppear to map correctly. Since my unit is an arms nano lathe I imported the lathe from the AA 3DO and fixed the nose (redid it. I'm wonderring if there are some invisible bad settings left behind and I'm tempted to make the model again. In upspring when I go to view UV map everything is fine except that two faces of the nano lathe, the biggest, are huge and on the top of a load of other things.

just let wings choose which faces belong to which groups and look at the outcome; when you're UVMapping you can't choose all the faces to be attched to one another as it confuses Wings. instead it divides the faces up into groups. these groups are split up on the UVmap. you can shuffle them round, transform them etc etc until they're in the right place, then make the texture.

edit: post a screengrab of your problem on myimg.de or imageshack

Nah I use my own serverfor images, no excessive features, simple and no bandwidth limit, fast to upload with FTP...

Anyway it seems to be fixed. I redid the nano by hand and made it the same then rebuilt the model in upspring so I have to do my origins again

It seems to randomly not like somethings. Wings still doesn't appear to like using feature detection on the nano only project, but it all seems to map so far.

All I need now is to find out how to use the alpha channel. I have gimp.

Orakio wrote:
It seems to randomly not like somethings. Wings still doesn't appear to like using feature detection on the nano only project, but it all seems to map so far.

...so you figured out how to manually specify the groups for the faces when UVmapping...it's best to anyways

UpSpring doesn't create good model exports if you include point objects. Just FYI.

Yes, sometime it screws the rotation on some objects up or inverts normals or crap like that.

Argh wrote:UpSpring doesn't create good model exports if you include point objects. Just FYI.

is this empty objects you're talking about?