Changing Characters for new ones

    Quote from spuder

    yeah will do thanx. you sound prity clued up about 3D modeling, is that what you do or is it just an interest of urs?


    What I do is IT Tech support/Operations (last quarter of a century or so, before that I was in the Royal Navy), 3D CGI is just a hobby, one I've dabbled in for the last 17 yrs or so, along with a little game modding / custom content creation here and there...


    LOL

    AestheticDemon


    Terror Trooper #666


    Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day...
    Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life...

    Yeah im still working on figurin out how to add new models but that isnt planed to be done until version 2 or 3 anyways, so ill be doing this with version 1. I spent about 3hrs last night playing around with head textures changing just the face to blue and adding tattoo's and stuff. For the time being im only including Klingon, Romulan, Federation and borg ships so I may work on adding other races into the game but at this time they would only be in the bars. Version 2 will have the new ships and systems added to it.


    Im guessing It will work ok if I edit say trents face save it as Pi_pirate6_head.dfm then add it to the ini files and have a new head yeah?


    Anyways im studying for the rest of the week got a uni exam on monday and need to get my head down

    The dfm files contain mesh names and texture names, the names must be unique, so just saving the file as a different name will probably cause conflicts, you need to clone the file, with different mesh and texture names...


    You have to do this manually in a utf editor...


    Here is a clone test I did, of a recoloured Liberty uniform, for a new faction, compare this with the li_female_guard_body.dfm to see what I changed...
    UTFEditor v3 lets you open multiple files so you can see them side by side...

    AestheticDemon


    Terror Trooper #666


    Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day...
    Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life...

    Edited once, last by AestheticDemon ().

    just a quike Q: trents texture is dds format but only has 1 texture insted of 8. most of the others are TGA and have 8 peaces each. Does this mean if I turn the TGA textures into dds I will only need 1 file for each section for all the others or is trent different in some way?

    yeah its coming together slowly, should make my 2 year objective date. Aestheticdemon is helping me with converting some of the ships so im bang on time now. Cheers Demon x

    Quote from spuder

    just a quike Q: trents texture is dds format but only has 1 texture insted of 8. most of the others are TGA and have 8 peaces each. Does this mean if I turn the TGA textures into dds I will only need 1 file for each section for all the others or is trent different in some way?


    Nope, same as any texture, 1 dds file or several tga's, how many depends on how large the textures are, basically its factorial 2,


    mip0 = original texture
    mip1 half size
    mip2 quarter size


    and so on until you hit 1 pixel by 1 pixel


    tga's will give better quality, since dds is a lossy format, but f you use dtx 5 compression which Swat mentioned he'd tried and FL takes with no problem, you lose less data than with dtx1 or 3, it shouldnt make much difference visually.

    AestheticDemon


    Terror Trooper #666


    Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day...
    Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life...

    yeah iv notice when trent walks there are gaps in his texture so if I convert his dds to the 8 tga files do you recon this will fix this?


    Dont want my chars walking around with holes in them lol.


    Oh yeah tried your clone only prob is it was for a uniform and I am working on heads. some of the files are different and I tried changing the names and adding it to the ini but it went invisible lol.

    Heads work the same way...


    Find the head you want to clone, copy and paste the dfm file with a new name, so


    Copy head_99.dfm paste as head_99_goth.dfm, export the mip0 texture, apply your pale goth makeup, make your mip1-mip8 resizes, import them into the head_99_goth.dfm, then rename the correct bits so they wont conflict with the original version...


    You need to change the materials names in...


    \ MultiLevel Mesh? Face_groups Group? Material_Name


    ...for all mesh lods (mesh0 mesh1 etc), and all groups (group0 group1 etc), and in the Materials Library section, and in the texture library, the names for the 3db's can be left as is, since you're just cloning an existing head/body...


    Doesn't matter if head_99 3db in head_99.dfm is replaced by head_99 3db in head_99_goth.dfm, since its the same mesh, but the texture names and material names MUST be different, if you want to use both...


    Check out the downloads, for a 'mod' called 'Plastic Surgery Kit' or similar, has a whole bunch of cloned female heads, that can be used alongside the originals with no problems.


    As for gaps in trents textures, well maybe the dds to tga/edit tga/tga to dds routine has made just enough errors in replication to leave gaps, just using tga's might well fix that.

    AestheticDemon


    Terror Trooper #666


    Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day...
    Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life...

    Edited once, last by AestheticDemon ().

    haha just changed trents head file to dds dtx 5 and it completely morphed it. think Im just gona stick with the TGA's even if it means create 8 peaces. and I hope your right about it fixing his uniform it alittle anoying



    HAHA found out why it looked morphed, I forgot to flip the texture! after changing trents body dds for tga iv notice its all upside down so that must have been what was wrong with the dds i created for his head.

    all textures working fine now that iv converted the to dds dtx 5. much easier doing it this way as i only have to do 1 lol. Did ya get to do the test flight DEMON? hope you managed to get it into the game without having to change any polys or anythin. PS if you did get it in but it aint done yet can you send me a pic of it in the game so i can get an idea of what it will look like

    LOL Been a little busy last couple of days, catching up on stuff I didn't get done earlier in the week during the riots, and the aftermath, should get the mesh sorted tonight/tomorrow (fingers crossed)...


    Speaking of 'in game'... anybody got any suggestions for engine effects? Havn't seen any startrek stuff in must be 10 years, have NO idea what impulse engines on a shuttle should look like, FX wise...

    AestheticDemon


    Terror Trooper #666


    Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day...
    Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life...

    I assume souch a thing can be done, but not surely with an ALE effect. If you know how, you can make a light-texture for this glow.


    BTW are you planning a jumpgate-free jumping system? (sorry for changing the subject)