Hexes - Crashes

[astrotrooper]

You don't need to spend an hour showing them how to make a complex model - making a cylinder in 3-4 parts should do.

Also it's worthwile advice to show how to use lith unwrap instead of uu3.

My advice about that is multiple objects can be mapped from multiple angles and in lith it will show these objects from the face you mapped them from, so you can make a texture on which some objects are mapped from the side, top, and front - on the same texture - but you have to do the mapping prior to exporting from your chosen 3d editor program.


This is how I was able to map the Cabbage's engines, missile lanunchers and the plasma cannon from the front/rear, while everything else is mapped from the top.


Also when you are doing highlights you don't always have to pick one face at a time - I had a difficult time with the bussard collectors on the Cabbage - in some cases you can just select the whole object and "light up " the whole thing - for some objects - ie. bussard collectors in this case.


For textures you don't have to do everything in Photoshop - some things are just simpler and quicker in Paint - Photoshop you only really need to import into TGA format. Or to hijcak a gif file's palette.

[Dr_Breen]

thanks for the feedback.

i'll take care of the mentioned things. however i can't change the video anymore as i don't have the raw cuts anymore.

for now i'll take care of the most important parts

-scale, hex and the ships facing

-the list of programs that can be used will be extended in the forum topic.

-i won't recommend to seperate before scaling as this results in flickering shipparts ingame.

-the mapping is part of the video and can't be changed anymore. I still have some "cut away scenes" where i did some more complicated mapping. this resulted in the video being 40 minutes longer so i removed those parts and stayed to basic mapping. perhaps i can set them together to a separate video and add it to the topic.

[thunderchero]

Also when you are doing highlights you don't always have to pick one face at a time - I had a difficult time with the bussard collectors on the Cabbage - in some cases you can just select the whole object and "light up " the whole thing - for some objects - ie. bussard collectors in this case.

For me, I use separate objects and put all my highlighted polygons in that object and name it glow. For Dr_Breen's type of separation you would need multi objects named glow.

you might want to look at the way I separate model (by face) this requires a much cleaner model (no overlap and 100% hollow).

convert by face.zip

Sorry this tutorial is a little out of date but covers basics.

thunderchero

[astrotrooper]

I looked at the separate by face tutorial just yesterday.

One thing I noticed is the interpenetration tolerance - if you set it high to 0.1000 you will get ships that are fairly transparent (of course at that setting you can separate just about anything) - the lower you set the tolerance the more solid the ships will appear.

BUT the lower you set it the more unlikely it is to work - ie the default is 0.0200 - some ships I can separate at 0.0045 and get an improvement in quality over the default 0.0200 - others I would otherwise have to remake I can separate at slightly raised tolerance ie. 0.0250 but quality suffers.

[astrotrooper]

thanks for the feedback.

i'll take care of the mentioned things. however i can't change the video anymore as i don't have the raw cuts anymore.

That's all right it's basically a good video. What you can't edit you can just add a written supplement for.

i won't recommend to seperate before scaling as this results in flickering shipparts ingame

Hmm I'll have to try enlarging first and than separating at a higher interpenetration tolerance - see if that gets better results.

[Dr_Breen]

i ran into the problem of inseparability after scaling up as well.
Creator tries to mark the affected objects as good as possible. it helped me moving some vertices for a few units so that they weren't touching the other object anymore and the whole object separated at a low interpenetration tolerance.

[astrotrooper]

Well I realized, what happens is when you scale up an object the scale of the interpenetration gets scaled up too.

So if an object separates at a minimum of say 0.0100 when you import it, if you upscale it x10 you also have to upscale the interpenetration tolerance by a factor of 10. (to 0.1000 in this case)

Which is also why you got better results by separating after scaling up - the default interpenetration tolerance is 0.0200 - and if you separate after increasing object size x10 than it is the same as separating at 0.0020 - which gets better results.

And this is also why some objects will not separate after you enlarge them.

But otherwise it makes no difference when you separate.

[thunderchero]

But otherwise it makes no difference when you separate.

As you pointed out scale and interpenetration go hand in hand. When one changes the other will also need to be changed.

The main scale point is the final one if you plan on using scaling standards.

viewtopic.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=989

so what ever gives you the best results is the way to go.

Note; most of the time scaling up to 10 was done just to make it easier to move around and select what is needed.

thunderchero

[astrotrooper]

Yeah - it's the conversion to hot file (and manual editing of the hot file) that will ultimately determine the scale. Plus the Ultimate Editor.

But unless you make it huge in 3ds (or whatever program you're using) you probably will have to enlarge when you edit it in creator.

[astrotrooper]

Nice fleet of ships BTW.