[Vehicle] CV9035NL (WIP)

[CTRifle]

So, what am I renaming then? And I'll try the texture path, didn't notice that

[Rhino]

So, what am I renaming then? And I'll try the texture path, didn't notice that

The names themselves are not so important, they are just so they can easily be identified, some vehicles we have from OPK etc like the Tornado are exported with German names and it makes it pretty hard to work out what's what, have to open up the editor and select the part to see where the gizmo goes etc

The important thing is the names stay consistent between all the lods etc and they make sense. You will also want to check "prefix subparts" in the export setting if things are just named "Turret" (or "Turret__RotationalBundle" as the __*** suffix gets cut off its name during export and is put into its sub-objects creation type) as then when exported they will be named "nl_apc_cv90_Turret".

[CTRifle]

So you're saying leave then short or just __Rotation Bundle or __PCO so they don't get cut off? Sorry lol, just wanting to get a better understanding of how it works

Could you post an example hierarchy for me? Or visuals

[Rhino]

Closest thing I have to hand would be the Scorpion:



Although I made it off of the Scimitar without many edits and tbh, you probably shouldn't have the Gunner PCO in there and possibly some other things as they are technically another draw call being setup this way with a 1 tri mesh but would most likley be only a tiny optimization to get rid of them and code them in by hand in the .tweak file but setting things up would be trickier.

Then if you look in the Scorpions .con file you will find bits like this:

Code: Select all

ObjectTemplate.create [b][color=Red]PlayerControlObject [/color][/b]gb_ifv_scorpion_gunner
ObjectTemplate.hasMobilePhysics 1
ObjectTemplate.geometryPart 1
ObjectTemplate.addTemplate gb_ifv_scorpion_Turret
ObjectTemplate.setPosition -0.0590/0.8353/-0.0798

ObjectTemplate.create [b][color=Red]RotationalBundle [/color][/b]gb_ifv_scorpion_Turret
ObjectTemplate.hasMobilePhysics 1
ObjectTemplate.geometryPart 2
ObjectTemplate.addTemplate gb_ifv_scorpion_Barrel_Base
ObjectTemplate.setPosition 0.0365/-0.0625/0.7304

Where the Gunner mesh is defined as a PCO and the Turret is a RotationalBundle, because they have had those __*** suffixes to them. Without them they would be created as a "SimpleObject" which is basically a visual static that doesn't move (or at least it doesn't move independently from the vehicle if on a vehicle) or do anything. You can't even attach children to it, needs to be a "Bundle" to do that which is basically the same thing as a SimpleObject, but with a few more options. SimpleObjects are basically used for adding on simple additions like bags attached to the side of a vehicle which they might not have on some versions, or making things like invisible code barrels to tell projectiles where you want them to come out of and in what direction

[Mineral]

Ah, I didn't know that would automatically make it right in the con. Although personally I still prefer to do it without as in the past I have made so many naming errors that I find it so much easy-r without. But yeah I guess the best method is then with it in the export scene naming.

[Glimmerman]

is there any news regarding this model yet?

[CTRifle]

Sorry, been getting side tracked these past few weeks. Ill put up an update as soon as I can

[Mongolian_dude]

Side-tracked. genius

[sylent/shooter]

Quick, everyone run and get your dictionaries and grammar books! Mongolian the grammar Nazi is here!! D:

[CTRifle]

Alright, so I attempted to export, no more texture problems but no col mesh is exported, and if I try to open in the editor it crashes.. so I probably missed something, idk

Heres the hierarchy now





materials


So Im kinda stuck on what to fix, but thanks for all the help so far. Ive prob made alot of stupid mistakes

Side-tracked. genius

[Mineral]

Can't see anything bad at first sight, Other then that you didn't give the right name to the main object.

the '__playercontrolobject' should be 'nl_apc_cv90__playercontrolobject'. On all Lod's. Otherwise you give it no name at all.

Also, on geom1/lod0 it's missing a '_' by '_playercontrolobject'.

I suggest first attempting to export geom0,geom1/lod0,geom2/lod0 and not doing all the other lod's. Just try to make sure all lod0's work first before doing the other ones based on lod0. That way there is less room for errors.

[Rhino]

I don't know how many times I need to say this but you should just export one geom and one lod, if your running into problems with that even just one sub geom at a time and once you've confirmed that's all good, add the cols or next lod on and then if it suddenly stops working its pretty easy to trace the source of the problem...

Also you really should have your main textures and your col materials in two separate Multi/Sub-Object Materials as there is no need to mix them on one object but providing your MatIDs are all ok there isn't any real issue with having them both in the same Multi/Sub-Object Material, just there is no need and asking to have problems.

Also you shouldn't really have a "wheels" material, generally the wheels use the side armour material but its fine defining them sepratly to keep things flexible for possible future damage coding BUT your tracks need a track material, which at the moment you only have a track texture mat and not a track col mat. Also note that the wheels should not have the track material, will get odd damage and effects from hitting them otherwise.

Can't see anything bad at first sight, Other then that you didn't give the right name to the main object.

the '__playercontrolobject' should be 'nl_apc_cv90__playercontrolobject'. On all Lod's. Otherwise you give it no name at all.

Not if you check "prefix sub objects" (or something along those lines) button in the export settings which you need to do anyways which will then add the objects name, in this case "cv90" although it should be "nl_apc_cv90" to the front of every parts name including the parent.

[Mineral]

Not if you check "prefix sub objects" (or something along those lines) button in the export settings which you need to do anyways which will then add the objects name, in this case "cv90" although it should be "nl_apc_cv90" to the front of every parts name including the parent.

Good to know! Cheers

[CTRifle]

Thats what Ive been doing, but for some reason it was exporting the whole thing even if I didnt have the other geoms selected, so I just deleted them and boom


Its no longer 90 degrees, Ive fixed that. Now working on getting the turret in the editor


Also, Ive done all the naming stuff and material changed as you said

EDIT:
geom 0 is in, woo

[Rhino]

You detach them from the hierarchy as it exports w/e is under the selected "root_"

[lucky.BOY]

Nice

[Rhino]

Cool, but before you go any further you need to look into your material/texture setup. Currently it looks like you have no Spec map on the model which is either because you've not saved the textures with the spec map, or the material is trying to use the spec map off the wrong material.

Generally speaking we use the "ColorMapGloss" material which uses the spec off the Diffuse maps (_c.dds) Alpha and then that needs to be saved in DXT5 and then the normal saved in DXT1 with no alpha.

If however your texture has an opacity map then you will want the spec map on the normal map's alpha and the opacity map on the Diffuses alpha in order for most Alpha materials to work.

But the default material, dunno if it has a name but its the one it uses if you define none when exporting a bundlemesh uses the Spec map off the Normals (_b.dds) alpha texture, which in some cases can be useful (like for my new LGBs I made recently which all share the same normal and spec textures from the normal map saved in DXT5 and then having multiple diffuse colour textures for the different versions of the bombs so while there colour is different with each one having a 170kb _c.dds, they are all loading the same normal and spec maps which is 341kb: Laser-guided, state-of-the-art! - Project Reality Forums) but generally, you want to save the Diffuse in DXT5 with the Spec in its Alpha rather than the normal map as DXT1 with no alpha channel (or a 1 bit alpha) has slightly worse compression to it. Again you should only really do this if there is a chance of having multiple colour versions of the same sort of object on the same map, or if you want a lower rez normal and spec map than the diffuse map.

[CTRifle]

Texture materials


I gave all 3 this


and COL mats


and im giving the tracks thier material and changing the wheel cols to side mat

[Rhino]

You've given all your materials an Alpha_Test mat? Are they all transparent materials, let along any of them? You should only be giving materials with opacity that and even at some points its good to do two materials if a large texture only has small transparent parts to it since those materials are harder to render and can cause some problems with effects etc but its a bad idea to waste so much texture memory for only a small corner requiring it to be transparent, UVs should be setup with all transparent UVs on their own sheet.

[CTRifle]

Riiight wrong one, was going off of the scimitar scene I have. Just fixed it.