Modelling

[The Old Dragon]

Hi folks,

For the past few weeks I've been building a new model with multiple LOD phases. I've eventually finished the different phases themselves, now I'm having a few problems in understanding just how to get it all together.  The manual only contains a little about it and assumes you know what you're doing.Parent the subsequent layers  to the main layer and then rename the parented layers... where and how do you do the renaming part?

If anyone knows how to do this or of a guide for it, I'd really appreciate the help.

Many thanks.

[DreamorCZ]

That's quite easy click on "view" -> Layer settings and voilà, there are layer name and parent.

[The Old Dragon]

Thank you Dreamor  :thumbsup:
That's me sorted.

[The Old Dragon]

This is mainly an observation, but has any other modeller noticed that Nexus seems to double up the number of polygons that lightwave qoutes?

Or is it just a me-ism and doing something wrong?

[Arparso]

Nope, that's normal. In Lightwave you're typically dealing with quads (4 vertices per polygon), while Nexus and in fact about every 3d game out there uses triangles instead (3 vertices per polygon), because that's what the graphics hardware understands. When converting a Lightwave model to Nexus' format, the quads get split into two triangles each, hence you end up with double the polygon count as before.

Performance-wise it's no big deal. Current GPUs churn out hundreds of thousands or even millions of triangles without breaking a sweat. You might want to avoid using dozens or hundreds of different textures on a single model, though, even if they are really small. It's generally best to use a single (or maybe even a few) large uv-maps instead.

[The Old Dragon]

Aha, thanks Arparso. A little something new learned...

[Dark-Zero]

hey, i got a question, can a .3D file be converted into the MSH file that nexus uses (or whatever uses0?

im kinda wya too impatient to learn modeling out of nothing (i need to have someone enx to me to teach me basics XD) and i was wondering, since the ships i wante dot put ingame is alreayd modele din a .3D file, can it be converted and worked for to put in nexus?

[Arparso]

hey, i got a question, can a .3D file be converted into the MSH file that nexus uses (or whatever uses0?

Short answer: no.

Long answer: it kinda depends. There is only one known converter able to create Nexus' MSH files and that's the official texture/model converter included in the game's modding tools. That converter can only convert models from Lightwave's file format (LWO or LWS). So basically: no, you can't directly convert any other 3d file format other than Lightwave's into a Nexus' MSH file. You may be able to successfully export a model in a different format (e.g. 3DS) to Lightwave's format and use that to convert to MSH, but that really depends on what software you've got at your disposal and what specific file format the source model is in.

i was wondering, since the ships i wante dot put ingame is alreayd modele din a .3D file, can it be converted and worked for to put in nexus?

Like I wrote above: if you manage to somehow convert the file to Lightwave's LWO or LWS format, it's technically possible to put it into Nexus. However, those models won't be very useful, because the game wouldn't know where to place weapons, engines, docking points, etc. on its own. The model has to contain that extra information or else you won't be able to use your new ships. So there's really no way around editing the model in Lightwave at least to some extend.

[Dark-Zero]

oh bummer....worth asking XD

[The Old Dragon]

Hi Folks, been a bit quiet lately...

After a month or two of rework, I've finally got a model just about ready. Problem is, some of the surfaces lose their textures.

Now this is how it's supposed to look...


But this is what I get after converting the model...



As you can see, a  big black section or two. I've tried various attempts at fixing this and got nowhere, other sections of the model covered by the same texture and UV maps are fine, just these few are wrong.
 
 Anyone got any ideas as to why this has happened?

[Arparso]

Difficult to say, really. Mind if I have a look at the model and texture files? (the original lightwave ones, not the converted stuff)

[The Old Dragon]

Certainly, on the way now.

[Arparso]

Just had a look at it and - oddly enough - it looks fine at my end. Because they're marked as @boosters, the black sections are glowing in the engine's color, if the engine's active, just like they should. In other words, I can't replicate your screenshot, although I haven't made any changes at all.  :huh:

Maybe there's some faulty texture or model being loaded from the temp folder? Try deleting everything in:

/temp

... and then load your .lwo-model again.

[The Old Dragon]

Hi folks,

Does anyone know of a good program/plug-in or method for exporting uv maps from lightwave?

Till now I've been using a lightwave plug-in called 'UVImaginator' which worked fantastic on my old laptop, but on my new one it's a no go    I figure it's either windows 7 or the fact it's running in an emulated 32 bit enviroment. Whenever I tried the plug-in, it just crashed LW. So I uninstalled LW entirely and then reinstalled, but now I can't even add the plug-in.

I also know there's an option to export it via 'encapsulated postscript', but I found it leaves additional lines in the results when it comes to discontinous points, so again that's a no go.

Any help would be appreciated, thank you.

[jstubbles]

It's been a very long time since I used Ligthwave, but I remember just taking screen-caps of the UV window and resizing as needed. Not a great solution, but it does work.

I've become too pampered by 3dsmax and Modo

[Arparso]

You're using some kind of lwo-exporter then for your BSG-models?

[jstubbles]

Modo is made by ex-Newtek staff. It supports LWO natively. For animations, I'll have to use Lightwave
But right now I do all modeling and texturing in 3dsmax, then I export to OBJ and import that into Modo to setup hardpoints and things like that. Then Modo saves out the LWO format for the compiler

[The Old Dragon]

Hi Folks,

Does anyone know if you can increase the texture resolution in lightwave 10 to 2048 x 2048?  At the moment, there seems to be a limit at 1024 x 1024 which leaves a slight blurriness on the model. Kinda makes things a bit awkward when I need to line certain segments up.

And on a different note, is it possible to get the lights on a model to blink in a set pattern?  I've got a row of lights that I'd like to turn on one after the other, once they're all on, they stay on for a second then turn off before repeating. There's note really a lot in the modding manual for it.

[jstubbles]

I only have Lightwave 9.3 but I assume it has to be similar. If you press "D" it will bring up some options. In 9.3 there's a "GL" tab, with a texture resolution in the drop down.

[The Old Dragon]

The pixel sizes range from 64 x 64 to 1024 x 1024 in that menu. I could be wrong, but I'm sure I remember it going higher. Oh well.

[jstubbles]

Yeah that's strange. In 9.3 mine goes up to 4096x4096.
Google a solution? Maybe there's a config you have to change or something.

[The Old Dragon]

Argh! PC's!

Well, the 1024 limit appears to have resolved itself (hopefully for good). A friend of mine lent me his ext HDD with LW 9.2 on it, so I tried it on my old laptop (xp) and that had a limit of 2048 on it. Encouraged by the fact my grip on reality isn't slipping that much, I plugged said HDD into my new laptop, powered up LW 9.2 and discovered a limit of 4096 (same copy of LW = two different limits in the display settings?  ). So I then tried booting up my copy of LW 10 and low & behold, the limit has now gone up to the proper 4096 x 4096.  I've not got the foggiest what the HDD did, but I'm damn thankful... it also fixed my LW 10 reporting a crash whenever I exited. Magic HDD?

Anyway, enough of my rambling, now it's time to ponder another mystery (well, to me at least). The docking bay lights on the Angelwing... how did they make that happen. The bay door opens fully and then the lights switch on sequentially from where the door disappeared. If anyone has any ideas, please let me know as it may lead to one of my models being completed the way I want.

Thanks in advance,

The Old Dragon.

[Arparso]

I don't think the lights are getting "switched on", but rather moved in an instant to the right location. They are probably in their own layers hidden away in the inside of the ship and then moved to their final position during the dock animation.

I didn't have a look at the mesh file, though, so that's only my theory.

[The Old Dragon]

Thanks Arparso, that works for me    One model down...