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31
Mod Development / Released Mods / Re: CEP Revival?
« Last post by GeoModder on March 26, 2016, 15:51:57 »
Now that I know that a Nexus model viewer exists, I'll have to locate it (I assume its either a mod tool on this website, or in the install folder) and give it a whirl. I think once I have a better understanding of how the ship operates it'll be a lot easier for me going forward.

The mod tools can be found under Nexus The Jupiter Incident\mod_tools. The model viewer is called 'viewer_DX9'.
32
Mod Development / Released Mods / Re: CEP Revival?
« Last post by Multigun on March 26, 2016, 14:18:22 »
Took a little research (had to google what a Phong  ). To begin with, I’d just like to point out that I’m round the hobbyist/amateur level when it comes round to 3D art. When there’s a particular effect or process that I’m trying to do, I look for tutorials and whatnot on the net to learn at the time. My art training ended at school, I’m afraid ;)

Appreciate the googling :)

Quote from: The Old Dragon link
1)   I kind of suspect Nexus (or its converter) doesn’t. On occasion I’ve had a model with an odd shaped poly that looked good in LW but once converted, that odd section was changed. Personally, I prefer to triangulate the polys myself as (especially on smoothed out sections) as it can reduce or remove artefacts.
As for Maya, I did a quick google search… I think what you’re looking for is under Meshes > Triangulate.

Ah makes sense. Yes I found it in Maya :) Having triangulations in the mesh will of course increase the poly count, but when the original ship only has 3k poly's, that still gives me a ton of room to play with.

Quote from: The Old Dragon link
2)   The majority of the model goes in one layer, while moving parts need to go in separate layers. So each dock door (because they move individually) would require its own layer, whereas something like a radar dish or a rotating ring, that entire section would go in a layer of its own as the polys required to make it need to move together.
The best way to figure out which sections need their own layers would be to use Nexus’s model viewer and watch the animations on the original models (1 - 0 starts them, crtl + 1 - 0 stops them).

Didn't even realize that there was a Nexus model viewer and that you could view the animations in it. That's helpful!

Quote from: The Old Dragon link
3)   If I understand this one correctly, how much a section shines is based on the spec map that gets loaded into the colour maps alpha channel. Things like reflection or transparency also require some settings in LW so that the converter understands what that section is supposed to look like. But for the most part, I try to achieve the visual effects in photoshop as much as possible. Descriptions of the various texture maps and how to use them start on page 14 of the modding manual.

Right that's basically what I was saying. In Maya, a phong is a type of material, kind of a plasticy look. In the full version of Maya, there is also a blinn, which is used for metal type surfaces, and lambert for non reflective surfaces, among others that I never used. I do my texturing in a combination of Photoshop,Bitmap2Material, Substance Painter, and Substance Designer.

What got me wondering was if I assign a phong, a blinn, or a lambert to a model prior to exporting the model into say, Substance Designer, for working on the texture, will it impact the actual final look versus I had assigned a blinn instead (if that was even possible since I'm using the Indie version of Maya and thus can only use phongs). It's probably an answer you can't answer. My suspicion is that no, it doesn't matter, since the texture maps are the driving force in how it ultimately looks. But I'm not 100% certain about it.

My Update:

Started working on it today. I'm about to hit the sack, but didn't make much progress. I had a decent chunk done, then it occurred to me that maybe all the various meshes that were kept separate was done intentionally for either animation, or being able to target certain parts of the ship, or something. Decided to instead just use the existing mesh and slowly work my way around and use them as a reference and improve on them in whatever way I can.

Now that I know that a Nexus model viewer exists, I'll have to locate it (I assume its either a mod tool on this website, or in the install folder) and give it a whirl. I think once I have a better understanding of how the ship operates it'll be a lot easier for me going forward.

Long term I'll have to read more up on how to do the assign engine points, and gun turret stuff, and whatever else I need to do. Also wonder how the animations will work, does somebody have to re-do the animations for various things (if required)?
33
Mod Development / Released Mods / Re: CEP Revival?
« Last post by The Old Dragon on March 26, 2016, 13:54:18 »
Took a little research (had to google what a Phong  ). To begin with, I’d just like to point out that I’m round the hobbyist/amateur level when it comes round to 3D art. When there’s a particular effect or process that I’m trying to do, I look for tutorials and whatnot on the net to learn at the time. My art training ended at school, I’m afraid ;)

1)   I kind of suspect Nexus (or its converter) doesn’t. On occasion I’ve had a model with an odd shaped poly that looked good in LW but once converted, that odd section was changed. Personally, I prefer to triangulate the polys myself as (especially on smoothed out sections) as it can reduce or remove artefacts.
As for Maya, I did a quick google search… I think what you’re looking for is under Meshes > Triangulate.

2)   The majority of the model goes in one layer, while moving parts need to go in separate layers. So each dock door (because they move individually) would require its own layer, whereas something like a radar dish or a rotating ring, that entire section would go in a layer of its own as the polys required to make it need to move together.
The best way to figure out which sections need their own layers would be to use Nexus’s model viewer and watch the animations on the original models (1 - 0 starts them, crtl + 1 - 0 stops them).

3)   If I understand this one correctly, how much a section shines is based on the spec map that gets loaded into the colour maps alpha channel. Things like reflection or transparency also require some settings in LW so that the converter understands what that section is supposed to look like. But for the most part, I try to achieve the visual effects in photoshop as much as possible. Descriptions of the various texture maps and how to use them start on page 14 of the modding manual.
34
Mod Development / Released Mods / Re: CEP Revival?
« Last post by Multigun on March 26, 2016, 03:26:44 »
Appreciate the conversion :) Had a couple questions that came up.

1. Does the mesh have to be triangulated prior to importing into Nexus? UE4 does it automatically, but that is of course a much newer engine. Pretty sure there is a Maya option somewhere to triangulate a mesh, just have to remember where.

2. Are all parts of the model supposed to combined into one model or keep separated ? The .obj version of kissaki_b has multiple pieces that are separated out (I assumed for maybe animation?). The .fbx of kissaki has the meshes combined together, though that could just be how you exported it out of Lightwave. If that's the case, I'll need to know what parts of the mesh to not combine into the rest of the model so as to allow animation or whatever reason the game engine requires them to be separated out (maybe check your Lightwave export settings?)

3. This is a general question, and a question I have been trying to figure out myself for a while. Does the material  you assign in your 3D modeling program ultimately matter? What I mean by that is, if you have a shiny material, but you use various textures to drive how shiny or reflective an object is, and you aren't using your 3D engine for the rendering/final look, does the actual material matter?

How this impacts this specific project, is that Maya LT only comes with the ability to assign a Phong Material. I can assign various versions of a Phong to the model for being able to assign different texture maps to different areas easily, but it is ultimately just a Phong. 
35
Mod Development / Released Mods / Re: CEP Revival?
« Last post by The Old Dragon on March 25, 2016, 23:33:51 »
All converted for you Multigun. Any questions or issues, post here on the forums (in the appropriate thread,of course) or use the Chat Log in the CEP folder, we'll do our best to help.

For completed tasks, pop the finished file in the correct CEP subfolder and update the change log and assigned tasks sheet. Anything else pop them in your 'personal' folder and update the chat log with your news/requests .
36
Mod Development / Released Mods / Re: CEP Revival?
« Last post by Multigun on March 25, 2016, 12:31:46 »
As I run into issues and need help, have updates I want to report/show, etc, where should I post? Update this forum post, create my own, email, add something to dropbox, etc?

For the time being, I'll just update this post. I am having issues importing an .obj into Maya LT. I have had this issue in the past and have used .fbx to get around it. What happens is I go to import it, and Maya does nothing after the update. Nothing shows up in the viewport, nothing shows up in the Outliner (essentially a list of all the objects in the scene), nothing. I used some sort of 3D viewer that apparently comes with Windows 10 (who knew), and it displays the mesh just fine in that so the .obj isn't corrupted to my knowledge.

I'll add the .obj's to dropbox under "Multigun's" files. Could you throw them into Lightwave and convert them into an .fbx for me? Just a short term workaround while I try and figure out why Maya hates me and .obj's. I'll download Blender in the mean time and install it after I wake up, haven't used Blender before but I assume it has an .obj importer and an .fbx save (I hope) and I assume I can figure out the software even though I haven't used it before.

Edit:

OK I am having issues with just the Kissaki.obj file. The other two seem to be fine. Again though, the Windows 10 viewer see's the mesh fine, but not Maya. Still will probably need that .fbx
37
Mod Development / Released Mods / Re: CEP Revival?
« Last post by Multigun on March 24, 2016, 23:46:24 »
3 million poly's...Ya, UV mapping can be a lot of hard work but 3 million? That's downright scary. Makes sense about the required formatting thing. As long as you have the tools to take an .obj or .fbx and convert it into the proper format, no probs.

I don't see how improving existing models wouldn't be possible, unless there is some sort of engine or code limitation. My understanding is that you can create your very own models, so shouldn't be an issue to improve existing models.

UV mapping tools in the latest iteration of Maya have made the process much easier, but I typically throw the mesh through 3D Coat first. 3D Coat lets you draw where you want your seams to be; its basically amazing. So I'm not worried about UV mapping in the least, just takes a bit of time and effort :) Looking forward to getting started.
38
Mod Development / Released Mods / Re: CEP Revival?
« Last post by The Old Dragon on March 24, 2016, 15:14:37 »
Lightwave is the 3D art program used by the original devs to create the models. It comes in two parts - in modeller, you can create anything you want really and attach your textures files (if you're good with it though, I think you can even texture your models with it!) and then you have layout. With this part you can create your animations and renders.

Incidentally, I think it was also used in the newer BSG (amongst probably countless other projects) series to create the space scenes and ships... I seem to recall the battlestars had a poly count round the 3 million mark. I wouldn't like the task of mapping that one :s

As I mentioned earlier, the first task is to improve the models themselves (if possible), which would then require new UV maps and then onto trying to improve the textures for them. Hopefully, newer programs and techniques will let us create more realistic textures. However, if the model itself can't be improved, then we can use the existing texture files as templates to to create new ones without the need to remap the UV's.

Nexus comes with it's own converting tools to turn the models and textures into game readable files - it's these that require the models and textures to be in certain formats.
39
Mod Development / Released Mods / Re: CEP Revival?
« Last post by Multigun on March 24, 2016, 11:16:52 »
Invitation sent.

To begin with, can you start with the following models?

Kissaki.msh
Kissaki(b).msh
Kissaki_support_kontainer_transporter.msh1`

To get around the format issue on models, if you save them in .OBJ format and place them in the CEP folder (you can create your own subfolder), I can then put them through lightwave.

Just to completely remove any confusion on texture size, the manual states...

Width and height can differ, but both factors must be powers of two, and cannot be larger than 2048. The figures can therefore be: 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, and 2048.

Sure, just need to study up on the manual and what not. Haven't had the chance to read through it just yet. I haven't heard of lightwave before. Are you using it to convert the .OBJ to the appropriate format for Nexus? Or are you doing specific tasks with the models in lightwave?

I am going to openly assume you will want the UV maps done, which isn't an issue. And yes, 2048 I know what you meant :) Better safe then sorry though!

I will read through the manual tomorrow and post my questions if need be. I assume there will be a little bit of a learning curve, but that's part of the fun :)
40
Mod Development / Released Mods / Re: CEP Revival?
« Last post by The Old Dragon on March 24, 2016, 08:51:35 »
Invitation sent.

To begin with, can you start with the following models?

Kissaki.msh
Kissaki(b).msh
Kissaki_support_kontainer_transporter.msh1`

To get around the format issue on models, if you save them in .OBJ format and place them in the CEP folder (you can create your own subfolder), I can then put them through lightwave.

Just to completely remove any confusion on texture size, the manual states...

Width and height can differ, but both factors must be powers of two, and cannot be larger than 2048. The figures can therefore be: 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, and 2048.



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