Need opinions from anyone who's modeled for EoC

Don't worry about staying out of it MajorTom, you have a lot of experience with EoC in general so your insights are definitely appreciated. I think it's a good idea to try it on different graphics cards. I'm using a GeForce2 GTS for mine. But before I send it to you I want to try one other thing. I'm wondering if maybe the setup scene itself is screwed up. I can't remember at this point but it might still be the same one that I tried unsuccessfully to add animation to, and by adding faulty animation and then removing it I might have messed up something else in the scene. I'm going to try making a new setup scene from scratch. I really need to send you something anyway, so you can start trying to get the animation working. I'll send you two sets of files; one with animation, and one without.

It would be great if Shane could post that link again.

About the nulls like AddNullObject LOD0_Handle; I haven't looked yet, but it sounds like a reference to an external scene file. One of the great features of modeling for EoC is that everything doesn't have to be contained in one LW scene. You could have an avatar setup scene that includes, say, just the LOD models. Then you could have an entirely seperate scene that has all the nav lights or engine flares or whatever. Then all you need to do is include a reference null in the setup scene that points to that external scene, and it's automatically included in the setup when flux accesses it. This way you only have to make one nav light, engine flare, whatever setup for all LOD's. It's a great option for saving work.

As for where items are in the list, and which wing set would get priority; the order that items appear in the list is the order in which they were added to the scene. Since I don't think the LW scenes were ever actually intended to be viewed as a text file, the order in which they're listed should be completely arbitrary (and thus of no interest). So a root null being further down the list just means that that's the point at which the artist said "Ooh, I'd better get a root null in there before I forget." At least, I'm pretty sure that that's the case.

All of your insights and observations have been perfectly valid, so please don't hold back. It helps to get opinions from a fresh perspective.

Thanks.

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The Ultimate Guide To Modding: I-War 2 - Edge Of Chaos (on hold during SW MP mod)
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Converting to three-point polys does increase the poly count, but it's something the converter does anyway no matter what. All models converted are reduced to 3-pt polys.

So why do it manually beforehand? Less chance of the converter messing up the model. LW does it better. And, as you said, no possibility of non-planar polys. I've found fewer problems when I do it that way.

At the Buda 5 forums, the totals for 3-pt polys were guessed to be about 800 per model section. My experience has been that a model built of 700 quad polys will not display in-game because when the converter strips to triangle there are suddenly a hell of a lot more than 800 polys. The most common result is that the avatar simply does not display at all.

I do fudge the limits from time to time... the Terrapin is around 900 polys, and displays fine. But the polys are all 3-pt polys.

To convert to 3 pt. polys in LW, just press SHIFT-T. Then you can press 'w' to see your what your poly count will be after conversion.

The link I posted before is to the Newtek forums (Newtek.com) Mr. Craig A. Clark sometimes posts there, but might not have tons of information about Flux, since he joined PS after the release of EoC. Stephen Robertson is most likely your best chance if this problem persists. Either he or a gentleman named Pixel-boy (Andy Turner I believe, who has joined with a group of 3D artists forming a company... can't remember the name... will try to find a link).

MajorTom: The order the items are listed in when you open a LW scene with Notepad are not important in themselves. However, when an item is parented to another item, you'll see something to this effect:

ParentObject 2

That means the current object is parented to the second object in the scene. So, if you change the order, you can screw up the parenting. But (so far ), that's the only importance order can have in the LW scene Notepad edit.

<font size="1"><font face="Book Antiqua"><font color="black">"Never before in the history of the world had such a mass of human beings moved and suffered together. This was no disciplined march; it was a stampede-- without order and without a goal, six million people unarmed and unprovisioned, driving headlong. It was the beginning of the rout of Civilisation... of the massacre of Mankind."
--H. G. Wells The War Of The Worlds</font id="black"></font id="Book Antiqua"> </font id="size1">

Thanks for the info on converting to three point polys Shane.

So, if you change the order, you can screw up the parenting.

Remember, this only applies to editing done in text format. The parenting is automatically relinked if you delete or add objects through Lightwave.

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Woo Hoo! I finally got the wings to show up! Check my "X-Wing in game shots" post for pics. Unfortunately I still don't know exactly what the problem was, but I think it had something to do with the gun parts of the mesh. I got the wings to show up by making the guns seperate parts and parenting them to their respective wings. But if you look closely at the gun tips in the pics I posted there's some kind of weirdness going on with the little curvy vertical bits, they look like cups. Somehow flux added a two sided polygon to each side of the curved bit, ending up with a cup-like shape. I'm going to screw around with it some more and see if I can fix it. Strange that they work when seperated, but not together.[?] Go figure.

In totally unrelated news: Strangely, I found out something very interesting and important from two unrelated sources in the same day. It turns out that the target shown in the HUD is actually based on the avatar itself, and not the collision hull as I previously believed. First I read about it in the modeling tips page of this forum's home site (thanks to Shane actually, I was investigating one of his old posts). Then, after forgetting about it, I was testing the X-Wing by using it as the avatar of one of the Navy fighters to see if the wings would show up that way (they didn't). And when I checked the target display in the HUD, there was the X-Wing with closed wings! Just like the avatar. I modeled the collision hull with open wings. The modeling tips page says the target is based on the lowest LOD avatar model, but I didn't get a long enough look to verify this.

MajorTom - this means we don't have to worry about the wing position in the target HUD display.

Shane - btw, in case you don't already use it, I wanted to tell you about qemLOSS2; the poly reducing plugin for LW. It's one of the best poly reduction plugins I've seen, ever! I've been using it for quite a while now and I highly recommend it. I also use a poly reducer based on the same concept for Max. It features a lot of useful options for reducing polys by any amount you choose.

Here's a link if you feel like checking it out.
amber.rc.arizona.edu/lw/qemloss2.html

Converting to three-point polys does increase the poly count, but it's something the converter does anyway no matter what.

I don't believe this is correct. I've noticed a vast increase in pso file sizes when converting models that have been converted to three point polys as opposed to ones that have optimized the poly count using Lightwave's built-in Co-planar Polygon Reduction utility (reflecting the increased volume of information for the new polys in the file). That means, I assume, that the converter is not adding additional polys. Perhaps this is why there are ever texture and poly issues at all. Do you usually use the triangle stripping mode of the converter or the normal mode? As I understand it the triangle stripping mode is for stripping unneeded polys from the model to reduce the poly count, not increase it. This can be easily verified by comparing the file size of a model converted with triangle stripping to the file size of the same model converted without it. I believe it's used primarily for making LOD models.

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The Ultimate Guide To Modding: I-War 2 - Edge Of Chaos (on hold during SW MP mod)
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Woo Hoo! I finally got the wings to show up!

Good to hear. Sad that the problem wasn't identified though. Happens a lot with me... for whatever reason it starts to work and I tend not to question things too much when it does. Flux is touchy.:D

Shane - btw, in case you don't already use it, I wanted to tell you about qemLOSS2; the poly reducing plugin for LW.

Thanks. I do use it alot (it was integrated into the LW 7.0 package). It does do a good job; but don't ever trust it completely. I've made it go screwy before.

quote:

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Converting to three-point polys does increase the poly count, but it's something the converter does anyway no matter what.

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I don't believe this is correct.

Ack. You made me dust off my converter document. You're right. I must have mixed something up.

Someone (somewhere, a long, long time ago) mentioned that the converter reduces quads to tri's. IIRC, the statement was something like "Watch out how many quads you use since they'll be split by the converter and can kick your poly count over the limit". And, as far as I can tell, I've never seen anything to suggest otherwise. Of course, I've never seen anything to support the original statement either... (I'm at a loss to find a way to test it... unless trying to get a non-planar poly to display and see if the converter splits it?)

Anyway, I always use the recommended settings for the converter... which means Triangle Stripping instead of Normal. I don't use Fast Stripping.



<font size="1"><font face="Book Antiqua"><font color="black">"Never before in the history of the world had such a mass of human beings moved and suffered together. This was no disciplined march; it was a stampede-- without order and without a goal, six million people unarmed and unprovisioned, driving headlong. It was the beginning of the rout of Civilisation... of the massacre of Mankind."
--H. G. Wells The War Of The Worlds</font id="black"></font id="Book Antiqua"> </font id="size1">

(I'm at a loss to find a way to test it... unless trying to get a non-planar poly to display and see if the converter splits it?)

There's no need to test it. If you use the debug option on the converter it tells you exactly how many polys are in the converted model. And for each poly it tells you how many vertices that poly contains. According to the converter's own debug information the converter does not tesselate any polys to tri polys. It's perfectly happy to spit out ten sided polygons all day long.

Now that I think about it, the above statement is evidenced by the fact that any of my ships appear in-game at all! My poly counts routinely go over 800, and that's optimized! When I converted one of wings for the X-Wing to tri polys it was something like 15,000 polys! Needless to say, I didn't leave it that way. Since the X-Wing obviously works (with two wing sets and no slow downs), I think that's pretty good evidence that the converter doesn't tesselate to tris.

I tried to copy some of my converter debug info into a text file, but sadly, you can't copy text from the converter.

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The Ultimate Guide To Modding: I-War 2 - Edge Of Chaos (on hold during SW MP mod)
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