#21

I’ve run into those same alignment and rotation errors too. Abundant use of reset xform.

For the export orientation, there is a z-up option in the dae export dialog.

Edit: EJ have you tried “collapsing” the xform modifier? I think that might be what we’re doing wrong that’s causing all the random transforms.

#22

The local transforms for MULT (multimesh) objects relative to their JNT (joint) parents MUST be zero. Because the HOD engine doesn’t store transforms anywhere except Joints, I couldn’t just collapse MULT transforms after a JNT into the mesh (lossy during early dev), or back into the JNT (multiple children might each transform a different way). So in the end, you get a basic rule - ZERO your local transforms for anything that carries visible mesh (or collision mesh)…

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#23

It issss!!! I promise!!! But I will totally look again. :smile:

My ships are now uniformly exporting using a from-scratch rig. Uniformly exporting on their noses, at the moment, but hey.

Rotation transforms on the JNT’s are zeroed out, verified local, parent, and world, but they’ll only assume the proper orientation if I put a 90 degree X-axis rotation on the ROOT markers.

#24

Yes - which I believe matches the Examples DAEs we released, yes?

#25

Yes it does.

Edit: ship meshes are behaving themselves now, but the collision meshes are still acting screwy.

@EvilleJedi are you still running into any of these issues?

#26

Collision mesh is going to have the exact same requirements - when in doubt match the transforms you see in the example up to the node you’re editing… worst case we can talk and I can look at it for you.

#27

got the orientations straightened out for the custom rig, but collision is acting like it is not there just like a small box in the center of the ship

Also looks like dock paths and thrusters textures work. I haven’t done the engine burns yet. Are we still limited to 10 total nozzles?

I’d be interested in how to get mads to export/work, it looks like lods won’t work with mads any more as there needs to be separate LOD[1,2,3] nodes (used to be able to keyframe nodes for multiple meshes at the same time in maya toolset)

also would be interested in latch paths for resourcers

#28

I am SUPER swamped tonight and then mostly away until Monday, so I keep putting off doing the Dockpaths update (which would give you all of that) - you may have to wait until early next week, sorry!

As for nozzles - I think the limit is because of how it looks for them - but unless they have to be entirely unique objects with their own states and toggles - you can just make some complex glows that are a single mesh but look like a dozen nozzles, yeah? That works perfectly (we did it all over)…

For MAD stuff, actually you just animate LOD 0 - remember that the LOD[x] MULTS are just children of the lower-LOD number MULT that they share a name with - it’s not a bunch of distinct hierarchies…

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#29

Are animated collision meshes possible this time around?

Edit: I tried multiple COL meshes, and it crashed, but I may have been doing something wrong.

Also, I have my COL meshes behaving now, mostly. LOTS of use of reset xform and collapse modifier. Make sure you do a reset xform and collapse modifier after you have stuffed it into it’s proper joint. And make sure to check the World, Local, and Parent coordinates in Max.

#30

Or weapon hardpoints on animated parts?

2 Likes
#31

Can you explain more? Are there certain key frame conventions? How does that link with the events file?

1 Like
#32

EJ did you figure out trails yet? I’m starting to add them back in to my ships.

#33

Tried emulating the swarmer and was unsuccesful. Also not sure about how to prefix engine glows for larger ships since the Turanic example doesn’t have them

I’ve had hit and miss on the collision meshes. Very simple shapes seem to work, but taking and optimizing the mesh down to a few hundred tris and making sure there are no holes doesn’t work (collision mesh ends up being a very tiny section of the ship.

Dock paths look like they need to be aligned with the root node rotationally (90) regardless of the rest of the ships orientation

I haven’t been able to tell if subsystem mesh render distance is working properly, I know in classic it was ignored and this would lead to a lot of slow downs since turret meshes were being displayed for all ships even though they were <1 pixel. I will need to test further as that was a huge change in warlords previous version that I’m not sure I want to undo. (building weapons into the ship hod) if inegral subsystems are easier to do in MAX then I might do those instead since I can control turret placement much easier.

Looking at my laundry list of things to look into

  1. Integral subsystems (or if mesh render for subs is fixed)
  2. latch paths for resourcing
  3. mad state hook ups for animations (both linked to docking doors and looping)
  4. figure out collision mesh complexity issues
  5. determine proper setup for engine glows
#34
  1. determine proper setup for engine glows

As per SHADERS.MAP (yes, I know I say this a lot but it is literally a mapping of how ships are set up):

# Engine Thrusters
+thruster
!NoScars
	$diffuseOn[DXT1] = 1 1 1 1
		DIFF = R G B 1
	$diffuseOff[DXT1] = 1 1 1 1
		DIFX = R G B 1
	$glowOn[DXT1] = 0 0 0 1
		GLOW = G G G G
		SPEC = B B B B
		REFL = R R R R
	$glowOff[DXT1] = 0 0 0 1
		GLOX = G G G G
		SPEX = B B B B
		REFX = R R R R
	$team[DXT1] = 1 1 0 1
		TEAM = 1 1 1 r	#invert into a...
		STRP = 1 1 1 g
		PAIN = 1 1 1 b
	$normal[DXT1]= 5 5 1 1
		NORM[B] = R G B 1

So your engines need to use the thruster shader (using the Vaygr Assault Frigate as my example), ie:

MAT[Assault_Engine]_SHD[thruster]

So reading from the snippet of SHADERS.MAP we know what SHADERS.MAP expects to see in the source:

Engine_DIFF.TGA -- engine on
Engine_DIFX.TGA  -- engine off
Engine_GLOW.TGA -- engine glow at full power
Engine_GLOX.TGA -- engine at idle
Engine_SPEC.TGA  -- you'll want black in the spec wherever there is emissive glow
Engine_SPEX.TGA
Engine_REFL.TGA -- same for spec, black where there is emissive glow
Engine_REFX.TGA
Engine_NORM.TGA
Engine_TEAM.TGA
Engine_STRP.TGA
Engine_PAIN.TGA

Yeah, that’s a lot but it is for flexibility. So the ones that end in an ‘X’ are the off versions. When a ship is not moving, the game displays the X version and interpolates to the normal version based on speed. For your engines you’ll need on and off versions of the diffuse, spec, reflection, and glow. Only in edge cases will you probably want a different spec or reflection so those will almost always be the same but they are needed to fill the channels when the internal HOD materials are built.

Does that help you?

#35

@scole - I thīnk he’s talking about the glowy cloudy bits that extend from the engines of capital ships. There was no engine glow mesh included in the turanic carrier example.

@EvilleJedi Here’s a link to a copy of my ship’s .max file, may prove useful. Trails are working for me, with the caveat of I have this weird constellation of engine flares that orbits around the ship. Kinda looks like lens flares from the engine flares…anyways the trails work.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B7L7Vksvc03TcUZzbk5fTmtaOE0&authuser=0

Also here’s the hierarchy I’ve got.

#36 
JNT[EngineNozzleX]
    GLOW[EngineGlowX] <-- This is the same thing as a MULT - but UVs are ignored.
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#37

So is that a “dummy” or a mesh (sorry if that’s a silly question)?

Edit: I guess its a mesh, because you are talking about UVs.

#38

Yeah, that’s the mesh with the ‘glow’ shape in it - the bubble or nozzles, etc…

#39

Sastrei: doesn’t look like it will open in max 2011, I don’t have the same issue that you are talking about with the ETSH, but I started with a plane and converted to editable poly, I don’t think you can use a box

The GLOW[] fixed the issue, but I noticed that it centers strangely, need to play around with transforms more

Also in HW2 classic maya exporter we had to create engineglow0, engineglow1, etc it looks like it ignores these additional ones?

Edit, looks like the GLOW is using the pivot point as the center, once it was reset to the center of the mesh it worked a lot better

it looks like the ETSH places the glow in the center of the mesh faces, this means that a ship with a lot of engines will need a lot of engine nozzles to get the glow in the right spot, I will need to check if more than 10 still crashes.

#40

So, how do I export such animation? I presume it has to have a name (“open”, “close”), but I don’t know of any way 3Ds Max actually names its animations. Do you by any chance do that via parameters in the dummy object’s names in the scene? And how do I export multiple of these animations at once, each with a different purpose?