Building mod... but some questions!

[Biffa]

I moaned about map size, I moaned about city buildings and I was going to moan about the style of the current buildings in the game but then I thought maybe I could fix that myself.

I'm hoping to release a couple of buildings packs with the aim of making the/our maps look a little busier and 'ethnic'.

Ukraine/Kharkov region has some amazing rural buildings, I've never been there but after a few days research I was struck by how beautiful some of them are and thought that using a few of the various styles of buildings it would be more reflective of the region and the scenarios.



Aiming at first for about 20 low poly buildings, plus ruins, wrecks, road signs etc, maybe even later in another pack some industrial and city buildings to follow if all goes well and I can get the spare time. Will try to keep in mind that some of you guys don't have the latest machines.

These are just a few of the ones that are finished ready to be ported into the game.




Here is the 'catch'.... dumb questions, between playing the game, collecting references and making these models I haven't had much time to 'fiddle' with stuff, so being a bit 'tech' lazy (or stupid) and time poor, I hoped I could pop up some questions that somebody out there may already know the answers to.

I'm sure they will be useful to others out there who are planning on creating some extra buildings, sorry in advance if the answers should be obvious or are covered elsewhere.

1. Mounting buildings with infantry? Does this use 'nodes' set out on each model or is this a process that is done automatically by the game code? If so how many building 'floors/levels' can it handle? e.g. the vanilla church they all mount in the bell tower from what I have seen so far.

2. Is snow always on the buildings? Can it be masked like most of the other map objects?

3. Building ruins, planning on making a few of these but they're very time consuming can these be added and just keyed 'Obstruction' and non enterable rather than 'Impassable' aka red?

4. Vehicle/Unit pathing width? Asked this before any new info, how wide do busy streets have to be?

5. Can two different models share the same texture?

6. Haven't seen particle smoke coming off a fixed map object yet, is it possible?

7. Can I add to this post later in the week with more dumb questions?

I've never created a MIP map before so that is tonights challenge! I'll keep you guys posted with some more screens as I progress.

Thanks in advance for any answers to the above.

[Erik Rutins]

Biffa,

These look _phenomenal_ and I'd be happy to include some of them on the official maps once finished, if you give us permission.

Stridor should be able to answer most of your questions, I'll chime in on a few.

ORIGINAL: SAF_Biffa
4. Vehicle/Unit pathing width? Asked this before any new info, how wide do busy streets have to be?

I'd go with about twice the width of a truck as the minimum if you have obstacles on either side. It needs to be possible for a vehicle to turn around on the street if it needs to since they can't currently go "through" a building.

5. Can two different models share the same texture?

Yes, absolutely.

6. Haven't seen particle smoke coming off a fixed map object yet, is it possible?

Yes.

7. Can I add to this post later in the week with more dumb questions?

Absolutely! Keep up the great work.

Regards,

- Erik

[rickier65]

These look really nice - I'd be intrested in trying a few out when you get them ready -

I'll make a stab at some of these questions - though take it with a grain of salt. My knowledge comes entirely from just reading the borads here and playing with the vairous editors in the game, and I'm not sure I even understood some of them.

ORIGINAL: SAF_Biffa

I'm hoping to release a couple of buildings packs with the aim of making the/our maps look a little busier and 'ethnic'.

These are just a few of the ones that are finished ready to be ported into the game.

Can you attach them to a msg and I'll try them out?

1. Mounting buildings with infantry? Does this use 'nodes' set out on each model or is this a process that is done automatically by the game code? If so how many building 'floors/levels' can it handle? e.g. the vanilla church they all mount in the bell tower from what I have seen so far.

Well, I know that in the scene edit each object has properties, one of them is "is Building" and thet property has choice list that includes the number of squads and the building height. ie "light squadcount2 three stroies",, etc. and I think I read elsewhere that squads fill bldgs from the top down.

2. Is snow always on the buildings? Can it be masked like most of the other map objects?

I know there are building without snow. I thought there were just "built" that way, ie static models so you would a snow building in a winter scene and a different verions in an Aug scene. (I'm pretty sure weather snow - is a map feature - not dynamic.

3. Building ruins, planning on making a few of these but they're very time consuming can these be added and just keyed 'Obstruction' and non enterable rather than 'Impassable' aka red?

There is a map code called obstruction, not sure how it works - also, if you paint the terrain the ruins are on as impassable, this might work - but why would you not want folks to occupy. (byt the way - I mistakenly put some blding on a red area, but forgot to call them bldgs in the object properties, and units were not able to enter them.

I'm sure there are more expert answers out there, and stridor is pretty good with this stuff, so he' or erik will probably give you the straight scoop.

And these look pretty nice - I'm not sure how they get into the game, but I'd be glad to try them out (I'm planning on making some revsions to Balta scenario today and tommorrow, if you want me to try some of them in there.

Thanks
Rick

[z1812]

Hi SAF_Biffa,

Really nice work!!

regards John

[Stridor]

Holy crap this came outa nowhere! Have you done any MS3D work before? Boy that was fast! And good!

ORIGINAL: SAF_Biffa
1. Mounting buildings with infantry? Does this use 'nodes' set out on each model or is this a process that is done automatically by the game code? If so how many building 'floors/levels' can it handle? e.g. the vanilla church they all mount in the bell tower from what I have seen so far.

There are two issues here. The first is how the building is defined in the map scene. There is a buildingtype attribute that you can edit in scenedit (or in raw xml if you prefer), which defines what type of building your have (light / heavy) how may stories it has and how may squads you can get in it (1 or 2).

Next you need to define where the squads will be positioned in the model when they mount it. This needs to be done in MS3D. Now I haven't test this (but I will) in MS3D but in 3DSmax you define "bones" which are dummy points with names. These are named bone_position0X and bone_position0X_dir where X = number from 1 - 6. Inside buildings max men in squad is abstracted to 3 models so 1-3 is squad 1 and 4-6 is squad 2. They will fill the building in position order so if you put bone_position01 in the church steeple then that is where they will go first, etc. I am pretty sure in MS3D you can get the same effect of dummy bones in max either with named joints or very small boxes. I will have to check.

You can just define the building type and not worry about the position bones, but then all the squads will stack at 0,0,0 which won't look good!
[/quote]

2. Is snow always on the buildings? Can it be masked like most of the other map objects?

You need two separate textures to map to the model (summer / winter). You can make the texture definition in the media.xml file so it is easy to swap them in and out, but essentially they are map based.

3. Building ruins, planning on making a few of these but they're very time consuming can these be added and just keyed 'Obstruction' and non enterable rather than 'Impassable' aka red?

Yes, what you do in building type is set it to "none" that way nothing can mount it.

5. Can two different models share the same texture?

Yes, as I said sometimes it is best to move your texture definitions out into the media.xml to allow quick changing.

6. Haven't seen particle smoke coming off a fixed map object yet, is it possible?

Do you mean like chimney smoke? I haven't seen them, don't know how they would be defined in the xmls, I was surprised Erik said yes. Maybe he knows something I don't [;)] There is a thing called a debug particle in scenedit. I don't know what it is used for or how many there can be on a map, or even if they could be used for smoke effects? Perhaps Erik can say more.

7. Can I add to this post later in the week with more dumb questions?

Sure, from what I have seen in those SS I don't think you could as a dumb question!

I've never created a MIP map before so that is tonights challenge! I'll keep you guys posted with some more screens as I progress.

What dds tools are you using. Most will auto mip for you at export no trouble.

Thanks in advance for any answers to the above.

Pleasure and keep up the excellent work. I was hoping someone would do a "Terrain" pack for map makers to use in their maps. It looks like I am going to get my wish and earlier than expected!

Regards

S.




[/quote]

[Mraah]

SAF_Biffa,

These look great!! I'll use these on my Singling Map!

Here's an idea about the chimney smoke ... Create a 3D object in a shape of a funnel, twist it like a tornado. Apply one of the smoke images from the particle folder. It won't animate but perhaps adding "bones" to make it flutter ... or perhaps animating the picture sequence to give it a puff, puff kinda movement. I dunno.

Looking forward to your building collection!

Rob

[Erik Rutins]

Regarding the particles - hang on, I need to find the level where we added a smoking ruin.

[Biffa]

Thanks for the kind words guys!

Sorted out the .dds files, just got to figure the 'bones' for the unit positions and writing to the media.xml, then I'll start releasing them, ofc everyone is welcome to use them, they'll probably need using/testing and then I'll bag them up in groups for general download.

Hopefully in the next couple of days aiming for Friday but don't want to stress out over it.

Also working on a group of very low very low poly and graphic models that can be used as space fillers with the main models (shacks/sheds) or for people with very low spec machines. They're based on the average basic looking rural home and they look ok considering:



The graphic texture file is only a 128x128 aka 18kb! I could also reduce the model poly count even more but these buildings have a very distinctive roof eve/overhang that needs to be kept.



It does strike me the more references you look at, just how tightly packed even the small villages are/were.

I'll pop up more screens as other buildings get near completion.

[Erik Rutins]

The game engine does support multiple LOD (level of detail) versions and will use them automatically at distance with most settings. We don't have as many in at the moment as we could, but that's an option. The existing High/Medium/Low texture setting also automatically downsamples the default textures for people with low end systems

[Biffa]

Few more for fun, hoping that I don't get stuck on the bone bits. Would also like to add the church shown above if possible.

[Stridor]

SAF_Biffa,

You have obviously modeled in MS3D before [;)]

Don't worry too much about the bones. If I can't find a way to do it in MS3D give me the files and I will add them in max, it is the least I can do given all the work you have done. I would be very surprised if I couldn't get them to work in MS3D though.

Keep up the good work!

S.

[Biffa]

Lol Stridor, I haven't, but I have been modding for many years, kind of a modding grandpa, even done a degree in it!

I'm using 3DSM then porting them across to MS, I got 25 days left of the trial!

Help with the boring data stuff would be great, tbh I'd rather spend my time cracking out more models.

[Stridor]

If you have 3DSM you could do it all from there. MS3D is not needed (you do need a DX export but I think panda exporter will do it for static stuff, you only need polytrans for animated vehicles)

[Marc von Martial]

Hey they look great. Good job, they really give a better "Russian flair" [;)]


The only ting that I noticed is that the UV map on the house with the outside chimney needs some work on the chimneys top, it is stretching. At least it looks like that in the screenshot.

I would not bother with 128x128 textures honestly. The performance savings are really really marginal. The polycount is a better place to save for performance.


Regarding Mip maps, if you use the NIVIDA DDS tool plugin for Photoshop you can have the tool create them automatically.

[Biffa]

Yep got all the plug ins now Marc and thanks, it's hard for a non pro to really know where to make the performance savings. On the chimney I was letting the texture run around to save painting each face, I've always had a good machine so it's hard to know, but I have often had people email me with complaints about the processing efficiency on my mods.

Most of the wargamers I know with machines would rather spend their money on paint and figures than new graphics cards! [;)]

At the moment the total polycount for every building I've done (approx 20) so far comes to about half of what the factory does in the original game.

I'll push out a bit with the textures that will make it a lot more fun to do.

Dumb questions continued......(as promised)

This is holding me up a bit.

Infantry mount positions, I was looking for evidence of 'bones' or 'joints' that serve as markers for the infantry when they enter a building, it's the one big thing I have left to fix. I understand what Stridor was saying but I thought I'd check the original models to see exactly how it was done.

Weird I can't find any evidence of indicators to use as a guide in the original models, I've checked several now including the Guard towers and nothing? Maybe they're lost when the files are imported? Don't know but if anyone can give me a bit more of an idea then I'd be really grateful, also would it be better to use 3dsm or ms to make them?

Factory model, main building...nothing!

[Stridor]

Yes the directX mesh importer of MS3D losses the bones!

You can get them back if you use a commercial grade importer like polytrans in 3DSM.

If you do have max you are much better off doing all your work in that. If you can spring for polytrans you are set for everything including doing vehicles. I use max + polytrans and did several vehicles, maps, buildings, etc. However I think there is a free "panda" direct X exporter for 3dSM which should be ok for static things, but doesn't work for vehicles [:(]. This might be your best bet. Alternatively I will investigate if you can use joints or tiny meshes for bones in MS3D which the game will be ok with.

I am going to test that right now in fact ...

Regards

S.

[Mraah]

ORIGINAL: Stridor

Yes the directX mesh importer of MS3D losses the bones!

You can get them back if you use a commercial grade importer like polytrans in 3DSM.

Stridor,

It appears the only freeware program that exports bones would be BLENDER using the Python25 plugin. Attached to this post is the TXT version of the DirectXExporter241 py script. In the script, it has a readme that states ....

# This script export meshes created with Blender in DirectX8 file format
# it exports meshes,armatures,materials,normals,texturecoords and animations

If you can write a script for MS3D then it would be awesome!! I don't know how it all works but you might want to have a look to see, if all else fails.

Thanks,
Rob

[koiosworks]

As a note. to add a low detail model to the game (so that at long distance views a low poly model is used to greatly improve rendering performance) simply create a low poly model of your building or whatever and name it the exact same name but add _LOD

for example:

house_russian.x would be the full poly model that the game uses if the camera is near object

house_russian_LOD.x would be the low poly model that the game would use if the camera is far away from the object

[Marc von Martial]

ORIGINAL: SAF_Biffa

On the chimney I was letting the texture run around to save painting each face, I've always had a good machine so it's hard to know, but I have often had people email me with complaints about the processing efficiency on my mods.

For repeating bricks patterns like on chimneys for example all you need is small part of the texture space. Just make sure that small part is tiling seamless (you can make seamless tiling textures in Photoshop pretty easy, if you need some tips on that just holler). No need to texture every polygon or face on model parts that use repeating patterns [;)].

The stretched bricks of this texture will really stick out and be "in your face" as it is on the highest point of the building.

[Mobius]

ORIGINAL: koiosworks
As a note. to add a low detail model to the game (so that at long distance views a low poly model is used to greatly improve rendering performance) simply create a low poly model of your building or whatever and name it the exact same name but add _LOD

for example:

house_russian.x would be the full poly model that the game uses if the camera is near object

house_russian_LOD.x would be the low poly model that the game would use if the camera is far away from the object

Kevin, does that apply for tanks too?