[REL] Open Horizons II

[gap]

Originally Posted by Trevally.

Looks fantastic Gap - looking forward to seeing it in OH

Did you place the barrage balloons in campaign as units (i.e. via campaign layer in ME) or as "raw" objects (i.e. through object editor)? The latter I suppose but I want to be sure

[Trevally.]

Air units in the environment layer

[gap]

Originally Posted by Trevally.

Air units in the environment layer

It involves that they can be set by date, isn't it?

[Trevally.]

Originally Posted by gap

It involves that they can be set by date, isn't it?

Yes - It can also be moved without deleting etc
Overall - using the ME2 layers gives more options

If your new balloon in a straight switch in the air file - the campaign will start using the new version.
Adding more balloons become easy (environ layer is common with all campaigns).

Are you going to add them to any ships?

[gap]

Originally Posted by Trevally.

Yes - It can also be moved without deleting etc
Overall - using the ME2 layers gives more options

Excellent, this will allow us to set the usage of different balloon models at various lcations/timespans

Originally Posted by Trevally.

If your new balloon in a straight switch in the air file - the campaign will start using the new version.
Adding more balloons become easy (environ layer is common with all campaigns).

There will be two types of balloon: the Mk VII used mostly on British mainland and aboard coastal vessels (docked off British ports), and the smaller Mk VI used aboard sea going vessels and, at some point, in Italy, France and North Africa. For each type there will be several models with different cable heights. Ships will be equipped with the appropriate balloons through X nodes/bones and eqp files (as aircraft carriers currently do). As for land-based balloons, given the way you are placing them in campaign (as regular air units), we can set them with the usual three textures (early, mid and late) which we can use for switching between early war RAF roundel, late roundel and no roundel at all.

Originally Posted by Trevally.

Are you going to add them to any ships?

Not at all. I will equip a barge, a couple of tugboats and maybe a sailboat with the bigger Mk VII balloon, after creating proxy copies of them so that the same vessels will be also available without balloons. I am open to suggestions on what unitype we should use for avoiding that these barrage balloon vessels will spawn randomly outside ports. Note that not all of the aforementioned units are featured by OHII. Nonetheless I have found some models that will fit our needs, and I will ask their authors for permission to use them.

As for sea going vessels, I will equip with the smaller balloon proxies of two or three troop/war transport ships and possibly of a corvette and of the landing craft, and I will set their timespan from the Nazi invasion of France to just before the end of the hostilities. Again, I will need for suggestions on the best unit type that these balloon-equipped units should be assigned to, for making them to spawn appropriately in campaign.

What do you think? Will you help me placing the new barrage balloon units in campaign?

[gap]

Quick update

The ambient occlusion map of the Mk VII balloon is ready. This is a poor wings3d render of it:



notice the shadows on the side of the balloon, and the enhanced 3d effect in its fins

Now it is time to work on the normal/bump map and on the specular mask. Works on them won't last long (just the time to fine-tune them).

I see one problem though: land based balloons can be GR2 objects, and they can be set with all their masks enabled with no problem. Nonetheless, if we are going to add balloons to some dat ships, they need to be dat objects or they will render black (as GR2 guns on dat ships). The problem is that, IIRC, ship equipments don't support the UnifiedRenderController, and we need for it if we want self-illumination and normal maps to work. For self illumination map I have a workaround: having created a non-overlapping diffuse UV map, I can overlay the AO map on the diffuse one (this is is the method I have used for the above render, by the way); the problem still remains for the normal map.

Atm I see only three possible solutions:

- giving up the normal map

- if memory serves me well, there is a separate controller which can be used either for AO or normal mapping without need of the unfied render controller. I need to check if we can use it on ship equipments without side effects.

- converting the dat ships which are going to be fitted with balloons to GR2 format, but given the current state of the GR2 editor, converting complex units would take long, and with not guarantee of success

Any suggestion guys?

[Targor Avelany]

Depending how complex the unit is and how many maps actually cover it.

As you know, TDW was not able to bypass the problem with assigning more than 3 maps to a mesh. It is moderately simple to make up to a medium level complexity GR2 from a very simple one (like a life boat, with very few meshes/bones).

[gap]

Originally Posted by Targor Avelany

Depending how complex the unit is and how many maps actually cover it.

As you know, TDW was not able to bypass the problem with assigning more than 3 maps to a mesh. It is moderately simple to make up to a medium level complexity GR2 from a very simple one (like a life boat, with very few meshes/bones).

most SHIII to SH5 ships use just one of each map (diffuse/specular, self-illumination and bump), and are split in several meshes so it is unlikely that each mesh will need for more than 3 texture maps and 1 material assigned. But talking about the same topic, have you seen this post by me? Unless I am very much mistaken, it seems I have found the perfect exception to the "two materials" rule.


The worst problem I have met so far with TDW's editor is its tendecy to break chains, especially when bone/meshes are renamed or when unused materials are removed. This forces to frequent back-ups, in case something goes wrong. Moreover, I have encountered a weird problem that I have still to solve with distorted diffuse/AO mapping on the lighthouse model that I have been workin on lately.

[Targor Avelany]

Originally Posted by gap

most SHIII to SH5 ships use just one of each map (diffuse/specular, self-illumination and bump), and are split in several meshes so it is unlikely that each mesh will need for more than 3 texture maps and 1 material assigned. But talking about the same topic, have you seen this post by me? Unless I am very much mistaken, it seems I have found the perfect exception to the "two materials" rule.


The worst problem I have met so far with TDW's editor is its tendecy to break chains, especially when bone/meshes are renamed or when unused materials are removed. This forces to frequent back-ups, in case something goes wrong. Moreover, I have encountered a weird problem that I have still to solve with distorted diffuse/AO mapping on the lighthouse model that I have been workin on lately.

I saw that post Awesome and I'm very curious how it works.
Also, I haven't seen TDW reply to it yet.

In regards to backups & broken chains - yep, completely true. It is very tedious sometimes. That is why I, generally, try to select a unit that has close number of meshes/texture maps to what I require to minimize that risk. Bones can be moved, textures re-assigned, even if not renamed.

[gap]

Originally Posted by Targor Avelany

I saw that post Awesome and I'm very curious how it works.
Also, I haven't seen TDW reply to it yet.

Let's hope that TDW will be soon in the right mood to resume working on his awesome tool

Originally Posted by Targor Avelany

In regards to backups & broken chains - yep, completely true. It is very tedious sometimes. That is why I, generally, try to select a unit that has close number of meshes/texture maps to what I require to minimize that risk.

This is exactly what I am trying to do myself. A wise selection of the GR2 to start from is of maximum importance, as we cannot add/remove meshes at our wish

Originally Posted by Targor Avelany

Bones can be moved, textures re-assigned, even if not renamed.

yet I have noticed that for your lifeboat you have managed to rename conveniently all of its bones and meshes. I wonder how you managed to do it

[Targor Avelany]

Originally Posted by gap

Let's hope that TDW will be soon in the right mood to resume working on his awesome tool



This is exactly what I am trying to do myself. A wise selection of the GR2 to start from is of maximum importance, as we cannot add/remove meshes at our wish



yet I have noticed that for your lifeboat you have managed to rename conveniently all of its bones and meshes. I wonder how you managed to do it

Partially by hand in hex-editor, partially via TDW's Editor. Worked like a charm.

[gap]

Originally Posted by Targor Avelany

Partially by hand in hex-editor, partially via TDW's Editor. Worked like a charm.

If I remember correctly, the trick for changing bone names in hex editor is retaining the same number of characters

[Targor Avelany]

Originally Posted by gap

If I remember correctly, the trick for changing bone names in hex editor is retaining the same number of characters

Yep. It works even on AI uboats. But uboats are an enormous more of a pain in everything else. And yeah, constant backup.

But even with manual re-write in TDW's editor works. The only reason I used hex-editor was because there is just too many bones/meshes in the uboats gr2 and the names are very similar - exact same length anyhow, so I could just sit and "find next" & "replace": repeat as many times as needed. I think in the lifeboats I did it through TDW's editor.

[gap]

Originally Posted by Targor Avelany

Yep. It works even on AI uboats. But uboats are an enormous more of a pain in everything else. And yeah, constant backup.

But even with manual re-write in TDW's editor works. The only reason I used hex-editor was because there is just too many bones/meshes in the uboats gr2 and the names are very similar - exact same length anyhow, so I could just sit and "find next" & "replace": repeat as many times as needed. I think in the lifeboats I did it through TDW's editor.

What do you do with unused meshes (if any)? do you set them to invisible? Do you change them with low-poly objects, or what else?

[Targor Avelany]

Originally Posted by gap

What do you do with unused meshes (if any)? do you set them to invisible? Do you change them with low-poly objects, or what else?

That is the trick: to figure out what to do with them. If I have too many meshes that are in the file, but my actual object doesn't have that much (something I try to avoid), I either add something to the object or split something off and do separately. Like in case a a balloon, if I had it in one single object (I dunno ofc how you have it), and I had 2 meshes in the file I would split all the cables off into a separate mesh and use it in the second mesh. They always can use the same mats. If I have more objects and not enough meshes, then I work on how can I reduce: subsets, if they can use same mats (can't atm have more than 3 different subsets with 3 different materials, which is painful) and use it to the fullest.

I don't know if my way is right, but to me it seems better not to leave anything just in a "shadow" mod. Don't know why, but I feel it creates more problems