a couple of problems with a ship i''m working on...

Sat Mar 13, 2004 2:37 pm by Schizm

ok, so i asked in drizz's thread about problem number 1 and got no answer to the question. i also have looked through a lot of forums and seen nothing, so i thought i'd go ahead and ask.

1)
i can't seem to get the textures to show up in game. no, the ship isn't invisble or anything - it's actually showing as a white untextured model when i fly it, as long as i have some kind of material for it in the .mat file. however, the material won't show. i've tried creating new .mat files with the UTF editor and the .mat file exporter for milkshape, and i get the same problem every time. i'm using 24-bit, non-compressed .tga files for textures, and i've flipped them as it says to do in drizz' tutorial. the shiparch.ini file points to the right .mat file, and almost everything else about the ship (infocard, hardpoints, etc..) are fine.

2)
here's a tricky one that is kind of odd - and i'm just asking it in this thread because i just noticed it and was asking question 1 anyway

.

the only thing that seems to be able to hit my ship while i'm flying it are missiles. beam weaponry passes straight through, and though it will drop my shields, it will never actually hit my hull. is this a problem with the model or with an .ini file? if someone could direct me to a thread where this type of question is answered, that would be great!

thanks,
Schizm

Sat Mar 13, 2004 2:46 pm by Chips

2 = SUR files, you cannaot make them, best is to make a guess as to which ship best fits it, then copy that sur file, rename it to match your ships CMP name, and put it in same folder.
Done

Sat Mar 13, 2004 3:14 pm by Schizm

thanks, the .sur file fixed problem 2. now if i could just figure out problem 1....

Sun Mar 14, 2004 8:50 am by black_lightning

what size textures are you using? Some peoples graphics cards can't handel non power of two textures in freelancer. Make sure it's by dimensions of 128x128, 256x256, or 512x512.

Or just save it as a .dds, cause you can only save in .dds as powers of 2.

Sun Mar 14, 2004 8:53 am by Schizm

tried with one at 128x128 as a .tng, it still wouldn't show.

i'll try as a dds, but what version of milkshape lets me use .dds in my materials?

Sun Mar 14, 2004 10:13 am by Glitch

Doesn't. As far as I know milkshape won't do .dds at all. Also you might try making your texture a .tga since that's one that nearly always seems to work.

(This site is best viewed with your eyes open)

Sun Mar 14, 2004 11:51 am by black_lightning

Milkshape DOES / CAN use .dds as textures in version 1.7.0 And if you registered any of the previous versions you might as well dl the newest version, as per no upgrade cost. Register one and they all work, well, until whenever 2.0 comes out.

Also you don't even need to use the texture your using in freelancer in milkshape. Ex. For all of my ships pre 1.7.0 I still used .dds, just put it in the mat through the utf editor.

Right now I make my ship in milkshape just using the straight .psd files as textures in milkshape, then at the end convert everything to .dds.

Sun Mar 14, 2004 12:15 pm by Schizm

.tga, yeah.. lol, i ment that before. it's what i have been using.

ok, so, if i can put any texture into the mat file.. well i still get the same problem.

whats going on is that i'm not sure how the mat file and the cmp interact inside freelancer, and how to doublecheck to see that the correct groups are pointing to the correct textures. i opened up the utf editor to have a look around, but didn't see anything that really made sense to me. hmm.

Sun Mar 14, 2004 12:16 pm by Glitch

I stand corrected

(This site is best viewed with your eyes open)

Sun Mar 14, 2004 3:01 pm by black_lightning

ehh.. you can't just put any file in teh mat... well.. you can but it won't work; you can use any texture type you want though in milkshape during the building of the ship. But if you use the .mat exporter you'll just need to have the correct file used in milkshape at the time of export, else just go into the .mat and import a new skin into the node via utf.

If your ship is visible, but not skinned, that tends to mean that the problem is stricly with your file type. If it couldn't read it it woulda shown your ship as completely transparent. the fact you can see it but only white means the prob is in your texture type. Are you sure it is uncompressed?

Just as a simple test of it, you can always import your texture into another ships .mat node and see what happens. Just change the MIPS to MIP0 and import your .tga into any similar sized freelancer ships texture. If in that ship you can see the colors, then your format is correct, if it appears as white, then the problem is strictly within your texture format. Vice versly you could just import an original freelancer texture into your ships to see if it's colored or not. -note, it would still look weird interms of uv, but this is just to test if you can see the color aka the skin, and verif y which parts are working.

Using .dds over tga has a couple advantages, A) it's smaller in size

you don't have to worry whether your texture is being compressed or not C) you don't have to flip your texture verticle D) it forces you to only be able to save as a power of 2

using a direct draw texture should fix the prob, if not, well... send it to someone else and see if they can see it, I have heard a couple times bout people not being able to see a ships skin while others could, cause of the graphics cards.

Mon Mar 15, 2004 12:18 am by Firewing

What he said...

Make a 32bit uncompressed tga of the texture youre using, flip it vertically and imprt that into your mat file (MIP0)

Mon Mar 15, 2004 12:59 am by firebase

he just said that use dds file instead of tga file. its worry free...

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Mon Mar 15, 2004 4:01 pm by Firewing

I have no ide how to export a tga to dds......

Mon Mar 15, 2004 4:10 pm by Glitch

Find Kasida's texture guide (it's for download here somewhere). It has the files you'll need to do it, all you do is move the files into the right place and then save it as a DDS.

(This site is best viewed with your eyes open)

Mon Mar 15, 2004 7:22 pm by firebase

try nvidia's developer site it has all the tools for a dds files...

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