If ship is docked pilot is away from ship doing his thing, lol

This is driving me up the wall, I can't get it to work, tried every possible way. Could someone send me a sample .tga or preferably a .psd to <removed> (email is encoded), or point me to one hosted somewhere.
Thanks!

Edit:
Seems to have worked itself out after a reboot... :/ I hate it when that happens. Anyways, now I have a set collection of glass all different colors. Thankies!

Edited by - Twex on 15-10-2003 03:43:43

I didn't use any texture for the glass on my ship and it came out fine.

I created the model in 3ds max and made a glass material. I then exported the model from max in .ms3d format.

When I created the .cmp and .mat files I didn't put any texture for the glass yet a transparent glass cockpit appears in flight.

Anyone have any ideas why?

Edited by - PantherRas on 15-11-2003 17:43:58

While digging around in the .mat files for the native FL ships I noticed that they don't contain glass textures but each has a glass material.

I copied the glass material entries to my model's .mat file and it worked perfectly. So you don't need a texture for the cockpit glass.

First I'd like to say great forum!! I'm a complete newb to modding, (and photoshop, and Milkshape too for that matter) so please be gentle. Does the transparent effect show in Milkshape 3d's 3d window or only ingame? I've followed the instructions for the glass texture but still cant see inside the ship. I've yet to try to import a custom ship into the game as I'm still learning to model. I'd like my first import to be a "keeper".

Uhm what's a signature?

Ok I've gottaen a few e-mails about what I was talking about so here goes.

What I do is copy the info in the native FL .mat files for the glass material. The advantages are that you don't need a texture for the glass and because of that your .mat file is smaller. The disadvantage is that you're limited to the colors used in the .mat files (until I can figure out the values)

First thing is to create an entry called glass under the material library section and then put the following entries in as shown.



Then in each section put the following values (make sure that int array shows in the Interpet data as... window. Put in the numbers only and on separate lines as shown (not the text or the ...'s)

Type...DcDtOcOt

Dc.....1041536149
.........1046536418
.........1050451101
.........0

Oc.....1061997772
.........0

Notice the difference between entries for regular textures (pontoon & fuselage) and the glass material. Also notice that there is no entry for glass under texture.

The above entries will give you the blue glass that the Liberty ships use. If you want a different color use the entries for another house/faction.

**Very Important**
When exportiing the .cmp make sure that in the material window in milkshape the glass texture is [UNOT[/U the top of the material list or your entire cockpit will be invisible (don't ask me why).

The Dc controls the color of the glass, ie. Diffuse Colors
Oc on the otherhand controls the Opacity/Transparency of the glass

Dc <-- in floating point
0.123456 <---- Red Color Matrix I
0.123456 <---- Green Color Matrix > Mixture of this three will give you the color of the glass.
0.123456 <---- Blue Color Matrix I
0.00000 <---- Edited this but nothing happens so just leave it....

Oc <--- in floating point too..
0.80000 <--- Controls the Opacity or Transparency of the Glass
0.00000 <---- Edited this but nothing happens so just leave it....


All I do for LOVE

Edited by - firebase on 1/26/2004 6:29:48 PM

you people are my heroes! since i dont pirate software, i dont have photoshop 7. and ive been trying to do transparent glass for a long time, and now i can! whee!

thanks a bunch

jake

-------------------------
at the end of the day, the kings and pawns go back in the same box.

hmmm, mine textures only show up when I use a dds, Is there any reason a tgs exported in photoshop as 24 bits wouldn't show? (I know to make it MIP0 btw)

I have imported my ship into Milkshape. In gmax, i made a canopy from a thin, muptiple-length/width-segmented rectangle; I edited the vertices to match up exactly with the edge of the cockpit. The only thing is, the canopy doesn't have any thickness now - it originally had a top that was 0.5 units above the bottom, but when i edited all the vertices of the canopy, i made the vertices from the "bottom" of the rectangle in hte same X/Y/Z coordiante as the top one. I was hoping for a very thin object for my canopy, but perhaps i made it too thin?
Does that make sense? if not, tell me and i'll try to make myself clear.
~ So my question is when i select the canopy in Milkshape, and apply a transparent texture to it, will it work? all i did to make that texture was to open Photoshop7, make a plane, color it light gray, and set opacity to %10. I saved it as a Targa file (which has TGA after it in the Save dragdown list), it asked me if i wanted to save as 16-, 24-, or 32-bit; I chose 32 (is that right/okay?), tried to close Photshop, but it asked my if i want to save changes right after i saved it (??) . DIDN'T do any fancy flipping or anything (i don't know how), and went to Milkshape. I then selected my canopy, went to Materials, New, selected my new transparent texture, and pressed Assign. I tried the Texture Coordinator thing, but if the texture should be same color/same appearnce all over, do i even need to? Anyway, I did the Texture Coordinator, aligned canopy with texture, closed it. I right-clicked the 3D window, told it to display in Textrured mode, but my canopy has big black splotches on both sides. It will not become transparent; it's just a gray, OPAQUE (not transparent like i wanted) object. I can assign a texture to my ship's body, and that shows up fine in Miklshape (haven't put ship in game yet, so don't nkow about that), but my canopy doesn't let me see through to my cockpit. I tried applying my supposedly-transparent texture to my canopy: isn't transparent. I selected the body of my ship, applied my supposedly-transparent textureq to it, but it, too, shows up as opaque.
What's wrong?

ro9ue,

as far as i know, milkshape cannot handle transparencies.
anyway, it has a slider, actually two of them, the one in the right is supposed to control the opacity of a textured object, but i just makes it disappear.

if you are trying to edit your cockpit, just select your glass canopy or whatever it is and hide, right click option. and then you can see your cockpit now....

Now, fl can take transparencies. just edit your mat file....

if you are using a texture on your glass.... make sure that you have an oc entry in your material node...

material
---Dt_name <---- your glass.tga or dds
---Oc <------ 0.800000 in float
0.000000
---type <----- DcDtOcOtTwo <--- the two is optional it just mean two sided

the thickness of your glass doesn't matter in fl.... i tried it, it has the same effect.

As long as we don't have a sur file creator... we will never create the same effect as that of the original fl ships.

---

a message from firebase...

---

Ok, i went back into gmax and made the canopy have thickness. I imported to Milkshape, NO black smears on canopy now. I can apply a texture to the canopy now, but again, my 'glass' texture from Photoshop is still not transparent.
If i followed the tut and slid the Opacity slider in Photoshop back to 10%, saved as .tga, and then applied to my canopy, even if Milkshape cannot display it as transparent, will FL?
And, uh, sorry, but what is that stuff about "oc entry in material node" ...? i don't know what that is or where it's from. Is that from that UTF Editor thing, like in that screenshot at the top of this page? If so, what is that?
And this is my last newb question: Where are hte .mat files for FL located? If i have to apply mine to them, i guess i'll need to be able to find those, right?

Sorry for my ignorance, but I am very grateful for your assistance. thanks

Edited by - Ro9ue on 4/12/2004 8:05:40 AM

Sorry I've been away for so long. I've been working on projects for some other games that have been EATING away at my time. Anyway, to answer a very common question;

No, my Lambda Class shuttle is not in any mod that is available. There are many bugs in it that I am still trying to work out. As well, before it is released I would like to find a way to make the wings raise upon landing and the weapons to appear to be comming from the model instead of big bulky guns where they're shouldn't be. I don't know if it will ever be done, but I'm still working on it.

to answer a couple things I see here,

1st off Milkshape CAN handle transparencies (btw just as a general reminder as I write this the newest version out is milkshape 1.7.1)
need proof look at the second pic down of the danrik on my webpage, it's a straight screen shot from milkshape and it's cockpit canopy is transparent, this is done strictly with the texture, didn't use any opacity slider bars in milkshape for it.

2nd, when dealing with textures things don't always look on your model how they look in freelancer, escpecially in regards to textures. I mean for targa's you flip them vertically when putting them into freelancer anyways, if you have them flipped they look weird in milkshape, but look correct in freelancer. Same thing goes with some texture formats, such as tga alpha data.

Best thing to do is before asking what it will look like in game, to actually first put it in game and see for yourself before asking others what it will look like. Then if you have a problem you can be more descriptive of it.