VWireData - complete structure at last

Wed Nov 17, 2004 4:30 pm by Anton

Have found the last unknown to Colin Sandby's VWireData structure :

struct TVWireData {
DWORD header_size; // always 0x00000010 (16)
DWORD vmeshlib_crc_id; // crc of vms data referenced
WORD Offset; // offset into vertex buffer for 0 referenced vertex
WORD no_vertices; // number of unique vertices referenced
WORD no_ref_vertices; // number of verts referenced
WORD highest_numbered_vert; // highest vert number referenced + 1
// ^ My addition ^
};

struct TVWireDataLine {
WORD point1;
WORD point2;
};

So... with offset of 0 and simply connecting vert 0 to vert 1, vert 1 to vert 2 etc should display whole mesh in scanner. So far only tested connecting a few verts so will find out when a tool to produce this data for entire models is ready to test any limits on this data (ie how many lines FL engine will allow), past 35536 vertices obviously

A tool to produce this data for custom models is in the works.

+++ out of cheese error - redo from start +++

Xtreme Team Studios

Edited by - bakedpotato on 11/19/2004 4:00:40 AM

Fri Dec 10, 2004 4:39 pm by harrier

Anton,

Any advance on this tool? Vwire data would be nice for both custom ships and weapons.

Harrier

Retreat[![! ---- I'm too badly messed up now[![!

Sat Dec 11, 2004 7:18 am by Anton

From experimantal use the is a limit on how many lines can be drawn. In stock ships there is a vwire segment for each 3db rather than for a whole ship as in custom models.

The next problem of course is that with a ship with thousands of vertices, which do you join up to make a scanner mesh?

Solutions : One i've considered is an operation to make each mesh group in a custom ship into a 3db and retry basically drawing the mesh into the scanner (its worked with up to 200 lines so far but sometimes crashes... Of course weapons have very few polygons compared to ships so just drawing the polys line by line may work

Otherwise to make a very low poly version of the model and do as above without splitting the 3db into many portions.

Edit : low poly version then added as a new LOD vms and referenced

+++ out of cheese error - redo from start +++

Xtreme Team Studios

Edited by - Anton on 12/11/2004 7:19:40 AM

Fri Apr 08, 2005 2:02 pm by Anton

*Bump* Does anyone have an idea where to start with calculating these lines from a mesh?

What i know :
DirectX has 'creases' but i have no idea how to go about finding these in a model and extracting the end-points to use in a wire generation system.

A possibility is to recreate each ship as a very low poly mesh and add as a new lod and hand edit each scanner mesh. This will be unbelievably irritating and time consuming - i've tried it for test data lol

DA have obviously done it.

Mon May 23, 2005 9:55 pm by NightHound

i'm no programer (yet) but in milkshape there's a thing called "Milkshape 3D Manual Edit" maybe you could write a addon to the cmp exporter that used the vert numbers or somthing....

i was just thinking for a change, if you where to join every singal vertial the ship will be some what busy is the radar thing...

Tue May 24, 2005 12:01 am by Anton

I tried that for fun but there is a cap on the number of lines (< 256 i think). I'm still looking into it but we may just have to make v low poly versions and hand do from there for now

Tue May 24, 2005 4:09 pm by Cold_Void

so what about generating the lines automatically?is this a manual editing thing and what does it look like in milkshape?

Tue May 24, 2005 10:50 pm by harrier

Anton,

When you see vwire in your scanner, what is it that you actually see? the outline of the vertex intersections? or something else?

I have exported a lot of the freelancer ships and in some instances, (tho something happens to the exporter and they can get very messed up

), there is evidence of a secondary frame, this seems most noticable in the nomad fighter.. When I was playing about with the nomad textures, my first model using them was transparent, and all the components and weapons cound be seen. pilot the lot.. now normally when you make a translucent texture by moving the hardpoints around you can hide everything.. not so with the nomad ship, so I created a simple tube structure inside the ship textured it with the same nomad pattern but not illuminated.. and bingo.. problem - more or less - solved. The ship even looked more like the nomad ships do...Now I dont know if this has any bearing on your research but I offer it anyway.

Harrier.

Wed May 25, 2005 12:43 am by Anton

Look at the picture in initial post - thats a cobra mk III (elite ships pack) and the scanner mesh shown is what you see in FL. I generated that automatically by just doing a join the dots program since it's a v low poly ship. (BP did the artwork vers of the screenshot btw)

edit: cold_void, these are polyline structures not polygon. i don't believe milkshape can use the data. I havent had any joy finding a polygon to poly line conversion tool which would make this task possible for even simple ships....

Edited by - Anton on 5/25/2005 1:45:45 AM

Wed May 25, 2005 1:13 am by NightHound

I'm not sure if your useing milkshape exporter or using a 3rd party app, but woulden't it be posible to limit the person to 60 odd poly model for the shape and then just join them all ?

Thu May 26, 2005 12:35 pm by Anton

This is a possibility i've considered. Make a second LOD massively simplified and reference that... perhaps i'll actually make one and do some code to copy out the tri data as line data to insert. still manual operations required with utfeditor but better than nothing. I was gonna chill after shift with a quest on SWG but as the servers are down...

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