IceNine on 7/11/2007 at 11:06

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1. How do I set smoothing groups? I read that dependent on the texture, geometry can be set to either all faceted or all smoothed...how? Also that polygons could be cut at the seams to simulate a selective faceting. Does this work and are there any problems with it?
As far as I know, smoothing groups don't make it through 3ds2e. NV or SHadowSpawn can give you definitive on this though. I can't be certain as I don't use MAX, but every other app I've used that makes them results in zero change to the geometry appearance ingame. If you open the .E file in a text editor each material will have a shading mode attached to it, FLAT PHONG or GOURAUD. All three are valid, but only FLAT and GOURAUD seem to work ( PHONG defaults back to GOURAUD ). The other way to force contours across surfaces is physically breaking them up to seperate layers/objects within the main object, which works for static models, but gets complicated on jointed ones ( due to the naming constraints ) and fails completely on AI mesh type models. It's better to split the parts you want to surfaces and edit the .E for them.

2. What should I know about the textures? Can Shock2 only handle 256x256 .pcx? Also what kind of palette settings do I need to keep in mind?
RocketMan has this one. :-)

3. How does the game determine where the weapon is displayed on your hud? I had assumed that it uses the origin point of your model scene to place it, but I've noticed that the gun shifts position on the screen simply from deleting a rear stock.
Not sure on this, but I've also noticed a rubberFOV effect and model clipping from using a model significantly different in size from the one replaced, or when the geo falls too far off the origin. I'm guessing the engine uses the bbox for something but I'm not sure quite how.

4. Is shock capable of any special texture effects beyond fullbright and (badly) animated?
Hmm, not sure if you count transparency, but not that I can remember outside that. Both my memory or the inventiveness of the modders might have changed during my sabbatical though.

5. NORMALS! Why do my normals keep getting flipped? Also is it better to triangulate the model before importing? (I work in quads)
Triangulate for export to SS2. The tools won't bail on quads, but they will fake it giving erroneous weird results. Watch out for creating long tris, the tools don't like them.

Looks nice so far, Good Luck and keep it up Merc!

ZylonBane on 7/11/2007 at 16:37

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Well, using the alpha channel feature of TGA textures in combination with a regular GIF/PCX texture, it's possible to to simulate lightmap support.

RocketMan on 7/11/2007 at 22:44

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yes please do....I tried it once and it only half worked.

ZylonBane on 7/11/2007 at 23:27

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Well okay, I've never actually tested it, but my theory is basically this:

Create two object textures-- A base texture that's lit normally, then a duplicate "glow" texture (I should have used the term "glow map" instead of "light map" in my previous post) that's set to render fullbright, with all the non-glowy bits made transparent. A TGA would be best for this, but GIF/PCX would work too, albeit with much chunkier edges.

Then float the glow texture above the surface of the base texture, just enough to avoid z-fighting issues. Voila!

Mercurius on 8/11/2007 at 05:31

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Great info in this thread, having targa available is going to be very helpful.

I spent today getting very frustrated with UVs (the most despicable part of the process) and ended up hunting for tools to make it easier. In the process, I'm now considerably more familiar with both Max and Maya and this will expedite my work flow from here on out :thumb:

ZB, that trick sounds feasible and I'm going to test it out as soon as I'm done with this pistol. It doesn't sound like it will work too well with anything that deforms and depending on how far the illuminated shell has to be from the base surface to avoid z-buffer sorting issues, it might only be useful in situations where the player's view can't change much; namely weapons. Still, even if that's all its good for, that's plenty useful.

@Some_twerp
I played around with that idea a bit but having the left arm in the scene really takes up a lot of the screen. Though it would be nice if SS2 had full body awareness like Dark Messiah, I think I'm going to consign the left arm to the invisible void where Goggles' feet reside :)

@NV
Can weapons call on each other's flash/brass vhots? Would be nice if the pistol could get ejecting brass and the shotgun a muzzle flash.