disbeliever Posted December 30, 2009 Author Share Posted December 30, 2009 Was my files helpful in the least, or jacked up? Maybe using the second area that Q could send you would be best Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
magnusll Posted December 30, 2009 Share Posted December 30, 2009 Ok, here's a gallery after I reexported the ascii files with my own Kaurora: As far as I can tell, everything is ok. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
disbeliever Posted December 30, 2009 Author Share Posted December 30, 2009 So how is it when you take the ascii files i sent, and run it through KA you get no stretching or issues like what I circled in my screenshots? I ran the exact same ascii files through the newest version of KA and got what I circled... edit: example, your 3rd pic from the top. Same shot of the gate building as my second pic. In mine, lightmaps are jacked up as circled, in yours, they look perfect. Same ascii files ran through, what I am assuming, is the same version of KA... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
magnusll Posted December 30, 2009 Share Posted December 30, 2009 I'm starting to wonder if I didn't post some older version by mistake... I made a very minor modification to 0.6 as well, so I will post the new one just to make sure: KAurora 0.4 release candidate 7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
disbeliever Posted December 30, 2009 Author Share Posted December 30, 2009 Testing the new version now to see if I can reproduce your correct screens... Edit: I ran the exact same ascii files I sent you through the newest version of KA (7) , moved bin files over to override, loaded game, warped, and still get: I dont get it, how did you not get lightmap mangling issues, while I did? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
disbeliever Posted December 30, 2009 Author Share Posted December 30, 2009 Do you have a different version or tweeks to the exporter in 3dsm? Have you tweeked that at all? Just wondering why we get different results seemingly using the same ascii files and tools... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
magnusll Posted December 30, 2009 Share Posted December 30, 2009 No clue. Only thing I did different was, for the 03c model, to build an .erf file with all the lightmaps in it (using KotorTool) which also required to rename some of them (and thus also rename the lightmap in the ascii model) because files in an erf archive can have names of maximum 16 chars (excluding the .tga qualifier). But I only did that for the 03c, and didn't bother redoing it for all the models. You can try it too, but it will be a chore 'cause there's a ****load of them, and you also need to rename all the references in the ascii files. Then again, if you check all the existing files from the original installation, they all tend to have shortish names. Hmmm.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
disbeliever Posted December 30, 2009 Author Share Posted December 30, 2009 Wow thats a pain, and that is why our screens are different I think, at least for the shot i mentioned. Your c cut is "fixed" while mine is not. So maybe somehow that tweek you did and went through helped? Otherwise I see no reason why the same ascii files ran through the same KA would yield different results ike they do. Q, can you run your market area through this new version of KA and report back? Can something be done about the name length accepted? As rendering lightmaps gives a longer name than what your saying they can have i think... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quanon Posted December 30, 2009 Share Posted December 30, 2009 Hey, Dis, I'll check it out right away. About the names of the lightmap, I only add, LM, in the name part of the render to texture menu. Because, Max automatically adds the object name, so the names turn out like: Object95LM.tga If you have a good text editing program, I use Textpad, there's a replace function.( This is to edit the .ASCII file). So you would say Replace Object by, euh, D for example. Then little program replace's Object to D for the whole file... which might not be a good idea, now I think about it.... DANG xD Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
disbeliever Posted December 30, 2009 Author Share Posted December 30, 2009 Run the market area through the newest version of KA please and let me know the results. If your market area turns out fine, and mags did area 3 fine, my end must be jacked. If your area turns out jacked still, maybe mags has something different going on on his end... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quanon Posted December 30, 2009 Share Posted December 30, 2009 To be honest, I don't really see shadows in Magnus screenshots... must be going blind... Perhaps we need to use more colour in our lightmap renderings, so its very obvious if they are there or not. Cause the game does do a very basic shadow rendering on meshes. I used the newer version and still get, just like Dis, stretched lightmaps... I've uploaded, everything you need for the area m102dq. Though the models are named m101dq_02a to _02z. No idea what Dis was doing Anyway, the only model with lightmaps is _02b. Here's the link: CLICKY Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
disbeliever Posted December 30, 2009 Author Share Posted December 30, 2009 shut your face I rarely know what I am doing. I hope mags can look at your files and figure things out And as an edit, I cam cleaning up my files Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
magnusll Posted December 30, 2009 Share Posted December 30, 2009 Check out the ultrawhite stripes on my screenshots. Compare them with Dis ones. Something is certainly being applied there, and it looks like it gets applied correctly (i.e. only on the right spots). Also on the very first screenshot of my last series you can see some shadow on the back wall, and in the last one there's correct shadowing on the blocks in the recessed spot in front of my char. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
magnusll Posted December 31, 2009 Share Posted December 31, 2009 Meh, forget it. The lightmaps are just wrong <sigh>. Need to understand what's the problem now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quanon Posted December 31, 2009 Share Posted December 31, 2009 Ultra white is often the sign a texture is missing or wasn't applied to the mesh Now, not everything you made seems to be doing wrong things. I made another basic little room. Just a cube with some cylinders in and other smallish cubes. I only used very basic UVWs for the textures. These are fine and OK, most lightmaps infact turn out OK as well. Only the cylinder objects, their lightmaps are stretched. I tried this room last evening, PM'ed to Dis that it didn't look good, but I forgot to copy my lightmaps into the override, so I'm not sure what the game used... it looked funky EDIT: Following images are from this morning, when I copyied the lightmaps to the override, things looked much better! So, to a certain degree, Kaurora does its job, like it should What makes thing's hard to predict is the Automatic part. When Max does the unwrapping, you can give it certain options. Since I never touch those, in the render to texture window. I think Max moves,rotates and scales the UVWs as it sees fit. Normally, you can say it shouldn't rotate and do no scaling and such. You can limit it to what it can do in the Unwrapping progress. Perhaps this is a good idea, as I'm sure this stuff directly influences the mess about the vert-stuff you mentioned before. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
magnusll Posted December 31, 2009 Share Posted December 31, 2009 I've found another one of the problems afflicting the conversion. Unfortunately it's not a simple one to solve. I tried something and it did improve things somewhat but it's not yet good. If you want to try something, do this: export the scene into the old 3ds (not max) format, telling it to preserve textures, then reimport it into max and export using nwn from there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
magnusll Posted December 31, 2009 Share Posted December 31, 2009 All right, I simply can't think of any more ways to refine the algorithm, but it's still not working. Q, can you send me all the files needed to import in game the first test area you made (the one with red and green lights) and tell me the name 3dsmax is using for one of those small pillar objects whose lightmap is still coming up screwed. At least this way I can pinpoint my analysis to that object and check what's happening. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quanon Posted December 31, 2009 Share Posted December 31, 2009 Allright, I"ll look it up 1) Okay, the bottom of the pillars is named: Object 27 2) The small borders in the feet of the pillars is named: Box01 I think you already had most files of this area, but I've packed it all up again. Textures, lightmaps, the module file, 3Ds Max file, the ASCII file and the .lyt file. CLICKY FOR DOWNLOAD Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
magnusll Posted December 31, 2009 Share Posted December 31, 2009 Missing the walkmesh. But in any case... it's useless, as I compiled the model with my latest version and now those defects have been corrected. Not sure whether I should laugh or cry... Tried with your Sleheyron model. It's damn close now... but no cookie yet <sigh> Try this: KAurora 0.4 release candidate 8 and tell me the name of one of the objects which is still getting its lightmap mangled. I need to pinpoint which case I'm still botching. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quanon Posted December 31, 2009 Share Posted December 31, 2009 Ah, great news Yeah, the small test area in Kotor, has no walkmesh, I couldn't export it. Due to the little channel 2 bug in the export script. Well, was a bit lazy to swap the file again Anyway I'll return shortly with a object names Okay; it looked pretty good already, main trouble makers seem to be the cylinder shaped parts. Here's a list of the object names in the 3Ds max file => B_LmTest ( model m101dq_02b.mdl) b1_toptrim01 b1_face04 b1_foot01 b1_face05 These are all part of this smaller cylinder building, in the middle, with those crates next to it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
disbeliever Posted December 31, 2009 Author Share Posted December 31, 2009 Awesome news Mags. I am sure your frustrated, but again, we appriciate it very much!. Q, get that man some Sleheyron object names Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
disbeliever Posted December 31, 2009 Author Share Posted December 31, 2009 if KA has problems with cylinder shaped parts, were in a world of hurt as Sleheyron is 90% cylinders Q, on your small test you did this morning, what are the jagged shadows on the tallest cylinder in the room? In your second screen, the tall cylinder in front of the PC. When i rendered out lightmaps, I often got these jagged looking odd shadows as well... Hope mags can take those object names for sleheyron and fix it up. I cant imagine the programming in KA Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quanon Posted December 31, 2009 Share Posted December 31, 2009 @Dis: The jagged shadows are there, because of lower quality in the shadow settings and render to texture settings. I only use 256x256 pixels for my lightmaps. So for bigger meshes this is small to press all the details on. It's something I think we'll have to live with, since our scenes contain a lot of meshes. And we don't want our mod to be like 10 Gigabyte in size. 90% lightmaps Its obvious Bioware had a good tool or plugin, to preserve quality and to fuse all their walkmeshes, euh lightmaps in just a few files. We could do somewhat the same though, taking our lightmaps, then throw'em in Photoshop, to merge them. But that would mean we'dd have to go back to Max and adjust the UVWs of the lightmaps again, to match the edit in Photoshop... We're looking at a ton of more work here Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
disbeliever Posted December 31, 2009 Author Share Posted December 31, 2009 To bad bioware did not release a development tool like other games, but Mags is doing an incredible job So would going to 512x512 reduce the jagged edges enough to make a visual difference but not hurt performance? Or just accept the jaggedness? Here's hoping mags can look into the sleheyron model you sent him and figure out why cylinder buildings go wacky Read your PM brutha edit: snap you already did Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quanon Posted December 31, 2009 Share Posted December 31, 2009 The size increase, would help a bit. But a great deal is in the hands of the render engine. The default one in Max doesn't do that great a job. But it's fast and less heavy on the PC doing the work. I used the mentalray renderer on the small test area, with the 4 pillars, the shadows do have a better look, but it took like 25 minutes just to render that little room. On one Sleheyron part, my 3Ds Max just crashed... so... I think we'll have to settle for a more jagged look. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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