Triumvirate Lords Of The Third Dimension

[disbeliever]

damn these limitations. Some bioware rogue developer from KOTOR needs to geek it up and give up their secrets

 

eagerly awaiting mags...

[magnusll]

I win. HA!

 

KAurora 0.4 release candidate 9

 

P.S.

Don't even *try* to tell me this still doesn't work. I will track you down and burn your house.

[Quanon]

It crashes my PC :'(

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Not

Still need to test

 

EDIT: Joking aside... IT WORKS! YAHOOOOOOO! Superb job, Magnus!

 

 

 

No more messy stuff on cylinders. I'll be checking out TSL in a bit.

[disbeliever]

Let us know your test results Q

[magnusll]

Sooo... let me know if you find any more problems, otherwise I'll consider the last version good to go, and will start debugging the Max script for the final release

[Quanon]

Hey, happy new year!

 

And thanks Magnus. I believe we can use this version. I'll do a few more parts of my Sleheyron area, see how they turn out. If more stretched and broken textures appear, I'll pack up the ASCII& Max file, list the objects with the faults

 

Perhaps like that we can nail, each odd "bug" that crops up one by one.

[disbeliever]

Let us know and see your sleheyron test results Q.

 

Thanks for the hard work mags

[disbeliever]

I am running into a brick wall with lightmaps.

 

I am using the 3rd area of ours, the rich area. Here are the steps I do/take:

 

I opened up every cut of that area (a-f) and renamed every mesh to something simpler and shorter as to not anger kotor. I named every mesh according to what area cut is was (i.e. a101, b101 etc). So no mesh id is over 4 characters. I then set all meshes to show backface culling, and set all materials to show 2 sides.

 

Once that is done I merge all areas back into a mother file. At this point it is just the meshes with textures, no AB or lights

 

I create 3 omni lights for shadows. I only put 1 light to show shadows, the other 2 are just for lighting. I see nice shadows on all surfaces.

 

I then select each section at a time, as to not anger 3dsm, and click on render to texture.

 

In render to texture I set th output directory, then make sure its set to channel 2. I choose lightmap from the output menu, and select a target map or "ambientlight". I shorten the name given to the new lightmap textures from "lightmap" to "LM", and i click render.

 

I do this for every part of the motherfile, until everyone is done, and I have a directory with all lightmap textures names a1-f223.

 

I then recut up my mother file into pieces. I select all a meshes and put them in an A file, same for all the rest.

 

I then open those cut files, and add in the aurorabase, select the AB and export each cut out. No errors or crashes on any of the cuts. So i end up with an ASCII directory with all my parts, a-f mdl files.

 

I then run all ascii parts through version 9 of KA, the latest that was posted, and get my bin files mdl/mdx.

 

I then move over all mdl/mdx files, as well as all lightmap textures into the override folder.

 

I then warp to my area, and only about 25% of the lightmaps show up, the rest are completely missing and I see only the original textures. So some lightmaps show up, but the majority just gets ignored it looks like.

 

I have run this test on several cuts, and always get the same. left out lightmaps for no reason I can find. I see no rhyme or reason as to why a few get in the game, and others do not.

 

Can you think of anything i may be missing, forgetting or not doing regarding anything? The meshes, the render to texture settings anything?

[disbeliever]

Ok update time:

 

I have spent literally 8 hours experimenting with lightmaps, to figure out why some did and did not show up. I may be completely wrong on this, but my observations and testing have found this:

 

A. All, or at least all i tested do show up in game. The issue was lighting. For some reason area lighting settings must have been drowning out the lightmap shadows. Maybe some settings in the ARE file or the aururalight itself i dunnot.

 

B. to test this theory, I kept everything with my file as is, but turned the intensity of the omni light that was generating shadows up to 4, instead of 1. In max this made completely black areas where the light did not shine. I re rendered the lightmaps with all other settings the same, except that intensity setting.

 

C. I exported the cut out, moved lightmaps over, warped and those shadows DID in fact show up, however even at intensity level 4 they were not VERY dark like in max.

 

So my conclusion is something in the are file or the aururalight must be drowning out the lightmap intensity in game, because in max the lightmap shadows on the render below was completely black, but in game they are only slightly dark.

 

Could there be anything to my theory?

 

[magnusll]

Your theory is completely correct. It was the final thing that stopped me before I gave you the first release candidate, as my own test lightmap was almost invisible. I should have warned you.

 

So far we kept using the AuroraLights because of missing lightmaps. Even a faint AuroraLight will quickly "overwrite" whatever lightmap you used in the spots where the light hits the mapped material.

 

You need a balancing act between lightmaps and AuroraLights for best results. I suggest messing around with intensity and radius values to find the correct settings for the lights. Or, you can try to completely avoid AuroraLights and just use lightmaps plus the .are settings for the general ambient light.

[disbeliever]

Awesome to read that I was on the right track. Before it dawned on me to up the intensity of the lightmaps I was ripping my hair out trying to figure out why I could not get lightmaps on my area cuts.

 

Now that I know the ARE and Adlights do affect lightmaps I will experiment more.

 

Thanks Magnus

 

Edit: Any idea when we can get a new export script from max? Its a pain to have to switch files if you want to export an aururabase without a lightmap. Or cuts that have a walkmesh AND a lightmap? Thanks

 

Edit again: Mags, any idea why I cannot get lightmaps onto the floor, to show shadows of buildings?

 

And for anyone who did not know, there is a group auto rename feature in max to rename all of your meshes and have it auto increment the numbers.

[magnusll]

No reason that I can think of about the missing lightmap on the floor, unless it has to do with the fact that the floor gets assigned the multi-material like the walkmeshes do and that messes up with the export script. Can you check if the floor nodes in the ascii export have the "lightmap" and "lightmaptverts" entries?

[disbeliever]

As a test I deleted the values of sunambient and sundiffuse from the ARE file, and warped to my area. ALL shadows and lightmaps show up now, exactly as they look in 3dsm, completely black, even the floor.

 

The issue is, the PC is completely black as well.

 

So I guess as you said, i need a balancing act between the are, and the lightmaps.

 

Is there a way to turn the intensity of the ARE values down, but still keep values in them?

 

Otherwise, how do I light the PC up? I can dim the lightmap shadows down in 3dsm and re export, but the PC is 100% black. Should I add back in an auroralight but turn the intensity down, or play with ARE settings?

 

Any ideas?

[Quanon]

The anwser to your .ARE troubles would be the RGBcalculator from GloveMaster.

With that little tool you can make any colour you like and it will give the right code that the .are file uses for the Sunambient & diffuse setting.

 

Now where using full white, so a more light grey should make a differance.

Get it here

http://www.mediafire.com/?g5mzzyntnqz

 

An example 3 bit code, I got for a grey colour:

12500670

 

And for a dark grey:

7303023

[disbeliever]

So would it be best to:

 

A. set all sunambient/diffuse to 0 and put an aururalight in with low settings or

B. Keep the aurualight out and set the sunambient to a gray color?

 

edit: nevermind

[Sithspecter]

Congratulations on cracking the lightmaps, Magnus!

 

And I've been seeing the screens, Dis and Q, and they look amazing! I can't wait to finally get to test the lightmaps. Is Q's procedure still the standard, or are there other things that need to be done in order for a correct export? I've been trying to figure out how from the posts, but I'm still a little confused.

[magnusll]

Q's procedure is much the same, you render the lightmap on channel #2 and use my modified script (which still needs debugging work) to export the lightmap data in the ascii file.

 

As for the .ARE values: did you try setting just the sundiffuse and leaving sunambient to 0? It might help since the lightmap gets assigned the ambient slot.

[magnusll]

New release:

 

KAurora 0.4 release candidate 10

 

Nothing special in it, but I corrected a new bug which could have crashed KAurora on models without lightmaps.

[disbeliever]

The steps are pretty much the same SS. You have your model, you create omni lights to get the shadows you want. Then you select all model parts and click render - render to texture. Choose export part, set to channel 2 instead of default 3, then under output select lightingmaps, and finally select a slot, been using ambient. Then hit render.

 

After that, add AB and export out geom as usual. Run through new KA and put mdl/mdx files and lightmap textures in override.

 

 

Make sure ARE settings don't drown out lightmaps.

 

I'm making a tutorial for people on this.

[disbeliever]

Edit: nevermind everything I just said

 

Magnus, do you think you have time to work on a new export script for 3dsm that does not require switching between the old and new?

 

For example, with the latest version I saw of the export script, if you do not have a lightmap in your scene, and it is just a model with an AB, the export crashes because it is looking for things in channel 2.

 

Thanks

[magnusll]

Magnus, do you think you have time to work on a new export script for 3dsm that does not require switching between the old and new?

 

Trick question

 

But yes, I will fix that script; it's the only thing left before public release. No promises on times, as always, though

[disbeliever]

No worries, its not that big of a pain switching scripts Thanks for all your hard work.

 

Now take a nice breather before you begin working on area animations

[TriggerGod]

Well, I haven't completely died guys. I did reinstall 3ds, and I'll need to apply my certain program that will make it a full copy. Haven't done much KOTOR/TSL wise except for taking some renders of some robe skins and 1 lightsaber. But I am venturing into the area of HIGH POLY WASTAGE TIME

 

I don't see anywhere where it says this is only for modeling for KOTOR and TSL.

 

I've started modeling the leg of a human that generally have long-ish hair and an evil period of time at the end of the month.

 

I only managed to get up to the calf though, I plan to have the full leg done by the end of the day.

 

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BUT WAIT! In my venturing of the various tutorial, I found out that when cube modeling (which I am doing) a body, Meshsmooth works wonders. So I took that old, blocky, icky looking thing, and made it into...

 

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[Quanon]

Hey, TG! Long time we've heard of you

 

Aha, you ventured forth in the 3D realm. Lately I've been very bored with my 3D.

Gone back to my old luuuve, drawing! I am planning on doing something differant in 3D.

J7 needs an Alien and I MUST model it

 

Of course, I know very well the Kotor modelling bug will bite me again.

Looking forward to see where that leg ends up.

 

Is it this famous tutorial you following?

http://www.3dtotal.com/ffa/tutorials/max/joanofarc/joanmenu.php

[TriggerGod]

Yeah. I feel the same way. In fact, I'm having difficulties concentrating on modding any game, let alone modeling for a possible indie game i might be thinking of. >.>

 

And yeah, I am using the Joan of Arc tutorial. Probably one of the best if not the best body modeling tutorial i could find on the net.