[blowfish]

Hmm ... just had a thought.  Will the import import an object that has no rotation, scale, or translation defined?

[Scooby_Doo]

Scooby, perhaps that could be integrated into the Collada support, making the extra step unnecessary?

Well the first one i'm doing is more for personal dislike for extra typing numbers
The layout will be something like this:

Code: [Select]

-lod0
 +turret1
    - <base mesh>
   +arm
     -<arm mesh>
     -fp0
     -fp1
   +destroyed
      -<destroyed mesh>
-lod1

It's just a matter of reading the xml file and renaming and moving somethings around. It'll convert this variation back to the one PCS2 uses.

The next tool I might need to do is one that automatically removed the "-node" so the PCS can read the info correctly. -Done
And possibly the third tool is to allow you to use groups instead of linking.

Right now I'm working on the first one only.

[Topgun]

just something I was wondering, does this keep blender smoothing?

[Vasudan Admiral]

Yes - but not autofaceting. So it will correctly read whether a face is set to solid or smooth.

Also something I need to look into is the idea of splitting (Y key) selected faces and smoothing them separately - because it behaves quite differently and looks far better, but it means the base hull is going to have a lot of holes and coincident verts. :\

[Topgun]

autofaceting?

[Vasudan Admiral]

Above right of the Set Smooth and Set Solid buttons in the mesh pane you should see a blue "Auto Smooth" & <Degr> button. The idea of that is that any angles between face normals below that amount are smoothed (set smooth), and any above are faceted (set solid) hence it's usually called auto facet.

In blender to set it up, you set your whole model to smooth, and toggle on that button with an appropriate angle though you'll only see the effect in renders. Overall Blenders support for smoothing is not a pretty setup, only partially converts to POF and not nearly as awesome as Max's smoothgroup arrangment, but it is there.

[Scooby_Doo]

I've just noticed something...

I've got a model setup as is in xml:

Code: [Select]


<library_visual_scenes>

detail0
    +chair
    +pilot
    +box1
    +box5
    +......

when I load it into pcs2 everything loads in, but wireframe/bounding box is incorrect, box5 (plus others) are not included.  However they do appear under "detail0" in the subsystems.  And they appear to be counted in the polycount.


Box5 being the wings


Is this just a for-loop glitch?

[Vasudan Admiral]

That's because of how you build your models rather than a glitch in the conversion I'm afraid. With COB conversions those separate objects under one object group would be automatically merged into one FS subobject with the object groups name. The DAE converter treats those separate objects correctly - and converts them all to FS subobjects.

I'm not sure where you're creating DAEs from here (Max or TS?) but you should be able to fix it by just attaching all the parts that would be part of the one FS subobject in Max, so one max object = one FS subobject.

[Scooby_Doo]

Yuck, well that definetely complicates things a bit.

[Akalabeth Angel]

       I got a problem. I have a single poly object mesh, I call it detail0. I use the Collada exporter plug in I downloaded for Maya and export it as a .dae file. When I open the .dae file with PCS2, I don't see anything. Under subobjects there's a green circle with "detail0" but I can't actually see the mesh in shaded or wireframe mode.

       I've exported from PCS2 some other models, including that same mesh converted through a crappy means earlier. And one of Strattcom's cruisers. I can load them up in Maya just fine (and if I do the helpers for the cruiser I enter locator hell, but anyway).

       So does anyone know what's going on??? I've tried both exporting all, and exporting the object proper. I've got the object basically centered on the 0.0.0 co-ordinates, or at least I have it such that 000 is where I'd want the pivot to be. But I don't see anything in PCS2. I don't know if anyone else has had this problem, I checked back a few pages but didn't see anything. But it's nearly 4am so I'm not going to check back any further right now 



EDIT - As an experiment, I took one of the files exported to .dae from .pof. And basically in Maya re-exported as .dae that same detail0 polygon object. I load it up in PCS2 and it says "normals not found wheeee" and then proceeds to show me nothing again. I dunno what's going on. When I did "export all" with all the locators for the gunpoints and stuff, it said the same then also said "rotate" about 15 times (or probably as many times as I have locators).

Here's the export options for the Collada ".dae". Maybe I've got it set up incorrectly????


[attachment deleted by admin]

[Vasudan Admiral]

You'd probably need to upload the problem DAE. When you say 'a single poly object' do you mean it has one polygon in it or you're just talking about the hull of a ship and nothing else? I'm assuming the latter.

My guess is that the Maya DAE exporter simply stores its models in a different way again from Blender and Max, so if you provide some sample maya DAE outputs maybe Spicious will be able to adjust the converter to accept Maya created stuff as well.

[Akalabeth Angel]

You'd probably need to upload the problem DAE. When you say 'a single poly object' do you mean it has one polygon in it or you're just talking about the hull of a ship and nothing else? I'm assuming the latter.

Yeah, what I meant is that it's just one object. One object that's a couple thousand polygons or so.
Anyway, here's the .dae export:

This export btw is an "export selection" style one with only the fighter mesh selected. (named detail0)


[attachment deleted by admin]

[Vasudan Admiral]

Oh, heh, I don't think it's anything you did/didn't do actually. I updated to the latest version from Spicious' sig link just now and nothing imports anymore. I saved an Orion to DAE, opened in blender, deleted everything but LOD0 hierarchy wise and resaved as DAE. Upon import into PCS2, it presents me with a blank screen. Polycount is there, bounding box is there but ridiculusly huge, but there's no actual polys visible.

This is the same with all other test models including testshipone, but I should point out that it seems able to convert models that it itself has saved. (Ie, POF->DAE->POF)

Spicious! Something borked!

[Spicious]

Division by zero is fun!
It should also fix the axes for models with their up axis set to y.

Normals still won't show up since they're stored in a slightly different place compared to everything else so far.

[Vasudan Admiral]

Yeah, it works again now, but I'm encountering an almost identical error when attempting to convert the barebones Hades, which I need to be untriangulated for conversion. (More efficient for collision detection, though the HTL engine will auto triangulate the model for display purposes)

Is there anything in the current code that might cause that with untriangulated (but no more than 4 sided) polygons? I can probably provide test models if you need them.

[Akalabeth Angel]

    Sweet, yeah it works for me now. Or at least, the ship shows up in PCS2.


     So, is it possible to set up all the gunpoints, dockpoints, etcetera in Maya (or software of choice?). Like can a person throw down a bunch of locators and have PCS2 interpret the data as whatever it needs to be? I still haven't gotten a good video card so PCS2 is prone to crashing on my computer when I add firepoints/gunpoints.

 
    Another problem I noticed. My texture name seemed to become garbled when I exported it from Maya. Well, I had a pof, I used PCS2 to export it to Dae, then I loaded it up in Maya, resized the ship, and exported it again as a Dae and opened it with PS2 again. My texture name, currently outUV had the o and u replaced with ascii characters for some reason. I just renamed it in the pof editor.

[Akalabeth Angel]

     Anyway, it seems to be working pretty damn good so far. Let me know when I have to pony up some cash. In the interim I'll try to actually try to finish a model and get 'er released for public consumption.


    Oh wait, one thing weird I noticed. After I took my model to dae format, into maya, and then exported it out back again and back to pof the textures look wierd. Whereas originally it was bright with glow and shine maps, after taking it back to maya to resize the glow and shine maps don't seem to be on in PCS2 and the ship appears very dark. Or sometimes the glow maps work but not the shine maps??? I dunno.

[Scooby_Doo]

Question.... does the converter see things like "turret01-fp-1" the same as "turret01-fp-01"? 

[Spicious]

     So, is it possible to set up all the gunpoints, dockpoints, etcetera in Maya (or software of choice?). Like can a person throw down a bunch of locators and have PCS2 interpret the data as whatever it needs to be? I still haven't gotten a good video card so PCS2 is prone to crashing on my computer when I add firepoints/gunpoints.

Yes, the wiki page has the expected naming and organisation.

    Oh wait, one thing weird I noticed. After I took my model to dae format, into maya, and then exported it out back again and back to pof the textures look wierd. Whereas originally it was bright with glow and shine maps, after taking it back to maya to resize the glow and shine maps don't seem to be on in PCS2 and the ship appears very dark. Or sometimes the glow maps work but not the shine maps??? I dunno.

That would be the problem with normals. Since it doesn't find them where it expects to, they default to (0,0,0).

Question.... does the converter see things like "turret01-fp-1" the same as "turret01-fp-01"? 

Typically no, but for grouped helpers the names of the individual child helpers don't matter, only the parent. In the case of turret firepoints, the parent name only has to start with "firepoints" since they're children of the turret submodel.

Is there anything in the current code that might cause that with untriangulated (but no more than 4 sided) polygons? I can probably provide test models if you need them.

It should be fine for everything but shields and insignia. Tests are always good.

[Scooby_Doo]

Ohh your doing things differently then... good.

How does the turret hierarchy show as?

in the original it was

Code: [Select]

+detailX
      +turretX
            +turretX-arm
                  +turretX-fp-Y
      +turretX-destroyed