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AzAkiR NaLDa
Council of Exiles
Brave Collective
#261 - 2013-02-02 11:54:45 UTC  |  Edited by: AzAkiR NaLDa
the "dust" particles are stars with motion blur due to the animation. will recreate a render with better lighting and the stars turned off.

update scene.

reduce the lighting coming from the cube maps
Increased total lights in the scene.
Increased render quality
updated trail effect and colors

http://imageshack.us/a/img833/8947/gaurdian03hd.jpg
http://imageshack.us/a/img833/8947/gaurdian04hd.jpg

need to fix sharp shadow edges
need to fix some more small lightning issues.

Lone Star Warrior
Ezurae
Science and Trade Institute
Caldari State
#262 - 2013-02-03 18:47:29 UTC
AzAkiR NaLDa wrote:
the "dust" particles are stars with motion blur due to the animation. will recreate a render with better lighting and the stars turned off.

update scene.

reduce the lighting coming from the cube maps
Increased total lights in the scene.
Increased render quality
updated trail effect and colors

http://imageshack.us/a/img833/8947/gaurdian03hd.jpg
http://imageshack.us/a/img833/8947/gaurdian04hd.jpg

need to fix sharp shadow edges
need to fix some more small lightning issues.


tbh if those are stars they should only be in the background and not in front of the ship, otherwise those stars would have to be tiny to fit between ship and camera ;-) I never liked the stars zipping by in movies or tv series. it never made sense to me. But as i said that probably depends on the personal taste.

The lighting is a lot better now, great improvement. :-) keep up the great work everyone, can't wait to see what kind of videos everyone will create
ZuiljiN
Sato Industries
#263 - 2013-02-04 21:21:00 UTC  |  Edited by: ZuiljiN
Anyone else is having troubles with the quality of the two mask layer in the PGS files? I've recreated the new shader in UDK and everything looks great other than mask and submask layer.

Also, is it normal that the BlacktoJSON Program crash on most of the files? I've tried version 1 and 1.2

Regards
AzAkiR NaLDa
Council of Exiles
Brave Collective
#264 - 2013-02-04 22:55:51 UTC
ZuiljiN wrote:
Anyone else is having troubles with the quality of the two mask layer in the PGS files? I've recreated the new shader in UDK and everything looks great other than mask and submask layer.

Also, is it normal that the BlacktoJSON Program crash on most of the files? I've tried version 1 and 1.2

Regards

no issues here with the mask files. What exactly is the issue? That way we could try to aid. And I don't have any crashes at all after the 1.2 update. Do you have .net 3.5 or 4?

Lone Star Warrior
ZuiljiN
Sato Industries
#265 - 2013-02-05 00:53:56 UTC  |  Edited by: ZuiljiN
AzAkiR NaLDa wrote:
ZuiljiN wrote:
Anyone else is having troubles with the quality of the two mask layer in the PGS files? I've recreated the new shader in UDK and everything looks great other than mask and submask layer.

Also, is it normal that the BlacktoJSON Program crash on most of the files? I've tried version 1 and 1.2

Regards

no issues here with the mask files. What exactly is the issue? That way we could try to aid. And I don't have any crashes at all after the 1.2 update. Do you have .net 3.5 or 4?

It's looks like compression artifacts to me and maybe it's even worst in my case since udk recompress everything. I used gbc1 for my test and if you look at the pgs.dds file you can see that mask aren't sharp and have many artifacts. Im not at home currently so I cant post pictures or look at other pgs files, maybe I was just unlucky with my model choice.

As for BlacktoJSON yeah I have both framework so the problem isn't there
AzAkiR NaLDa
Council of Exiles
Brave Collective
#266 - 2013-02-05 08:13:30 UTC
I never noticed artifacts in the masks. If you can upload and show a mask that has this it would show us exactly what is wrong

Lone Star Warrior
ZuiljiN
Sato Industries
#267 - 2013-02-05 14:12:36 UTC  |  Edited by: ZuiljiN
AzAkiR NaLDa wrote:
I never noticed artifacts in the masks. If you can upload and show a mask that has this it would show us exactly what is wrong


I've looked at few PGS and it's really seems to be a bug with gbc1_t1_pgs.dds i've uploaded the blue channel so you can see what im talking about Blue Channel as you can see it's full of artifact and doesnt have clean edges so as you can imagine it's doesnt looks really good on the model.

As for BLACKtoJSON i fixed my bug by uninstalling the few version i had and only reinstalling the 1.2 version Smile
Valeria Ghost
Viziam
Amarr Empire
#268 - 2013-02-05 15:54:45 UTC  |  Edited by: Valeria Ghost
although my mask obviously has the same artifacts it doesn't really make a difference for the textured model, the texture resolution is a bigger problem. The resolution of the textures is crappy so you shouldnt go that close to the model anyways. I still wish CCP would give players the option to download i high resolution texture pack, so those with the hardware power could take advantage of it. I'm pretty sure they must have high res textures somewhere...

back to the problem, if you have your brutix fully textured and look at the black lines on the green material (which are a result of the diffuse map) they show the same pixelation as the parts between two materials so the artifacts really arent the problem but the resolution is. If the parts between different materials are a lot worse than those black lines of the diffuse map then it might be useful to post your rendered result of the problematic parts because then something else must be going on.

The masks of other ships do have the same artifacts btw, at least those i checked do (prophecy for example). the submasks on the other hand seem to be fine which is odd
Valeria Ghost
Viziam
Amarr Empire
#269 - 2013-02-06 21:03:57 UTC
How do you guys get the nebulas into decent cube or sphere maps? I'm talking about the ones in /res/dx9/scene/universe where the pictures of cloud ring etc are

while it was easy to create a cube map of the ones in /res/texture/nebula i just don't like those and the resolution of the other ones is higher i believe. the problem is that the layers of the dds file arent just the sides of a cube and there would be a lot of stitching needed to get a proper cubemap. Is there any fast way to do it? any program that can convert them or are there better cube/sphere maps of the nebulas somewhere in the eve data?
Selvin
Galactic Fighters Organization
#270 - 2013-02-06 21:54:36 UTC  |  Edited by: Selvin
Valeria Ghost wrote:
How do you guys get the nebulas into decent cube or sphere maps? I'm talking about the ones in /res/dx9/scene/universe where the pictures of cloud ring etc are

while it was easy to create a cube map of the ones in /res/texture/nebula i just don't like those and the resolution of the other ones is higher i believe. the problem is that the layers of the dds file arent just the sides of a cube and there would be a lot of stitching needed to get a proper cubemap. Is there any fast way to do it? any program that can convert them or are there better cube/sphere maps of the nebulas somewhere in the eve data?


i don't know what exaclty you wana achive but try:

ATI CubeMapGen

or

My DDSCubeToPng tool
How works my tool:
"unstuff" universe to some place on you hdd, run my tool and then just drag and drop nebula dds file on form (fx.: a01_cube.dds)

if Blender check box is not checked it will produces:

a01_cube.png -> which is +X-X+Y-Y+Z-Z in one row
and 6 files a01_cube_c0a.png where a is number 0...5 those files are +X ... -Z each in single file

if Blender checkbox is selected it will produce blender cubemap(a01_cubeblender.png) which is:
|-X-Z+X|
|+Y-Y+Z|
(2 rows 3 columns) or something like this (in code i've had {1, 5, 0, 2, 3, 4})


but why, oh why no one can help me with damn decals :)

EDIT:
about nebula_blur.dds ... they are used in some effects ... fx. if in black files "(Mask)ReflectionMap" is "EnvMap1: we use "big" nebulas if "EnvMap2" then blurred ones (taken from analyzing of WebGL ShipViewer's code)
AzAkiR NaLDa
Council of Exiles
Brave Collective
#271 - 2013-02-06 22:01:03 UTC
i use photoshop with the nvidia plugin set. this includes a cubemap shuffler which rotates and orientates the cube map images correctly.

then i seperate them from the layers and set them up in max. i create a big cube and assign 1 image to every single face of the cube. then i reallign them to be nicely connected and then add a modifier to the cube to turn it into a sphere.

once that is done i move the bitmap files to a vray light material so the nebulae actually emits light. and aids in the general lighting of a scene and set the mood.

Lone Star Warrior
Valeria Ghost
Viziam
Amarr Empire
#272 - 2013-02-07 22:25:49 UTC  |  Edited by: Valeria Ghost
Thanks Selvin, your tool is what i was looking for. Its a fast way to extract the single sides of the cubemaps which i can then stitch into a cubemap for maya afterwards. I had no way to extract the cubemaps of the real nebulas before.

i haven't really come to the point where i worry about the decals and havent set them up yet. I know the normal map of the decals is in the *_os.dds (at least those look like normal maps?) and the *_d.dds is the diffuse. I'd suspect scaling, rotation and position are parameters for a simple plane that has the alpha channel of the *_d.dds in transparency and the other layers applied just with the normal shader they use.

I'm not sure if it works as i think because the curvature of the models where the decals are applied could be a problem. I'll play around with the decals on the weekend. thanks again for your tool ^^
Valeria Ghost
Viziam
Amarr Empire
#273 - 2013-02-10 16:54:52 UTC  |  Edited by: Valeria Ghost
about the decals: For the front decal of the Brutix/Astarte I'm now using a polygon plane with 2 subdivisions in the width and 1 in the height.
The "position" data is relative to the origin of the model, the "rotation" data is how the plane has to be rotated. scaling is the size of the plane (first two numbers are the height and the last one the width, at least for the front decal, the odd thing is that the decals on the side have 3 different scaling values and the second one seems to be the width there but since i havent done those yet i cant tell you for sure now)

for the record i had to interpret the rotation data as zyx instead of xyz. The numbers have to be multiplied by 360 degrees to get the degree data. I'm still not sure what the 4th number under rotation means, i used it for a bend deform which bends the plane to fit it better to the curvature of the model, which was pretty accurate. Unfortunately all of this didnt fit 100% (but it was extremely close) so i had to adjust the numbers slightly. I'm not sure how CCP does it, maybe after the rough placement the plane is projected on the model or their origin of the model is slightly different. does anyone have any idea how it is done?

rest of the data i just plugged into my shader the same way i do it with the data for the models. Unfortunately i have no idea how the red channel of the *_os.dds file is used. any ideas? It looks like a sharper version of the rgb channels of the decal diffuse map *_d.dds, so maybe i'll replace the diffuse map with that red channel as a greyscale image or does anyone know what its for? I used the green and alpha channel of the *_os.dds for the normal map just like for the ship models. And i used the Alpha channel of the diffuse *_d.dds to set the opacity of the plane.

I only did the front decal for now so maybe i'll figure out more stuff when i tried the other ones. Just wanted to give you a quick update before i take a break. Maybe I'll post some pictures and another update later today if i got the time.

edit: well, here is what it looked like yesterday without any decals:
http://img152.imageshack.us/img152/2070/everender1.jpg
http://img842.imageshack.us/img842/4492/everender2.jpg

I'm still missing stars on the background so thats high on the ToDo list but i couldnt think of a quick way to automate it yet ^^ maybe after the decals
Theo Samaritan
Perkone
Caldari State
#274 - 2013-02-11 11:50:00 UTC
Tutorials are delayed folks, as I have a new 3930K due at the end of the month. I can finally get back to work on A.A. now I will have some actual processing power.
Valeria Ghost
Viziam
Amarr Empire
#275 - 2013-02-11 18:29:06 UTC
finished the other decals, i'm not sure anymore how to interpret the rotation data since it didnt fit for the other logos. Furthermore to apply the scaling data correctly the plane first has to have a size of 2x2 and then be scaled by the values i.e. final width would be 2 * scaling value. For the Logos on the side of the astarte the first value was the height and the second value the width. i dont know why there is a third value and for what it might be used. i also dont know why for the front logo i had to use the first or second value for height (both values were the same) and the third for width.
AzAkiR NaLDa
Council of Exiles
Brave Collective
#276 - 2013-02-11 18:41:40 UTC
Maybe iys a curving value? Any screenshots showing off the decals?

Lone Star Warrior
Valeria Ghost
Viziam
Amarr Empire
#277 - 2013-02-11 19:04:31 UTC
of course, kinda forgot to post them :D

http://img689.imageshack.us/img689/2632/astartedecals.jpg

now i'll try to get some stars into the scene ^^
Theo Samaritan
Perkone
Caldari State
#278 - 2013-02-12 15:40:50 UTC
Valeria Ghost wrote:
of course, kinda forgot to post them :D

http://img689.imageshack.us/img689/2632/astartedecals.jpg

now i'll try to get some stars into the scene ^^


I highly suggest you use the material EVE uses, combined into a blend with various levels of tiling. I also suggest that if you intend on animating you render the nebula separately at double resolution to avoid twinkling.
Valeria Ghost
Viziam
Amarr Empire
#279 - 2013-02-12 18:12:37 UTC  |  Edited by: Valeria Ghost
Theo Samaritan wrote:
Valeria Ghost wrote:
of course, kinda forgot to post them :D

http://img689.imageshack.us/img689/2632/astartedecals.jpg

now i'll try to get some stars into the scene ^^


I highly suggest you use the material EVE uses, combined into a blend with various levels of tiling. I also suggest that if you intend on animating you render the nebula separately at double resolution to avoid twinkling.


tried using eve's HLSL shader, didnt render at all, unfortunately i dont know why. besides i really like the look i have now and it doesn't have to be exactly like ingame anymore :D

any reason why you "highly suggest" to use eve's hlsl shader besides that it would recreate the ingame look exactly?
AzAkiR NaLDa
Council of Exiles
Brave Collective
#280 - 2013-02-12 18:23:22 UTC
I think Theo is talking about replicating the material for the decals.

Lone Star Warrior