EVE Technology Lab

Awesome job mate, will make my life a lot easier.. or at least it would if I figured out how to use triexporter to export models from new eve cache, care to share how are you getting your models exported?

Ohh god, thanks a lot, it works now!
For anyone else who might google his way here: I used old version of Triexporter and tried setting shared cache as a folder when in fact i had to selected main eve folder :)

Thanks again!

Uhm, yes. I might want to add some instructions.

Basically, open up your scene, go to File -> Append, select the SKIN.blend file -> Node Tree -> Plug and Play Skin Shader.

Then you add a node tree to the material you are using for your model, and in the node editor, hit Shift+A -> Group -> Plug and Play Skin Shader.

Plug in the exported .dds textures into the right slots, adjust the colors and specularity and you are done.

Please note, that you still have to flip the UV map for your exported model along the Y axis, as the textures come mirrored.


I have also improved the node and made it even simpler to set up. I will post an update soon, if I don't forget.

Edit: Figured I could as well do it now. OP updated.

can someone explain how to get the actual diffuse textures for the ships and the new SKINs. I've managed to export the 3x dds files from triexporter, but not sure how to organise them all.

eg; Quafe Megathron SKIN

I'd also like to create a single diffuse/texture map to put onto the model for use in other 3D programs.

Any help on how to go about this would be great.

@Xercodo: Specularity is not a term used anymore by most physical renderers becaus, as I understand it's not physically accurate. Instead "roughness" is used to determine, how "reflective" a surface is. Basically, both a roughness- and a specularity image are greyscale textures. On a specularity map, white means "shiny" and black means "diffuse". On a roughness map, it's the other way around. Eve models come with a roughness map, so if you need a specularity map, try inverting the colors on that one and go from there. You may still have to tweak brightness/contrast to get a good result - to be frank, I have not yet figured that out completely myself.

@Annexe: There is no actual "diffuse" map anymore in Eve. You have paint-, material-, dirt-, glow-, albedo-, roughness-, normal- and occlusion-maps. Except normal and albedo, they are all greyscale maps. The albedo-map is the closest you have to a diffuse map, but it's still mostly black and white. This is because the colors are not defined in the texture. When you look at the skins, you will notice many of them use exactly the same textures, but all in a different color. Now, they don't make a new texture for each color-scheme. Instead, you are supposed to multiply the albedo-map with a color of your choice.

In order to get a single diffuse texture, you can try the following: Add a plane in blender, and apply my shader node as material. Plug in all the textures needed for the ship of your choice. The special versions such as T2, faction and SKIN variants require you to plug in the appropriate _PMDG.dds - you can find those in subfolders for the ship you want to render. Only set up the "diffuse" color inputs, and set the specular color inputs to black. Set the normal-/displacement-inputs as well as the specularity slider to 0 (you don't want those in your diffuse map). Don't add any lights to your scene, and set the environment to white instead. You can then bake out the combined texture into a single, colormap you can use as a diffuse map. You will still need specularity/normal maps for the whole thing to look any good.

Please note that some skins that use color gradients and "mix colors" such as Guristas or Ishukone do not yet work well in this version. I have fixed that already, but I have not yet uploaded the updated version. I would still like to tweak it a bit, it's coming soon™

Esnaelc Sin'led: Those yellow "edges" look like they are either based on the "dirt" or the specularity roughness (see, I'm still confusing those all the time. crazy new world) map. Try those to mix in the yellow. Maybe I will try to recreate that SKIN later, once I'm at home just to see how it works.

There is always a bit of color mixed in with the albedo-map, so it might be in there. I am at work right now, and don't have access to Triexporter or Eve, but if there is another texture for that SKIN, it should be in a subfolder of the mbc2 folder. Could you check if there's a different _PMDG (contains paint, material, dirt, glow) or _AR (contains albedo and roughness) texture in there somewhere?

i've checked res/dx9/model/ship/minmatar/bc/mbc2 (for hurricane) and couldn't find a new texture file or folder.
There're still thukker / nefantar /navy /brutor, but no valklear or blue_tiger ^^
May be in some other folder somewhere.

Edit : The yellow material looks like a real gold, very reflectiv, very metalic, whereas the blue texture looks more diffuse, mat, rough.
I really think that's a brand new texture, looks like they cut the textures one by one to bring out those edges on each and every models.

Looks great ! Good job !
Although, i kinda feel like there're some material not really rendered correctly, i don't how to say that.
It seems to me that some metalic part of the material are looking rubbish/plastic more than metalic.

Also, would be great to see some minmatar ships. :p
Specially those sun panel things. :D

Yep, i figured that out.
Like the solar panels, for matar ships, i use a transparant shader mixed with your shader group on the material shape linked to that specific 3D shape. But it put transparancy to the fasteners as well :x

I think i found the .pmdg on which they built Valklear and BlueTiger SKIN : the nefantar pmdg.
The yellow edges are the "ancient color" on your group shader

I think i need to work more on the environment as well.
Kinda hard to really recreate the exact shaders InGame lights and reflections, and such.

http://i.imgur.com/blBQyaj.png?1