EVE Technology Lab

Does anyone know how tech2 ships can be exported using TriExporter? I was looking in the res/dx9/model/ship/* directories but the models I can find there seem to be only for the tech1 variants (plus a couple extra like AT ships).

What I need is the 3d model of the Rapier. The only ship I found which is similar is the Bellicose in res/dx9/model/ship/minmatar/mc3. This is not the same model as can be seen in the game though: the rapier not only has a different texture in game, but it also differs in the geometry: it has 3 more engines and 2 extra solar panels. Is the EVE client using some sort of compositioning to put on these extra parts, and if yes, where can I find these extra models?

Hi Guys!

I am still fighting with applying the paint maps to the diffuse texture in GIMP. Most of you will probably use Blender for doing some nice ship renderings. What i wanna do is apply a specific painting to the diffuse texture, so that the generic diffuse texture will end up as a specific faction/model painting.

This is what i tried so far:
Do the usual magic to decompose the d and pgs texture to layers.
Copy alpha from pgs texture to d texture.
Invert alpha and adjust levels.
Recompose d texture
Copy the two mask layers from pgs texture to d texture
Open red file and get MaterialDiffuseColor, MaskDiffuseColor, SubMaskDiffuseColor for Hull and create additional layers with these colors.

Ok so far so good... Now it becomes a bit odd... Somehow magically i have to compose all these layers to the final color.

So i tried this:
Open the Eve Client and have a sharp look at the model preview and decide which color is what and how it matches with the mask. Now i overlayed the base-color with the diffuse texture and did a Merge Down Layer to get the base color of the diffuse texture. Then i combined the mask colors with the mask - sometimes inverting the mask - to get a new layer, where everything is white, and the two masks have their respective color. And finally overlayed that stuff with the already painted diffuse texture.

Vexor Paint Test

It looks better than not painting it at all, but the con is, that the colors of the paintmask is a combination of:
diffuse texture - material diffuse color - mask diffuse color
Not sure if it is intended to multiply the material diffuse color as well... *headscratch*

So the big question is: How do you use the colors in the Mask colors from the Red Files?

Bests,
Tobias

P.S.: Any ideas what the new *.black files are? A binary version of *.red or something entirely else...

Hi,

I tried installing TriExporter2009 and extracting some meshes like described in the Eve Uni video someone made and linked here not too long ago. However, the program crashes when trying to load most ship files. I almost suspect this has something to do with the v3ing of the ships since most of the ships that haven't been v3ed yet seem to work ok. This is a little unexpected since I thought V3ing only meant changing the shading but not the geometry.

Since this thread seems to be active I figured you don't have this problem and know how to fix it. If you would point me in the right direction I would be very grateful. It's very hard to find all the right files and resources in all those various forum threads they are spread over.

Thanks!

The file you linked only contained the source code, but I downloaded the .net version from eve-files and it works with the granny2.dll from that one (texture coordinates are messed up when importing into blender but I guess that's a different problem).

There really should be a wiki page with all the relevant info. Or is there?

I'm having issues as well since Inferno. The Amarr ships, other V3 ships, they crash TriExporter. I was just starting a video tutorial series for people as well, to try to get all of our collected knowledge and experience in one place.

I clicked the link for the .NET updated granny.dll but it returns a page error.

Any other solutions?

@craidie:
There is some black magic in there somewhere (maybe that's why we have *.black files now ). For some ships my manual GIMP painting attempts were pretty easy, and for others a complete epic fail. For example the Vexor, Opux and Prophecy came out quite nicely, but the Nightmare is literally a nightmare: After hours of fiddling i got something which looked almost but not quite right, saved it and have not managed to reproduce it ever since. And with the Ferox i had problems because how do i transform a color value with numbers bigger than 1 into RGB values for GIMP?

I will give it a try with the Scorpion. Which *.red file are you using?

Bests,
Andares

in that i was using cb2_t1.red and then just painted bright colors for the submask and mask map and combined them and added them as specular color map...
However I went and compared the red files, the cb2_t#.red seem to be the same, atleast all the values are the same.
Looking at the Kaalakiota red files, again no difference in values. But when comparing to the normal red file not only did it had different values, it had two new values ("materialreflectioncolor" and "maskreflectioncolor") values, however, are wrong neither are even near the reddish color.

Also looking at the .dds files, the specular layer is identical to normal one, but the sub-mask and mask layers have their colors reversed. Ignoring that i'm quite certain that the sub-mask maps are identical... The mask layer seems to have almost the whole submask parts and all the mask layer parts from the scorpion pgs file.

I'm pretty sure there's an art team guy laughing at us how we're doing this =)

P.S. someone know any use for the red file values for other than colors?

edit: also the first line of the .black seems to be .red file without values

@Andares:

I guess the same thing is with the green/blue patches on megathron... except it's made completely different as all the "painted" parts are in sub-mask... I've been combining textures in 3ds max for the whole night... nothing even close, sadly.

yeah remember that comment... old thread page 22 was it? i'll have a look at it tomorrow.

Well when working with eve textures you should basically start by extracting all the various channels used by
the engine into seperate images. The red files should only be used a references of wich files are used.

For example the red channel of the pgs map is a mask. Open it in a software like photoshop or gimp.
and copy the red channel to the green an blue channel. this will give you a black and white mask
that you can directly use in a 3D Software as a mask for two different Materials rather than using it for painting
the material in Photoshop or Gimp. (If you really know what you´re doing you can do channel boolean operations
in a 3D software directly and skip this step).

So for example in 3dsmax you could use this extracted mask in a "Blend Material" (Material level) or a "Mix Map" (Map level)
to Blend between 2 Materials. I recently did that with the Ishtar wich consists of two "colors" green and a metalic grey.
So I make two seperate materials in 3dsmax, one for the green parts and one for the grey parts. Both use the same
diffuse Map one is desaturated for the grey part while the other one stays green as it is. Than I put both of them
into a Blend Material and use the previously generated Mask to blend them. Every 3D software should have similar functions
to blend two maps or whole materials.

Also if you want to render the normal map correctly. Open the Normal Map in Photoshop. Leave the green channel as it is.
Copy the alpha channel to the red channel and fill the blue channel with white. Otherwise they won´t work at all.

cheers

I am very excited about getting started on this kind of work. I recently downloaded the tools needed and now I just need to save up money to buy Maya.

I do however have a few questions.

Let's say I want to import an exact replica of my current player model in the highest detail possible before I go to work on it and give her all the things CCP neglected to give her. How would I go about doing this?

In terms of rendering and lighting/shaders/etc is there is specific set of settings or configurations that would more or less imitate those of the EVE client itself?

(Purely Hypothetical:) How would I hypothetically put the character or whatever assets I altered back into the game so that they actually work like the un-modified assets? I am not expecting a slider to magically appear that allows me to adjust the size of her newly sculpted genitalia. I am however concerned with clipping or getting exact measurements on the limitations of the pre-existing sliders so that no matter what body shape I choose in the game the stuff I added to her is not effected. (/Purely Hypothetical)


And now for a more complicated question...

Can I add animations to the model that I import with triexporter and fluid physics, you know all that good stuff. Does it come with a skeleton or do I have to build it myself?