chip you old sea dog!!
what do you think of sins?

Honestly?i really like it. If it was actaully out out I would put it as one of the top 10 games of the year.

Because its a first screenshot?

Excellent.

BTW: If you need sounds I think I still have the old Official ST sound effects CD from the 80's stashed away somewhere.

And so it begins...  

a mere 5000 vertices & 10,000 faces with credit to the model author(s) Balogt & Cycrow from the X3 modding community.

Btw, if you don't want it to be so reflective, it can be fixed with the color texture alpha channel. I really need to write an help file at this point. Any volunteer

you guys may experience problems with your models normal maps and colouring if you haven't created proper tangent maps before export.

*Gasms*

You need to make a Star wars one (One thats 100% to scale, EaW wasn't lol). If I knew how to do this (or if you wanted to teach me *hint*) I'd do it myself.

Hm... Star Wars?

Tristan i think my model problems have to do with them being in "X" format. In any other viewer, or 3d program ranging from milkshape to 3dsmax, to lightwave i have no issues with the mesh. However i had to convert from LWO to X format using Deep Exploration. I havent attempted an import from .obj, or .3ds yet.

It may also be the mesh editor itself causing the mesh errors, but TBH i wont know for sure until i try converting some more models.

I could also try to flip the faces of the model before i convert like Darkshimmer suggested. In other words turn my model "inside out" and let the editor flip it back.

The thing is Tristan, i kinda know what you are talking about with the "tangents", but this is using Softimage XSI. I need to know if we can duplicate the tangents with 3dsmax, or lightwave. If not then this may be the problem, and 3rd party importers wont work unless Code Herder can write this into his editor. The forge tools are head deep in NDA right now so we may have to wait until after the release of sins for the 3rd party tools to develop properly.

In the mean time there is nothing stopping from using the current tools models as placeholders. Until the real tools arrive.

BTW i dont expect my mod to be released until well after Sins final is released. There is much we still dont know about the engine which we are learning. There are many models that still need to be built. I dont give any guarantees except "when it is done"

The model you see here is just a test model. While it looks great IMO, The final will more than likely have more spit and polish. I expect all the models i use to be of similar quality.

well, to me it sounds like a tangent issue, as the files in the game have valid tangent info.

What are the tangent exactly? Something like normals? And what model error do you get? I can't fix it if I don't know what's wrong .

I fixed quite a few problems with the last version of the editor, it would die on all 3ds meshes because of a quirk of the library I was using.

if the issue is tangents i think there is a hasvalidtangent modifer somewhere in the mesh file. you may be able to set to false as a work around. If its the normal map, you should make sure that your using the same normal map format used in house, as there diffrent types of normal maps.

The Sins normal maps are identical to a standard normal map made using the nvidia dds plugins for photoshop. The only difference is sins uses grayscale.

Ill post some better shots of the mesh errors later (ill have to re-convert my models on my laptop cause i have no access to my desktop at the moment). It seems like the vertices unweld at the texture seems, and the lighting looks like it is coming from the wrong direction on the model as compared to the rest of the objects on the map.

There's two type of texture in sins with normal data. There's the gray looking one, that end with "-nm" and the pinkish ones with "-bm" ending.

Well, I can extract tangents from 3ds models at least, haven't looked at the other formats. I just need to find out if the sins models use them now.

I get this little warn fuzzy feeling welling up in the pits of my soul when I allow myself the mer passing thought of playing a B5 universe fully interactive 3D game. Woohoo!! Be still my abused heart...

Sounds like a tangent issue for sure man.

Sins normal maps just switch the channels around for better compression with dds format.
Has nothing to do with the model not rendering.

Tristan can you explain the "tangents" in a little more detail? What would a 3dsmax equivalent be? Is this still under NDA?

I havn't done any testing with 3ds max. I havn't been able to find an equivalent.
sorry:(

I have looked, I'll have to have another look soon. I'm pretty sure it's there

Nobody seems to be replying on the thread I started so...



Know how to make the Earth the same size as the other planets and make it so its not dark like that?

Will it not scale using Code Herders Mesh Editor?

I for example scale the B5 Shadow Vessel to 1.5 in X, Y & Z as its too small at its default.

anymore pics stressman?

planets use a different shader and requires 2 sets of uv's.
The planet has to be about 10000 units big i believe, I don't remember off hand

Nothing new from me just yet. I am currently in the middle of a big move. Plus my work tends to keep me away from my puter for a while (I travel around the state for my job). So time is my worst enemy ATM. Once i get settled into my new place, and get some more down time i can concentrate more on this

BTW good job on the planet Thrawn even tho it didnt turn out quite like u planned