Check this baby out...(Finished!)

[FunkyFreshMan]

Making progress! Might be slow, but at least it's progress. After fixing the model's meshes, I ran another simple test OPT with a few basic hardpoints slapped on. This time, it works beautifully. Here are a few in-game screens. Yeah, I know. It's still not textured. I just covered it with a generic gray color since the default texture is hard on the eyes.

Vin_01.jpg (23.93 KB) Viewed 760 times

Vin_02.jpg (24.84 KB) Viewed 759 times

And with this breakthrough comes yet more annoying questions. What is the correct warhead hardpoint in OPTech? I've tried using both the torpedo and missile ones, but neither seemed to work. And does anyone know what the easiest way to do the template for the wings would be? Since is has so many bends in it, doing a simple side render of it would probably give me too extreme a perspective to work with. Any suggestions?

[Fader]

That's very nice!
At last some new work around here
I hope to see the texturing soon.

[FunkyFreshMan]

Thank you kindly, Fader!
I've started drawing up some textures. They look pretty good, I just hope I'm doing them right so they'll apply to the model properly. Still not sure if I'm going to UV it or what. I think I laid them out wrong for UV mapping, though.
OPTech probably wouldn't be so bad except for a very odd problem. When the model's vertexes and faces are in reverse order, the default textures show up fine, but of course the model's inside out. When I flip them to the right orientation, all I get are little squares of color at the vertexes and nothing else! What's up with that?! If anyone has any idea what the problem might be, let me know. I am so close to finishing this thing...yet still so far away!

[Draco429]

I have NO idea what that problem could be, but the texture I saw on facebook will work just fine with UV Mapping.

[Dragon]

After fixing the vertexes, you should Calculate the Face Normales.

[Draco429]

Oh, duh. I DID know that. X\

[FunkyFreshMan]

Okay, first of all, Happy Thanksgiving to all my American friends out there. Now, let's get down to business.

I think this has been covered here somewhere before, but I can't find it, so I'll ask again. How do I get the textures to reduce to an 8-bit bitmap without the colors turning really funky colors. Photoshop (CS4, if that matters) will only let me save as a 16-bit and when I open it in paint (the generic paint that comes with windows) and save it, it really messes up the colors and all of the details basically disappear. I know that it's supposed to lose some color information, but I didn't think it would be that bad. What obvious thing am I missing this time?

[Fader]

Isn't there the possibility to reduce the colour depth directly to 256 colours?
In Gimp, this is called "Indexed color depth" and you can choose how much colours you would like to reduce to... even black and white with 2 colours.
I'm sorry but i use Gimp rather than Photoshop and i can't remember well how the menus are set.

[Draco429]

I've got to get to work, so I can't test this, but I think I got around it by doing THIS:

Save as 256 color GIF with custom palette, then open in Paint and resave as 8-bit bitmap.

Hope that helps!

[FunkyFreshMan]

Hey! It worked! Thanks guys!

I was going to post some pics of what I have textured so far (it's looking pretty cool), but when I try to OPT it, OPTech gives me a "runtime error: '63' Bad Record Number" Um...huh? The only thing that has changed since I last test OPTed it was the textures, but they're all the right dimensions and format (as far as I know). The only thing that I can figure the problem might be is that they're not named TEX00001, etc. Unfortunately, I won't be able to test that theory until NEXT weekend. It kinda sucks having a home residence with all the programs I need and a school residence without them. Anyway, if anyone else knows what the problem might be, it would save me a lot of trouble. Hopefully, once I get this first OPT under my belt, I won't be asking so many dumb questions. Sure, I could probably figure it out eventually, but it's nice to get advice from people who have been there before. Speed things up a bit. You know what I mean?

Thanks once again. Maybe I'll be able to get some pics of the finished thing up soon!

[Dragon]

I had that error too. It has nothing to do with the name, one or more textures must have a wrong format.

[FunkyFreshMan]

This just dawned on me while I was fiddling with my TIE model in Rhino. I'm thinking the problem might have something to do with the mesh names not being called mesh0, mesh 1, mesh2, etc. and that's messing up the texture information or something since it OPTed fine without textures, but not with them. I think I read somewhere where the meshes have to be named as such for the textures to work. Not sure though. I'll have to try it this weekend, unless somebody can confirm or deny that one.

[Draco429]

I'm pretty sure that's correct.

[Darksaber]

The naming of the meshes can be anything really, in my tutorial I name then as mesh0, mesh1 for ease

The names haven't got anything to do with it, if it opted ok without textures it should opt ok with textures.

Plus think of it, your was having problem converting textures using photoshop, that's the only logical explanation why your getting the error. I suggest you get your hands on Paint Shop Pro or as someone suggested Gimp, Dragon is correct one or more textures are the wrong format.

The error your referring is to do with textures, You need to check each texture to see if they are 256 colours and the correct dimensions 16x16 32x32 64x64 128x128 256x256 or a combination of those numbers, do not use 8x8 Optech doesn't like those for some reason.

Also when you tested you opt before applying textures it would have had the default Optech texture on the opt, this is one reason you may have been having infinite triangulation in game, because it only had one texture covering the complete opt.

Meshes need to have a maximum of 250 faces if your only applying one texture on it, up to 350 faces if your using more textures on that one mesh, the more the textures on one mesh the happier it will be ingame.

When first making a model in Rhino make sure you start a face in a clockwise direction, making a face anti-clockwise will usually invert the face causing problems

Checkm the textures though, one of them is either the wrong dimension of not 256 colours

DO NOT bother converting the texture to a gif this will totally screw your colours up, if you have spent the time and effort creating your textures it will be all lost if you choose that format.

I'm sure if you can get your hands on CS4 you can get a hold of Paint Shop Pro

[FunkyFreshMan]

Okay, then. I thought I saw somewhere where the naming of the meshes was important. So I can rule that one out, then. (After I just went back into all of my models and changed all the mesh names. Oh, well)

Meshes need to have a maximum of 250 faces if your only applying one texture on it, up to 350 faces if your using more textures on that one mesh, the more the textures on one mesh the happier it will be ingame.

That I didn't know. Even if it's not related to my current problem, I'll bet it would have caused issues in the future. Just like the triangulating thing, it's easy to get carried away and not realize there are that many faces in a mesh.

It seemed like converting to a .gif before saving as a bitmap worked fine, as far as the colors go. It was when I converted it straight to bitmap that I lost all of my color information. I'm not saying that you're wrong or anything (you have a lot more experience with this stuff than I do.) I'm just a little confused.

Does anybody know if there's anything that can be done using Corel Painter? Like, say, importing the Photoshop file and saving it in a different format using Painter. Just wondering.

Looks like I'll have to fall back onto good old trial-and-error.

Thanks for the assist.

[Draco429]

My bad... Sorry for the bad info.

Try this: Finish your image, save the PSD. Resave as a new file (just to not screw your colors up on accident). Go to Image > Mode > Indexed Color. Play with the settings until it looks good and hit okay. Save as BMP. The only option should be 8-bit now.

I think this will work and will skip the GIF step. And, once again, work. (Funny, I got the GIF thing to work when I worked on the hyperspace thing years ago...)

[FunkyFreshMan]

I can already see eyes rolling and people saying "Aw, man, this guy again!?" but here goes. Yet more issues with the textures.

I made a couple of pics to illustrate my problem a little better.

This is the original texture I made for part of the cockpit before reducing it:

cockpit_big.png (220.09 KB) Viewed 344 times

This one is after it was reduced to the right dimensions and color depth. This is also how it appears in OPTech when it is applied to the model:

cockpit.png (18.01 KB) Viewed 335 times

And this is how it appears in-game:

port_screen.PNG (155.14 KB) Viewed 346 times

Obviously, there are some major differences in colors. Is that how it's supposed to look in-game? If so, I guess I can live with it, but it kind of set the kibosh on my plans to somehow release it, as it doesn't appear to be up to standards.

I tried changing the color mode in Photoshop to indexed color then saving it as an 8-bit .bmp directly from PS, which worked except that my textures were purple in-game and I'm not really going for a TIE Pimp . It seems like the best thing that worked was actually saving it as a .GIF first then as a .bmp. (I know, Darksaber told me not to do that!) I saved a different texture for a different ship the same way and it appeared in-game almost exactly like the original image. So I'm guessing my problem has something to do with the colors I used to paint the TIE textures. Is there, by, chance an easy way to fix it without having to repaint the whole thing? I'm still fairly inexperienced with Photoshop and I still don't know what a lot of those effects do.

Sorry for posting so many images, but I figured that would be easier than trying to explain it. I hope this makes sense.
You guys have really been a great help so far and I really appreciate your time. Thanks.

[Mako]

The problem is with your brightness settings in-game. Try lowering it.

[WildstarBlue9]

DeviantArt.com already has a TIE Vindicator, so you'll have to come up w/ a different name. However, you could always make a "real" TIE Vindicator OPT using the fan art as your primary reference.

[Dragon]

About your color problem after saving the textures as indexed color BMP in Photo Shop:
Just resave the texture with Windows Paint and everything will be fine.

[FunkyFreshMan]

DeviantArt.com already has a TIE Vindicator, so you'll have to come up w/ a different name. However, you could always make a "real" TIE Vindicator OPT using the fan art as your primary reference.

Aw, man, that sucks. Thanks for letting me know, though. Oh, well, I'll just keep the name as a sort of "working title" for now so I won't have to rename all of my files, but if I ever get around to actually releasing it, I'll change the name.

I think I figured out my problem. I had way too much detail in the textures for XWA to display properly. I removed all of the dirt, grime and paint chips layers and repainted the base color to a single color with very little tone variation. I still kept all of the little raised panels and the red triangle. It looked fine in-game except where there was still a little bit of the darker gray shading near the back and bottom of the textures. It seems like the colors need to be fairly contrasting and sharp since it was corrupted where there was a subtle blend between tones. That also happened on another model that had a gray hull with red accents. The gray part looked bad because it had some smooth blends into darker gray, but the red, which had fewer tone variations, appeared fine. I am slowly learning just how frustratingly finicky XWA can be. It is a ten-year-old game, after all. Though it means I’ll have to discard a lot of the (in my opinion) beautiful weathering on the textures, it will result in a lot nicer looking in-game model.

[Darksaber]

I don't know why you've buggered about removing all the dirt and grunge from your textures, you've seen our textures and we don't seem to have the trouble your having

lower the brightness in game to minimum as Mako suggested

Also YOU can save as 8bit 256 colours in CS3 so you should be able to save as it in CS4

1. First save your file as a PSD file
2. resize your image but make sure the resolution is set to 300 pixel/inch
3. go to image / mode / indexed color
5. click ok
6. you'll now see the indexed color window
7. set the palette to Local (doesn't matter which either perceptual, selective or adaptive) or possibly exact
8. if the color is not set to 256 set it as
9. set forced to none
10. options set both to none
11. click ok
12. save as BMP
13. another widow will come saying BMP Option set it as windows and 8 bit

Right you BMP still hasn't been saved correctly, now you will have to open it in another paint program
I've tried opening it in MSPaint and saving that was crap
I next tried Fireworks and saved it again that works if you set it as bmp 8 exact
I next tried PAINT SHOP PRO and that saved correctly also
I download Gimp http://www.gimp.org/ and tried that but it wouldn't load so I could test it

So stop being a GIMP yourself and stop sodding about and get your hands on either Fireworks or Paint Shop Pro, you've managed to get your hands on Photoshop CS4 and I doubt very much that you paid for that not at $700 or even paid $1700 for the full Creative Suite.

Last thing please read the advise people are giving you, as the way I see it your skipping over it and making up as you go!

Now go back and read this again and one more time until you understand what we are trying to tell you!

[FunkyFreshMan]

I have been reading EVERYTHING and trying EVERYTHING. I'm not that stupid! I lowered the brightness as far as it would go. Helped somewhat, but still has some problems. I saved everything exactly the way you described it. I even had it set to 300 dpi, which is what I usually work with anyway. I've tried what everyone else has said, some of it has worked to a certain extent. Just because I didn't post a reply regarding every suggestion doesn't mean I haven't been paying attention or not trying anything. Why would I even bother posting anything if I was just going to make up my own answers? I could have done that without having to go through all of this! The only reason I even have Photoshop is because I needed it for school, and even though I did get it at a discount, it was still much more than I wanted to pay.

But, since I'm apparently being a bother, I'll just go back to trying to figure it out myself and if it never gets done, oh well. I'm sure it would be no great loss if the community didn't have another couple of ships to play with. Goodness knows there are enough out there already.

Sorry for being so nasty, but I don't much like when my intelligence is insulted simply because I'm not as knowledgeable about something as someone else or because I ask a lot of questions. That doesn't mean I'm stupid or ignorant, that's just how I learn.
Rant over.

[Darksaber]

Did I actually say that your stupid, NO!!

All I'm trying to tell you is to get your hands on Fireworks or Paint shop Pro, I'm not telling you to make your textures in either one of them.

You just need either one of them to save the damned texture correctly

From what I have been experimenting with, if you save your texture as a BMP using Photoshop the textures will come out as Purple in XWA

Make your textures using Photoshop, but then use either Paint shop Pro or Fireworks to save them correctly!!

Jezz

[Dragon]

Hi DS, what happened with the textures when you resaved them with MSPaint?