Wing Commander Prophecy: Secret Ops Model Update Pack

I moved the turrets from the angled faces of the engineering hull to the flat plane on the bottom, for future ease of placing turrets without having to create a turret matrix at an angle (which is something I'm not looking forward to). :) I can probably remove the lower AMG's but I seem to recall they were there in the shooting model? the images online aren't too clear.

Right now I'm trying to figure out why the model doesn't render right. It's odd. The game knows its there, but it doesn't render the model until after you're inside the collision sphere. So from a distance it shows as a bunch of disembodied turrets until you collide with it. :) And it doesn't show at all in the viewer. Unless I shrink it down to around 500 meters or so. The only thing I can think of is that there are a series of FRONT/REAR chunks in the original IFF that aren't in my version, but I don't know how they work or if that's even the cause...
 
The underside image in the CIC ship database you can see the top turrets through the hull. A little problem the game had with render order :)

For the render problems look at the CNTR and RADI chunks in the MESH/0012 form. This is used by the game to 'frustum cull' objects that aren't in front of the camera to improve rendering efficiency. Make sure the CNTR is the model's centre most point (not always 0/0/0) and RADI is big enough to encompass the whole ship (obviously radius, not diameter).

I should be able to whip up a quick matrix calculator that will convert the Euler angles to the 4x4 matrix, or even directly update the iff file. Make it a little easier than Thomas BR's turrets.exe. Watch this space.
 
gr1mre4per said:
The underside image in the CIC ship database you can see the top turrets through the hull. A little problem the game had with render order :)

For the render problems look at the CNTR and RADI chunks in the MESH/0012 form. This is used by the game to 'frustum cull' objects that aren't in front of the camera to improve rendering efficiency. Make sure the CNTR is the model's centre most point (not always 0/0/0) and RADI is big enough to encompass the whole ship (obviously radius, not diameter).

I should be able to whip up a quick matrix calculator that will convert the Euler angles to the 4x4 matrix, or even directly update the iff file. Make it a little easier than Thomas BR's turrets.exe. Watch this space.
Click to expand...

See, this is why I like you! I say "I'm not sure I want to do this so I'll take a short cut" and you say, "No, don't do that, I'll just write you a program." :D

I'll check out the .iFF file and see if that's the problem. I think the collision spheres may be busted too since I was able to fly straight through it...:D
 
You can fly through it because you need extents and bsp tree. I'm not sure the blender plug in does that. You will need to create basic convex boxes to cover the different parts ship and it can be used to build the tree. Thomas Bruckner had a mesh tool that used a dll from hcl to build the bsp tree but I can't remember if it used the main mesh or a separate mesh to build the tree. If it uses the main mesh then I'm sure it will explode.
 
gr1mre4per said:
You can fly through it because you need extents and bsp tree. I'm not sure the blender plug in does that. You will need to create basic convex boxes to cover the different parts ship and it can be used to build the tree. Thomas Bruckner had a mesh tool that used a dll from hcl to build the bsp tree but I can't remember if it used the main mesh or a separate mesh to build the tree. If it uses the main mesh then I'm sure it will explode.
Click to expand...

Fortunately I made a basic collision mesh for the HW version. That could be used to make the tree one supposes. Now to go figure out how to do that bit. I recall Killerwave's site has a tutorial on it.
 
Well the RADI isn't the issue I don't think, I changed it from the default 750 in 1,000 unit increments out to about 100,000 and it still behaves the same...
 
gr1mre4per said:
I should be able to whip up a quick matrix calculator that will convert the Euler angles to the 4x4 matrix, or even directly update the iff file. Make it a little easier than Thomas BR's turrets.exe. Watch this space.
Click to expand...
Oh.... wow. I never thought I'd live to see the day. Someone is actually trying to make our lives easier.
 
@gr1mre4per was kind enough to sort out my problem with the Vesuvius Iff's. The draw in issue was created by the .IFF file containing a FAR chunk, which is needed for fighters but not cap ships. @Kevin Caccamo - I know the blender script inserts it by default and it's not hard to correct now that I know what to look for, but if you're enhancing your scripts for cap ships this is good to know.

I also updated the SO model with the darker texture I made for HW:RM. I think it looks snazzy.

Vesu_Dark1.jpg Vesu_Dark2.jpg Vesu_Dark3.jpg Vesu_Dark4.jpg Vesu_Dark6.jpg
 
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Blow it up! Blow it up! :p

There's something oddly satisfying about seeing a really high-res flight deck in WCP/SO, especially since the SO Vesuvius model was...less than spectacular in that regard.

Can you land on it at the end of a mission? I remember the Vesuvius having that function but it was so glitched and buggy that you just flew at it at top speed.
 
Been a bit quiet in here for a while, time to liven it up again :)

Here is my WCP Hardpoint Editor I hinted at earlier, its for anyone to have a go. Hope I got all the bugs worked out...

Let me know via pm if the Nephilim have infiltrated!

Known anomalies (not bugs):

* If you set one of the rotation values to 180, it may sometimes appear as -180 and vice versa.
* Settings rotation values greater than 180 or less than -180 will work, but will normalise within that range
* Gimbal Lock: Setting Pitch 180 will come back as Yaw 180 and Roll 180 instead, which is the same thing. This is just one possible example.

*** Once downloaded, you may need to Unblock the ZIP file before extracting or unblock the EXE once it is extracted. Just another Microsoft annoyance :)
 
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Thanks! I've had a really rough week where life has unfortunately intruded far too often. Two people close to my family unexpectedly passed away last week. Things should be back on an even keel here in a bit. I did get some new turret designed for SO cap ships so I'll be able to test out your software.
 
Sorry to hear about that. Thoughts are with you and I hope you are all well.

Will be good to see your work starting up again soon. All in good time :)
 
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MUPdate time: I'm back in the saddle after a week where life has decided to really get after me. No new pics to post currently. I'm actually working on texturing some turrets for the HW:RM mod. But that's ok because I plan on leveraging that for the turrets on WCP models. Hooray for finding efficiencies! I plan on posting up some new shots before the week is out. Stay tuned!
 
Lt.Overload said:
Blow it up! Blow it up! :p

There's something oddly satisfying about seeing a really high-res flight deck in WCP/SO, especially since the SO Vesuvius model was...less than spectacular in that regard.

Can you land on it at the end of a mission? I remember the Vesuvius having that function but it was so glitched and buggy that you just flew at it at top speed.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure about landing on it, however I looked at the original BSP tree for the Vesuvius and the flight deck was not "punched out" meaning that you'd just collide with the back of the ship even if you were aiming for the super-narrow flight deck on it.

Honestly, I'm not sure why you couldn't code a mission to land on it though.
 
DefianceIndustries said:
I'm not sure about landing on it, however I looked at the original BSP tree for the Vesuvius and the flight deck was not "punched out" meaning that you'd just collide with the back of the ship even if you were aiming for the super-narrow flight deck on it.

Honestly, I'm not sure why you couldn't code a mission to land on it though.
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Landing would be fine as it's automatic and collision is turned off but you couldn't randomly fly through it.

There is no reason you couldn't put a hole through the flight deck and a landing collision mesh with a hole. Just put the collision sphere center on one of the edges so torpedos don't fly all the way through or hit the base mesh.
 
Update: Not much progress on the MUP currently as I'm doing some work on Flag Commander at the moment. I owe those guys some Black Lance assets and I'm a bit behind on providing them. I did do some tests on turreting on the Vesuvius last night, I'll post some shots here in a bit.
 
Quick update: Here I profess my undying hatred for the F-107 LanceDragon. For some reason I can't get the silly thing to model right. On the other hand, I've also started my first tutorial for modding Vision. So far its about 12 pages, going from what software you need, to tricks for installation, to an overview on how to model the mesh and the pros and cons of various modifiers and when IMO to best employ them. I'm up to hard points. Once I get that covered, I just need to cover texturing and conversion steps and we'll have a first draft...
 
Hi all,

Here is the first tutorial for modding Vision with a vanilla install. I know it's kind of putting the cart before the horse a bit (since I still don't have a complete update pack) but I wanted to write it while it was still fresh in my head. Anyway I thought I could contribute to everyone's light after dinner reading.
 

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I am glad someone finally wrote a tutorial, we were too lazy to ! :p I see that you reference a tool I haven't [yet] made available, I guess I should put it up for other people to use.
 
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