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FPSC Classic Models and Media / Can someone answer this?

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Cosmic Prophet
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Posted: 4th Feb 2013 20:10 Edited at: 4th Feb 2013 20:12
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Hi guys. I have a question, and don't know if this should be asked here,or in the scripts section.

I'd like to find out; is there a way (via the .fpe) to add parts of two or more seperate meshes, to be displayed as a single entity object in-game.

Similar to the way segment parts are combined via the .fps to build a room, and how door ,or window entities can be combined with the the segment parts such as frames, etc.

Can this somehow be done for entities? For example, an entity can have a decal (which is a seprate mesh-entity) assigned in the .fpe, "decal=" and the 2 will be diplayed as a single entity.

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rolfy
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Posted: 4th Feb 2013 22:49 Edited at: 4th Feb 2013 23:16
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Dont think this can be done as you describe. Maybe you can attach an entity to another through scripting in recent updates but not had much of a chance to look at this yet. No way to 'attach' a separate mesh with coordinates so they fit together when placed in the map, unless they can be placed using coord in script and are static in world terms. You still couldn't place two entity's in map with a single click through the fpe that I know of.

Quote: "
Can this somehow be done for entities? For example, an entity can have a decal (which is a seprate mesh-entity) assigned in the .fpe, "decal=" and the 2 will be diplayed as a single entity."
I think, maybe, you can attach a decal to an entity already in a couple of ways. Decals are flat planes produced by the engine and cant be meshes you create, shader is the answer.

You could perhaps make the object a character and attach a firespot where you want the decal to appear, off the top of my head it would work fairly well.

Another way would be to use a mesh which part of the texture used animated frames, of course the whole texture would be used with only the appropriate uv 'islands' being animated. Use an atlas walk shader such as bond1's free one.
This might work better with the new video texture feature for better resolution.

Although dynamic entity's can use multiple textures you cant apply different shaders to different parts of the model, you raise some interesting questions.

If you could create prefab entity's same as segments your problem would be solved

I dont know exactly what your trying to achieve, if you dont want to post here shoot me an e-mail and I'll look at it.

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s4real
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Posted: 4th Feb 2013 23:30
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@Cosmic Prophet :- entitles are flagged in the engine so the engine knows its a entity and not a segment so this is not possible as far as I can see.

Best s4real

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Disturbing 13
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Posted: 6th Feb 2013 04:04
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Greetings Cosmic,
I'm not sure what exact effect you are trying to achieve but it would have to be done via modeling and scripting. Butterfingers did this for me ages ago with a character I made called electro. The jist of it is this- A decal can be called at any frame of animation to appear on a firespot joint (or bone).So if scripted properly you can call a decal in one frame and the very next frame call it again. Each time you call it it will run the full 16 frames of decal animation. If you move the firespot in each frame of animation it will still play in each spot giving the illusion of the decal being in multiple places at once. The entity has to have a weapon that uses the desired decal. This is a great way to create a character that uses a flamethrower. Hope that helps.

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Cosmic Prophet
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Posted: 6th Feb 2013 05:28 Edited at: 6th Feb 2013 22:31
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Here's an example of what I'm trying to do. this entity uses a shader that renders depth via the normal map, similar to bond1's tangent basis shader. In the game the blue bits are animated with a pulsing glow. Other objects in the game ( like computer units) have the same detail brought out with the normals, and have animated screens and such.



I want to be able to make highly detailed normals for various entities ( and have them show up as they should, as the picture shows), and have animated lights, and displys on them. I got lucky with this shot, the machine on the right shows the dimmed lights, and the other two, are in the lightend stage of the animation.

currently we would need to use two seperate shaders to achieve this look. The tangent basis, and animated shader from bond1. My first thought was to make the base mesh, assign the tangent basis to it, and have a conjoind static (not moving on the base) mesh that the animated textures could be assigned. This way the screens, and lights could be mapped seperatly to utilize the animated shader, while the monitors, consoles, etc. could use the depth, and detail that the tangent basis shader provides.

I have not worked with the animated textures yet so I don't know if this is possible using that.

I'm working on media for my next sci-fi release, all of my walls, and entities use the tangent basis shader, and all my animated consoles, and machinery look flat, and dull in comparison, and looks aweful.

Here's more examples...





Do you see what I'm meaning?, You can see the effect of the normal map clearly on these entities, plus the animated parts. Is this something that would require a revision of the animated shader itself? It would be great if we could assign multiple textures to parts of a single mesh with indipendant shader assignments.

Let me know your thoughts.

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Disturbing 13
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Posted: 7th Feb 2013 05:30
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My bad, I thought you were talking about character entities. Guess I sounded way off base. On the other hand my god that stuff looks great! If you were going for a Doom3 look congratulations; I wouldn't be able to tell this from the AAA title. Looking excellent!

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Cosmic Prophet
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Posted: 7th Feb 2013 06:39 Edited at: 7th Feb 2013 07:36
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The one on top is from Pariah, the other 2 are from Doom3. I'm using them to give an example of the look I'm after.

Mine are similar though. see below. The mesh is just a box. all the relief is rendered with the normal map. now I want to put animations on this stuff, and keep the normals.



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Disturbing 13
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Posted: 7th Feb 2013 07:41
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Quote: " I wouldn't be able to tell this from the AAA title."

Quote: "the other 2 are from Doom3"

Ahh now I feel foolish.

Quote: "Mine are similar though. see below."

Well now I don't feel so foolish and my original comment still stands.... actually no, yours looks better than Doom3's.

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rolfy
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Posted: 7th Feb 2013 13:08 Edited at: 7th Feb 2013 13:14
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I would check out bond1's lobby sign in the metro theatre pack for what you want, I am sure it uses a normal map and atlas illumination shader combined, would work perfect for you.

The spec alpha animates illumination.

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Wolf
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Posted: 20th Feb 2013 06:24
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Quote: " I would check out bond1's lobby sign in the metro theatre pack for what you want, I am sure it uses a normal map and atlas illumination shader combined, would work perfect for you.
"


I may be wrong, but Bond1's Lobby sign only flickers and I think Cosmic wants animated screens.

Now I'm not nearly as good as Cosmic at modeling but I think trying to ram all this in a single mesh isn't the best way to do this.

I think it saves you a lot of time if your screens are separate entities. The result would be practically the same.

I do however recall vaguely that having multiple shaders and meshes is possible in .fps files. Segments are often a combination out of many meshes. Maybe that is the correct approach?

Best luck with your new pack, by the way !!

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rolfy
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Posted: 20th Feb 2013 09:58 Edited at: 20th Feb 2013 10:16
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Quote: "I may be wrong, but Bond1's Lobby sign only flickers and I think Cosmic wants animated screens."

The shader uses the alpha in the specular texture for atlas walk illumination, though its only 2, 1 frames (it flickers because its playing these two frames) this could be increased, it could be used to achieve the effect he wants in a single model with some tweaking.

Quote: "I want to be able to make highly detailed normals for various entities ( and have them show up as they should, as the picture shows), and have animated lights, and displys on them. I got lucky with this shot, the machine on the right shows the dimmed lights, and the other two, are in the lightend stage of the animation."

In fact if you only required a lights on lights off effect then the shader is ready to go with your own textures, all you would require was the spec alpha be done properly.
If you increased the frames and changed the float speed you could have the lights gradually dim and light, but thats just me going off again....meh!

This shader also has specular "hero" highlights and receives lightmapping like any normal static entity, it might be beyond the capabilities of most around here but it should be entirely possible to achieve what your looking for in one single mesh if you were willing to dig into it.

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bond1
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Posted: 20th Feb 2013 10:16
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I could make a version of the tangent basis shader that also does "pulsing" style glow. Do you want your entity to be static or dynamic? I'll just need to know which version of the shader to add it to.

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Cosmic Prophet
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Posted: 20th Feb 2013 21:38 Edited at: 20th Feb 2013 22:04
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Hello guy's. Rolfy, Thanks for the tips, but tweaking shaders is beyond me. I should remedy that.

Wolf you hit it on the head. I want to have animated screens, and, or glowing parts on consoles that can be detailed with the normal map, similar to bond1's tangent basis.

Like this...



Note that the machine entity clearly shows the bump effect from the normal on it's surface, and has the 2 animated screens on it.

That way the animated entity will blend in to the surrounding environment, and react to light as the tangent shader does. when using Bond1's animated shader, you cant get the same light reaction, or bump relief effect rendered by the normal map.

Bond1, Hello sir. If this could me managed, it would be wonderful. I use your tangent basis shader on nearly everything in my new sci-fi development, which makes it all, look fantastic! and to be able to make entities with that same look, and have animated screens, monitors, and lights on them, would in fact, be genius.

If I may, Mark, if you were to put together a collection of special efffect shaders, that could be used to bring FPSC users up to speed with what other engines have been using forever now. There is probably no amount that would be too much to pay for such a pack. Effects that could replace the use of the current decals available for improved visuals. As well as a wider variety of water effeects to enhance your Metro theater collection, like fountains, etc. I'm still trying to find a transparent shader that could be used to give a water effect to simulate water behind glass, like in Bioshock, for my Ryan's Rapture development. Just a personal wish list item here. But my offer to pay you to make these still stands my friend.

To answer your question, static would be preferred, if possible. if not, that's fine too.

And if you made the pulsing light effect, as well, that would be the icing on the cake. I am in no rush, and know you have better things to do with your time, anything that you would consider making would be warmly appreciated. Thank you!

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bond1
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Posted: 22nd Feb 2013 08:37
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I can make it static, the only drawback is that there are only 2 textures available to play with for static entities. The normal map's alpha channel is already spoken for since it contains the specular. That leaves the diffuse alpha channel to define the pulsating bits. I can do it next week.

Reloaded will hopefully be here before we know it. And it will finally bring unity to all the shaders, rather than the hodge-podge of different shaders available now. The basic framework is already done and in place, so that everything will react to all lights and fog in the same way.

And I indeed intend to make a section of special effect shaders, that contain just about every modern effect that you could need.

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Cosmic Prophet
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Posted: 22nd Feb 2013 11:43
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You are my Hero man! Can't wait.

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unfamillia
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Posted: 22nd Feb 2013 13:24
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Just on a side note, Couldn't you make a smaller screen 'model' to place inside the the console?

So, you have two models:

The main model that has the normal and spec maps applied

The smaller screen model that fits inside the and holds the video texture.

This is what i am doing with one of my models as i need to have something similar.

Unfamillia.

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bond1
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Posted: 23rd Feb 2013 01:33 Edited at: 23rd Feb 2013 01:35
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Quote: " Couldn't you make a smaller screen 'model' to place inside the the console"


Yeah, but some way to define a "group" of entities, like the segment system, would be the ideal way to do it. Without having to fiddle with placing it each time in the editor for each instance.

It would be a powerful way to make complex, multi-part entities, like houses, buildings, etc. Perhaps we should push this to Lee as a feature of Reloaded. I can't imagine it would be THAT difficult to implement, since the segments already use a similar system.

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Cosmic Prophet
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Posted: 23rd Feb 2013 12:42 Edited at: 23rd Feb 2013 12:57
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Quote: "Perhaps we should push this to Lee as a feature of Reloaded"


I Agree.

Quote: "Yeah, but some way to define a "group" of entities, like the segment system, would be the ideal way to do it. Without having to fiddle with placing it each time in the editor for each instance."


Exactly. We can already do this type of effect using a segment, ( like a vidio screen built into a wall, blinking lights, etc.) I did it in the steampunk community pack. But we really need this available for entities as well.

As I've pointed out before, you can already add a decal to an entity ( which is a seperate model in itself) in the .fpe. How hard could it be to expand on that ability to include multiple meshes? Or in it's place, allow a single mesh that can be indipendantly textured, and givin it's own shader assignment ( animated shader, or video texture), instead of running it as a 16 frame decal.

Wow, can you imagine being able to build a city building, with animated billboards, and lights (like in Times Square New York), set it up in the .fpe, and just click to add the whole thing as a single game element?

We can dream, can't we?

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