EoC planet objects?

I'll try to get in contact with Craig A. Clark. And perhaps see if Hot4Darmat will forward a message to Steve Robertson.

PS Are you the same Shane as I see working on the Freehauler project?

You found me out. Yes, I am.

Well, I took a look with a hex editor. The name of the SHDR block is "DPlanet". Case might be important. I tried just slicing out the SHDR block from a working planet and replacing the "EDefault" that is the name of the shader block in the 1 meter planet files that Shane created. Sadly, that crashes the game. So there must be checksum or size calculations that I would have to redo by hand.

What does "EDefault" normally refer to? There are no other names in the file. It could just be a matter of setting up the surface to match what PS did. In which case, it might be possible to compare adjustments to the PS hex output. And then make changes until the two begin to match. At the very least, a person could begin to understand the codes in the PSO files. On the other hand, you can spend days going nowhere.

I tried cutting and pasting the head of the original planet files into my working but texturless ones, but so far to no avail. I took this to mean that there are other areas of the file that may be important though. I think it would be possible to crack the code, but it would takes days at the least.
I should try naming the surface Dplanet again, because I don't think I was watching the case.

hmm...I just did that and things have changed...the colors of the planets are now very strong, as if the texture is being applied, but is being blurred extensively....maybe I just need to know what settings to give the surface now.

On further examination it seems clear that both texture files are being applied, as the blur contains both their main colors.

Update! I have solved the planet model dilemna!!! Whoooohoo! It just took a little thought and the hex editor. Here goes:

Create a 256 by 256 image and save it as a lbm file (Deluxe Paint). It MUST be named either Planet_LOD0_0.lbm, or Planet_LOD1_0.lbm, or Planet_LOD2_0.lbm, depending on which level of detail model you are replacing.

Creat a sphere of radius 1m in Lightwave Modeller, with surface called 'Planet'. Make sure smoothing is turned on for the texture.

Save the Object, then open it in Lightwave.

Load the image

Open the Surfaces panel and change the Current Surface to 'Planet'

Click on the texture button for Surface Color

Click on Texture Map and choose the .lbm file you created previously as the image for the surface.

Now choose the Texture type, which is likely Cylindrical Image Map (Most work but I am not positive which projection works best..still tying them out)

Save the object then convert it with the PSO converter plug it into Avatars/Planets in your resource file or mod and Voila! New beautiful smoothilishess planets.

I have had good success with spheres of up to 3500 Polygons! Though...that seems a little overboard. The sphere looks perfectly smooth and round at much lower levels.

I will post up some working PlanetLODs and screenshots soon

I'd very much like to see those screenshots. I've tried this three seperate times but still have not gotten it to work. The planet objects are smoother... it's clear the program is using the higher-poly planet objects. However, none of the planets have terrain or cloud textures.

In the image below the top two images show the planet Jewel using the new planet pso object. The bottom images show what Jewel looks like with the original planet pso objects.



BTW: It was standard pratice to use the 'cubic' method of texture projection at the time EoC was made. That, I've found, seems to the the method PS used (no seams).

Here is a shot of the new planet object in action. I am not sure whether you can see from this picture, but all the texture layering and effects are being applied. The model is behaving exactly like the original.