GrandpaTrout - about your geog sdk docs

Shane, do you have a fairly good grasp of the organization of the lw lighting files for maps?

Yikes... I'd probably have to look into it again. It's been some time since I've dealt with the geog files (like a year or so).

But I can take a look and post the results here. In essence, they're just LW scenes which set up the lights and positions of distant suns.

I'll post something this evening.

<font size="1"><font face="Book Antiqua"><font color="black">"Never before in the history of the world had such a mass of human beings moved and suffered together. This was no disciplined march; it was a stampede-- without order and without a goal, six million people unarmed and unprovisioned, driving headlong. It was the beginning of the rout of Civilisation... of the massacre of Mankind."
--H. G. Wells The War Of The Worlds</font id="black"></font id="Book Antiqua"> </font id="size1">

Thanks. If I can be shown how the lws files are organized it should be cake to have the new version of my EoC Mapmaker write out scene files to go with the map files.

btw - I just found a program that flawlessly converts almost any 3D file format into lightwave 5 scene and object files WITH TEXTURES!. I just tried it out on a test object and the pso converter recognized the surfaces with no problems and made the new LBM textures. Now I can do all my work (including texturing) in Max. It's called PolyTrans from Okino. The new version 4 now supports proper uv coordinate conversion to lw5 standards. Unfortunately it's also almost $400.

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Geog LW Scenes:

Here's a pic of what the Hoffer's Wake geog scene looks like when opened in LW Layout. (I, of course, added the red text and the black text insert to the picture.)

http://images.snapfish.com/33986%3C8723232%7Ffp58%3Dot%3E2328%3D%3C2%3C%3D8%3A8%3DXROQDF%3E232349%3B%3C83549ot1lsi

The Lights in the Scene:
Each of the systems is represented with a point light. This is so that, when traveling Hoffer's Wake, the distant stars of Coyote, Santa Romera, etc. all show up in the starfield (something I was never aware of when playing the game).

The Objects in the Scene
There are only a few objects in the scene. They are pretty much all located at the central 'cross' in the picture. They are:

The root object: Most scenes in EoC use a root object. It may be that the root objects (which are simply nulls named 'root') are a way of keeping everything organized. It could be that flux looks for the root object for some hidden reason. I do not fully know what the purpose of the root object is.


The SystemParent object: This is a null named 'SystemParent'. I do not know what this is used for.

The <node class=icNebulaAvatar url=model||models|hoffers_wake_nebula> object: A null which shows the center of the nebula avatar, and includes the path of the nebula avatar file in it's name. Flux picks this up and loads the correct avatar for the system.


The <node class=icStarfieldAvatar bright_star_count=2000 dim_star_count=100000 tint=(0.8,0.8,1.0)> object: Probably locates the center of the starfield, and creates the stars (there is no 'real' starfield avatar, so this is doing it 'on the fly'. The location of this null would be important, since flux is probably using it as the 'pivot point' for the starfield.

The <star> object: I have no idea what this is used for. It is not parented to anything.

The <fill> object: I have no idea what this is used for either. It, also, is not parented to anything.

The Camera object: A camera must exist in every LW scene. This one is located at position 0,0,0, which is not where LW cameras appear by default. This leads me to believe there is some reason for the camera to be placed at the same position as the Hoffer's Wake system. In a similar manner, if I open up the Coyote file, the camera and coyote star are both placed at 0,0,0.


Notes:

The system lights (like the Coyote, SantaRomera, etc. lights) are all parented to the root object. The root object is parented to the SystemParent object.

Neither the StarField avatar object nor the NebulaAvatar object is parented to anything. <star> and <fill> are both parented to nothing.

Hopefully this helps somewhat. There's a lot of stuff going on which I have no idea about. Perhaps others can fill in the blanks.


<font size="1"><font face="Book Antiqua"><font color="black">"Never before in the history of the world had such a mass of human beings moved and suffered together. This was no disciplined march; it was a stampede-- without order and without a goal, six million people unarmed and unprovisioned, driving headlong. It was the beginning of the rout of Civilisation... of the massacre of Mankind."
--H. G. Wells The War Of The Worlds</font id="black"></font id="Book Antiqua"> </font id="size1">

A correction to my previous post:

The <star> and <fill> are not objects. They are spotlights. Both are placed at the Hoffer's Wake position (0,0,0). One (the <fill> light) is not rotated at all (Heading: 0, Pitch: 0, Bank: 0).

The <star> light is rotated thus: Heading: 180, Pitch: 0, Bank: 0).

Remember, spotlights in Flux are single sided sources only. So, to get correct lighting, you'd have to have two set up just like this (basically a light for each side).

The <star> color is 255, 204,128 which creates a bright yellow.

Here's the fun part...

The <fill> color is 092, 172, 034 which creates a bright green light. The same bright green light that you see in Hoffer's Wake. [8D]

The <star> and <fill> lights just add extra illumination and color to the system. In Hoffer's Wake, the <star> gives the bright yellow near the star itself, and the <fill> gives the green-tint to everything in the system.

<font size="1"><font face="Book Antiqua"><font color="black">"Never before in the history of the world had such a mass of human beings moved and suffered together. This was no disciplined march; it was a stampede-- without order and without a goal, six million people unarmed and unprovisioned, driving headlong. It was the beginning of the rout of Civilisation... of the massacre of Mankind."
--H. G. Wells The War Of The Worlds</font id="black"></font id="Book Antiqua"> </font id="size1">

Thanks Shane, awsome job! I've done a ton of experimenting and posted the results in another post on this forum. Thanks again.

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