New New Planets!

Those planets are absolutely beautiful, cambrogol. If you wouldn't mind terribly, could you please explain exactly how you made them. I assume that they're Lightwave objects, but how did you get the specularity, glossiness and luminosity map channels to work? What version of Lightwave are you using? Did you create the surfaces in Modeler or Layout? What did you name the surfaces to get the glow to work, etc, etc? Are they part of the geography .map file? If not, how did you place them at the correct locations?

How about a quick tutorial? We in the Wings of Defiance team could put this info to good use right away, on a variety of subjects. Including improving the ships. If you Epic guys want something in return, MajorTom has pretty much figured out how to get the cockpit view to look left/right, up/down, etc. But I would be very appreciative if you could let me in on how you got the Lightwave surface map channels working. Shane had that info once, but sadly he said he lost it in a drive cleaning.

Thanks.

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Hi Second Chance. Glad you like those planets. Too bad that they won't make it into Middle States. It turns out a change to the flux.ini (increasing the 'far_clip' setting) that allowed planet size objects to stay in game without being clipped also caused a crash when exiting the game. Hopefully we will resolve that in Traffic.
Now, I didn't realise that accessing the channels for lightwave surfaces had given anyone trouble before this. I am really a total amature when it come to lightwave, but I will gladly share what I did, as far as I remember.
Firstly, I am using Lightwave 7.0
I made objects in modeller, then opened the objects in Lightwave (layout). Once there I was able to turn on various channels. The only ones I used were specular and luminosity channels. The way I used them was by assigning textures to the channels. This was the only way I achieved any effect in game I believe. I also noticed that for specularity, the only way to vary the intensity of the effect was by varying the darkness or lightness of the specular texture. Luminosity was different (I think) and could be adjusted directly in Lightwave. The name of the channel was unimportant. I used either default, or even planet. Keep in mind these objects are not normal planet objects. After I finished adding the textures for the normal surface, luminosity, and specular channels, I resaved the object (or in this case exported it as a 5.6 object). When I then processed the object with the convertor, it listed 3 texture surfaces as being present.
As for placement, I used two techniques. GrandpaTrout can be credited for both. One was using the 'station environment' tools he made to place the planet as a 'station-planet'. Essentially it was just a giant station that I placed over the normal planet. Placement for this was a little tricky, but I somehow figured out a method...
GrandpaTrout came up with a better way to place the planet objects though, via his Geog tools. Placement for these objects is now included in the current set of tools.

Okay, I know that was far from the nice tutorials you usually write up, but that is the best I can do for now (Really REALLY busy these days). My memory on the process is fading a bit, and actually I am having trouble with my Lightwave install right now, so I can't refresh it. Maybe I could send you the orginal files for my planets and asteroids? That way you could just see first hand exactly how I set them up. That might be easiest for a lightwave pro like yourself.

Thanks Cambrogol, I really appreciate that info. This is absolutely incredible! For years it was commonly understood that the only way to get any special features to work in the game was through the use of special naming conventions for either the surfaces or the objects themselves, as specified in the avatar creation section of the graphic SDK. If you've managed to get these things working without special names, then that's a major breakthrough! And I can quite clearly see shiny oceans on those planets and lights on the night side.

None of these features ever worked for me, no matter what I did. And some correspondence with the buda5 modelers revealed that generally these effects don't work when made with a Lightwave version other than 5 itself. It could be that my problem has been where I texture the surfaces. Coming from a "normal" 3D package like Max, I tended to texture my surfaces in Modeler, instead of Layout. I thought that this was perfectly normal, until I found out that Lightwave never allowed this until version 6. All versions prior to this (including 5, which was used for EoC) only allowed surface texturing in Layout. Since I texture my surfaces in Modeler (which don't work) and you texture your surfaces in Layout (which do work), this may be an important new piece of modeling information. I would definitely like to see your files (the originals and the version 5 exports). I can't wait to try this out.

Brilliant work, thanks again.

*edit*
I'm a little unclear on something. You said you made the objects and then opened them in Layout. Did you export the objects as 5.6 before opening them in Layout? Or did you open your ver. 7 objects in layout? You then said that after texturing in Layout you (re)saved, or exported, them as 5.6. I assume your talking about exporting the scene to 5.6, right? Not saving the objects again. Because if you saved the objects from Layout, they would be saved in ver. 7 format. And you can't export objects from Layout, only scenes.

Did you open the ver. 7 objects in Layout, texture them, then save them from Layout (in ver. 7 format), then open them again in modeler and export them as Lightwave 5 objects? Also, you mention activating channels. You are talking about assigning texture maps with the T button on the Basic tab of the surface editor, right?

If you could be little more specific about the exact order of operations, that would be very helpful. Thanks again.

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I got it to work first time. Just a quickie test with a mini-planet and down-and-dirty maps. So don't be slamming me on quality issues.




Damn fine job Cambragol. Really nice. I can't imagine how every single person working on this problem missed the mark. Glad you hit it.


Second Chance; Here's my steps (they differ from Cambragol's a bit since I have LW 7.5 and 5.6):

1. Create sphere in Modeler.

2. Assign it a surface (any surface name you'd like... I named mine planet).

3. Export the model as a LW5 file. Again... any name will do. I saved mine as Viridian.

4. Build your maps for color, luminosity, and specularity. I created an ocean planet since that seemed quicker to make.

5. Open Layout and assign your color map to the color channel of your surface. Assign the luminosity map to luminosity and the spec map to specularity.

6. Save the object.

7. Convert the object. Then follow the usual steps to place the object in-game. (For this example I just tagged the avatar onto the cops fighter Mk 3 model and then used the Sandbox to call it up.)

This really opens some doorways for EoC modding.

Grrr! This isn't working for me. I'm trying to use this for non-planet objects.

I make my object in 8.0 (finally decided I liked LW enough to upgrade).

Convert object to 5.6

Open 5.6 object in Layout and texture Default surface, using color, luminosity, and specular map channels. Save object from 8.0 Layout (which I'm sure saves it as an 8.0 object again). Export Layout scene to 5.6.

Convert object saved object, get this:

0 surfaces gives 0 textures.
0 pylogons.

Just like trying to convert a non 5.6 object.

Shane, how are you saving a 5.6 object from layout? It's not possible. There's no option to export a 5.6 object from Layout's menu. So how are you guys saving your Layout surfaced object?

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You're making this too difficult. That's the reason we never found the correct method. I guess all the jumping through Flux hoops made us jaded.

Follow these steps exactly. I suggest a mini-planet like I did for ease of testing.

1. Create a sphere in LW 8. Mine was tesselated and had 1280 polys.

2. Open the surface properties panel and change the name of the surface from default to planet (or something like that).

3. Export as a LW5 file. Name it anything you like.

4. Now open the object using LW 5.6 Layout. Click the Surfaces tab to open the surfaces panel.

5. Assign the correct surface attributes to their respective fields. I applied my maps (color, luminosity, and specularity) as planar images mapped on the Y-axis. Then I hit autosize. Also I set my diffuse to 80%.

6. Once all your textures are assigned close the panel. Now click on the Objects tab. Select Save Object.

7. Now run the object through the converter and set up your default avatar scene. Then place the object in-game using whatever method you are familiar with.

Does that help? If you still have problems I'll be up for a couple more hours here. Just post back.