Custom starspheres
-
That’s unfortunately.
Color of the starsphere is good, unusual in Freelancer, Cool.They, Forsaken, you are the modder of Shattered Worlds right? Oh I love the mod, i played Evo 2.28 NomadRevenge and 2.29 few years before, and new Shattered Worlds is amazing. I hope one day i can make a beautiful and powerful mod like that.
Btw i have a question:
As you can see, i changed the barrier_tile_ice.tga, that’s fine but problem is, some color lost,originally, it should looks like this:
How to make the texture showing normally in game?
-
heh thanks mate.
I really appreciate your kudos. It wasn’t just me tho. We have a great crew of guys working on it. Alone I don’t think we could of pulled it off. But as a group… FriendlyFire, Blackbeard, Snake eye, Digdug, Ramirez, Enigma, Michaeloco, Hobbes and the rest of the guys all made amazing contributions to the project. Hopefully we can bring more to the table in the future and keep the pushing the engine limits.
In regards to your texture… Go to material type and change the type from Nebula to DcDt. Lemme know if that helps.
-
Forsaken wrote:
heh thanks mate.I really appreciate your kudos. It wasn’t just me tho. We have a great crew of guys working on it. Alone I don’t think we could of pulled it off. But as a group… FriendlyFire, Blackbeard, Snake eye, Digdug, Ramirez, Enigma, Michaeloco, Hobbes and the rest of the guys all made amazing contributions to the project. Hopefully we can bring more to the table in the future and keep the pushing the engine limits.
In regards to your texture… Go to material type and change the type from Nebula to DcDt. Lemme know if that helps.
A great work by a great group. your group almost updated all things of Freelancer, i mean game looks like a new one but more beautiful and more interesting.
And the texture, i will get try. Thank you for tell me this!
-
If what Forsaken said doesn’t work,
- Make sure your space color is black.
- Try another starsphere CMP. Many starspheres have vertex coloring, which means any texture will get tinted regardless of what’s actually on it.
-
Forsaken wrote:
Davis wrote:
I saw your pictures about the new starspheres you made, and my question is, if imake a cube, can i assign only one high resolution texture, for example 2000x2000 to one entirely face of the cube?Sure can. Check these starspheres out… its a cube with 6 textures.
The vanilla starspheres have many polys, it seems, its build up the entirely clouds from that little 256x256 as you said “seamless” texture but howsoever theese are not as sharp and realistic as i’d use only one hight res texture.
Yeah thats something we fight. Your texture has to have a really nice resolution to it. Its like doing a planet texture that looks good in photoshop when zoomed at 100%. Then when you put it on the planet it dont look near as good unless its from afar.
The second thing, i made black or very dark textures on the vanilla starspheres, and sometimes in the game there are lighting edges of the polys. How and where can i set it?
That ones a pita. Lets just say it involves you importing it into milkshape then adjusting the UV’s then exporting and resetting it up as a starsphere. TBH, thats why I most always use the texture type Nebula as the the material type… and ensure that the space color is pure black.
Hope this helps. Atleast 2 years since I played with starspheres and FriendlyFire can tell you how forgetful I am lol.
Thanks the guideline Forsaken! I havent seen the last picture yet with this blue clouds and dark clouds below.
I must say, it has real hard 3d effect, kudos for that.
Ive checked all of your pictures on your website this weekend, and at many places there are huge star density. My question is, does the background (clouds…etc) contain stars/star clusters also, or just the clouds and you made an other cmp with only stars like in vanilla?
What i want to do, to make a cube as you advised, so it has 8 faces, i use max 2 faces for a cloud with transparency at the edges and the remain 6 faces wanna be black colored backgrounds with stars only, then i dont need 2 more cmps.
Does it work? -
NeXoSE wrote:
That’s unfortunately.
Color of the starsphere is good, unusual in Freelancer, Cool.They, Forsaken, you are the modder of Shattered Worlds right? Oh I love the mod, i played Evo 2.28 NomadRevenge and 2.29 few years before, and new Shattered Worlds is amazing. I hope one day i can make a beautiful and powerful mod like that.
Btw i have a question:
As you can see, i changed the barrier_tile_ice.tga, that’s fine but problem is, some color lost,originally, it should looks like this:
How to make the texture showing normally in game?
Im not sure, but try to play with the Ec (emissive i think)
UTF–->Your starsphere—>material library---->barrier_ice_tile.tga—> Ec—> EDIT, and you’ve got 3 numbers like: 0.313726
0.313726
0.313726
Set this numbers between (0,1 ÷ 0,9) and see what happening. -
Ok, test is over, and now….
i change the texture to DcDt and DcDtEcOcOt (and add node Ec and Oc), no decided difference between it, and the bug is:
Looks very clearly and beautifully, but looks the edge transparent not work.
And I also do this to clouds_Li01.tga, and have the bug too.
Here is the setting of barrier_tile_ice.tga
barrier_tile_ice.tga
±Type – DcDtEcOcOt
±Dt_name – Nochange
±Dt_flags – Nochange
±Ec
– float -1.000000 //i tried to change it to 0.3, but looks no difference
– float -1.000000
– float -1.000000
±Oc
– float - 0.700000
– float - 0.000000 -
NeXoSE wrote:
Ok, test is over, and now….i change the texture to DcDt and DcDtEcOcOt (and add node Ec and Oc), no decided difference between it, and the bug is:
Looks very clearly and beautifully, but looks the edge transparent not work.
And I also do this to clouds_Li01.tga, and have the bug too.
Here is the setting of barrier_tile_ice.tga
barrier_tile_ice.tga
±Type – DcDtEcOcOt
±Dt_name – Nochange
±Dt_flags – Nochange
±Ec
– float -1.000000 //i tried to change it to 0.3, but looks no difference
– float -1.000000
– float -1.000000
±Oc
– float - 0.700000
– float - 0.000000Yes, the second problem could be: if you have photoshop, export the barrier_tile_ice texture and check if it is transparent or not.
If it is not, then you cant set transparency by adding new nodes to the material library, because the texture itself not transparent. Not all textures are transparent, you’d rather make a new one (with transparent layer) that looks like the origin, and simply change it. -
Davis wrote:
Yes, the second problem could be: if you have photoshop, export the barrier_tile_ice texture and check if it is transparent or not.
If it is not, then you cant set transparency by adding new nodes to the material library, because the texture itself not transparent. Not all textures are transparent, you’d rather make a new one (with transparent layer) that looks like the origin, and simply change it.Transparent layer means Alpha layer?
but I have added a alpha layer to barrier_tile_ice.tga. so i think that is something else.
-
NeXoSE wrote:
Davis wrote:
Yes, the second problem could be: if you have photoshop, export the barrier_tile_ice texture and check if it is transparent or not.
If it is not, then you cant set transparency by adding new nodes to the material library, because the texture itself not transparent. Not all textures are transparent, you’d rather make a new one (with transparent layer) that looks like the origin, and simply change it.Transparent layer means Alpha layer?
but I have added a alpha layer to barrier_tile_ice.tga. so i think that is something else.
Im not sure i understand it, but did you make a new texture which is same as the vanilla, or you added something in photoshop to the texture.
If the second one, that wont works, at least i couldnt made it.
Check something else: There are galaxy textures, all of them are transparent with black background. Try to import one of them into photoshop and check the preferences of the layers. If you make a new layer, and move it up you will see the original texture is transparent. Do same with the barrier_tile. If the result is different, ie not transparent you can add everything as you want in UTF, the texture wont be transparent in the game. -
Davis wrote:
Ive checked all of your pictures on your website this weekend, and at many places there are huge star density. My question is, does the background (clouds…etc) contain stars/star clusters also, or just the clouds and you made an other cmp with only stars like in vanilla?
We had several versions of star backgrounds. Originally it was a cube with a stars photoshopped in the background. Here is an example. It wasn’t that great maybe a slight improvement over vanilla. To be honest it was really difficult. No matter how small I made the specs. They’d appear really huge in FL due to the texture stretching. Also people noticed the pattern of the larger stars. Kinda hokey imho.
We then went an made a star background like is shown in many of of the newer ModDB and Starport screenshots…These background stars are basically a starsphere with a bazillion billboards placed and sized procedurally (I think that’s the right term for it).
Alucard wrote:
Nebula to dcdt? What is that and how to?
Use your UTF editor, and go to the Material Library. There is a node in there which specifies the material type. You can change this to what you need. In many cases, starsphere clouds will have the “Nebula” material type, on the other hand, ship textures will normally be “DcDt” or one of its derivatives. I don’t know if it is posted here, but look on Lancer Solarus’ site for a complete listing of all FL materials and the nodes which apply to them. Its been a lifesaver many times. If you can’t find it, I’ll look it up and send it to you.
Nexose wrote:
Transparent layer means Alpha layer?
but I have added a alpha layer to barrier_tile_ice.tga. so i think that is something else
I’m glad the DcDt addressed your original issue. Too bad there is a side-effect to it. Its never easy in FL modding is it? LOL! I think Davis is correct tho. If you made an alpha layer and made the edges more transparent on your texture (its a good one btw hats off) you’ll be on the right path. TBH I tried changing the barrier reef texture on SWWT and never had luck producing something that was equal or better quality than vanilla. I swear they strech and bend that texture like Gumbi.
-
Forsaken wrote:
We had several versions of star backgrounds. Originally it was a cube with a stars photoshopped in the background. Here is an example. It wasn’t that great maybe a slight improvement over vanilla. To be honest it was really difficult. No matter how small I made the specs. They’d appear really huge in FL due to the texture stretching. Also people noticed the pattern of the larger stars. Kinda hokey imho.
Yes, i had same problem with the stars too. First time i made stars by hand using the brush tool, but in the game many of them appeared like a fat amoeba.
After i tried the noise command, got better result, i dont know if the program has adjustments of the size of the noise, i will dig for. True i made only 256x256 size texture of the stars and i used it for a vanilla cmp (omega-5 if i remember right).
Thts why i fed up to use unique textures on vanilla starspheres, rather i gonna make own
