Tool Request: Accurate Model Viewer
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Greetings gents, I just wanted to float a couple ideas / questions out there to those of the community with graphic engine experience.
We have a basic tool that almost accomplishes this, with HardCMP. But the fact is, it doesn’t display opacity or any effects like those of Nomad or animated textures. These features would really really help out, as it’s a total pain in the arse de/re-activating the mod, starting up FL, loading a saved game or starting new with a viable loadout and market entry, then launching to see how the model actually looks in-game. Same with Milkshape; it’s only basic opacity.
So partly what I’m asking is if it would be possible to use the FL engine to display these models as they would actually appear in-game, sans any hardpoints or anything else? I think it’d be a very useful tool and cut down on development time considerably, especially where you’re just tweaking UV mapping alignments and such.Another tool that would be great is one able to display ale effects as they appear / function in-game. Better yet would be a complete graphical designer, but that’s likely far too much of an involved project. Just being able to display the animated version of ALE effects would do the job fine.
So… is it possible to sort of bastardize the FL engine to accomplish these tools?
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You could just not use FLMM for development
If you don’t have the FLMM activation part and you have quick shortcuts to the server and client, it isn’t much of a hassle.
I mean, a 3D engine isn’t so bad to make, but it won’t render exactly the same as FL and making Nomad stuff or opacity could be more time-consuming.
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Using a dedicated FL install for development cuts down a little, but it’s still annoying as heck to go through the whole loading process with every tiny tweak
especially if ya forget a couple things in the ini’s ^^
-> close fl, re-edit, restart and load, launch, check things out, repeat. Sucks up hours of time better spent on modeling / texturing / mapping.Probably wont see anything like this, but it’d be nice.
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What I’d like would be a way for F1 to force reloading of assets (INIs, CMPs, MATs, ALEs, TXMs, etc.). F1’ing out and back in is acceptable and would be great for development (and autoupdaters, too!)
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That actually would accomplish the task perfectly,
good idear there FF
Likely a lot easier than starting from scratch.off-topic: Anyone been able
to use the frame based texture animation in a model yet? Still
haven’t been able to make it work without doing it via attached FX yet.
(Mean the one using Frame Rect and an array of frame pics in one
texture -mainly used in Missile fx or computer monitors. Not the
regular sliding ani’s used on signs n’ such) -
FriendlyFire wrote:
What I’d like would be a way for F1 to force reloading of assets (INIs, CMPs, MATs, ALEs, TXMs, etc.). F1’ing out and back in is acceptable and would be great for development (and autoupdaters, too!)Some times the simplest ideas are the most powerful.
The ability to reload data without restarting Freelancer would be an awesome time saver.
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Ships at least are reloaded when a game is loaded (assuming you’re testing with SP). You could use Console to quicksave a game in space, then it’s just a matter of Enter-lo-Enter to update the ship. Probably work with any equipment, too. I think thorns are reloaded whenever they’re needed, but systems run into problems, so you still have to restart for those.
I would really like to at least get Dc and Oc working with UTF Editor (just so the cockpit looks right), but I don’t yet know how.
