Glass Issue and Question (in a Fighter)
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Imho it’s a pity the Liberty Navy lacks Gunboats. So, I used the XML project to clone a Rhino, and I used the FLModelTool to enlarge it 1.75 times.
To my astonishment, this worked!!! I got me an oversized Rhino, and it’s a fitting and easy choice for a Liberty Gunboat.
The only thing I figured I need to do, would be to make the glass intransparent, otherwise there would be a 1.75 times too big pilot visible, which is silly. An intransparent cockpit would be fine.*
The issue is: the glass of the 1.75xRhino is totally invisible. As in: not there at all. What can be the cause of this?
The (regular) question is: how can I make the glass totally intransparent? From my previous modding life, I remember this is fabulously easy: just changing a number. Problem is, I don’t see any obvious number I could change…
*(I assume that, if I’d make this a playable ship, the intransparency of the cockpit will not influence the player view, as the player cockits are separate files. is this assumption correct?)
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I would imagine it’s a cmp issue unless you’re using a new mat file for the ship. Can’t help you with that. I can tell you how the glass works in a .mat file though.
The rhino freighter uses the li_playerships.mat file.
Open the .mat with utf editor and under the material node you will find a node called L_glass, expand the node.
You will see 3 more nodes. Dc, Oc and type.
Dc is diffuse colour. You need to edit the float to alter the colour of the glass. First 3 entries rgb.
Oc is the opacity of the texture. Again it’s the float you need to edit. First entry is usally 0.800000, which is well transparent, change it to 0.000000 and you will not be able to see through the glass.
Word to the wise though, if you were to alter the glass in the li_playerships.mat file you would be altering the glass for all the liberty ships, so you will need to use a seperate mat for your gunboat if you wish to avoid this.
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@ Timmy51m Thx!! Best thing I can do, it seems, is to make another node and have the Gunship.cmp point to that instead of to the vanilla glass.
EDIT: what I forgot, is that atm, no glass at all is displayed… But maybe I’ll solve that on the way.
@ Davis: Good advice, thx!
Btw I do remember that, when the word ‘glass’ was used in a material node, its opacity/transparency wa automatically set to 0.7000000? Oh well, I’ll find that out, if so
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Hmm… having it point to another node in practice is less easy than it seemed in theory. There is no ‘pointing to’ at all. The only link I can think of, is the name of the .3db itself - which, then, should be the same as the node in the .mat file.
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Yes, they are around 0.70000, but I often use 0.80000 or 0.75000 but it’s a matter of taste.
You wrote the new rhino’s glass totally unvisible. Have you made new mat file for the new rhino or it’s mat links to the orig lib mat?
If the second one I suggest to make a new mat for the 1.75 rhino.Moonhead wrote:
Hmm… having it point to another node in practice is less easy than it seemed in theory. There is no ‘pointing to’ at all. The only link I can think of, is the name of the .3db itself - which, then, should be the same as the node in the .mat file.
Errr… I’m not sure I understand what you mean…
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Davis wrote:
Yes, they are around 0.70000, but I often use 0.80000 or 0.75000 but it’s a matter of taste.
You wrote the new rhino’s glass totally unvisible. Have you made new mat file for the new rhino or it’s mat links to the orig lib mat?
If the second one I suggest to make a new mat for the 1.75 rhino.I used the original one.
I’d be willing to create a new file, but I’m kinda puzzled with how the files are setup… I studied a couple of bases a while ago and had assumed ships would work the same. But it’s more difficult imho.
How to create a new .mat? (I guess I could use FLModelCloner but I work with the XML project, and UTF-XML still doesn’t work… And I suppose that anything that FLmodelCloner does automatically, I can also do ‘manually’ do in the XML files that build the Gunship.
So, how to make it use another .mat??
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Davis wrote:
Moonhead wrote:
Hmm… having it point to another node in practice is less easy than it seemed in theory. There is no ‘pointing to’ at all. The only link I can think of, is the name of the .3db itself - which, then, should be the same as the node in the .mat file.
Errr… I’m not sure I understand what you mean…
I mean that in the .XML files (which are the .cmp and .3db files converted into text XML files) there is no obvious explicit reference to a mat file.
Of course, there is a line in ShipArch.ini, but just changing that is supposed to render conflicts (if two objects -in my case, the original Rhino and the new Gunship - refer to different files with the same name, it might screw up.)
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Vital wrote:
Use liberty gunboat from 88Flak(made by why485 I think).It has very liberty style
Thx for the offer / suggestion, but Id be more satisfied if I learn how to overcome the problems I ran into.
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I think I found the material reference! It’s in the ‘lod’ files.
As they are in the same folder as the VMesh files (in the XML project) I didn’t find them at first.
Okay back to continuing trying/doing stuff now
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This is weird: (I’m now working with a model the size of a standard Rhino, as the enlargement is the last phase in my ‘assembly line’) I see the new glass I made, when I fly the ship in space, but at the base (in the equip room, and also as a model at the shipdealer) the glass in invisible…
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Screw it, the XML generated ship has issues (controls weird, even though its just a Rhino - not even enlarged now - with the exact stats of a Rhino. it’s not meant to be a flyable ship, but still I cannot comprehend why a cloned ship should have these issues.
FlModelCloner doesn’t seem to work properly. Prolly another Win7x64 issue. Well I never liked it much anyway tbh, I’m sadder about the XMLUTF which apparently has some issues, because the method it represents, makes perfect sense - in theory that is.
Don’t bother to respond; this is meant as a closing post of this issue.
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Making new mat:
First, export the cmp model into ms3d with the mat files ( when the program asks for mat simply click the original lib mat).Second, export the mat from ms3d. Not a bad idea if the mat and the cmp names are the same.
For example: new_rhino.mat, new_rhino.cmp and of course new_rhino.sur
All you need are: mat.exporter, cmp importer/exporter for ms3d.
You can get these packages from the ‘download’ section I guess.I think you’re familiar with the FL_Model Tool, so I ignore the third step.
When you have the new .mat file everything is going to be default. You can easily set your values if you open the liberty mat by another utf editor and simply copy/paste the RGB values (only the values: Dc, Oc) to their proper place, and of course if you want to get glowing textures like the windows have then you must add Et, Ec nodes and their values/names.
I’m by no means an expert on XML so I cannot help with that.
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Sizer wrote:
there’s this wonderful thing… it’s called the edit button.I agree. It’s particularly wonderful because there’s always the choice whether or not to use it.
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@ Davis: thx for the info, but I’ll leave it at this.
Btw I haven’t had had a working Milkshape for years (I believe because I erroneously upgraded to a version that did not support the plugins). I contemplated getting a new version some months ago, but there was a rumor that in the foreseeable future it wouldn’t be necessary anymore. So, I decided to wait.
Not anymore, in fact I think I’ll just quit modding. I don’t wanna spend time to discover certain errors are because some functions in the tools don’t work well with Win7 x64
etc. etc. My stepson just started on university, programming Java a.o… I might get a better kick out of trying to keep up with him.Thanx anyway.
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You can’t quit that easily man. Make the damn ship!
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Lol, was rly tired last evening and also rly frustrated because I dedicated my whole evening to it, and I’m still sad about the XML project rendering unpredictable results, because it would be such a nice and clear way to do stuff like this.
EDIT: I deleted each an every file that was remotely involved with the ship, and then started anew - using XMLUTF. I did everything exactly the same way as I did before. However, the result differs: the ship works fine now :crazy: No glass issue, no steering issue. No idea where the corruption has come from, but I’m very glad it’s not in XMLUTF!
Now, I gotta enlarge the thing, which isn’t hard. After that I’m done
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Enlarging the ship triggers some issues (no glass, and some kinda ‘lid’ on the back of the ship is lower than it should be) but i’ll open another thread for that.
