Jefferson's 3D Modeling Tips for Freelancer

Out of Engine:

New Toledo Order Base in volumetric rederer:

Again. 5th attempt to reply. This site does NOT like Android. Submit vanishes.

Points made in 4 attepts:
( Edits made post submit as I had to hurry. Screen on smart phone tiny. I’m so blind can’t drive anymore, etc)

Love DDS format.
DDS supplies direct access to DX.
Don’t like games reinventing wheel to get same functionality as DDS system.

Maybe enlightening to show how other games using DDS handle the format. One developed own filter for normal + height generation. (Never work on FL, but interesting).
Could show with examples evolution of DDS from beginning to now if I hunted up examples from backups.

Polygon budget are paramount in any 3D game NOW.
expect that to change in a few years. Not in FL but in future you give the engine an example of what you want and it will generate the 3D itself at no fixed poly count. (Eg: huge for close passes tiny for far or perfect LOD). Texture examples fed to it will be 4096 min dimension I didn’t hear their maximum ( probably 65,535 or FFFF).

Some modern game already using shemas like this, this is only the one I know those involved.

Others are working on a program to take any old game, run it in and output it totally upgraded to modern WIN 10 use and that’s sound and graphics aside, that has to redone to modern standards, its the “wrapper” engine, renderer, etc that gets upgraded. This is to pull old DOS games from the dustbin, polish them, pat them on the head and tell them “now go back into the arena and make us more money”.

There are more teams working more ideas out there than are dreamt of in your philosophy Haratio.
They are planning on not only digging up Yoric’s skull, they are planning on raising the jester in the entire.

So there is infinite jest here. Change is on the horizon. The question is; What change and whose change and who has the say about it.

Not me I’m afraid. Mans days upon this earth are numbered to three score and ten as the Christian bible says. I’m slated to fall a tad short of the mark.

Though as far as the future is concerned, lists are being made. I’m sure (Dead sure) Freelancer is on those lists. It will all come down to one question from that point, “Whose the best and brightest at X part of what comes next?”. Resumes not accepted, they’ll make the calls.

No I don’t know any of this as solid as to the competitors simply because there is a horserace with a bunch of developers to get this out. No make that a good old knock down drag out fistfight! First to develop and pitch is the winner. That’s just the way it works. Good old Darwinistic Capitalism.

I knew only some of the people on one team. I was begged to join. If I had I wouldn’t me back in the Freelancer community. 'Fraid their insurance woudn’t let me near them.

Nope, ol Jeff is going back to what he had the most fun at doin a while back. Other than making a rightous sword or piece of great looking armor or a really fantastic looking gun or a great looking effect when that gun reduced the shootee into ash, that was the thrill I got flying my own designs around Sirius. Few games give you that opportunity folks. Charish the game for this.

As for polygon budgets. Don’t teach gradpa how to suck eggs. The tecnique is called “Dog Robbing”.
Freelancer’s terrain is “Fixed Grid”. X by Y you have the grid plane. Terribe for terrain budgets. Why? The answer is a simple logic it’s easy to get across. Say you have a flat piece of the terrain like under the landing pads in the Toledo base I’m doing to leave as an example. That’s a bunch of polys that with no problems at all can be merged into one polygon freeing you to use those polys you just saved to be used where needed. And the need here is terrain folds. Eg: Where cliffs drop off as one example.
Now it’s outside of the engine and taking Toledo and exporting to .obj and importing into two tools I’ve been using for years. Vue and Bryce. Oh shut up, yes there might be better in you opinion. But opions are like anal cavities, everybody has one and I know how to to do thing with my tools no casulal user has any business trying. Now from there grabbing a height map (kind of like those used in other applications but with the full range of tones uesed) and then regenerating the terrain (bunch of times as this entails exporting them back to objactions and then CMP and into Freelancer for a look see)

Now those new pads ARE NOT the stock models by any means any more. They had just too many polys doing absolotely nothing so I merged and played and cut their budgets so I could clone more and not raise the overall budget that much. Want to know what the HUGE polygon waste was and I MEAN HUGE? The walkways and if you don’t believe me break then out of the CMP youself and see. Now if you do, what is going to pop into your head after you stop laughing or crying will be, “What we’re they thinkinlg”. And from experiance I think I know. Toledo gets used in these live action cut scenes and they kept the buget high so that department would be happy with the results.

Now take those walkways and instead of baking the texture as solid we can not be lazy and keep all the cutouts with alphas and get exactly the same effect of the walkway guard rails as the did with landing pad grating.

Now start adding that savings to the list and and start spending the savings where needed. Thats on the “Hero” parts that get more that a too quick view on the flyover. (I won’t go into how to preserve the things like imbedded path splines and prop hardpoints. Take it as read nothing I’m doing will change those) Or they’d better not or it’s back to troubleshooting until they do work. The best thing to “do with the new” here is import into the existing CMP with UTF editor.

(Great tool for models too. Oft overlooked that I love to do things like change the canopy glass color with. Red glass looks cool on some moldels.)

Android acting flaky again. Shocked lasted this long
Sign off before lose submit.

Edited by Jfferson001 with a rig I set up to magnify this LG smartphone’s screen. Tried blue tooth keyboards unstead of virtual. On keystroke per second sucked. Sorry but must reedit. Today eyes really bad. Most times submit gone.

As for looking better than the original? Thank you that in this case is a HUGE compliment. It’s the VAST changes made that you’re not suppose to see that are the key.

That goes back to dog robbing. I took from Peter to pay Paul as they say. There’s no arguing with success and I see I’d better show an example here so I’m whipping one up.

Those catwalks and why you couldn’t see any difference but the difference is HUGE.

In fact there’s not much of the original CMP in the geometry I haven’t dropped the the polygon counts drastically on.

Better show how or people’s not going to believe me. That’s simple enough and is a good lesson on how to dog rob some other badly executed models scattered throughout the game.

So let me get busy backtracking on that catwalk problem.

Well first first off why raise the poly count any more than you have too? On the other hand the smarter move might be follow Occum’s Razor. Most scew up old Occum and totally drop the premise and make the statement false. The premise is: “All things being equal.” Then goes on with “The simplest solution is the best.” Given that the if you can simplify the geometry keeping the same result in the analysis, why not? Again Swat you’ve made my point for me. Thank you. Keep up the good work.

Now in sterling example of a difference that makes no difference makes no difference. To the naked eye what I’m going to show is what a difference it makes to the budget I need to revamp the terrain. And why you didn’t see any difference because had you then I would have been disappointed.

Got my ducks in a row so here I go:

In a row continued:

Okay I get your point load and clear! I AM MOST Certainly doing this to add something Spectacular to this when I’m finished. Besides sorting that blocky terrain. Oh that sign idea? Killer! Consider it done!

Imagine flying into the base and over on that big pad is the ship seller under a huge lit sign “Jeff’s Used Starships”. Redoing that pad material to same sized small pad decals and tiling them to put the ships on.

Next on the list is making a larger control center sticking out of that cliff face. They chopped up the terrain mesh around it and didn’t need to. The terrain mat will be seamless with more detail but that’s just taking the huge material my terrain generator will kick out and chopping it into Freelancer sized pieces. Most you reuse, like the snow pack. That old tiled cliff face is so gone! Distracts.

The terrain map and material has been rendering on it’s own machine for a day and a half now.

Which is why I’m scrounging polys. The old scene had X and I’ve blown out this particular scene one before trying to do back then what was just adding pads and trying to upgrade the terrain. This time my goal is to add lots more, but until I know how how much of the important thing -the terrain upgrade - costs I won’t know how much I have left over for that. Now all the new pads, catwalks, accoutrements are just a tad over the original’s were three pads and all. Plus it would be nice to leave a nicer looking Toledo without all my mods put in too. I mean who hasn’t trucked into Omicron Minor to swat a few nomads?

The more I save here I can put there.

The question is (in my mind at least) is how much can I add?

Edit: I’d kill for vertex lighting! I suppose HDRI is out?

Workin’ on it.

Right now I’m headed to audition for….

I might be shooting myself in the foot posting on this topic again, but after 2 days of plugging away at the height map from the old terrain my terrain generator kicked out the new terrain and a texture I was really surprised at. I set it to render granite and only told it to change the mesh from quad based to triangles and the texture sizes to 1024 x 1024 .tga (It doesn’t speak .dds) and as I suppose to please my mother the geologist a rock strata band up there at the top of the cliffs. (Does that by UV manipulation.) I don’t think you can ask for much better and I’m happy.

Yes comments got me thinking “Why settle for all that rust when I’m setting on gigs of material libraries?” Then I thought that since I know what not to mess with (Thought I’ve moved around and added ship seller type hp’s before those keypoints for the cutscene there has me edgy) I’d like to change the flyover path too but that’s arcana I can leave for later or shout HELP! Thinking of new pads and catwalks now that that terrain is done.

As for now I’m giving away my ship models I don’t have the time to complete over at the ship showcase forum.

Come and get you free .obj format models!

(Have to clean out my closet sometime don’t you know?)

Used to give them out like this on Lancers Reactor in “days of yore”. And those who mod might not model.

Sorry, my joke video had to get pulled off my cloud drive. Google changed polices and now you have to approve everyone via email.

Sorry.

Somewhere along the process of import-export the mesh update got rejected in the .vms. Should have backed up meshes that worked. Didn’t. Got burnt for it. However with the old terrain mesh the new texture in my final version looks good (I think, but I might be a tad biased ) yes it repeats, that’s old meshes UV’s.
Working on new hardware next.

Edit: Look at next post for link to this .cmp to add to even vanilla Freelancer and workfiles so you might get new mesh to work.

Okay I admit it I goofed somewhere and don’t have time to start again. So I’m handing what I’ve got up to now over. At the least you’ll get a new looking Toledo. If someone gets the terrain mesh into the cmp successfully please let me know. By the way. The new UTF editor you can get on the site is four star. Bravo to the team.

Link to zip:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kJYlxz1CDpeUictxJ–E3tR1EMUhyqyu/view?usp=drivesdk

Jefferson here is still monitoring, but up to my neck in another project.

-Cheers-

While working on another project group in another modding community has packed 22mb of 3ds and gmax import - export scripts and plugins into one zip.

Don’t have to be a member to download at this link:

https://neverwintervault.org/project/nwn1/other/gmax12-3dsmax4-importexport-plugin-script-collection

Know these work with gmax 1.2 and Max 7. Haven’t tried on newer builds.

Edit: Heads together with post docs around the tent pitched to heat the monitor from freezing that’s attached to the telescope out in cold I mentioned my woes with a terrain mesh. Don’t laugh, one’s an Elven Ranger, another a Red Wizard, then a Barbarian and the last a Druid. Me? Admin. I roll dice behind a screen. So one mumbles, “used gw didn’t you? Bad move.” By response was “Huh?” “You said you had to drop back to Max 7? Uses Wavefront. Said (He mumbles) you’re using Design, couldn’t get some exporter to work dat made fer regular Max.” “And?” I prompted the Barbarian. “After 7 or so the switched to gw and booted Wavefront. Gotta big mesh one exported in gw, load into a program what only speaks wavefront, bang, big chunk of your mesh is going to flip vectors. Go try it. Bet ya!”. Four hours later back from counting stars I found out he was right. The center of my terrain up and vanished in Wavefront .obj and appeared perfect imported back into Design with gw .obj. So I trimmed more polygons until it reappeared in wavefront. Already cursing that the CMP exporter returns “version conflict” in 2010 Design because it’s made for regular 2010. Welcome to 3DS Max. About as friendly as a bobcat with a sore paw. So “Wait till we see it in the engine.” Soon. Very soon. Only one little problem now. What happens to that other planet that uses the mesh calling new hp’s and textures through thorn scripts? Why? Because it’s used in the long flyover scene and down the rabbit hole and you never are back in the cockpit until the Rhineland Nomads blow up the docking ring. Sprague. That long fly over is the left of the terrain, the flying landing of Toledo is right. A dimple an a mesa on the left is the rabbit hole entrance. There is no cmp for Sprague. The changes are are all scripted.
So it’s get the cmp for toledo right, then tackle Sprague by taking out it’s texture calls. Job done.

All I have to say is, “Out of the mouths of barbarians.”

Vox Barberi!